I swear this magic stuff is beginning to be a good news, bad news deal. Tegan you’re a witch, but you can’t stay a boy to learn about magic. Well back to trying to read the book title. “I assume I am looking for something like ‘Grimoire’, ‘Spell Book’, ‘Book of Magic’, or ’Repository of all Magical Knowledge’ for the rest of the title.”

“Something like that.” My Grandma smiled at me and made a ‘go on’ motion with her hands to get me back to looking.

With less than five minutes left ‘till we needed to leave I’d got pieces of the fourth word that was either eight or ten letters long depending on how you count the two double letters. “Grandma is the next word in English?”

“Tegan, you do know how to amaze me. It took me over four hours after knowing there were more than three words to work out said more wasn’t written in English. What have you got?”

“Just that two of the letters are like the double letter a and e squashed together. They are not that though, nor are they the same and one is found near the beginning of the word and the other is the last letter and it is superscript to the rest of the word. If the word was a maths expression it would look like the initial part is risen to the power of the last double letter.”

“Well you can possibly look at this again if we have time when we get back. However, now we need to get to the station.” Grandma took the book and locked it up. I wanted to complain and keep looking, but knew we had to get into Hull.

Locking the garage door after Grandma reversed the car from the garage, I quickly got into the car to drive to the railway station. We found a spot on the street near the station and with a minor wait as the train was running a few minutes late, we were getting off the platform and onto the six-twenty-eight Hull train.

The train trip from Hessle to Hull is in that range of time that you wonder why you bothered sitting down. Dependent on if the train is trying to catch back lost time or not the trip is between eight and twelve minutes. If the train is busy and slightly behind, like it was this morning, it can and did take us nearly five minutes to find a seat. If we had not bothered, we would have wished we’d looked but having bothered one wonders if it was a wasted effort when just slightly over three minutes later we were pulling in to the terminus and bailing from the seat into Hull with a little less than twenty minutes to make the short walk to the School Uniform Store.

“We’ve time for a cup of tea.” Grandma remarked, to let me know we would be stopping for one. I think she runs on the stuff. “Come on ‘Two Gingers’ is there.”

We were still in Hull Paragon Terminus and I knew the ‘Two Gingers Coffee House’ was in the Paragon Arcade on the other side of the Ferensway* but there was a door clearly labeled with their business and hours of operation from '8:00 AM to 6:00 PM'. “I don’t think they’re open yet…

“Sure, they are. Come on Tegan, put a bit more welly in.” Grandma opened the door and chivied me to catch up.

She’d already got sat at one of the long tables and I hear her order two loose leaf teas and we’re apparently sharing a slice of cake, as I’m looking for the door I just entered through, but only finding a blank wall.

Well one of the ginger haired owners is here but I don’t know if the place was open or if he was here to get the place ready to open. With my eyes opened to how Grandma allowed the lie of her husband and her own birth to give them a younger age I am now wondering if the whole, ‘I don’t lie’ is part of the spell to mind bend reality. Now when Grandma claims to never lie, I’m looking at it as she means once more to bend the world to her truth.

The cake was nice moist and buttery without being too heavy and went well with the dragon pearl white tea that was on offer today. The tea was definitely well wet, though with the delicate flavor it probably could have done with us letting it mash a bit longer than the time we had to spare. I obviously wasn’t completely awake as it wasn’t till I left the rear seating area for one of the two doors that I noticed the lights around the two sides of the store front and doors weren’t on.

“We need to use this door Tegan.” Grandma said, indicating the space between the two long pale wooden tables which I swear was a plain white wall before, and wasn’t there a potted tree?

We exited the door and we’re stood between two shop fronts. One was labeled ‘Kingston Jeanery’ and the other ‘rawcliffes’ spelt with a lower case ‘r’ I noted the oddity. I was a bit turned around, I mean I knew Paragon Arcade had entrances onto Paragon Street, but it was closer to the station. I just wondered why we took the train to Hull if Grandma could open doors to where she wanted to be. Before I could ask though she was opening the door at a couple of minutes before seven. A door that stated it opened at nine not seven in the morning. The store front was as lit as the coffee shop’s front had been, in other words all the lights were off save background lighting focused on the display cases, shelves and mannequins.

I was pondering if I was supposed to lock the front door when a yell of “Tegan!” convinced me it was likely already in hand, and so I darted after Grandma as she was exiting the empty shop floor for the warehouse area behind. I had to run a bit as she was turning into a side aisle ahead of me. Several twists later and through a curtained off partition, and they designed the room to make you think you had come through the bay window of someone’s formal sitting room. A cuckoo clock was chirping the hour.

The second thing, in this front living room I noticed though, which made sense as of course they wouldn’t need a fireplace, was instead of the fireplace, there was a short step-up fitting platform. It was a clever idea, and likely calmed a kid about to be shipped off to boarding school, to be measured in a living room instead of a shop. The curtains swayed back closed and I even momentarily thought I’d seen the wall and bay window sill, which was silly as this was a prop in the store’s warehouse, not someone’s actual formal living room.

“Perfect Misses Goss, right on time. This is your granddaughter? Come on girl, stand up here, let’s get you measured.” The old skinny tall lady was the third thing I noticed. “Belmare Moor, yes? Oh, you’ll have your third year trials later this month. Am I ever glad I passed those murderous tests. Tegan, what’s Belmare Moor’s current mortality rate, for third year trials?”

“What!”

“Tegan she’s joking with you. Alice really that was completely inappropriate.”

“I have to get up early, then I deserve to get entertained. Tegan, thank you, I will treasure your horrified expression all week. Now take your blouse and bra off.”

The distraction of having my new assets measured allowed me to calm down from the last scare. With Grandma’s blatant use of magic I’d forgotten that ‘Rawcliffes’ was a normal store for supplying school uniforms. Actually, I was lucky Alice didn’t think my overreaction to her joke was suspicious. Probably Grandma, soothed more than me, when she intervened. It was odd talking about my finals this month, they were next month. Further, calling them trials was unusual. She obviously used the word to unsettle me and thus wind me up. I finally regained my composure due to working out why the odd word was used. Also, for someone as old as she was, she couldn’t be expected to recall which month finals were offered.

I guess one good thing about being measured for the girl’s uniform was I didn’t have to get an inside leg measurement. That could have caused problems for me, being a boy. Nope the skirt required waist, hips, and the front of the body length from waist to knee. There was an allowed range of one and a half inches below to two and a half above the knee to determine which one to get, and thanks to the peddler I now had hips.

Unfortunately my small waist and hips were not enough to get the longer skirt though. True the skirt that fit me was only three inches shorter, but as I didn’t want to wear a skirt in the first place, my problem was, that it was those three inches shorter. “When I grow this skirt will quickly fall out of regulation length, it’s only half an inch in currently.”

“Tegan, with your waist and hips this is the standard length skirt and the range is really only enforced when first bought and has growth factored in. If you grow an exceptional amount there is three-eighths hem I can let out.” Alice informed.

“Could you let the hem out now?” I asked hopefully.

“Young lady, you’re travelling to school today, so there is no time for alterations, and it fits you right now perfectly. Soon enough and you’ll be arguing to sneak one through that’s too short for sure.”

“Alice, please pack a small travel trunk with four sets of uniforms, and two ribbons after we leave. I’ll pay now for that plus a fifth uniform including ribbon, beret and blazer that she will wear out today. I will be back after shopping for Tegan’s other supplies.”

After getting me kitted in the girl's school uniform, Alice led us to the false bay-window floor length curtains, into and through the warehouse, then back into the shop front. I waited patiently not paying attention to the conversation between the two ladies, while everything got rung up and my Grandma paid at the register .

“Come on Tegan we have other things to shop for.” Grandma told me heading for the exit back onto Paragon Street. I expected us to go to the door we’d come out of when arriving, but to prove it wasn’t a real door, there was now an old stone wall column between the two businesses. “I guess you’ll want jeans amongst your casual wear?”

I nodded and saw a sale’s associate open Kingston Jeanery, the store next door, forty odd minutes prior to its nine-a.m. opening time.

Though I did manage to talk the sales associate out of the skin-tight design and got three pairs of regular jeans, they did trick me into two pairs of jeggings, and I discovered in the changing room that the girls’ regular fit was a whole lot tighter than the boys. I also found out when I tried them on that the jeggings were so tight they might as well be painted on, which meant I wouldn’t be able to wear them. I couldn’t use that excuse because I didn’t want to bring attention to the fact I was a boy, and Grandma failed to notice my hints and bought them despite my attempts to not get them.

We left the store and the extra door between the two businesses was ready for us this time. Walking through we were beside Cooplands bakery which is up Paragon Street closer to the Ferensway. The bakery was open, as it opens at eight, so of course we didn’t enter it, but re-entered the door we had just left and came out at the top of Baker Street, across the road was Debenhams.

“Grandma, why did we catch the train this morning, if you can just make doorways?”

“Doorways are limited in distance and must have a common name. The first three used that each was named ‘Paragon’, this last one was a little harder, but the business of bakeries are usually located on Baker Street. Any way, we just have a few more selections to get from Debenhams, and you’ll be kitted out young lady. Being just gone nine Debenhams is now open. Let’s finish shopping so we can get back home.”

After nearly two hours spent in Debenhams and loaded under far too many bags we returned to Cooplands, and got a cup of coffee and buttered scone. It was just what the doctor ordered as with the poor sleep last night and early start I was flagging. Thankfully the next door hop to Rawcliffes allowed most of the items bought to be loaded into the trunk.

The thanks was short lived as next Grandma and I, with a side of the trunk each, left the store and used the door to get in the PLA** office of Paragon terminus railway station. “Grandma, PLA takes about two weeks to get the passengers luggage to the destination.” I hissed to her quietly before the worker got too close to the counter. When he got closer I also pulled at the hem of my new school skirt hopping to draw it further down as the lecherous man behind the counter brazenly wandered his eyes all over me, mentally undressing me.

“Don’t worry Tegan, I’ll fix that. Good morning sir, I need to send my granddaughter’s trunk PLA to her school.” She smacked my hand away from my skirt. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was lengthening my skirt that she planned to fix.

“Pop the trunk on the scale and unless you want to pay for extra weight take the shopping bags off the top.” The young man informed us. I guess chivalry is dead. I didn’t mean because I now looked a girl, but it’s his job and he expects my Grandma with my help to lift it off the counter and lower it onto the floor scale.

The PLA worker came around the counter as we lifted the trunk off it and stood behind me as I backed toward the scale, so Grandma could walk forward.

“Wait Tegan. Young man get out of the way. My granddaughter is fourteen and with you standing where you are it looks like you are trying to get her to back into you.” Grandma was frowning over my shoulder until he moved from behind me. I was just glad Grandma worked out his intention, as I would have been livid if what he planned to have happen had occurred. Perhaps he would have carried the trunk for Grandma, but didn’t because he was too busy orchestrating a groping of me. Was this something I had to constantly think about now?

I picked the few bags we would take with us off the trunk, so its weight could be read. As I stood up I noticed he had been looking at my bottom when I was bent over. It would seem he still got the secondary prize and I was suddenly feeling guilty at all the looking I had previously done of other girls. It’s different when you’re the oglee rather than the ogler.

Needless to say, I was quite happy to get out of the PLA office and get on the platform that the Hessle train will leave from in nearly fifteen minutes.

“Will you tell me now, how my trunk will get to school in time?” I asked after we sat on one of the platform seats waiting for our train to arrive.

“It’s dated, and the young man believes what just happened is him recalling us dropping the trunk nearly two weeks ago. His minor wrist slap for forgetting to get the trunk started on its journey pays back for his lewd behavior toward you, and failure to help a customer put the trunk on the scale. You not using the return half of the train ticket to Malton pays for the extra delivery cost of getting the trunk to your school in three days instead of the usual two weeks.”

“We’re not catching the train? Grandma it is quite a long drive to the school, and I swear the bus always uses different roads on the moors and all the road signs are still wrong up there***. I might get us lost.” I started to panic, being on the moors around our school in the evenings and not knowing exactly where you’re going is probably on the top ten list of stupid things you should never do.

“Tegan, don’t worry about it. I looked the school over before your parents offered it to you. I can find it on a cloud filled new moon night without a candle. Look, here comes our train.” Her distraction successfully pulled me away from paying more attention to her odd expression.

Having got home I quickly packed my suitcase with my purchases, and put Melisa’s outfit into the laundry. I then made a quick lunch for Grandma and myself. I brought a tray with the ploughman’s sandwiches on plates and a couple of cups of tea, and gave the one with milk and sugar to my Grandma who’d been resting in an armchair in the rear sitting room. I’d actually grown used to drinking my teeth black. Part of me was worried that it meant my personality had been partially overwritten for Anne Marie’s. Then I took stock that it was the only change I noticed and if I had to have one thing overwritten then my taste in how I took my cup of tea, though central to an Englishman’s life, was something I was willing to sacrifice, as long as everything else that was me, remained me.

“Tegan I will wash up the lunch things while you try to puzzle out the fourth word. Dependant on whether or not you manage in the next two to three hours will determine how we will address the one outstanding issue before we head back to your school.” Grandma told me prior to taking the tray of dirty pots back through to the kitchen, and I picked up the brown leather book once more.

I tried to not waste time being distracted wondering what the one thing left to address was. I was quiet successful, if I do say so, but what can I say it might be an annoying puzzle, but magic, kind of lends itself to provide a reason to concentrate. A bit over an hour and a half later and I had no idea if I had got closer on the fourth word, being that it wasn’t English and didn’t have any of the standard twenty six letters. I knew it was a concept of all knowledge, magic power, true names, and that the superscript double-letter symbol stood for all of that raised to the power of something else. Did I just need to grasp the concept, or must I pronounce this word that my gut informed me likely was not of any spoken language? It would be nice if as a concept I just needed to hold the image then I would only need to work out what it was risen to the power of.

As I glanced at the window looking out onto the backgarden I saw the translucent reflection of Tegan in the glass.

It’s myself! ‘Daughter’s of Wood source of knowledge, magic, power, and true names raised by the power of my own will.’ And the book’s cover was no longer brown, but blood red with the title in cursive black letters clearly visible even when looking straight at it. Including the fourth unspoken word, I now grasped the concept of.

“Perfect I won’t have to return to your school every week. You, Tegan, are going to learn your first spell. Tegan think ‘veiled for twenty-seven and eleven and open the book.” Grandma informed me. I hadn’t even known she was there.

“Don’t I need to be given a bit more specific information on what the spell does?”

“Tegan, just do as I ask, there isn’t too much time. Think ‘veiled for twenty-seven and eleven’. Open the book, learn the spell.” Grandma told me in a voice that sounded all kinds of frustrated with me. I did as requested and what do you know the spell explained all the missing information that my Grandma couldn’t be bothered to tell me.

Like hell it did. The bloody page was completely blank. I’d barely started to turn away from the book and Grandma is almost yelling at me. “Yes, Tegan the page is blank. Just keep looking at the page until you learn something, I’ll start making high-tea^.”

So for over two hours I stared at a blank page of a magic book. Magic sucks!

I was offered a quick interruption to scoff down a scone with a cup of black tea then back to staring at the blank page. I think I dozed off as suddenly I’m feeling… full? My hands are also hurting from holding the book so long. They feel hot, sweaty and itching and on fire. “Hell!” I dropped the book my hands looked like they’d got sun burned. There was something trapped inside me pushing and straining. Trying to escape.

“Great you have the spell. I’ll pop the book away.” Grandma picked up the now once more brown leather bound book that had no words on its cover and locked it up in the cabinet.

“Now, conveniently when she was shaving your legs, Anne Marie was only wearing crotchless panties. I need you to imagine the area between your legs looking exactly how Anne Marie’s did. Do you have that image firmly in your head, Tegan?”

I went through a gambit of emotions where embarrassed and humiliated took pride of place, but finally was able to think the image and nodded to let my Grandma know I had it. “Now Tegan, while keeping firm hold on that image say, ‘For twenty-seven hours and eleven minutes veil me with this image.’”

“Well Granddaughter you have just cast your first spell, well intentionally and knowingly for the first time at least. When you wake up tomorrow you will feel that odd full feeling and find you are able to cast it again. Do so, each morning at the same time and you will seem to have female genitals, and no bumps will show even when just wearing panties.”

Worried I patted the front of my skirt between my legs and felt I was still there even though the skirt seemed to go right in between my legs without meeting any obstruction. “It’s only an illusion, Tegan. The spell is only a beginning level easy spell that makes an illusion of minor changes to the witches own body for a limited duration. Oh, but next time you don’t need to give yourself the knickers too. I really don’t think that style is appropriate at your age young lady.”

“Should I put my suitcase into the car now, Grandma?” I needed to change the topic fast and work out how to stop all my blood rushing to my face.

“Actually, while you let me lock up, bring your suitcase to the green house.” I looked at my Grandma oddly, but then as she gave me the get going hand signals I grabbed it from beside the sofa and headed to the kitchen with it.

“If we need something from the green house doesn’t it make sense to pop the suitcase in the boot first?” I asked Grandma as she locked the rear kitchen door.

“We need the suitcase…

“Grandma, I don’t have the magic book to re-learn the spell.”

“Every morning you will wake up primed to cast that spell, as long as you don’t waste the spell casting a different illusion on yourself you’re covered. Now come on let’s get to the greenhouse.” Grandma opened the gate and headed across the garden’s paving stones to the green house behind the swing. She entered the greenhouse and proceeded to lift the wooden board off the well.

I couldn’t stop myself from shivering and getting worried. I have nightmares about Grandma’s well and it’s Helen and Grandma’s fault. Possibly it is because I’ve been told the story multiple times or it was so traumatic I do recall what happened when I was a few months shy of three years old. We’d come to visit our Grandparents and while Dad, Mum, Grandpa and Grandma were sitting on deck chairs in the back garden drinking tea and talking, I was chasing Helen around the garden. Well chasing in as far as a toddler can do.

Earlier Grandma had been watering her prize tomatoes in the green house with well water, and she hadn’t covered the well back up. The greenhouse door was propped open and the well was just inside the entry. Helen ran inside the greenhouse and seeing the open hole jumped over it. I toddled after my older sister, and fell in the well.

A well the gardener dumped fertilizer in. So a foot or two down there is then three or more feet of shitty water. I think my Dad broke the world record for running the hundred yards as I was just starting to cry out. I was likely swallowing Grandma’s secret tomato food, when I saw him hanging down into the well and yanking me toward the obstructed circle of light past the oddly shining stones of the well wall. I don’t have memory of being under the water, but Dad said I wasn’t visible and he plunged his arms into the liquid shit, frantically waving them ‘till he captured me.

I’m less clear on recalling the trip to A&E and the injections and course of antibiotics I was apparently put on, but I still have nightmares of the well’s cover being closed after I’d fallen in. Laughter and voices saying Thomas was a useless son and not worth getting dirty to save anyway. Needles to say, I was a bit put out that Grandma chose now, to water her flippin’ tomatoes!

Grandma stood in front of the now uncovered well, and said. “Ding Dong Dell; Belmare Moor Springs in my well.”

Notes:

‘*’ Ferensway is a major dual carriage way that sort of makes up one side of a pseudo ring road around downtown Hull. It is a surface street though, not a Motorway/Interstate Hwy (for US).

‘**’ PLA is/was a crazy system all attendees of boarding school become used to. It was a department of British Rail and now that the trains have been privatized, I have no clue what boarding students use to get their trunks to school. (Surely running an overladen luggage cart through a brick wall isn’t on the cards though). PLA stands for Passenger Luggage in Advance and it does go in advance it just gets there after you do. You ship it a week before you are traveling and it will arrive about a week after you get there. Its one useful function was to let professors know that you can’t give them the holiday work they assigned as, 'it is in the trunk' that hasn’t arrived yet. I always 'seemed' to forget to pack it in my suitcase, and they gave up in punishing me for doing so. Sometimes they even forgot to request it when the trunks surely had finally arrived.

‘***’ I don’t know if it was official policy or the local Yorkshire men that came up with this idea, but during World War II they went around the Moors and deliberately twisted the road signs to point the wrong ways. If you try to use road signs you will go in circles. They did it in case the Germans got into the country they would have a hard time driving in the Moors. They never explained why the Germans would be interested in invading the Moors though. It has been quite a few years since I was last on the Moors relying on the road signs (thank you GPS), but it wasn’t fixed then, and I expect it still isn’t.

‘^’ high-tea a small snack provided to children to stop them getting hungry when dinner is going to be served late.