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Even when I was male, I always looked forward to spring. I enjoyed watching as the days got longer and the air got warmer. Just watching signs of life returning to the trees and grass was enough to raise my spirits to the stars. As spring began this year, I had something else to look forward to that I would have never imagined when I was male: I would deliver my first baby.

Well, as far as the doctor was concerned, it wasn’t my first. He remembered delivering my twins a few years before. But of course, I knew that I had never delivered them. They had been transformed into my children just as I had been transformed into their mother. That created something of a problem. The doctors and nurses all gave me the ‘you’ve been through all this before’ brush-off when I started looking a little nervous about the whole process. I couldn’t very well tell them that I hadn’t really given birth before, because like most people in Ovid, they had no idea that their entire existence was nothing more than a construct of the gods.

So there I was, as big as a house, waddling uncomfortably from place to place and trying not to be terrified by the whole process of giving birth. It had been so strange at first. Like most men who had never been exposed to the whole process before, I assumed that it was a little simpler than it really was. I didn’t realize the radical changes my own body would make to accommodate the baby. In some ways, it was as eerie as my magical transformation from a young man into a woman.

I began to feel the first stirrings of life within me after only three months. It wasn’t kicking exactly but it was something close to it. I could sense the presence of a life there that was not my own. Then I got to watch in fascination as my belly began to expand. It was thrilling at first; now it was just uncomfortable.

Seven months into the whole process, I began to feel that surely I couldn’t get any bigger and surely the baby had to come any day now. No such luck. My body continued to swell up until I thought my skin couldn’t stretch any more, and now my breasts were larger as well, even secreting a tiny bit of fluid occasionally. I began to sympathize with cows who needed to be milked.

If it hadn’t been for Susan, I think I would have blown a fuse. Susan Jager was every bit as pregnant as I was, but the doctors treated her differently. As far as anyone in Ovid was concerned, this would be her first baby. They explained everything to her. They held her hand. They calmed her fears–fears which were every bit as great as my own. Since Susan was a former man too, I think I have enough anecdotal evidence to say that this whole pregnancy thing was made tougher for us because we had not grown up with the idea that we would have to deliver children.

When I was first transformed into a woman, I found it odd but not unpleasant. I managed to adapt to my new role fairly quickly, as most new residents of Ovid do. I’m convinced it’s all part of the magic. In fact, after a few weeks, it became difficult to imagine being anyone but Cindy Patton. I had been given a pretty good life. I was attractive and I had a loving husband and two wonderful kids. Oh, the sex took a little getting used to, but by now I wouldn’t have it any other way. I pity men who will never know the exhilaration of multiple orgasms. Add to all that the fact that my job was probably one of the most interesting in town–administrative assistant for the Judge–and I would have to admit I had the ideal life.

The only problem is that I got pregnant. There was nothing miraculous about that–if I discounted my initial transformation. My husband Jerry and I just decided it would be a good idea to have another child. Since we had twins, they would grow up and leave us at the same time. Why not have another one? We were young enough. And it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I guess natural girls just grow up with the idea that they’ll give birth. For me though, it was a whole new concept. To be honest, I don’t think I was handling it terribly well. Nobody knew about the little calendar I kept in my desk with a big red circle around my expected due date. It was getting close now, and I could hardly wait.

I felt an odd little surge between my legs and an uncomfortable kick. What would it be like, to spread my legs wide and feel intense but welcome pain as a new person forced its way out of my body? Did natural women really take it in stride? I supposed that they did. I would do my best too, but for the first time in a long time, I found myself regretting my new sex.

I waddled over to a filing cabinet to file some mundane cases that had been handled that morning. As I opened the file drawer, the files I had propped on top of the cabinet fell to the floor. Of course they spread out all over the floor. Why couldn’t they at least have fallen in one place?

“Oh great!” I grumbled, wondering how I was going to pick them up in my condition. Then I heard the door open behind me. A visitor! I was so pleased. It meant I would have someone to pick up the files for me.

“Just in time!” I said happily, turning to see my friend Susan, looking equally pregnant and unable to pick up the files for me. “Oh no.”

She smiled wickedly, “And I’m happy to see you, too.”

I had forgotten our lunch date. Saddled with the extra weight of the baby, I was way behind in my work. Thank god the Judge had left for wherever he went in his off time after court. At least I would have the afternoon to try to catch up.

“I’m sorry,” I told Susan, giving her a little hug. A little hug was all I could manage given our respective sizes. “I just dropped these files and I don’t know if I can get them.”

“I’ll get them,” a cheerful disembodied voice called out. With a pop of air, a well-dressed Oriental girl in perhaps her early twenties was suddenly standing in front of us.

“Diana!” Susan and I said together.

She shook her head, waist length black hair swirling about. “Today, I am Di Lee.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Chinese name of Di,” I pointed out.

She shrugged. “Well, it sounds sort of Chinese, doesn’t it?”

She had me there.

“I thought I’d buy lunch for the two of you today,” she told us as she inspected our highly pregnant bodies.

“We’ll gladly accept,” I replied. “But I’m a little surprised to see you.”

Her dark eyes widened, looking even more Oriental in the process. “Why is that?”

“Well, there really haven’t been any terribly exciting cases in Ovid for a while.” It was true. Things had been somewhat slow since the flap with the Old Ones in the fall. The few new transformees we had run through the court at the end of the year were just the run of the mill types. There hadn’t been a case of interest to Diana and the rest of the gods for some time. In fact, I hadn’t even seen Diana for months except for a short visit around the holidays.

“There’s one that interests me, though,” she said with a little smile.

I thought I could guess which one it was. “You want to see the hooker who became a little boy, right?”

“Yuck! Certainly not.”

“Then how about the gambler who became a junior high cheerleader?”

“Bor-ring.”

I was getting frustrated. “The state patrol officer who became a secretary?”

“Wrong again.”

I threw up my hands. “I give up then. Who do you want to see?”

She grinned. “I’ll tell you at lunch.”

“Wait,” I called as she turned to lead us out of the office. “What about the files on the floor?”

She looked at me, her eyelashes fluttering innocently. “What files?”

There were, of course, no spilled files on the floor.

It took longer than usual to walk over to The Greenhouse for lunch. Susan and I looked more like penguins than women as we waddled through the early spring day to our favorite restaurant. When we were settled at a fairly private table with Diet Cokes in hand, I asked Diana, “Okay who is it you want to see?”

“The archaeologist.”

I frowned. “That surprises me. What’s unusual about that case?” I hadn’t even reviewed that one myself, and for some reason, none of the gods had expressed any interest in it. Come to think of it, I realized, that by itself was a little suspicious.

“Nothing really,” she said coyly.

I could see I wasn’t going to get anything else out of her. Whatever it was though would become evident once we had viewed his story. The sooner we started, the sooner I would know what it was all about. “Okay,” I sighed, feeling myself slipping into the trance that would begin the story. “Here we go...”

I could think of more pleasant places to be than the American Midwest in the winter. In fact, I couldn’t think of many more unpleasant places. I had left Columbia, Missouri that morning just ahead of a storm that promised to dump several inches of snow by nightfall. The edge of the storm, lumbering down along the I-70 corridor that bisected Missouri, gave me the incentive I needed to eschew that route in favor of a more serpentine but safer southern route. If only I could overcome my severe distaste for flying, I thought, as the first snowflakes of the day scudded along my windshield.

If I had both the money and the willpower to board another plane, I would gladly return to the Eastern Mediterranean where I had just spent the happiest months of my life. My time there in the soft, warm sea breezes had thinned my blood. Even with the car heater on at maximum, I found myself shivering as I watched the bleak winter landscape of Oklahoma rush by.

Bleak. Now there was a word that had many uses. It could describe the perennial assault of winter, and it could easily describe the reception that awaited me when I got back to UCLA where I held the title of Professor of Archaeology. I had planned on returning in triumph as my sabbatical year ended, but the events of the last few days had dashed those plans. It is said that man plans and the gods laugh. Truer words were never spoken.

Like many of my academic stature, I believed that while the university life I had chosen was nearly ideal, there were drawbacks. With the budget cuts in so many academic fields, more and more pressure was put upon us to be in the classroom. As a young graduate assistant, I took my turn in the classroom, toiling in front of lesser minds than my own, trying to teach them at least the fundamentals of a subject that should have been considered mankind’s very birthright. Yet most students found the subject tedious.

At least I was actually thought by many to be a talented instructor, and I suppose I must admit I did derive some initial enjoyment from the experience. Be that as it may, I had my sights set on greater things. I admired my professors. They were men of high standing, always leading expeditions into the field, publishing books, and presenting papers. But teaching? Of course not. They were above such things. I aspired to be just like them, and who more deserving than I? For after all, I had a mission. My mission was to reach the veritable top of my field–to be responsible for discoveries too great to be ignored by even the dullest of minds.

It took me all of my youth, but I persevered. At last, I rose to the exalted rank of Professor of Archaeology at UCLA. I was halfway to my goal. The other half would be more difficult, for I had determined what my great discovery would be.

When I was a boy of only twelve, an aunt of mine gave me a Christmas present that was to have great influence on my life. It was a book on Greek and Roman mythology. The title of the book is not important–in fact, it was so elementary I am embarrassed to admit that I read it even at the tender age of twelve. But the book did fire my imagination. I began to read everything I could on the subject. Within weeks, I had devoured every book our local library had on the subject, and I was crying for more.

Fortunately, my parents indulged me. I was, after all, the youngest of my siblings. In fact, my next youngest brother was six years older than I and was just starting college, so in many ways, it was as if I was an only child. Both of my parents were well educated. My father had taught high school chemistry until the lure of higher wages in the corporate sector pulled him away. Mother had taught as well once at the elementary level, but had given it up when my father’s income allowed her to stay at home and raise my siblings and me.

That combination of education and indulgence spurred them to take me the short distance from our home in Indianapolis to Bloomington, Indiana, the home of the University of Indiana. That school has one of the finest programs in mythology and folklore in the world. To say that its collection on the subject is phenomenal would be an understatement. I gasped when I saw the stacks, with shelf after shelf of obscure out-of-print books on every mythological subject imaginable. I was in love.

Yes, the love of my life was learning, and there was little room for other forms of love as a result. My parents died while I was still in graduate school. Busy on a dig in Crete, I could only shrug at their deaths in a plane crash and continue my work. I hadn’t bothered to join my brother and sister at the funeral. Perhaps that was the beginning of my distancing myself from the rest of my family.

Married life proved equally unrewarding. I had married a fellow doctoral candidate at Harvard. We seemed well suited, but we soon found it was not to be. My commitment to my field was far more serious than hers, and we parted if not friends, at least as respected colleagues.

After obtaining my doctorate at Harvard, my career advanced quickly. At the age of twenty-four, my doctoral dissertation had caused quite a stir. I advanced a theory relating to a secret cabal which dominated Greek politics for decades before the Roman invasions. Fortunately for my career, I was able to defend my thesis, even parlaying it into a funded trip to Greece where I was able to prove substantial parts of my theory.

That landed me two things: first, an Associate Professorship at UCLA and second, an invitation to become a Fellow of the American Archeological Society. From then on, I never looked back.

Unfortunately, midway through my forties, I seemed to have reached a dead end. I was a full professor now with half a dozen learned books in print. The name Thomas W. Winslow was known throughout academia. The problem was that I was chained to a classroom.

I was, I suppose, a victim of the times. Once, universities were seats of learning from which scholars gleaned whatever details they saw fit. If youths came to them to be enlightened, it was up to the scholars to impart whatever they deemed important to these neophytes. Not now, though. Universities are institutions of the state. Even if private, universities must beg for every crumb from politicians and bureaucrats whose intellect is mediocre at best. We are all slaves to political correctness and the whims of the masses. Money is tight. What this meant to scholars like me is that the new goal of universities was to fill young heads with mush and push them out into the world with a degree in hand which proved their intellectual accomplishments no better than the degree the Wizard of Oz gave to the Tin Man. In short, it was my fate in life to spend so much time in the classroom that there was little time for research.

I remembered my own undergraduate days back in Indiana. The classrooms were then manned by instructors or assistant professors–unimportant men whose limitations condemned them to lesser roles than the research undertaken by full professors. Their worn tweed coats and their rheumy eyes spoke volumes about their lives. Was I to be condemned to a similar fate in spite of my apparent status?

But I still had hope. I had developed a theory about the very nature of the Roman gods which I was sure I could prove with proper financial backing. It was just a little over a year ago that my Department Chairman, Raymond Jensen delivered the good news.

“Congratulations, Tom,” he said, smiling as he laid the grant file on my desk. Ray was a decent sort. Of course, as the Department Chair, he was more politician than scholar, but at least he seemed to be genuinely interested in advancing the needs of his staff. “It’s everything you asked for.”

My grant proposal had been made to so many funding agencies that I had lost count. Excited, I opened the file. There it was–a grant large enough for me to travel the Eastern Mediterranean for a full year with a small staff. Then I noticed the name of the funding organization: “The Olympus Foundation?”

Ray sat down in front of my desk, chuckling, “Appropriate name, don’t you think?”

“I suppose it is,” I admitted. “Who are they?”

“They work with a couple of other major funds. It’s there in the grant. Apparently they have a charter to ‘advance the cause of civilization’, or some such nonsense. God only knows where some of these groups come up with their goals and objectives. This is a first for them, though. They’ll be funding all of this grant–not just a part of it as they usually do.”

I scanned the document. The Olympus Foundation had an impressive board. Although not always politically astute, I knew enough to recognize several of the names as leading political figures and...

“There’s an admiral on this list of directors–an Admiral Nepper,” I pointed out.

Ray shrugged. “So?”

“What interest does the military have in something like this? Is this some undercover operation?”

“What do you mean?”

I sighed, shaking my head. “Ray, I’ll be travelling all over the Eastern Med. That includes Israel and maybe Lebanon and Syria. I suppose they want to have someone come along to represent the Foundation, eh? Maybe that someone will be CIA.”

Ray looked at me quizzically. “Aren’t you being a little paranoid? Read the grant. There’s no requirement for one of their people to tag along. This is your show, Tom. This is a big coup for you and the University. Don’t blow it.”

I didn’t blow it. I felt like Indiana Jones as I put together the expedition and girded my loins for the inevitable plane ride to the Med. The year had proven to be the greatest year of my life, and what I had found, I had managed to keep secret from even my own small staff. My theory had been entirely correct. Of course, I had couched my theory in more acceptable terms that would appeal to funding sources. As far as my staff and the Olympus Foundation was concerned, I had set out to prove the influences of Greco-Roman theology on the early settlements and colonies in the Eastern Mediterranean. Actually, I had set out to prove much more–and I had succeeded.

Now, though, I was back. My year’s sabbatical was at an end. Several more weeks of meticulously compiling my results awaited me, but I had been given a full class load as well that I would be expected to handle. I was returning to Hell with only scraps of time to put my findings together. And what I had found–if believed–would shake the very foundations of Western civilization.

And to my dismay, the University had scheduled a series of lectures for my return as well, to be delivered at several major universities under the auspices of the American Archaeological Society. I had tried to beg off, but the Olympus Foundation also insisted. Their grant had been generous, and if I ever wanted to apply to them again, I would not want to anger them. The piper did indeed call the tune. It was at one of these lectures just days ago at the University of Missouri in Columbia that my triumph began to unravel.

I was careful in my lecture to keep my most important findings hidden from the audience. One of the more Machiavellian aspects of academia is the propensity of scholars to snipe at each other’s findings. To prevent this, it is often necessary to hold back information until results are reported in a formal paper. This was my plan, so I was careful to speak in only the most general terms. I was determined to surrender only small fragments of what I had learned, and none of those fragments would alert anyone to the more important elements of my discoveries.

I had not known that the University of Missouri has one of the top journalism schools in the country. Therefore, it is not uncommon for the media elite to send their own children there. It was one of those children–a journalism major no doubt–who asked the question which proved to be my undoing.

“Doctor Winslow,” the pretty young blonde asked from her seat in the middle of the crowd, “you almost sound as if you believe the old Roman and Greek gods exist. Are they... say aliens or something?”

I took the question as one made in jest and answered it in a similar fashion. “I suppose anything is possible,” I said with a smile which was calculated to let the audience know that I knew something they did not.

I thought nothing more about the incident, busying myself with backtracking to St Louis for a speech at Washington University there. Imagine my surprise when I returned from that speech to find that Ray Jensen had left an urgent message for me.

“Tom, are you out of your mind?” Those were his first words to me, taking me aback.

“What are you talking about, Ray?” I had never heard him so agitated.

“Then you don’t know? You haven’t seen the papers today?”

A complimentary copy of the St Louis Post Dispatch was on my bed, unread. As Ray ranted in my ear, I picked up the paper. The article I knew he was referring to wasn’t hard to find. It actually made the front section:

NOTED PROFESSOR CLAIMS GREEK GODS CAME FROM SPACE

I spotted my name at once. Oh my god, I realized. It was a story from a wire service. That meant the story was all over the world.

“Ray, this isn’t true,” I said indignantly. I went on to explain what had actually been said.

“Tom,” Ray began through obviously gritted teeth, “that little blonde who asked the question is the daughter of Morton McKee.”

My blood froze. Everyone knew who Morton McKee was. He had parlayed a supermarket rag into a nationwide newspaper which was challenging USA Today. In spite of its tabloid style, The National Dispatch had gained nationwide attention, and McKee now ruled an empire which included newspapers, magazines, and even cable channels and god only knew what else.

Undoubtedly, my young blonde protagonist had been asking the question to get precisely the sort of response I had given her. I cursed myself for being so naíve. It was nothing but a coy little bit of repartee and yet it might do untold damage to my career.

“We have to refute the article,” I told Ray.

“What do you think we’re already doing?” Ray returned. “I’ve already gotten calls from the Chancellor and two of the Regents. And then there’s all the newspapers and broadcasting stations. We even got a call from Good Morning America. We’ve told them all you were quoted out of context. But Tom, you’ve been badly damaged by this.”

He was right. Any results I published would be overshadowed by this exaggerated example of yellow journalism. And as far as my confidential findings... well, no one would believe me now, even if I offered them proof. Unless something drastic was done, I would be remembered forever as the man who said the gods were from outer space.

“I’ll cut short my tour,” I offered. I hadn’t really wanted the speaking tour anyhow. It had been forced on me by the Olympus Foundation. They would surely understand that correcting this misconception was of paramount importance.

“That’s a good idea, Tom.”

So there I was, glumly crossing the Midwest on my way back to California. I was being forced to drive to my own execution–or so I felt. Oh, I knew what would happen. I would be allowed to publish my findings, but only after a committee of my peers, appointed by the Chancellor, had gone over it with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. What would be left would be a paper that was dull at best and so pedestrian that it would never justify the grant money spent to generate it. I would be for all practical purposes disgraced, hidden away in a classroom teaching ‘Beginning Archaeology’ to a class that didn’t want to be there any more than I did.

To add to my misery, the snow was becoming heavier, mixed with a cold rain that was freezing quickly to the pavement. I wasn’t used to that sort of weather. Sure, I had grown up in Indiana, but my years in California had thinned my blood and weakened my winter driving senses. I had forgotten how treacherous icy roads could be.

By concentrating, I was able to stay on the road, but I had to reduce my speed to the point that several cars with local license plates pulled around me at what I could only consider rash speeds. When the latest of these speeders roared around me, fishtailing ever so slightly on the slick road, I was relieved. There was no more traffic around.

My relief was ill founded. Inching around a blind curve, I was suddenly startled by the presence of a large delivery truck. Apparently, the driver was having problems of his own controlling his vehicle, and he had crossed the yellow centerline ever so slightly. The sudden presence of the truck so close to my own vehicle caused me to swerve toward the shoulder. Impulsively, I jerked the wheel back the other way. It was the wrong thing to do. In a heartbeat, my car had jumped off the road, heading for a small stand of trees. I closed my eyes, bracing for impact.

It never came. I opened my eyes slowly. There, to my left and behind me, was the stand of trees. At the last moment, my car had swerved a little to the right, narrowly missing the trees which would have most likely ended my life. I sighed in relief. I would live.

Yes, I would live. I would live to face my disgrace. Perhaps it would have been better, I thought to myself, if I had hit the trees. No, I realized. That would do no good. Had I hit them and been killed, my obituary would have talked about my supposed theory that the gods were aliens. UFO cults would probably spring up, believing that I had been killed by the aliens. Or maybe they would say I was killed by the government so I couldn’t prove that Jupiter and his fellow gods had landed on a spaceship. No, I would live. Even disgrace was better than such a ludicrous legacy.

It was then that I noticed I was not alone. Up there on the road, a white car with dancing red and blue flashers had pulled to the side of the road about at the point where I had left the highway. A police officer of some sort was standing by the car, looking down at me. From where I was, I could see he was tall and slender, and when he began to move toward me, he was almost graceful. In spite of the cold, he wore no coat over his blue uniform shirt. He was hatless as well. I couldn’t see his eyes though. In spite of the grayness of the day, he wore mirrored sunglasses. In short, he acted as if it were a mild spring day instead of a cold, dreary one.

He tapped on my car window. Nearly paralyzed from my near catastrophe, I suddenly realized I should have gotten out of the car to greet him. Fumbling, I managed to put down the car window.

“Having trouble?” he asked calmly.

“Yes... yes I am,” I answered, very happy he was there to help me. I had been so startled by the mishap that I might have sat there stunned until I froze.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so,” I responded. I got out of the damaged car as he opened the door for me. “I’m just a little shaken up.”

“I’ll take you back to town,” he offered. With that, he turned and started back to get his police car without waiting for my response.

“What about my car?” I asked.

“It will be taken care of,” he replied tonelessly, never bothering to turn around.

I wasn’t sure if he’d even wait for me if I stayed next to my car. So I hurried up the embankment after him, nearly slipping to the ground more than once. Yet the officer had had no trouble climbing the hill. He had seemed to ignore the snow and ice completely.

An odd fellow, I thought as I approached the car. I looked down at the crest on the door. It was the typical blue shield with what appeared to be an eagle in flight in the center. Below it in black were the words ‘City of Ovid.’ I had never heard of Ovid, Oklahoma, but then again I had never heard of the past dozen or so towns I had driven through. Well, as long as it was big enough for me to arrange new transportation and be on my way, it would suffice. Did small towns have car rental agencies? I wasn’t exactly sure. If not, I would have to pay someone to get me to the nearest large town.

Our drive was conducted in silence. Not once did the strange officer–Officer Mercer, I noted from his nametag–speak. That was all right with me. I had no desire to strike up a long-winded conversation with some country constable. Of course, I had to admit, Officer Mercer didn’t look like the stereotype of a small town police officer that I held in my mind. In some ways, he even looked familiar. Although I could not see his eyes under the dark lenses, there was something vaguely recognizable about him, as if I had seen him or at least his picture before.

Ovid was a much larger town than I had imagined. If I had to guess, I would have placed it as larger than ten thousand but under twenty thousand residents. The phrase small town covers a lot of ground. In Wyoming or Montana, Ovid would have been considered a fairly large community, complete with a shopping mall and probably its own TV station. In the more populous Midwest, though, Ovid was just one more mundane small community–or so I thought at the time.

Two things struck me about Ovid–other than of course its unlikely name. I mean, who would have named a small farming community in Oklahoma after a Roman poet? The first thing was that in spite of apparent prosperity, certain establishments seemed to be missing. I had grown up in the Midwest, and I knew that I should have seen a McDonald’s or a Burger King, or at the very least a Pizza Hut or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Instead, there were only local establishments. Oh, they looked prosperous enough. The largest of them, a ‘Rusty’s Burger Barn,’ even sported a large neon sign which would have been impressive even for a national franchise. The same was true of service stations and convenience stores. They were there, but they sported names I had never seen before, so I could only assume that they were local names. Why had national firms bypassed this little town?

The other thing I noted were the people. They were uniformly neat and well dressed, denoting again a local prosperity. However, some of them seemed to have an almost ethereal appearance. It was if I could see through them if I concentrated hard enough. I dismissed this as merely tired eyes, adversely affected by the tense drive. Perhaps I had even bumped my head slightly when my car skidded off the road.

In any case, Ovid had the look of a town that was almost too good to be true. It was almost like a Hollywood version that exhibited all of the virtues of Small Town America. I could imagine it was a town of high school marching bands and ice cream socials where the biggest social event of the year was the Elks Club chilli supper.

I had visions of being stuck in this proverbial burg for a few days while I awaited a rental car from Tulsa or some other nearby town where indoor plumbing was in vogue. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate than being stuck in a place like Ovid for a few days while my professional reputation continued to unravel. At least, I noted from the signs, there was a small college in the town. I had never heard of Capta College and wasn’t surprised by that fact.

Officer Mercer pulled up in front of an official-looking building that declared itself to be ‘City Hall’ from the letters carved in the granite face. I braced myself for the inevitable forms which would have to be filled out to account for my accident. Sure enough, we were headed directly for the Police Department. I chastised myself for having an unreasonable fear of flying. If it were not for that, I would already be back in Los Angeles defending my besmirched reputation.

A very pretty black woman dressed in a uniform like Officer Mercer’s smiled from her desk just inside the door. “Good morning, Officer Mercer.”

“Good morning, Wanda,” he replied with the first genuinely friendly tone I had heard from him. “You need to book Dr. Winslow here.”

“Book me!” I cried out. I was too stunned to realize until later that I had never given him my name. “I’ve had an auto accident; I haven’t robbed a bank! Why am I being treated this way?”

“The charge?” the woman–Wanda–asked as if I hadn’t spoken.

“Reckless driving,” came the reply.

This was too much. “I wasn’t being reckless,” I argued. “I was driving quite sensibly. Road conditions were responsible for my mishap. If you want to arrest someone, arrest your county maintenance department for improperly plowing and sanding the roads. I need to report this to the rental company and get on my way.”

Officer Mercer looked at me through his mirrored lenses. “We will take care of your car.” Then looking at Wanda, he asked, “Is the Judge ready to see him now?”

As if on cue, her phone rang. Listening for a moment, she replied, “Yes, he’ll see Dr. Winslow now.”

My eyes narrowed. “I get it now,” I said, reaching for my wallet. “This is one of those speed traps. All right, so how much do I have to pay you to be on my way?”

“You need to see the Judge,” Officer Mercer replied, surprising me as he gently but firmly took my arm and led me away.

It had to be a speed trap, I thought to myself. Many small towns in America had run speed traps through the years. It was like a big game. The police and judges would arrest speeders travelling just a few miles per hour over the legal limit. They would then fine them, but the money would never make its way into the town coffers. They would split the proceeds, never reporting the cases. Many states had cracked down on the process, and the Interstate Highway System had routed around many of the small communities, so the practice had fallen on hard times. Apparently, I thought, it was still thriving in Ovid.

I expected to be taken into the magistrate’s chambers where the fine would be discretely handled with outsiders being none the wiser. That was, I was sure, how such clandestine matters were taken care of. So I was surprised to be delivered to an open courtroom, complete with spectators. Well, one spectator anyhow.

Seated in the gallery was a very attractive blonde woman. She was seated, so it was difficult to tell, but it appeared that she might be pregnant. I wondered why she was there. Maybe like me she was awaiting a trial. Well, no matter.

Of more importance was the woman who sat at the defense stand. She, too, was very attractive–a brunette of about average height it appeared. And when she stood to greet me, I could see that she was most definitely pregnant, the lines of her blue business suit interrupted to accommodate a loose silk blouse that covered her gravid condition.

She gave me a professional smile and offered her feminine hand. “I’m Susan Jager, Dr. Winslow,” she announced as I took her hand. Her handshake was unusually firm for a woman, I noted. “I’m your attorney.”

My eyebrows rose. “My attorney? I wasn’t aware I would need one.” I felt myself fully qualified to represent myself in such a trivial matter.

“The Judge prefers it,” she explained. “The proceedings here are a little... unusual.”

“Yes,” I replied drolly, “I’m sure they are.” I was sure this would mean the fine would be even larger. Apparently, Ovid’s little speed trap would involve payment of an attorney to ‘defend’ me as well.

“We just have a few minutes before court is in session,” Susan Jager continued, ignoring my comments. “As I understand the case, you lost control of your vehicle and spun until your car came to a rest in a ditch near a stand of trees. Does that cover it?”

I nodded carefully.

She returned the nod. “Fine. Then we can plead guilty and move to have the punishment waived.”

“Of course,” I said in apparent agreement. In fact, I had no intention of pleading guilty in that kangaroo court. I could see the plan clearly. I would plead guilty with the hope of a suspended sentence only to have this so-called judge throw the book at me. I would be leaving myself wide open to a large fine.

“All rise!” Officer Mercer called out, apparently acting as bailiff. “The Municipal Court of the City of Ovid, Oklahoma, is now in session, the Honorable Judge presiding.”

I rose to my feet and stared directly into the face of the Judge. When I did, my blood froze. I had seen the face before. Well, not exactly the face, but the eyes... They were the eyes that had stared back at me from countless statues in my travels. They were the eyes that the finest sculptors of an earlier age had managed to somehow capture. They were the eyes of... No, it couldn’t be! He was just a local magistrate. It was just a coincidence.

The Judge to most eyes would have appeared to be a man gracefully entering middle age. His hair and beard were both brown but with the promise of gray to come. His gold-rimmed glasses sat comfortably on a patrician nose, doing little to disguise the piercing blue eyes that spoke of both power and intelligence. His robe was pressed so neatly that its pleats looked sharp enough to cut through wood.

“Be seated,” he ordered. His voice was not the deep bass one might expect from a figure of such authority, but it was a voice that was obviously used to being obeyed, rich and confident with just the trace of an Oklahoman accent. He reviewed what I presumed to be charges placed before him. Then, after an almost inaudible “humph” he spoke.

“The Court will now hear the case of the City of Ovid versus Dr. Thomas Winslow. The defendant will rise.”

I did, almost without thinking. To my right, Susan Jager also rose.

“The defendant is charged with reckless driving. How does the defendant plead?” the Judge asked.

“Your Honor,” my appointed attorney began, but she got no further.

“I plead not guilty, Your Honor,” I interposed. I had thought about keeping my mouth shut, but I can now admit that my ego got in the way. There was no way this country justice could be who he appeared to be. No, I told myself, I had merely been fooled by seeing a man in a black robe who somehow looked like a figure whose mythological essence had been sometimes captured in stone. In spite of everything, I had discovered on my expedition to the Eastern Mediterranean, I could not believe that I had stumbled across the proof in such a manner. This had to be just a bizarre coincidence.

To my surprise, the Judge smiled. “I thought you might,” he said calmly.

I said nothing, but I could hear my attorney sigh in frustration.

“You have been accused of reckless driving,” he continued. In another venue, this might have returned the fantastic to the mundane, but not here. There was a building presence in the room–a presence that made me feel suddenly uncomfortable. I began to become concerned. “I will address you directly, Dr. Winslow, since you foolishly seem to be ignoring the advice of counsel.”

I gulped. I had erred–of that I was becoming certain.

“I suspect also that you more than any other man to face me in this room have at least an inkling of who I am and what we are doing here.”

Oh my god, I thought. Why did I have to be right?

“That being the case, I will dispense with some of the trappings others find familiar and proceed directly to the issues at hand.”

I felt a small disturbance in the air. Then, when I looked around, I saw my attorney frozen in place. The blonde woman in the gallery was also stationary. Yet whatever the Judge had done, it had no effect on Officer Mercer, the Judge, or me.

The door to the courtroom opened and closed softly. From the corner of my eye, I could see that another woman had joined us, but I couldn’t see her clearly without taking my eyes completely off the Judge. This I was unwilling–or perhaps unable now–to do.

“Then you are... Zeus?” I ventured. If I was wrong, I would look like a complete fool. But I was sure I was right. It was in concert with what I had learned on my expedition.

“I prefer the name Jupiter,” he said calmly, his eyes narrowed as he stared at me. “Here I am referred to quite simply as ‘The Judge.’ You are an unusual man to believe in me so readily, Dr. Winslow.”

“I have good reason to believe in you,” I told him, sounding more calm than I felt. I was in the presence of a being far more powerful than most people could ever imagine. With a wave of his hand, he could blot me out of existence if he wished. I had walked into the courtroom convinced I was about to be railroaded into an excessive fine. How I now wished that that were so. Now, I had come to realize I had much more to lose.

“Yes,” the Judge agreed. “Your expedition. Did you think we wouldn’t learn of it?”

My heart nearly stopped. I should have known this was no coincidence. I had learned more about the gods in that one expedition than scholars had gleaned from centuries of research, for I had learned that they were very real. And my entire expedition had been funded by...

“The Olympus Foundation,” I muttered softly.

I was rewarded with a grim smile. “Yes, Dr. Winslow, the Olympus Foundation. We fund it, of course. The members of the Board of Directors you met were, of course, part of our pantheon.”

“But why did you finance me?” I asked. “You knew I would find what you had done.”

He nodded. “Yes, we knew. But as an old friend of mine in England once said, you must keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

Was that what I was? Was I the enemy of the gods?

“By financing your expedition, we would be able to know what you discovered,” he explained.

“But you didn’t even have anyone accompany me on the expedition,” I pointed out. “Wouldn’t that have been easier for you?”

“Oh yes,” he admitted, “but it really wasn’t necessary. We knew by the reports you gave to the Foundation what you would discover. It has always been in plain sight for those who are willing to believe. We knew you would wait to organize your findings. That’s why we arranged your little speaking tour. We knew that would delay your published results and give us time to discredit your findings.”

In spite of my fear, I could feel my anger rise. “The stories of gods being aliens. You devised them to discredit me?”

“Of course,” he laughed. “It was necessary to lure you here.”

I reviewed the chain of events in my mind. I returned to the United States only to be informed that my speaking tour began at once. Then, once they had me in the Midwest, I was asked an innocent question which was misconstrued into the sensationalist treatment of my speech. Were Morton McKee and his daughter gods? Maybe not, but at the very least, they had been influenced by the gods. So I had cut my tour short. Come to think of it, it was strange that no one at the Foundation had objected, but I was too upset at the time to notice. Then, the weather had forced me further south and straight into Ovid. I had little doubt that even the weather had been part of their plan.

“So what now?” I asked, resigned to my fate. I did not expect to live much longer.

“Now, we continue the trial,” the Judge replied. “Formalities must be observed, you understand.”

Again, I felt the subtle movement of air through the courtroom, and I could hear my attorney busily writing a note on her legal pad. She had no idea what had just happened. To her, no additional time had passed. I looked around at the blonde. She, too, was able to move again, and it was with only mild surprise that she looked at the new spectator in the room.

The new arrival had entered when time had stopped, so I had no doubt that she, too, was a god–or rather a goddess. She was very attractive and appeared to be forty or so with light brown hair fashionably but conservatively styled. She wore a business suit of winter white, and she sat with such poise and grace that one could almost expect her to be royalty. I suppose in a way, she was.

“The Court has no choice but to find you guilty of reckless driving, Dr. Winslow,” the Judge intoned formally. “Sentence will now be carried out.”

So I supposed in a way, I had been correct, I thought at that moment. It was a kangaroo court of sorts. The only thing was that the consequences would be much more severe. I firmly expected the next moments to be my last. After all, I knew things about the gods that no other living man knew–things which could actually change the way mankind looked at the universe. I braced myself for the fatal blow. Was I in fear of what was about to happen? I suppose I was, but in a way, it was gratifying to know that I had discovered something so important that the very gods themselves called for my death.

My body began to tingle as the Judge began to chant in an ancient form of Latin I had heretofore only read and never heard spoken. The words were powerful. They spoke of the very nature of reality and spoke of things I had never imagined could be. As the Judge stopped his chant, the tingling became even more intense. I looked down at myself. My chino slacks were rippling, as if they were being rewoven. In a moment that seemed to last forever, I saw that was indeed the case. They fused, the material becoming softer while the khaki color remained, and the fabric began to crawl up my legs until it reached just above my knee, tightening along the plane of my legs.

So fascinated had I become watching the material that it took a moment for my mind to realize that something had happened to my flesh as well. My legs were now smooth, hairless, and far slimmer than they had been. And they were covered in a thin mesh which made them looked almost tan. Involuntarily, I arched onto my toes, feeling shoes form under my feet with a two-inch heel forming under them.

I was being attired as a woman, I realized with a gasp. Then as a wisp of long honey blonde hair tickled my ear and lengthened before my eyes, I realized it was more than just my clothing. I raised my hands, seeing suddenly thin wrists and delicate fingers with nails which were fairly short but rounded in a most feminine manner and coated in a faint pink polish.

My chest rose and fell quickly as I nearly hyperventilated, but each time it fell, it seemed to rest above the level to which it had fallen last. Breasts were developing, I realized, beneath my shirt which had suddenly become a soft white woman’s blouse, silky and feminine and so nearly transparent that I could see the lines of a bra beneath it.

I couldn’t see my face, but I could feel it reshaping and I could taste something sweet on my lips. As I blinked my eyes, I felt the presence of longer eyelashes and felt my sense of color shift slightly. Then, I felt the final stab of transformation as I experienced a void between my legs that even my widened hips could not conceal. Dear God, I was a woman!

I looked up at the Judge who was watching the transformation with the mild interest of a being who had undoubtedly viewed it many times before. I looked about the room, feeling my longer hair swinging against my face. Officer Mercer and the three women in the room also showed no surprise. This was obviously nothing out of the ordinary for them as well.

“What...” I began, nearly choking on the word uttered in my new alto voice. “What have you done to me?”

“I should think the answer would be rather obvious, Ms. Reynolds,” he replied.

“Who?”

“Ms. Reynolds,” he repeated. “That is your name now. You are Alicia Sue Reynolds–Ally to your friends. It’s all in your purse over there.”

He nodded at the defendant’s table. There, next to my bemused attorney was a tan leather purse, very close in color to the heels I now wore.

“You’ll have time to look through it later,” he said lightly. “Right now, you need to get to work.”

Work? This was all happening too fast. I didn’t have any work here. I needed to get back to Los Angeles and my job at UCLA. What was happening here? I wasn’t this–what was her name?–Alicia Sue Reynolds. I was...

“Ally, we need to go.”

I looked up, still half dazed, to face the woman who had just arrived in the courtroom. She was looking at me calmly–almost primly–as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. “Go? Go where?” I asked in confusion.

“You’ll see,” she replied with a friendly smile. “Come on now. You have no further business here.”

I picked up the purse and dutifully followed her out of the courtroom, feeling for the first time the odd sway of feminine hips. And I was walking in heels, I told myself, unsure how my body could do that without stumbling. It was as if my body knew what to do even if my mind didn’t.

The woman led me out into the chilly air to her car, a nondescript blue Buick. So this was the chariot of the gods, I thought with grim amusement. Numbly, I climbed in the front seat as if I had been a woman all my life, sitting first before moving my legs inside the car to avoid problems with my skirt.

“There’s a coat for you in the back seat,” she told me as she started the car. “It’s supposed to get colder today, so don’t forget it.”

I looked in the back seat at the tan women’s trench coat. Yes, I would need it, I realized, suddenly aware of how cold my exposed legs had been as we had walked to the car. And the silky crá¨me-colored blouse I now wore had offered little protection from the cold, causing my expanded nipples to harden embarrassingly.

“Who... who are you?” I managed to ask in my high, sweet voice.

“I am Dr. Miner,” she replied as she pulled out of the parking lot. “I am superintendent of Schools for the Ovid School District.”

“Miner...” I mused. “Minerva?”

She looked at me with the smile a mother might give a bright child. “Very good, my dear, but I should warn you that you will not be able to speak our names in such a fashion unless we permit it–which we seldom do. Don’t try that again. The results are somewhat unpleasant. Now, we haven’t much time, but I need to acquaint you with your new role here.”

“New role?” I asked. “I don’t want to be here. I have important work to do. I need to get back to Los Angeles. I need to be changed back.” Yes, looking back on it, I was babbling. I was just making a fool of myself. But I had never been transformed into someone else before, so I was a little at a loss as to how to handle it.

“Dear, we really haven’t time for all of that,” she admonished me gently. “You of all people should understand that what has happened to you is permanent. You are Ally Reynolds and will be her for the rest of your life.”

“But my work...”

“Your work never happened,” she told me flatly. “Your books were never written. Your expeditions–including this last one–never occurred. In fact, no one–even your old family–has ever heard of Thomas Winslow. Do I make myself clear?”

If I thought I had been shocked to find myself transformed into a woman, it was nothing compared to what I felt as this... goddess informed me that I had never existed. My life’s work–gone! It was almost too much to take. I felt a sudden urge to burst into tears, managing only at the last moment to stifle the urge with a hard gulp. I looked down at myself–or perhaps I should say the self that I had become. I was undeniably a woman, apparently from the delicate skin on the back of my hands a young one. There were objects hanging from my ears and the taste of lipstick and a nylon mesh embracing my slender legs. There was a bra restraining what appeared to be undeniably feminine breasts. And as for what was between my legs... I was most certainly not Thomas Winslow. I was someone else.

Dr. Miner saw the resignation in my face. “Good, now that that has been settled, I need to tell you what you will need to know to get started today. You’re really quite privileged, you know. Most of our newcomers are forced to make their own way discovering their new lives. Of course, most don’t remember their old lives at all, so it isn’t an issue for them.”

I remained silent and attentive. I had no other choice since I knew I was in way over my head. My ego was taking a very serious blow as I sat there in the car next to a woman who was in fact a goddess. When I had set out on my expedition, I had done so with the objective of securing my own place in history. I was about to prove something which would have seemed mere fantasy before my expedition. But I had never considered that the gods were still active and would not want anyone to tell their secret. I had paid for my carelessness with, for all practical purposes, my life. Thomas Winslow was no more. I knew that no amount of pleading or threatening would change that.

I looked down at myself. This was who I now was and would be for the rest of my life. I had no choice but to assume the role of Ally Reynolds. I would have to accept her life, whatever it was. So I decided to listen carefully and without comment.

“Ah, here we are!” Dr. Miner said lightly.

I looked up in time to see the car pull into a parking lot behind a sign that said Northside Elementary. Oh my god, I thought to myself as my new role in Ovid began to dawn on me. There really was a hell.

“That’s right,” Dr. Miner said with a mischievous smile as she parked. “You are to be a teacher. You’ll have third grade. The regular teacher is out on maternity leave. She started labor a little early, so that opened the job for you. It’s temporary, of course, but if you do a good job, I’m sure Principal Dale will find a full time position for you next year.”

“But I... I... can’t teach children!” I practically wailed. “I don’t know what to do!” I had had enough difficulty teaching undergraduates and they were for all practical purposes adults. How was I to teach children?

“Oh nonsense,” she replied. “Now come on. Principal Dale is waiting for us.”

“But what about... about everything else?” I asked, not quite sure what to ask first about my new life.

“Oh, the rest will come to you; don’t worry, Ally. Just follow me.”

I followed her in stunned silence, making furtive looks into the various classrooms we passed along the way. I could hear the giggling of small children which nearly caused me to shudder. Then there were the clear, precisely enunciated tones of the teachers. Would I have to talk like that? Was this really to be my fate, standing before fresh-scrubbed young faces trying to fill their little heads with the fundamental knowledge that adults take for granted? That was even worse than discovering I was a woman.

“Now,” Dr. Miner said quietly to me as we walked down the hallway, “a little background information is in order. You’ve been working as a substitute teacher around Ovid this last year. Before that, you lived and taught in Iowa, but a divorce from your husband and an ailing mother on a farm not far from Ovid brought you back here. Your mother died last fall, allowing you to move into a small apartment here in Ovid, but it happened too late for you to get a teaching contract for this year.”

She could see the calculations going on behind my eyes. “No, Ally, there was no inheritance to speak of. And you have no family. You should be happy about that since family never meant much to you. You are here all alone now with no visible means of support. You need this teaching job to put food on the table. And by the way, consider yourself fortunate. Most of our newcomers don’t get this much of a briefing, but I thought you needed to know these things so you don’t make an ass of yourself. It would make securing a permanent teaching job far more difficult, don’t you think?”

I was a little hurt that she thought I would mishandle this new life. Unfortunately, she was probably correct. I was not pleased with the role I had been given and would probably have said or done something wrong which might have cost me a permanent job. I needed to be reminded that I had no other choices but to play the role I had been given. I was certain I would have to remind myself of that often. The gods had decided what my fate would be. Whom the gods would destroy, they would first make an elementary school teacher.

“Here we are!” Dr. Miner said brightly, motioning me into the administrative offices. A plump fiftyish woman with light brown hair going slowly gray stood and came around her desk. Instinctively, I put my right hand out to shake hers but quickly found both of my small feminine hands being held by her larger ones, pudgy fingers wrapped around mine. I was shocked to note that Principal Dale seemed somewhat insubstantial. By that I mean it was almost as if I could see through her but not quite. It’s difficult to explain. Suffice it to say I was surprised at the warmth and substantial feel of her hands.

“Oh Ally, thank god you’re here,” she said with a bright smile, eyes twinkling. “Dana is watching the class for you right now. We were caught by surprise when Kristi had to go into the hospital this morning. You know, the baby isn’t due for another two weeks, but the doctor is worried about how she’s carrying it.”

There was a look of stricken concern on my face. To be honest, it was concern for myself and how I would get through all of this, but Principal Dale thought I was concerned about this Kristi person. “Oh, don’t worry, dear. She’ll be just fine. It’s not that uncommon, you know–or you will know some day.”

I hadn’t thought of that. She was relating to me as if I was a woman–a woman who might someday get pregnant. Just when I was thinking it couldn’t get any worse...

“Now Kristi left all of her lesson plans in her desk. I know you’ve never subbed for her before, so you’ll probably want to review those plans tonight. These are very good kids, though. You’ll have a fine class. You’re lucky you didn’t have to do this a couple of weeks ago when they got back from Christmas break. It took them a little time to settle down then.”

Yes, this was hell.

“Now, you’ll probably want to freshen up a little before you go in,” she continued. She might as well have been telling me to check all of my gear before I went into combat. “You know where the teacher’s restrooms are. I’ll give you a few minutes and we can meet back here.”

I didn’t know where the teacher’s restrooms were, but she had motioned the direction with her head. First, I needed to talk to Dr. Miner, but when I turned, I saw she was gone. Come to think of it, she hadn’t gone into Principal Dale’s office with me. I suspected that as far as Principal Dale was concerned, I had shown up in her office alone.

I avoided the obvious error of going into the men’s restroom. My new body gave me constant reminders of my new sex. I would never have been tempted to enter a men’s room in a skirt and heels as the flesh on my chest and rear swayed softly and the long hair brushed against my ears and neck.

After struggling with my outfit, I managed to relieve myself. It didn’t prove as difficult as I had thought that it might. I was quickly finding that if I just let myself go, I knew what to do, including wiping myself like a good girl. When I consciously pulled myself back from that trance-like state, I was standing in front of the mirror ‘fixing’ my lipstick.

That chore finished, I took stock of who I had become, seeing my face for the first time. I suddenly realized I looked a little like that woman who had played a teacher in Kindergarten Cop. What was her name? Oh yes, Penelope Ann Miller. Well, to be fair, I suppose I wasn’t quite as attractive as her, but my hair was about the same color and length. My face wasn’t quite as cute as hers, my nose being a little straighter and my eyes not quite as attractive, and my hair was a little longer, but on the whole, I wasn’t a bad looking woman.

Strangely, that thought didn’t bother me as much as it should have. I never had any strange hidden desires to be anyone other than the person I had been born as. Who I was had never been as important to me as succeeding in my chosen field. I supposed that had I been born black or female, or whatever else, I would still have been an archaeologist. To be honest, I wasn’t really much of a sexual being at all. Our society tends to attempt to define men and women as heterosexual or homosexual, but it seldom categorizes them by degree.

By that, I mean I had always considered myself a heterosexual male, but I hadn’t followed the normal heterosexual pattern of finding a woman to make my wife and live happily ever after. I had been male second and an archaeologist first. Given the choice of uncovering an artefact or bedding a woman, I would have been happier with the artefact. Of course, I was hardly a virgin, but months would go between my sexual encounters and that was all right with me.

So there I was, standing in front of that mirror, seeing myself well for the first time. I was obviously a woman. I could do nothing about that, I was certain. I would find a way to live with that if I had to. But my sense of loss came not from my change of sex but rather from my change of occupation. I was no longer an archaeologist. If I were, by some chance, able to gain an audience before my former colleagues, they would not see me as an archaeologist. My degree, I was certain, probably proclaimed me to be the graduate of some small teacher’s college, and even if I were to quote from memory every ruler of every ancient Persian dynasty, I would hardly be considered worthy of their association. My sex would matter little to them, but my credentials would matter greatly.

No, I was an elementary teacher. I was deemed qualified only to impart fundamental skills such as basic arithmetic and English and science so fundamental that it was absolutely banal. I would have to stand before creatures barely out of diapers and try to mold them into human beings. I remembered the old proverb: whom the gods would destroy, they would first make mad. Well, if a classroom filled with thirty or so schoolchildren didn’t drive me mad, what would?

Principal Dale was waiting patiently for me when I returned to her office. The only difference between her and an executioner as far as I was concerned was that she had a smile on her face. “Shall we go meet your class, Ally?”

“Okay.” What else could I say? I was stuck as Ally Reynolds, elementary school teacher.

I knew in the next few moments how a condemned man must feel as he is led slowly down that long corridor to his foreordained place of execution. I tried to tell myself that if I had been able to teach Fundamentals of Archaeology at UCLA to a class full of bored students trying only to get an elective out of the way, I could handle a bunch of third graders. How old were third graders? Eight? Nine? What would I have to teach them? Were they even toilet trained at that age?

I wasn’t sure I could handle the assignment, but I knew in my heart that I had no choice. This was the role I had been given by the gods–much to their amusement, I was certain. If I failed to do a good job, I was certain that my next assignment–if there was one–would be even more onerous. With a deep, heartfelt sigh, I followed Principal Dale into the classroom.

There were some basic math drills up on the blackboard, and a young boy was carefully writing the answer to one of them as the rest of the class watched. The boy was also somewhat transparent, as was the teacher who Principal Dale had explained was her Assistant Principal. A furtive glance at the class showed most of the students to be like them. It was like watching a piece of film that had been double exposed. Yet I knew from my physical contact with the principal that these beings were as solid as I was.

As for the rest of the class, they appeared to be normal children. They were uniformly neat and appeared normal in all regards. I found myself wondering, though, just how many of the real ones were like me–transformed from another life to this strange new existence in Ovid. Had they all been children before, or was I looking at adults who had been regressed by the power of the Judge? My guess was that they were all transformed. No real person in Ovid was the individual they had come to the town as originally. And what had Dr. Miner said? She mentioned that most of the transformees didn’t even remember who they had been before Ovid. That made me feel terribly isolated.

“Class!” Principal Dale called out in a gentle but authoritative voice which bespoke of many years in the classroom. “This is Ms. Winters’ replacement for the next few weeks. This is Ms. Reynolds. Now let’s all welcome Ms. Reynolds to Northside Elementary.”

A loud, shrill chorus of “hi” and “hello Ms. Reynolds” assaulted my ears, and it was all I could do to keep from turning and running from the room. Drawing on reserves I didn’t even know I had, I managed a nervous smile in return. After all, I couldn’t allow myself to be intimidated by a room full of eight year olds, could I?

Principal Dale said quietly to me, “I’ll leave Dana in here to teach the rest of this period. Then it will be time for recess and she can turn the class over to you.”

Dana Johnson, the assistant principal, was a cheery woman. Her bright red hair and tall, slender figure were the opposite of Principal Dale’s, but she had the same pleasant demeanor. I watched in silence as she conducted the class through the rest of their math period. As I watched her in action, I became even more concerned, for Dana was masterful in the way she controlled the class.

I began to realize that my fears were well grounded. Certainly, I had taught many students in my life, but they had been adults–or nearly so. Therefore, I had been able to treat them as adults. If the truth be told, that included pontificating before them, deriding them when their logic was faulty, and giving only begrudging praise when they were correct. I realize not all college professors teach in that fashion, but I was never comfortable teaching, so I was determined to make it uncomfortable for my students as well.

I realized I would not be able to do that now. If I pontificated, I would only confuse these children. If I derided them, they would probably cry. If I gave only begrudging praise, they would lose interest. I understood all of these things, but I didn’t know how to correct them.

I tried to remember how it had been when I was in the third grade. It was difficult to remember that far back with any accuracy. My teacher had been a Mrs. Grundy. As I recall, she tolerated no guff in her classroom, but I didn’t remember her as being a particularly harsh disciplinarian. How had she managed?

I decided I needed to watch Dana and see how she handled the children. She seemed very good at what she did, so she was undoubtedly a proper role model. By the time the period had ended and the children had been dismissed for recess, I was terrified. What I had seen was a woman who was much more than an instructor. She was a mother and a taskmaster at the same time, comforting and mollifying them one moment and demanding more from them the next. She seemed to know in an instant which role to assume, and the children responded to her exactly as she desired. I was hopelessly out of my element it seemed.

“They’re a good class,” Dana told me with a smile when we were alone in the classroom. “The class is a little large–there are thirty-two kids. With all the growth over at Vulman Industries it seems like there are new children enrolling every week.”

I just nodded my head. Great. I had a larger-than-average class. Just what I needed.

“I know you’ve never taught here at Northside before,” she went on, “but I think you’ll find most of the kids are like the ones in our other elementary schools.”

“I’m sure they are,” I agreed, knowing there was no way Dana could understand what I really meant by that remark.

“We’ll have spelling right after recess,” she told me. “I’ll get out of here now and let you take over. Work with them on spelling until lunch. Then you and I can meet in the cafeteria and go over Kristi’s lesson plans. You’re lucky–Kristi is a good teacher, so all you’ll need to do is follow her lesson plans.”

Gee, I didn’t feel lucky.

The children filed back into the classroom in orderly fashion, taking their seats with a minimum of talking and giggling. It was time for me to take the stage. Nervously, I got to my feet. The unsteady stance I took was not entirely due to unfamiliarity with high heels. I steeled myself as well as I could for the ordeal that was sure to come.

“All right, class,” I began. “Before we start spelling, why don’t we all get to know each other a little better?” I was proud of myself for thinking of that. Not only did it sound right, it would occupy the first part of the class, and I had no idea how to teach spelling. “Let’s start over on this side.” I pointed to a cute little girl–one of the partially transparent children. She smiled and began to recite.

I really didn’t listen to all that they had to say. There were too many of them to remember what each recited. Besides, I had a seating chart which gave me their names and told me a little about them. I simply let each of them ramble on, nodding to them when they had finished, and indicating that the next child should speak. After all, the longer they spoke, the less time I had to worry about what–or how–I was going to teach them.

Some of the children were interesting, though. Generally, they were the real ones–or perhaps I should say the solid ones. First, there was Wendy Palmer. She was a very cute little girl dressed in a plaid skirt and black tights. With her long, curly blonde hair, her pert nose and round blue eyes, she was going to grow up to be a real beauty, I thought. She seemed embarrassed to recite her life history to the class, and when she did, it was as if she was talking about someone else–someone whose life history she had been required to learn. I suspected she was one of the transformees who remembered her previous life. I wondered who she had been.

Then there was Eric March. He was a handsome, confident little guy. He reminded me of that kid in the Dr. Pepper ad on TV who swaggers up to the teacher’s desk with a can of Dr. Pepper. The little devil practically leered at me, causing me to look down a couple of times to make certain everything was modestly covered. He was the son of a couple who apparently owned what passed for a department store in Ovid. From his confidence and bearing, it was obvious he was hot stuff–and he knew it.

Brice McHenry was just the opposite. Oh, he was a good-looking kid, with his dark brown hair and even deeper brown eyes, but he practically mumbled when he spoke. He seemed like a decent, studious boy if not overly gregarious. I could almost hear his little mind ticking away. I pegged him for one of the best students in the classroom, but his social skills would need work. In many ways, he reminded me of myself as a little boy. I wondered what he would think if he knew I had once been a little boy.

There were others as well who were interesting. There was a set of identical twins–boys–who were different in one regard: one was real while the other was somewhat transparent. Neither boy seemed to notice. I’m sure it would drive them crazy when they found I could easily tell them apart, for apparently there were only a few of us in Ovid who could detect the transparencies.

As I noted earlier, few of the children were not transparent. Out of thirty-two children, there were only seven who were solid. In addition to the four I had already noted, there was a small, almost scrawny girl named Lucy. She appeared to be mostly American Indian ethnically. I couldn’t tell if she knew who she had been or not. She was rather quiet. There was Tony, a good-looking little guy who seemed to be just what he appeared to be–a young boy. He seemed to be very popular, too. The other solid child was a rather pudgy little boy named Justin. He looked like an obnoxious lad. I vowed to keep a watchful eye on him.

The exercise had reinforced something which I had already come to believe–namely that transparent or not, each child in the room was real insofar as his or her classmates were concerned. I would have to treat them all the same.

Introductions out of the way, we went into the spelling lesson. Now, it was my turn to perform. I had the current lesson in front of me, since my predecessor had been thorough enough to do all the lesson plans. I thought it went fairly well, but the children seemed a little restless as they listened to me explain the spelling of the words. I think they were as relieved as I when the lunch bell finally rang after what seemed to be a stretch of days rather than just a little over an hour.

It was Eric who told me what was wrong. He lingered as the rest of the class rushed off to lunch, making no secret of their desire to escape my classroom. “Bad start,” he critiqued, shaking his head sadly as he stood before my desk.

My face flushed. What was this eight-year-old boy doing daring to criticize my teaching style? “I beg your pardon?” I said with as much ice as I could muster in my new feminine voice.

“This isn’t college, you know,” he went on, choosing to ignore my tone. “These aren’t graduate students; they’re children. You don’t lecture to them. You have to get them to interact with you.”

I looked closely at the boy, realizing suddenly that although he looked like a child, there was adult intelligence behind those blue eyes. Was he an adult transformed as I had been? I didn’t think so. I had already felt the subtle pressure of Ovid which would require me and others like me to conform to our new roles. No, I was certain no human adult changed into an eight-year-old boy would be expected to beard me in my own den. Eric was something more. Could he be an adult who had been transformed into a child? It was possible, but if so, he exhibited far more confidence than I would have expected. There was something more to him than that. One of the gods? Yes, it was possible that he was. He seemed to have the same level of confidence I had seen in the Judge, Officer Mercer, and Dr. Miner. Each of them displayed a presence that was almost regal. Eric was no exception, even when packaged in the body of a small boy. Perhaps I should hear him out, I thought.

“Then what should I do?” I asked, as humbly as I could. I hoped I did it right. It was so hard to be humble, but the results of the morning class had taught me more than it had taught the children.

“Make them recite,” he explained. “Make them come up to the board and spell. Then ask the rest of the class if they’ve spelled it correctly. You see, they don’t have the attention span required to listen to a lecture. Besides, at this age, they learn better by doing than by listening to a stuffy lecture.”

Stuffy? My eyes narrowed as I looked down at Eric. “Who are you? It’s obvious you aren’t really an eight-year-old boy.”

As if to refute my accusation, he giggled just like an eight-year-old boy. “Oh, I’ll let you figure that out. And by the way, yes I am an eight-year-old boy, even if it is just because I choose to be. You’d best treat me as one, too. The other kids wouldn’t understand if you didn’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get some lunch so I can have some time to play before afternoon classes.”

He didn’t wait to be dismissed, running from the room suddenly with the bright smile of youth on his handsome face. Shaking my head in confusion, I left as well to join Dana for lunch.

“What do you think of them?” she asked once we had gotten our lunch trays and found a private table in the teacher’s section of the cafeteria.

“They’re interesting,” I said carefully, trying to determine how chicken chilli and cinnamon rolls went together with lime Jell-O. I resolved to bring a sack lunch in the future.

She laughed, “Yes, they are, aren’t they? Kristi always said that they’re the brightest class she’s ever had. They seem to crave learning. It’s the sort of class that makes you happy you chose teaching.”

I nodded as enthusiastically as I could. After all, I needed the job.

“Have you talked to Brice yet?”

Brice? Oh yes, the quiet boy who reminded me of myself as a child. “Yes.”

“What do you think of him?”

Was this some sort of a test? No, I realized. The look in Dana’s eyes told me she was guileless but concerned.

“He’s quiet,” I ventured. “But he seems like a bright boy.”

“Right on both counts,” Dana told me as she toyed with a carrot stick. “I’m worried about him though.”

“How so?”

She sighed. “He just moved to town with his father at the beginning of the school year. His dad works for Vulman Industries. I suppose a lot of our new residents are here because of Vulman. Anyhow, apparently just a few months before they moved here, his mother was killed in a car accident. Brice was apparently very close to his mother. Poor kid–he got uprooted from all his friends and lost his mother in the same year.” She paused for a minute. “Ally, I’m worried about him.”

Was I to be a child psychologist as well? I wondered. How many roles would I have to assume? I was beginning to feel as if I was more out of my element than I had ever imagined. Teaching at the college level was entirely different from this. At the college level, I was expected to impart knowledge. At the elementary level, I was apparently expected to wear many hats. I had to entertain, be a surrogate mother, engage in psychology, and who knew what else. And I was expected to do it all, I realized without any idea of my current level of pay, at a fraction of what I had earned at UCLA. Yes, it was most certainly hell.

To be honest though, the afternoon went a little better. It was spent in reading and what passed for history at the third grade level. I made sure the children participated by reciting and reading and got a couple of approving nods from Eric for my efforts. I had to admit to myself that the participative method of teaching seemed to be easier on all parties concerned. By the final bell, I was actually feeling pretty good about my teaching style. I could do this.

A few of the children stayed behind to ask questions. At least that was their official reason. In reality, I think they just wanted to get to know me better. But one child, Wendy, hung behind, waiting for all the other kids to leave. When she was alone with me, she pushed her blonde hair back off her forehead and seemed to be working up her courage to talk to me.

“Ms. Reynolds?” she began tentatively. “I need to know something.”

“Sure, Wendy,” I said with a maternal smile. I had been practicing that smile all afternoon and thought I was getting rather good at it.

She was very nervous, as if she wasn’t sure what to say. At last she managed though. “Were... are... I mean, have you always been a girl?”

It would have been an odd question anywhere but Ovid. She was a smart girl. She could have asked me if I had been changed into a girl, but if I hadn’t remembered my previous life, I would find the question strange. “Well...” I drawled, waiting to see her reaction.

Her eyes brightened. “I thought so!” she said excitedly.

“What about you?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Have you always been a little girl?”

“God no!” she muttered. “I was a guy.”

I was actually fascinated. I leaned forward to hear her tale. Wendy was the first person I had met who, like me, remembered her previous life.

“I was a guy and I was sixteen–just,” she began. “My family lives in Tulsa. I even called them after I was changed, but they had never heard of me.” She sniffled a little at that. “It’s as if I never existed. I’m stuck here–like this.”

“So what were you doing in Ovid if you were only sixteen and living in Tulsa?” I asked, finding that misery really did like company. I was fascinated with his–rather her–story.

“Well,” she said slowly, her face a little red, “I stole a car. It was me and another guy. We just wanted to ride around for a while. It was a neat car–a BMW 5 Series. Some guy left the keys in it and we just took it. But we got spotted by the State Patrol. They started chasing us and we tried to lose them.”

“Let me guess,” I told her. “You got lost and eventually you got picked up by Officer Mercer and brought to Ovid.”

She nodded, blonde curls bouncing. “That’s right. Reggie–he was my friend and the one who was driving when we were caught–he got changed into a little Indian girl, maybe three years old or so. He didn’t remember being anything else. This woman came in and he screamed ‘Mommy!’ Then she carried him away. It was spooky. I was scared–I mean really scared. I mean, I didn’t want to end up like Reggie. But then the Judge looked at me and started mumbling in some other language. I felt kind of a tingling sensation. I guess you know what I mean.”

I nodded.

“Then the next thing I know, I’m like this and some woman–one of the ones you can sort of see through–comes and takes me away like I’m her little girl. I really freaked out, but she acts like I’ve always been Wendy.”

“When did all this happen?” I asked, intrigued. Apparently, misery really does like company.

“Two weeks ago,” she sighed. “I just about went crazy at first. It was like I was the only person in the whole town who noticed something wasn’t right. Everybody else–even the ones who aren’t transparent–acted like things were supposed to be this way.”

“You haven’t met anyone else who remembers who they were?” I asked.

She shrugged. “No. I’m a little girl. I can’t just go up to most adults and ask them who they were before the Judge got hold of them.”

“But you asked me.”

“That’s different,” she tried to explain. “You’re... well, you’re my teacher.”

“And that makes it easier for you to tell me this?” I asked, unable to understand her logic. Had the transformation made her think like an eight year old instead of the teenage boy she had been?

“I think so,” she admitted. “And most of the real kids don’t seem to want to talk about it–or they don’t remember. I’m really starting to worry.” She was on the verge of serious tears.

I hesitated before asking my next question. I think I was afraid of the answer. But I had to ask it. “What are you worried about, Wendy?”

She looked up at me, her pretty blue eyes brimming with tears. “I... I’m afraid I’m starting to like being like this.” It was all she could manage. She turned and ran. From the window of my classroom, I could see her boarding a yellow school bus, looking for all the world like the little eight year old girl she appeared to be.

I sat alone in my classroom, listening to the fading sounds of the last of the children as they left the school. I could hear the janitor’s broom being pushed down the tiled hall, the smell of the powdered cleaning compound nearly taking me back to my own elementary school days. It all seemed so normal when I just let myself go.

I knew that only a few hours before, I had been a middle-aged college professor and a man, but somehow that seemed like a lifetime ago. I could understand Wendy’s dilemma. The gods had made Ovid to be ‘normal.’ It looked like a small American town, smelled like one, sounded like one, and above all, acted like one. It would be impossible after a while for Wendy to act like anything other than the young girl the Judge had made of her. What else could she do but conform? Her ‘parents’ would not understand if she suddenly started claiming to be a sixteen year old boy. Her new friends would make her life even more miserable if she started dressing and acting like a teenage boy. Adults would see her as a child. Boys would see her as a girl. She had no choice but to conform.

And as she began to conform, she would start to think like the little girl she had become. She would learn to giggle like the other girls when something funny happened, and blush like them when she became embarrassed. She would learn to play the games girls played and say the things that girls said. She would learn to dress like the other girls and act like them or she would be entirely alone in her new body.

In a very few years, she would go through puberty. She would remember her previous life–I was certain of that. But as the new hormones streamed through her body, she would become more and more of the girl she appeared to be. Her mother would teach her to apply makeup. Her friends would shop with her. A boy would kiss her. And then... And then, the boy she had been would fade into mental obscurity, replaced by a ravishing young blonde woman who thought that being Wendy Palmer was just fine.

With a sudden start, I realized Wendy wasn’t the only person in Ovid who would be so affected. The same thing would happen to me, and maybe even faster. The female hormones Wendy’s body was only starting to produce in substantial quantity were already working their way through me. I had all the memories and attitudes of my previous male self, but they were being filtered through a different brain and influenced by a different balance of hormones. Gone was the testosterone, replaced by estrogen–or some such formula. It was only a matter of time until the unaccustomed chemicals altered my very thinking. Would I be more emotional? Would I feel more maternal? Would I like men?

I was sure the answers to all of those questions would be yes. To make matters even worse, I wouldn’t have the time or the energy to fight it. Why? Well, simply because I had to earn a living. I might know deep in my inner self that I wasn’t Ally Reynolds, but no one else would. Or if they did know, they wouldn’t care. If I signed a check at the grocery store with the name Thomas W. Winslow, it would be refused. If I tried to walk into a men’s room, I would be gently told I had made a mistake. Even if I could get in a car and drive back to my job at UCLA, from what Wendy had told me of her own experiences, I was certain I would find that there was no Thomas W. Winslow on the faculty. And even if there was a Thomas W. Winslow on the faculty, I was certainly not he.

“Ally?”

I looked up from my thoughts to see Principal Dale standing there. She gave me a warm smile. “So how was your first day?”

Oh, wonderful, I thought to myself. I had my sex changed, probably lost a lifetime of accomplishments, got thrown into a room full of post graduate rug rats, and got to wear a bra and pantyhose all day. Add to that, I have to sit down to pee now. What a wonderful day!

Discretion got the best of me, though. “It was just fine,” I said with a smile of my own.

“Well, I promised Dr. Miner I would take you over to pick up your car. She told me you had already taken it in for service before you knew we had a job for you.”

“That’s right,” I replied. I hadn’t known that. I was also wondering about how I was going to get home. Come to think of it, I was really starting to wonder where home was.

“Well, grab your stuff,” she said. “No sense in working late on your first day.”

In spite of myself, I found I liked Principal Dale–or rather Marge as she insisted I call her as we drove to pick up my car. She might have a small problem with transparency, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a real person–at least to me. She seemed genuinely to like her teachers. She participated in their lives without being obtrusive. Like college deans, she was probably politically adept within the boundaries of her profession, but unlike many deans I had known, she seemed unworried about how the actions of her teachers would affect her career. Rather, her focus was on the students and what was best for them.

She dropped me off with a cheerful wave. I looked around the service department, suddenly realizing I was the only woman in the place. It was one thing to be seen by children and peers, all of whom were women, but it was quite another thing to be stared at by a collection of men, all dressed in blue Ford shirts, as if I were some sort of alien species. In a way, I suppose I was. As a man, I knew little about automobiles, but I could bluff my way through an auto service department. After all, I was a man. Men knew about cars, or so most mechanics could be convinced to believe. Now though, in my skirt and heels, no such assumption was possible. I was an interloper, alone of my sex in this male world. I fled for the cashier’s window as quickly as possible.

Even in the administrative section of the dealership, I felt uncomfortable. I managed to turn my head to see a car salesman quickly look away, embarrassed that he had been caught staring at my legs. I knew I had been changed into an attractive woman. I mean, I probably wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but I wouldn’t have been out of place entering one. My figure was good and my face pleasant. I knew these things. I just hadn’t learned how to deal with them yet.

My car had been in for a brake problem, now fixed. It turned out to be a Ford Probe several years old but in good condition. Apparently as a single teacher, my income wasn’t good enough to afford much else. My bank account balance which I noted as I wrote the check seemed to confirm that. Well, that was one thing that hadn’t changed. Professors of Archaeology weren’t exactly wealthy men as a rule either.

Finding my home proved to be relatively easy. For one thing, my address was on the driver’s license in my purse, and Ovid wasn’t a terribly large place. There was also a small map of Ovid thoughtfully created by the Ovid Chamber of Commerce. And if that hadn’t been enough, I was a woman now. I thought with a private smile that that meant I was entitled to stop and ask for directions–something men seldom did.

Home wasn’t exactly palatial. It was a small apartment in a modest complex near the town’s modest college. I hadn’t expected much more, and didn’t really care. As a man, I had lived fairly modestly. My work was my life, and I had little need of luxuries. In fact, since I was often in the field on expeditions where luxuries were few and far between, it was best for me not to get used to them.

I kicked off my heels with a practiced move that surprised me and plopped down on the small couch that was the centerpiece of the mildly cluttered living room. I was pleased to see that Ally, like my former identity, was not much of a housekeeper.

A look around the room left little doubt that the resident was female, though. There was a feminine cast to the room–a frilly pillow here and a stuffed animal there. At least Ally wasn’t into overtly lacy things. I managed to feel reasonably comfortable as I unwound on the couch.

I was alone, and somehow, it didn’t feel right. I thought I knew why. As a man, I spent my days talking with peers–other professors and men and women for whom archaeology and the related fields were a passion. Even the students I interfaced with were for the most part adults. My evenings, if not taken up in some professional pursuit, were spent alone, and I was grateful for that. It gave me time to think and to plan what would come next in my impressive career.

Now though, I had spent the entire day around creatures whose lives had to be measured in single digits. The oldest of them was perhaps nine. Except for brief moments, I had not enjoyed adult intercourse and my mind craved it. There I was, alone. But being alone now seemed oppressive rather than relaxing.

I got out of my good clothes, putting on a knit sweater and a pair of jeans instead. I tried without success to ignore the bra I was wearing and what filled it–and the panties I was wearing and what didn’t fill them. I did note that the body was well toned. Apparently Ally took care of herself. I resolved to do the same thing. Not only would it strengthen this female body which seemed so weak compared to my male one, but it would allow me to become more accustomed to its operation. As a man, I had managed to stay in fairly good shape, in spite of a slowly growing paunch. There was no reason not to maintain good conditioning as a woman.

With that in mind, I found the freezer full of low-cal frozen dinners. I made myself one and settled down for the evening. I made the most of my time, going over as much of Ally’s life as I could. As an archaeologist, I was used to piecing together the daily lives of people in long-dead civilizations, so piecing together Ally’s–my–life wasn’t all that difficult.

Apparently the death of my mother and subsequent sale of what was left of the family farm hadn’t left me with much. Oh, I had over ten thousand in a savings account and my car was paid for, but my mother’s illness had apparently sapped the rest of the family resources. I had no brothers or sisters, so what little had been left was mine. It wasn’t a bad start, I thought, but it wouldn’t last long if I had to live on it. It meant I had to work, so again the importance of keeping my new job was brought home to me.

There were letters from friends. Christmas was just over, so all the friends Ally had apparently made over the years had written to her. I wondered as I read them if any of the writers were real. Maybe the letters were just props, like the non-existent mother and my mythical former husband. I hoped they were real. As I read the letters filled with the records of the lives of people I had never met, I began to feel a need for good friends I had never felt before.

Now, that didn’t mean that I had no friends in my previous life. As far as I was concerned, I had some very good friends. It’s just that my friendships had revolved around my work. They were academicians like myself, and there were many professional opportunities for us to renew our friendships. That would not be the case in Ovid. I would have to find friends or face an endless parade of nights like my first one there–sitting at the table with a frozen dinner in front of me with no one to share my day.

Maybe I would buy a cat.

My first full day as Ally Reynolds began normally enough. I got up especially early so I could get a morning run in the crisp winter air. Running seemed odd in this new body. It moved differently but not awkwardly as I had feared. Given the substantial breasts and wide hips, I had expected running to be uncomfortable at best. Instead, I was able to move gracefully through the cold morning. And I was so much lighter than I had been as a man that it was actually exhilarating.

The run was followed by an invigorating shower where I tried once again without success to ignore the feminine configuration of my body. I had seen my body naked when I had gotten into pajamas the night before and I had tried to avoid exploring my new anatomy. I guess I thought if I didn’t touch it, it wouldn’t be as real. I really had no choice as I showered though, carefully washing myself in all the new places. I was surprised at how sensitive my skin seemed to be. And touching my breasts and between my legs just to wash them was almost a sexual experience. There’d be time to play later, I reminded myself. After all, I expected to be stuck in this body for the rest of my life.

Getting ready for work proved easier than I had thought. I managed to achieve an almost trance-like state in which I was able to dress and do my makeup with little thought. And with that, I was ready to face the world–and maybe even the third grade.

I was met by the normal good-mornings from both children and other teachers. I was proud of myself for remembering most of their names. I had always had a good memory for names, and I was glad to see that talent had not been taken from me.

Morning classes went fairly smoothly. I was starting to get a feel for the personalities of each of my students. I found to my surprise that the little devils were actually far more complex than I had imagined. That made them actually interesting. Oh, I still would have killed for some adult conversation, but at least it wasn’t as bad as I had feared.

I got a little adult conversation in at lunch, eating with the other teachers. Most were older than me, and all were married. While I quickly tired of conversations about husbands and children, there were enough adult topics that I was able to get by. It seemed to be all right with the other teachers if I didn’t hold up my end of the conversation. Only one of them was not transparent, and she obviously had no memory of a previous life, believing herself to be the mother of three children.

“Well, come on, Ally,” Rosemary DeLong, a fifth grade teacher called to me as she picked up her finished tray.

“Come where?” I asked blankly.

“Oh, you haven’t checked the schedule,” she laughed, her dark brown eyes twinkling. “You and I have playground duty this afternoon. Marge doesn’t believe in letting any grass grow under our feet. You’re already on the schedule with all of us old timers.”

I joined Rosemary on the playground. She took the side with the older grades leaving me on the side with the younger children.

If I had known I was going to have to monitor the playground, I would have dressed differently. I had picked a pair of low heels, but I hadn’t anticipated standing around on concrete sidewalks while the children played. Then there was the skirt. I had chosen a longer one than the one I had been dressed in the day before, but the weather had turned colder, and a cold breeze was playing around my legs, my nylons barely checking the biting cold.

“Ms. Reynolds!”

I looked around, forgetting for the moment my discomfort in the urgency of the tiny girl’s voice. It was one of the girls from my class, and she wore a worried look on her somewhat transparent face.

“What is it, Vickie?”

“Brice is hurt!” she cried.

Brice hurt? “How bad is it?” I asked with uncalled worry in my voice.

“I don’t know,” Vickie replied, turning to run to Brice, expecting me to follow.

I rushed over to a prone figure, surrounded by several children. As I got closer, I saw that it was Brice. He was lying on the ground beneath a tree with a grimace of pain on his face. His left arm was twisted at an odd angle, and I could see that it had to be broken.

“What happened?” I demanded, remembering at the last second how to squat down in a skirt.

“I fell out of that tree,” Brice mumbled, pointing with his good arm at a large elm tree over our heads.

“Nobody’s supposed to climb the trees, Ms. Reynolds,” a little girl I didn’t know said primly.

“So what were you doing in the tree?” I asked Brice as I carefully examined his arm.

“It was a dare!” the little girl declared.

Brice looked at someone. It was all clear in a heartbeat. Someone else had put him up to climbing the tree. Dares were common among small boys. I remembered a few from my own childhood. I turned quickly to see who he was looking at. To my surprise, it was Eric March.

“Eric, I want to speak with you,” I said sternly as I helped Brice to his feet. I held him close to me as I walked him into the school, Eric walking next to me on the other side.

When I had left Brice with the school nurse, I turned on Eric in the hall. “Did you dare him to climb the tree?”

If I had expected him to lie, I would have been surprised. “Yes,” he said simply.

“Why?”

Eric shrugged, not intimidated by me in the slightest. I could see I would have to press him for an answer.

“Eric, you told me yesterday I should treat you as an eight-year-old boy. What do you think I should do about an eight-year-old boy who goads another eight-year-old boy into doing something dangerous?”

“That would be entirely up to you,” he said, as if he were a colleague discussing a completely theoretical point. “You might consider detention. That’s generally the most effective course of action.”

I stared at him, trying to see what lay behind those innocent blue eyes, but whatever it was, he hid it well. “What’s going on, Eric? Just who are you?”

He replied in mock surprise, “Why, I’m Eric March, Ms. Reynolds. Who else would I be?”

I sighed, “All right, Eric March. I’ll have the office notify your parents that you’ll be staying after school tonight. You’ll miss the bus, so they’ll have to pick you up. I think an hour should do it.”

“Fine,” he replied, as if we had just negotiated an agreement. “Then if that’s all, I do need to go to the boy’s room before class.”

I nodded and let him go. I thought about making him sit at his desk, but I wanted to go to the nurse’s office to see how Brice was doing. Besides, it somehow seemed inappropriate to have a boy who acted more like the president of IBM than an eight-year-old sit at his desk. And I really wanted to see how Brice was doing. The poor kid seemed so lost and alone in class that I was afraid I’d find him frightened by the medical attention.

I wasn’t wrong. There were tears on his little face as the nurse wrapped tape around his wrist. The nurse was one of the transparent people. She was an attractive young black woman who seemed to have a way with kids. Brice was trying to be brave as she spoke to him in soothing tones.

“Is it a broken arm?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “No, it’s just a bad sprain. Kids Brice’s age are pretty flexible. It’ll hurt him for a little while. I’ve called his dad and he’s on his way here. He’s going to take him to the doctor for x-rays just to be sure. He should be just fine, though.”

To my surprise, Brice leaped off the examining table and threw his arms around me, sobbing. I really didn’t know what to do, so I did the only thing that seemed natural. I put my arm around the sobbing boy. I don’t know why, but the action seemed to comfort me almost as much as it comforted him. I had never been a particularly demonstrative person. If the truth be known, my touches during lovemaking had been perfunctory rather than fired with emotion. Why then did it feel so comforting to put my arm around this small body?

The clinical side of my mind gave me something of an answer. I was now a woman. That meant that my emotions were governed by a new set of hormones and instincts. Yes, instincts. We all have them. The animal side of our bodies can react to primal instincts just like any more primitive life form. Maternal instinct was an absolute fact. Many species–including human–had it. The female body I now wore had it as well.

I was forced to put the clinic analysis aside, though, for the tiny person who was clutching my skirt and sobbing his heart out demanded my attention. “It will be alright, Brice,” I told him in as soothing a tone as I could muster.

It was then that I noticed for the first time the man standing in the doorway. He was tall, but not overly so. Given my new shorter stature, tall was a relative term. He had dark hair and dark brown eyes, and I knew almost–and there’s that word again–instinctively that he was Brice’s father. There was a stunned expression on his face as he saw us. I thought he was alarmed at the way I was holding his son. I tried to let go of him but he clutched at me even more. I guess I was thinking about the fact that had I still been male and been clutching the boy, someone might have gotten the wrong idea. As a woman though, I suppose it was expected of me.

“I’m... Ally Reynolds,” I told him. Then I added, “I’m his teacher,” in case the clarification was necessary.

“I know,” he replied with a nod. “Brice told me about you, but he didn’t...” His voice trailed off. Then, as if he suddenly remembered why he was there, he asked, “Is he all right?”

“He’ll be fine,” I told him, even mustering a little smile. “The nurse thinks it’s just a sprain, but she wants the doctor to take x-rays just in case.”

“I understand,” he said. “Shall we go see the doctor, Brice?”

The little boy looked up at me with those sad brown eyes. “Can you go with me?” he asked pitifully.

“I can’t Brice. I have to teach the class.”

“I’ll tell you what, Brice,” his father suggested, “I took the rest of the day off just in case. Maybe after we see the doctor, I can bring you back here to see Ms. Reynolds. Would that be okay?” He looked hopefully at me and I nodded that it would be all right.

“O... Okay,” he mumbled, reluctantly letting go of my skirt.

They were a touching pair, I thought to myself as they walked away together. Both were real people, and I found myself wondering who they had been in their previous lives. They seemed so close I wondered if they had been father and son before. Of course, knowing what I did of Ovid, there was an equal chance that they had once been mother and daughter.

Afternoon classes went well. To be honest, it was actually a little on the enjoyable side. Once I put my mind to it, I seemed to have a knack for dealing with the kids, and they seemed to like me. I found myself proud when I saw a look of understanding come over their faces as they understood for the first time some new idea or fact. I was proud of them and proud of myself. As a college professor teaching jaded students, I seldom saw such open responses. Ah, the innocence of children...

After school, Eric sat passively, reading a book during his period of detention. I wanted badly to ask him some questions, but I knew I wouldn’t receive meaningful answers. So I let him sit there, reading a book. I supposed that I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the title–it was a college level textbook on psychology.

“All right, Eric,” I said at last. “Your hour is up. Are your parents picking you up?”

He just smiled at me as he carefully placed the textbook in his backpack. “Really, Ms. Reynolds, you of all people should know that won’t be necessary.” Then he gave me a little boyish smile and sauntered out of the classroom, leaving me to silently shake my head.

Moments after Eric left, Brice and his father appeared. I noted that Brice was wearing clean clothes now. Apparently his father had taken him home to get out his soiled clothing. I noted with amusement that his father had also changed and was now wearing a crisper sweater and pressed slacks.

Brice ran for me, stopping as he approached to push up his sleeve. His arm had been re-taped with a minimal splint supporting the arm. “Look!”

“It was just a sprain,” his father explained, “but it was a fairly bad one. He’ll be wearing this for a week or two.”

I smiled at Brice. “Well, it could have been worse.”

“Brice has something to ask you,” his father said.

Brice stood very straight and asked formally, “Ms. Reynolds, would you like to go to dinner with Dad and me?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t had time to review the rules, but I knew some schools frowned on fraternizing with the children–or their parents. But Ovid was a small town, and I imagined that rule wouldn’t work too well since there weren’t that many people to socialize with in the first place. And deep inside me, I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend another evening alone with my low-cal frozen dinners. I craved adult conversation, and Brice’s father certainly fit into the adult category. “Sure,” I finally replied with a smile. Brice looked relieved. Come to think of it, so did his father.

Patrick McHenry remembered nothing of his previous life. I knew that as we sat talking at a fairly private table in a pleasant little downtown restaurant called the Greenhouse. He told me about where he grew up (a suburb of Dallas) and where he went to school (Texas A&M) with a practiced ease that told me he really believed it. I, on the other hand, kept my personal responses to a minimum, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Brice announced as a waiter brought after-dinner coffee for Pat and me. “I can go by myself,” he added proudly.

When he was gone, Pat looked at me with a serious expression. “Ally, I need to tell you something before he gets back. You probably noticed I didn’t say anything about Brice’s mother.”

I nodded. I had noticed but had said nothing, but I had been warned how deeply Brice had been hurt by his mother’s supposed death.

“I was offered this job early last year and moved to Ovid. Mary–that was my wife–was due to join me as soon as Brice’s school year was over. One day, Brice got sick at school and Mary left work to pick him up. On her was to get him, her car was hit by a truck. She was killed instantly.”

In the short time I had been in Ovid, I realized that stories like the one Pat was telling me weren’t real, but the story was real to Pat. I was he believed every word of it. He could probably relate the details of that terrible ordeal. And it was real for poor Brice as well. The poor kid probably even blamed himself for getting sick that day. After all, if his mother hadn’t left work that day to pick him up, she would still be alive. Of course in reality, she probably never existed. None of it was real. But I knew that even though it wasn’t real, I had to treat it as if it was.

“I’m so sorry, Pat,” I said.

“There’s more,” he told me, his eyes closed as if to block the pain.

“Yes?”

“Ally, you bear a remarkable resemblance to my wife–to Brice’s mother.”

I nearly gasped. No, not from the shock of the coincidence of my resemblance. I’ve never believed in coincidence, or at least not to that extent. I had been set up. I resembled someone who probably never even existed. I resembled her enough to be attractive to Brice as a mother figure. Come to think of it, I was undoubtedly equally attractive to his father.

Pat shook his head. “I’m sorry, Ally. I didn’t mean to burden you with all of that. I just thought you ought to know why Brice is so attracted to you.”

And why you are, too, I thought silently.

But what could I do about it? If I backed away from Brice and his father, I would be doing damage to two innocent people. They didn’t know that they were being used as pawns. In my previous life I had been accused of being aloof and unfeeling on a number of occasions, but I had never been intentionally cruel. And I didn’t intend to start being cruel now.

I made the best of the rest of the evening, being formally polite to Brice and his father. I don’t think they noticed. They had already formed an opinion of me in their minds, and that opinion was that I would make an excellent substitute for Mary.

I still managed to get home early. Since Brice was just a boy, his father needed to get him home on time for bed. I was thankful we had taken separate cars to the restaurant. It gave me the opportunity to leave the moment the check was paid. I hoped I hadn’t seemed too rude. Both Brice and his father had tried to give me a pleasant evening. And I had to admit, I found them both charming. I just didn’t like being set up. It was too late to do what I needed to do, but I vowed to get it done the next day.

I got one of the other teachers to take lunchroom duty for me that next day and drove to the Ovid Municipal Building. I had had the late evening and all morning to let my anger build. It was one angry woman who stormed into the Judge’s reception area.

The blonde from my court appearance was there. Apparently, she was the Judge’s secretary. She was struggling with her purse and her coat, wobbling a bit in her very pregnant state. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I need to see the Judge right now.”

Caution clouded her eyes. “I don’t think he can...”

“It’s all right, Cindy,” a voice from the intercom said gently. “Please see Ms. Reynolds in.”

She still looked a little uncertain, but she opened the door for me. I marched in.

“Please have a seat, Ms. Reynolds,” the Judge offered formally. He stood at my entrance, his dark suit crisp and fresh as if he had been standing behind the desk all morning.

With only as ugly a stare as I could muster with my sweet face, I sat. I was suddenly angry with myself for unconsciously sitting in such a feminine fashion–first crossing my legs and then fixing my skirt. To make it even worse, I could see the Judge was somewhat amused by the actions.

“I see you’re fitting in well, Ms. Reynolds.”

I held back my first impulse–which was to tell him to jam this whole town up his ass–since I was, after all, confronting one of the most powerful beings on the planet.

“Why did you do this to me?” I asked quietly when I had calmed myself down.

He smiled slightly. “I think you know the answer to that.”

I nodded slowly. “It’s because of what I discovered on my last expedition, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes, essentially it is,” he admitted, leaning back in his chair. He removed his gold-rimmed glasses and studied my face carefully. “There were other reasons as well.”

“Other reasons?”

He gave me the small smile again. “Yes. But we can discuss those later. You must surely realize that what you discovered could have serious effects on our plans. That couldn’t be allowed. It is far too important to us–to your race for that matter–that we succeed.”

“Mankind should be allowed to plot its own destiny,” I argued.

“I might agree with you if mankind was the only intelligent species on this world,” he told me, his voice becoming a little more stern. “This is our home, too, you know. The safety of the planet is just as much our business as it is yours.”

“Then reveal yourselves,” I countered. “Tell everyone what’s at stake. Tell them what you did long ago.”

To my surprise, he laughed. It was a rich laugh, full and boisterous. In that moment, I could almost see him in Olympus, a bolt of lightning in one hand, looking down on the Earth with amusement. “Reveal ourselves? You have searched for us too long. To you, we have been real for many years. You don’t understand that to nearly everyone else on the planet, we are only the stuff that myths and legends are made of. Mankind has enough religions already without adding us to the mix. Already more are killed on this planet in the name of God–any god–than any other reason. You would have us reveal ourselves and kill even more?”

I was silent. He was right. I had visited many parts of the world who were so certain their interpretation of God was absolutely correct–and they were willing to kill to prove their point, no matter what their religious teachings said about killing.

“No, Ms. Reynolds, your discoveries were far too dangerous to become widely known. The delicate balance that has allowed this world to survive this long would be greatly disrupted if they became generally accepted as fact.”

My eyes narrowed. I wanted to ask what that ridiculous story about the gods being aliens would do to his delicate plan, but then I remembered that by now, no one remembered that article. It had disappeared when Thomas Winslow ceased to exist. My expedition never took place. The Judge had thought of everything.

“So now what happens?” I asked dully.

“What happens now,” he told me, “is that you live the life you have been given.”

“Without interference?”

He looked hurt. “I don’t interfere, Ms. Reynolds. Whatever gave you that idea?” He then rose to his feet. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do–as I suspect do you.”

So I accomplished nothing, I thought to myself as I drove back to school. Here I was, a trained professional who probably knew more about the gods than nearly anyone else in the world. Yet I was as much a pawn in their game as someone who didn’t even know about the planet Jupiter let alone the god. The more I thought about it, I realized that the Judge had only said he didn’t interfere with my new life. That didn’t mean other gods didn’t interfere. To make matters worse, I was hungry and had missed my lunch. In fact, the children were forming up from lunch break to go back to class just as I pulled into the parking lot.

I had worn the lowest heel I could find with my outfit that day. I still nearly tripped as I ran into the classroom. To my surprise, everything appeared under control. I had expected a bunch of wild Indians when they got into the room and realized I wasn’t there.

I had to admit to myself as the afternoon went on that many of my conceptions about children had been wrong. I had assumed they were for the most part mindless little monkeys who were not mature enough to learn effectively. They lived, I thought, to play and run and make the lives of the adults around them as unpleasant as possible. Instead, they were polite, eager to learn, and for the most part well behaved. I wasn’t sure if this was really true of all elementary schools or just of Ovid. Of course, Ovid was all I needed to concern myself with.

Ovid was an idealized community, I thought to myself as the children read silently to themselves. Pictures I had seen of elementary schools around the nation often showed teachers dressed little better than undergraduates. Yet I had noted that all the teachers at Northside Elementary dressed very professionally. Not all wore skirts. Some wore pants, but they were still nice outfits. And the children were uniformly clean and well dressed. Oh, they wore the sort of clothing children wore anywhere, but their clothes were neat and appropriate. Even the children who obviously came from less affluent homes were well scrubbed.

I began to wonder if that was one of the problems of our society. Perhaps we had become too informal. Society needs some structure or it falls apart. Was that the eventual plan of the gods? Were they trying to give us back the discipline we had lost as a society? Perhaps. But I felt there was more to their plan than that. Considering what I had discovered on my expedition, I was sure of it.

By the time the final bell rang, my stomach was making rumbling sounds. I had almost wished that the afternoon hadn’t been so uneventful. That might have taken my mind off my hunger. It was probably part of being a woman, too. I found that I had to eat smaller meals since I would fill up quickly. The downside was that when I finally became hungry, I had little in reserve to work on. So when Brice put a crisp apple on my desk as the other children filed out, it was all I could do to avoid snatching it and devouring it like some ravenous beast.

“Thank you, Brice,” I managed. It was so trite of him, but I loved him for it, and not just because I was hungry I realized.

He smiled shyly. “You’re welcome.” He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere.

As politely as I could, I reached for the apple and took a bite. Maybe it was just because I was so hungry, but the apple was fabulous. What a loveable stunt–bringing an apple for the teacher. But I could have kissed his little cheek for it. “It’s delicious,” I told him truthfully with a thankful smile.

His eyes brightened. He had been quiet and withdrawn all day–not an uncommon mood I suspected. “Do you really like it?”

“Yes I do. I didn’t get any lunch today, so this was a perfect gift.”

“Ms. Reynolds?”

“Yes, Brice?”

His face clouded. “Are you mad at me?”

I stopped in mid-bite, the tang of the apple and the flavor of my lipstick mixing in my mouth. “Brice, whatever gave you the idea I was mad at you?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, last night at dinner... you were kind of...”

Reserved? Aloof? Distant? Rude? Yes, I was all of those things, especially when I realized what was happening. But I hadn’t meant for them to be apparent–especially to Brice. “I’m really not mad at you, Brice,” I told him gently. “I’m sorry if you thought that.”

His face brightened a little. Then, he asked, “Well, what about my dad?”

“What about him, Brice?”

“Are you mad at him?”

Was I? What possible reason did I have to be mad at him? “No, Brice, of course I’m not mad at your father.”

Now his smile was positively radiant. “Thanks, Ms. Reynolds. I hope you like the apple.” He turned to run and catch his bus. Then he stopped and turned back to me. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ms. Reynolds.”

“Good night, Brice.” I watched him with a smile as he ran out.

I spent another one of those lonely frozen dinner evenings that night. It was my third night as Ally Reynolds, and the first night that I realized how powerful the magic of Ovid was. On my first night, I had been uncommonly lonely. I had chalked it up to the fact that unlike my previous existence, I had no driven purpose in my new life. Whereas before, I would have pored over a document written in some dead tongue for hours without end, as Ally I had little to do with my evening. The second night, I had been happy to be with Pat and Brice. Then when I got home, I was too angry at being manipulated to be lonely. But now here I was on my third evening in the role of a woman, and I felt very lonely.

Oh, I had work to do. I was starting to realize that keeping a class of third graders intellectually stimulated would take substantial hours outside the classroom. No, it was something else. I fell back to my original theory that I was lacking mental stimulation during the day, spending it as I was among children. But to be honest with myself, it wasn’t just that. After all, I had met with the Judge that day, and if that meeting wasn’t intellectually stimulating, what was?

I hadn’t felt so alone the night before. Of course, I had been out with Brice and his father. But was that evening intellectually stimulating? Not really, I supposed. Brice was just a child, no matter who he had been before. And his father, although quite nice looking, was not exactly a mental giant. I mean, he was certainly bright enough, but our conversation had been limited to non-intellectual subjects such as where we were from and...

Nice looking?

I shook my head. Now where had that thought come from? Since when did I describe a man as being nice looking? Oh, I might have said a man was distinguished or well groomed, but nice looking?

I had nothing better to do, so I analyzed that thought. What exactly did I mean by nice looking? Well, he was tall but not terribly tall. He was about the height I had been before my transformation, so I now had to look up at him, but not too far up. And his eyes... they were dark brown as I had already noted, but they were what kind of eyes? Intelligent? Well, yes, I suppose they were. Friendly? Yes, that too. But there was something else, too...

Attractive.

No, it wasn’t that. It couldn’t be that.

But it was, I finally admitted to myself. Pat had very attractive eyes. It was funny, I thought to myself, that I should notice that. Had being changed into a woman changed my perspective of what was attractive and what was not? As a man, I might notice a woman’s eyes. But that wouldn’t be the first thing I would notice. First, I would notice her build, her hair, her general face and then maybe her eyes. What did I think of women now?

I thought about the other teachers I worked with. Some were young like me–the kind of women Thomas Winslow would have been attracted to. And yet I had barely noticed what they looked like. Come to think of it, I had mostly noticed what they were wearing, or how they managed to keep hair as long as mine from getting in their face. I had even noticed the earrings one of the teachers had been wearing and commented on how nice they looked. I had thought at the time that I was just being polite, but I realized suddenly that the earrings really did look nice and I had only suppressed the errant thought of how they would look on me.

Then I thought about the men I had come into contact with since my transformation. There really hadn’t been that many. There was the Judge, of course. Come to think of it, he was a nice looking man as well. He appeared to be in the graceful stage of middle age, although I realized it was only an illusion. Still, he was relatively trim, but not my type.

My type?

I moved on. All the other teachers were women, but I had seen a few men during the course of my day. There had been deliverymen at the school, fathers picking up their children, and the custodians were male. I was relieved to note that none of them had sparked any sexual feelings, though. Maybe women didn’t notice things the same way men did. Maybe women looked at men differently.

It was time for an experiment. I flipped on the TV and decided to watch carefully to see if any of the actors or actresses caused any sort of sexual urges. The answer was not really. Then again, as Thomas, I can’t say I got particularly turned on watching the sweet young things prance about the screen. I did notice that my eye was drawn to different things on the screen. If I let myself go, I seemed to notice the women more for what they wore and how they did their hair than how big their breasts were or how sexy their legs appeared. With the men, though, I would catch myself admiring their builds or watching their walks or... yes, looking closely at their eyes.

So okay, I told myself. My sexual orientation was changing. I was certain only part of it was due to the new hormones my body was producing. A little magic had to be thrown into the mix as well. Of course, it was probably being helped along by the fact that I had never been terribly sexually active as a male.

Now, that didn’t mean I had been some sort of a eunuch. Thomas Winslow had lost his virginity at sixteen. And as a student, I had been active sexually, although not to the point of being a campus stud. In my later adult life, I had considerable opportunities for sexual encounters. I was well known, reasonably affluent although hardly rich, and if I do say so myself, reasonably handsome. But colleges had begun to frown on faculty-student liaisons, and my libido had seemed to lessen even more as my professional stature increased.

It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. It might have been said that in recent years, my sexual life had been something of a vacuum. Now, with a new body and an entirely different set of hormones, those centers of my mind which I had allowed to atrophy were being awakened again, only with a different orientation. Strangely, it didn’t particularly bother me. Now that doesn’t mean I found myself wanting to bed wrestle with some big mindless hunk who was hung like a horse. No, it was more an intellectual acceptance than a physical need. I had simply reasoned that I was now a woman and that most women enjoyed making love to men. It logically followed that I would be attracted to men.

That night I checked out my new body with a bit more sexual curiosity. Now that doesn’t mean I sat around mindlessly playing with myself. No, I tried to be clinical about it. Since my transformation, I had chosen to ignore my new body whenever possible. I was obviously female–a fact of which I was reminded several times a minute. But it is as easy to ignore the sway of breasts as it is to ignore the sway of testicles–particularly if you have other things on your mind.

And so many things I now did were almost autonomic. The wiping after peeing, letting my breasts drop into the bra cups before fastening, crossing my legs demurely–all of these things and many more were so automatic that I didn’t have to think about the fact that I wouldn’t be doing any of them if I wasn’t in the body of a woman. So when I say I checked myself out, I really meant that I did so for the first time with conscious effort.

I was both relieved and disappointed to realize I wasn’t exactly centerfold material. Oh, I was cute enough I realized as I posed in front of a mirror, but my breasts were a little on the small side and my hips were feminine but not breathtaking. Probably my best features were a cute face and nice, athletic legs. I’d have to keep running, I told myself.

As any former male would do, I kept focussing on the neat triangle of hair between my legs. There was nothing unusual about it–for a woman. The phrase ‘conspicuous by its absence’ came to mind. It was almost as if I had awakened and found myself missing an arm or leg. The difference was that my new configuration was all perfectly normal–for a woman.

What would it be like–to be penetrated, I mean? I had no illusions about remaining chaste for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t be an old maid elementary school teacher like the unfortunate stereotype of a previous generation. No, I would be a heterosexual woman in every facet of the expression.

Was that too clinical of me? Perhaps, but I knew that eventually I would surrender my body to some man. I was already becoming attracted to men. It was only a matter of time.

Part of me did want to resist. Part of me wanted to find a way out of Ovid and to convince someone in authority what had happened to me. In that part of my mind, I could imagine standing before an important figure–maybe even the President of the United States–wearing my new body like the body of a wounded war veteran as I explained to the man what I had found on my latest expedition and how it might affect the entire world. I smiled to myself. As if that would happen.

But then the more pragmatic side of my new being reminded me that I was Ally Reynolds, and there was no one in the world who would have any reason to believe otherwise. And maybe the Judge was right. Maybe what I had learned on my expedition would cause great harm if imparted to the world. It would have gained Thomas Winslow fame–something which was very important to him. Unfortunately, it would only gain Ally Reynolds notoriety. And as Ally Reynolds, notoriety was the last thing I wanted.

So what would it be like–to make love as a woman? I closed my eyes and experimentally touched myself between my legs. It felt... different. It felt...

My reverie was broken by the insistent ring of the telephone. I jumped a foot in the air before picking up the phone at my bedside. With a flush of embarrassment, I realized I was still naked, as if that made a difference to the caller.

“Ally?”

“Yes?” I recognized the voice and flushed in embarrassment once more.

“This is Pat. Say, Brice is staying with a friend tomorrow night, and I wondered if you’d like to have dinner with me–sans Brice.”

Part of my mind screamed that things were moving way too fast. I wasn’t ready to go out on a date. While I might concede clinically that I would have to be a normal woman in all ways–and that included dating–this was all happening too fast.

But the other part of my mind held sway. It was the part of my mind that recognized I was lonesome, and Pat’s offer was too tempting to pass up. “I’d love to,” I blurted out before I could change my mind.

We talked for a few more minutes, finally agreeing on a seven o’clock dinner the next evening. The nice thing was that when I hung up the phone, I didn’t feel quite so lonely anymore.

The next day was Friday. I was actually going to make it to the weekend in one piece. Every day in the classroom was becoming a little easier, and I found myself actually enjoying the children in spite of myself.

Two of the children had become something of a special project for me. There was Brice, of course, who still spent much of his time in a self-imposed shell. At least he had made a friend. Eric March seemed to have made Brice his project as well, chumming around with him most of the time. I wasn’t at all surprised to find out that Eric was the friend Brice was going to be staying with that night.

My other project had been Wendy. In some ways, her situation was like mine. Both of us had been changed into females some years younger than we had been before. The difference was that I was still an adult. Wendy had gone from the edge of adulthood to the heart of childhood in an instant. I don’t think it would have been so bad for her if she had been changed into an eight-year-old boy. She had memories of that and could have coped. Now though, she was living completely outside her experience. To make matters worse, she had all the knowledge of a sixteen-year-old boy. She knew all about periods and back seat trysts. I found to no little surprise that as a boy, she had already experienced sex with a girl on several occasions. Now, only eight years old, she had several years before she would experience those things from the other side, and she was frightened half to death.

“I mean... what’s a period really like?” she asked me that day at recess while just the two of us were in the classroom.

“I don’t know,” I had to answer. “I haven’t had one yet.”

“But you will,” she pointed out. “And soon. I’ve heard that you can’t get pregnant until you’ve been in Ovid at least three months, but you have periods just like any other woman.” She paused for a moment. “When you have yours, will you tell me what it’s like?”

“Hasn’t your mother told you?” I asked. I was a little envious of Wendy to tell the truth. Her mother would teach her all the things a girl should be taught growing up. I would have to learn them on my own.

She nodded. “Yeah, she’s told me, but it isn’t the same. She thinks I’m only eight and talks down to me. Whenever I ask anything too embarrassing, she just smiles and says I’ll find out about that some day.”

I grunted in agreement. Yes, I could see that happening. A real eight-year-old might allow an adult to defer an answer, but Wendy wasn’t exactly a normal eight-year-old. Every time her mother refused to give her a straight answer, she probably feared the worst. Mother, how painful is it? You’ll find out some day, dear. No wonder she was terrified. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to having periods myself.

“So will you tell me?”

I managed a smile. “Sure–if I survive my first one.”

It was the answer she had wanted, and the little note of humor I had added to it was just enough to make her feel even better. “Okay,” I said, “now that we have that out of the way, I have a question for you.”

She returned my smile. “Sure.”

“Why are you having so much trouble with math?” I asked her. “You have the memories of a sixteen-year-old. Yet you seem to be having trouble understanding multiplication.” Third graders were just being exposed to multiplication, and Wendy, an otherwise good student, seemed to be having trouble with the entire concept.

She reddened and looked down at her little sneakers. “I don’t know. It’s weird. I was really good in math back in high school. Here though, it’s as if there’s a block on my mind. I have to really concentrate to get the right answer.” She looked up at me in alarm. “You don’t think I’m slowly losing my memories, do you? In some ways, that scares me more than anything. I’m afraid I might just wake up tomorrow and be like some of the others around here. You know, I might forget who I was and think I’ve always been a girl.”

“I don’t think so,” I told her truthfully. “Do you notice how if you don’t think about it, you act just like any other little girl?”

She nodded slowly.

“Well, it’s the same for me,” I explained. “I find if I don’t really concentrate, I act as if I had always been a woman. Most of the time, that’s okay; it’s sort of like camouflage. That’s probably the way it is for you. It wouldn’t do for an eight year old to understand the binomial equation, would it?”

“I suppose not,” she admitted. “So maybe the math ability is still there...”

I nodded. “Yes, but you’ll have to concentrate to use it. It apparently isn’t part of the natural things in Wendy’s character. If you concentrate though, I think you can be good in math again. Okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, the little grin slowly returning to her face. “Thanks, Ms. Reynolds.”

Before I could protest, she jumped at me and gave me a girlish hug before running out to join her friends for what remained of recess. I sat stunned. It wasn’t so much my surprise at being hugged by the little girl. Rather, it was because I found I enjoyed it. More than enjoyment, I felt a sense of accomplishment. I had helped her–really helped her. It wasn’t quite the same feeling of accomplishment that I had felt when I had successfully translated a stone tablet from some ancient city. But come to think of it, in some ways it was better because I had been able to see the true results of my accomplishment. The hug was like a medal. I wore it around my neck for the rest of the day.

The rest of the day actually went by very quickly. I had to admit that I was actually starting to enjoy my job. The other teachers were nice and the children were an entertaining challenge for my developing teaching skills.

Brice and Eric were the last to leave. “Mom’s picking us up here,” Eric explained. Well, no problem. I had a few things to do, so I let them sit and read while I finished up a little paperwork. Besides, I had plenty of time before my dinner meeting with Pat.

“Ms. Reynolds?”

I looked up at the sound of a woman’s voice. There, standing in the doorway of my classroom was the most incredibly beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. Now, I’ve noted that my sexual orientation was steadily changing, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t recognize great beauty when I saw it. The woman before me had an absolutely perfect figure. And the medium gray suit she wore displayed that figure in a way that made it look sexier than the sexiest swimsuit. The gray was broken by her perfect, creamy skin, blue eyes that sparkled with intelligence, and hair the color of spun gold. When she moved into my classroom, it was with a fluid grace that I would never have dreamed possible. By comparison, I moved around like a lumberjack.

I stood awkwardly to greet her, feeling like the ugly duckling as I put out my not-unattractive hand to shake her absolutely perfect one. When we touched, there was a soft tingle, not unlike the one I had felt when I had been transformed.

It didn’t take a former archaeologist to realize I was in the presence of a goddess. I had suspected Eric was one of the pantheon, and meeting his mother confirmed it. Their identities were now very clear to me.

“Vera March,” she said to me in a voice that was both regal and sensual at the same time.

I knew already that she was Venus. Venus was supposed to be an unsurpassed beauty, and Vera March was the most beautiful woman I could ever imagine.

“A... Ally Reynolds,” I managed to stutter.

She gave me a knowing smile. “Yes, you are. It’s so nice to meet you, Ally. I’ve admired your work for some time.”

I knew she wasn’t referring to my teaching work, but Brice was in the room and would not understand if this beautiful woman started talking about my previous life.

“I’ve... I’ve always been a great admirer of you,” I told her. It was true. I had always found her one of the most fascinating gods. I was now able to see why she had had such great influence in her time.

“Eric is enjoying you, too,” she continued smoothly, still holding my hand. “I can see you’ll be a great addition to Ovid.”

“Thank you,” I managed.

“Well now, I’m keeping you from other things,” she said, an almost dreamlike quality to her voice. “You have much to do to get ready.”

“Yes,” I agreed, the dreamlike quality slipping into my own voice.

“You’re very pretty,” she commented with a critical eye. “Yes, I can see what you need. Can you?”

“Yes...”

“Good.” She released my hand. I felt suddenly as if I had awakened from a long nap. She turned to Eric and Brice. “Come boys, Ms. Reynolds needs to get ready for her evening.”

The boys jumped up and ran giggling from the classroom. Brice was giggling because Eric was. Eric, on the other hand, seemed to find something that had just happened extremely funny. I wasn’t sure just what it was.

I know now that I was influenced by Venus. I would call it hypnosis, but that sounds so common compared to what she did to me. I practically floated home, my mind only on what I needed to do to get ready for my date. Yes, it was a date. I hadn’t really used the word before to describe my forthcoming dinner with Pat, but a date is what it was.

I had plenty of time and the day had been long. Why not take a relaxing bath? Now, I had always been a shower person, and to this day that hasn’t changed. Still, I felt a sudden need for a bath that afternoon. As I slipped into the warm water, it felt so good...

I don’t want to dwell on my hours of preparation for my date with Pat. Yes, I said hours. I think I was in a trance as I prepared for my date. The languorous bath was followed by a slow, careful painting of my nails. It was as if I had done it a thousand times before, yet it was my very first time. I selected lingerie and a dress with the confident assurance of a fashion model. I did my hair and makeup without a thought. I selected jewelry to complement my outfit with ease. I did all of this almost as if I were a passenger in my own body. For example, my hand would snake out to grab a dress; then my mind would say yes, that’s the one. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Shouldn’t I have decided first and then reached for it?

The next moment in which I felt completely in control of myself was as I stared into a mirror admiring my finished efforts. I had thought I was hardly centerfold material, but I was pretty damned cute if I did say so myself. My dark wine cocktail dress showed just the right amount of cleavage to be daring without being obscene. My hose were dark, too, and showed off a very fine pair of legs ending in feet encased in a wine-colored three-inch heel. My hair was lustrous and full, just touching my bare shoulders like an expensive stole. The gold of my necklace and earrings was a perfect complement to the healthy tone of my skin, and my makeup had been applied with the skill of an artist.

Where had I come up with the skills to appear so beautiful? I scarcely remembered any details of my preparations, but the results were spectacular. If I had had any doubts about who Vera March really was or what awesome power she had used on me, the mirror would have dispelled them.

My doorbell rang suddenly, shocking me out of my reverie. It was, of course, Pat, resplendent in a nice gray suit and stylish tie, the color perfectly complementing my dress. I almost expected flowers and felt a very feminine pang of disappointment that he hadn’t brought any for me, but it passed quickly.

It’s very difficult for me to verbalize the events of that night. It isn’t that I don’t remember them; quite to the contrary, I remember them vividly. The problem is that I remember them on two different levels–rational and emotional. While most people are able to blend the two into some semblance of reality, I felt that night almost as if I had been split into two entirely different people. The first person was whatever was left of Thomas Winslow. That person was rational and realized that he–now she–had been influenced by a goddess. All the inhibitions were there, trying to remain reserved and uninvolved. Unfortunately–or fortunately depending upon how I chose to look at it–that person was for all practical purposes a passenger.

The person in control was a much more emotional individual. Her inhibitions seemed to have been set aside for the evening, and while she remembered clearly her life as a male, it was as if that life were now not important. She seemed to enjoy being treated as an attractive woman. She smiled sweetly when the car door was opened for her, and she kept stealing glances at her date on the way to the restaurant, musing at how attractive he was and wondering what it might be like to...

A strange negotiation was going on inside my own head as we were shown to a secluded table in a pleasant hilltop steak house called Winston’s. There, surrounded by crisp linen, fresh flowers, and a glass of a nice Chardonnay, I began to feel the two sides of my mind subtly integrate each other into a single person. Maybe it was the wine or the Mozart violin concerto playing softly in the background, but I began to feel more comfortable with myself.

As a man, I had always enjoyed fine dining. I would miss my obligatory cigar after the meal, but a brandy and coffee was probably not out of the question. Pat proved to be a pleasant dinner partner. Unlike many engineers whose acquaintance I have made through the years, he was very eclectic in his interests. I was able to see him as an equal instead of just the father of one of my students.

And as I have said, somewhere during that most pleasant meal, my intellectual mind and my newly feminized self made peace with each other. What both sides discovered is that they liked Patrick McHenry very much.

I giggled just a little as I set my coffee cup back on its saucer. Using the coffee to wash down the last bit of dessert, I had had a momentary urge to call the waiter over to complain about the lipstick marks on my white china cup. The giggle came when I realized that the lipstick was my own.

“What’s so funny?” Pat asked over his own coffee. Fortunately, we had both decided against an after dinner drink since we had both had a fair amount of wine.

“It’s hard to explain,” I told him, suppressing another giggle. I didn’t think he would understand if I told him I had never worn lipstick before that last week.

“Well, I assume this means you’ve had a good time this evening,” he ventured.

I answered without thinking as I looked into his eyes. “I’ve had a wonderful time.” It was true. I couldn’t remember the last time I had had such a good time at dinner. Now if I could have just had that damned cigar... Come to think of it though, I hadn’t noticed anyone in Ovid smoking. Perhaps the gods didn’t like smoking. At that thought, I giggled again.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine,” he said with a grin.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have had the last two glasses of wine,” I laughed. I had been having so much fun that I forgot my now-smaller body wouldn’t have the tolerance for that much wine.

“Well, maybe I’d better get you home,” he suggested.

It was a good idea, but I found I didn’t want to go home. How could I tell him that without sounding like a pouty bimbo? “Maybe I should take a walk first,” I replied.

He shook his head. “Even with your coat on, it might be a little chilly out there. That dress of yours can’t provide much warmth.”

“You don’t like my dress?”

He blushed. I had been a man recently enough to know that he absolutely loved my dress. “I just don’t want you to catch cold.”

“Well, then I guess home it is,” I giggled.

And home it was, but not alone.

I don’t know why I asked him in. Oh, I know it was partially the magic and partially the wine, but there was something else as well. I just didn’t want him to go home. I offered coffee, of course, and he gladly accepted. He obviously wasn’t ready to go home either.

I sat next to him on the couch. And yes, I sat very close to him. Somewhere in the back recesses of my mind, a tiny masculine voice was crying out in terror. The residual masculine personality knew exactly where this whole affair was going, and it was displeased, disgusted, and disturbed. I was seducing Pat, and I was having a wonderful time doing it.

When I had been a man, I was sure that I had the hardest part in a potential sexual relationship with a woman. After all, it was up to the man to seduce, was it not? Now, as a woman, I began to realize that my simplistic notion had not been completely correct. My female body tingled with anticipation. I wanted to tear off all of Pat’s clothing and rape him on the spot. Whatever the Judge and Vera March–and her son–had done to me had made me very horny–a new experience in my new sex. But while all I would have had to do is say “come on, big boy,” that wasn’t the way I wanted this to be.

How odd that I could change my perspective of sex so quickly, but I did. I was discovering that women want sex every bit as much as men, but they don’t like to be aggressive about it. That sends the wrong message. It’s almost like screaming “I’m easy” from the top of a tall building. The vast majority of women don’t want to appear easy.

So the answer to a woman’s needs is to do all the right things to make them think it was their idea. No wonder women seem to have the power to lead men around by the nose, I thought suddenly. If a woman can subtly cause a man to say and do the right things sexually, getting them to do anything else would be simple. I think in that moment, I began to realize how intriguing it could be to be a woman.

“Dinner was lovely,” I purred. The wine was wearing off, but it was being replaced by sensations that were at least equally euphoric.

“I’m glad you liked it,” Pat replied, staring at me over his coffee. I noted that he hadn’t tasted a drop.

I stretched over to set my coffee down on the coffee table in front of the couch, allowing him a very good view of my cleavage. “I’ve really enjoyed this evening.” And I was still enjoying it. I managed to glance down at Pat’s crotch and saw I was having a definite effect on him.

“I’ve enjoyed it too,” he replied, setting his own cup down.

We looked at each other as we rose back to a sitting position, but Pat’s face was closer. He was leaning forward. The poor male still embedded in my head was sending alarms that almost swayed me from my goal. Almost, but not quite. There were too many hormones and pheromones and soft moans going on then for the alarms to be seriously considered.

Our lips touched–chastely at first, then greedily. I could actually feel my nipples began to harden, and the sensation between my legs was as if I had suddenly come into contact with warm water.

From that moment on, my thoughts aren’t too clear. I knew what was happening, of course, and the rational core of my mind sought to analyze why it was happening. The rest of my mind didn’t seem to care. It had already surrendered to the needs of the body. An almost primitive impulse of wanting... needing had overwhelmed my senses, and although I sensed that these were not the normal needs of a middle-aged archaeologist, it didn’t seem to matter.

Sex as a woman... how to describe it? If I were to describe it to a man, it would be like trying to describe a sunset to a person who had always been blind. Suffice it to say that instead of pressure building to a climactic eruption as with a man, sex as a woman is more like a growing tides, waxing and waning with each new touch. I wanted it to go on forever, I thought as an orgasmic wave rippled through me.

So when the actual penetration came, any trepidation I might have expected was already gone. I needed Pat to complete what he had started. I gasped as he entered me–not from pain or surprise, but rather from pleasure. I felt complete, and the feeling of being alone I had experienced since my transformation eroded until it was gone, replaced by a feeling of belonging. This was right. I was Ally Reynolds–not because somebody told me I was, but because I wanted to be her.

Was it this moment that I reconciled myself to my new life? Not entirely. Rather, this was the moment in which I realized that I had reconciled myself. In fact, I had been reconciling myself almost from the moment of my conversion. ‘What had I really given up?’ I asked myself as I lay there snuggled in Pat’s arms when we had finished.

Oh, I had discovered something which would stun some people, but the vast majority of mankind would not understand it–nor care about it for that matter, I realized for perhaps the first time. How would I have announced it? If I were to proclaim the reality of the gods and what they had actually done, it would probably have been received much as the erroneous report of the gods being space travellers had been–with derision and scorn. Others would have reviled me for my discovery.

Now Thomas Winslow would not have cared. After all, his fellow academicians would have lauded him for his discoveries–once they had accepted them. So what if the information had a disastrous effect on society? Wasn’t the truth more important than the effect on the world?

Yes, I thought as I drifted off into a satisfied sleep, perhaps it was all for the best.

I slipped out of bed the next morning before Pat. I had surprised myself a little by waking with no remorse regarding my previous night’s activities. I had half expected the residue of my male identity to have reared its ugly head when I was no longer in the throes of passion. But looking at Pat lying there, I felt my body tingle again. I had no excuse this time. The wine had worn off with no ill after-effects and I suspected the strong magical urging which I had experienced had now expired. No, whatever I felt for Pat now was too deep within me to be influenced by either alcohol or magic, and too deep for any lingering male prejudices to sway. For the first time in my life, I cared more about someone than something. It was a nice feeling.

I showered in a leisurely fashion, comparing the feeling of my hands rubbing my body to Pat’s larger, stronger hands. Maybe I should have asked him to take a shower with me, I thought with a pleasant smile. I started to dress but got only as far as my lingerie when I thought I should probably start something for breakfast. I put on a long, soft robe and hurried to the kitchen, starting some bacon and making some juice.

“Smells good,” a deep voice said behind me.

I turned and saw Pat standing there in just a pair of boxer shorts. I couldn’t help it. I looked down at the way his shorts were tenting out and smiled.

“But I’m not ready for breakfast quite yet,” he went on with an answering smile as he opened the front of my robe.

Needless to say, by the time we were ready for breakfast, the bacon was overdone.

The day was mild–much milder than I would have expected for that time of year. And the sun was bright if low in the sky. We made the best of the day, travelling to a place called Sooner Park where we walked along the pathways watching other couples and smiling at the children as they played. Most of the people we saw were the transparent type. Wendy had told me they were called ‘shades.’ I had chuckled to myself at the time, thinking about how appropriate that was. Apparently people like Pat who had no memories of a previous life didn’t even see the transparent aspect.

But a few of the people were real. Most were young–some even children–but all seemed to be happy with their lives. I was sure some of them remembered their previous lives as I did, yet they seemed happy with their new lives. Maybe they were even happier than they had been in their old lives.

Was that what Ovid was all about? I thought to myself as we walked. No, there had to be more to it than that. But whatever it was, happiness seemed to be a part of it. It was important that Ovid be a comfortable, happy community. Who was I to argue with that?

I took Pat’s hand as we walked. Was I one of those people–one of the ones happier in this new life than in my old one? When I thought of everything I had given up–my academic standing, my career, my sex–I should have been as disgruntled as I had been at the hour of my transformation. But I wasn’t. I was starting to enjoy the life of Ally Reynolds. Of course, I didn’t know at the time that Ovid had a few surprises left for me.

We went to the March’s house to pick up Brice. I hadn’t known what to expect of the March’s house. Given that in mythology, Venus was married most of the time to Mars, I guess I expected some sort of medieval fortress or something with Mars scowling over the battlements. Instead, Pat pulled up in front of a large, inviting two-story house, complete with a spacious, well-landscaped yard which had to be beautiful in the spring.

Vera March opened the door herself. She was dressed casually but smartly in a long woollen skirt and comfortable sweater. Even in so inconspicuous an outfit, she was stunningly beautiful. She smiled at us. “Come in, won’t you? The boys are playing upstairs and will be down in a moment.”

From the stairway, I could hear the sound of the two little boys giggling and laughing. It was understandable that Brice would be doing that, but Eric? Eric had to be Eros, the son of Venus and the personification of love. I had figured that out when I realized who his mother was. It had, of course, become clear to me that he had had no small part in making certain that I would meet Pat. He had dared Brice into a mildly dangerous stunt so that I would end up with a reason to meet his father.

I suppose I should have been upset at having been manipulated in such a fashion. Eros–as Eric–had made certain that I would meet a compatible man–namely Pat. I had even been made to look a little like Pat’s dead wife. Then Eric’s mother had wielded her magic to make certain that I was unable to resist an attraction to Pat which, given a more mundane path, might have taken much longer.

Yet I found myself unable to be angry with them. I really did like Pat. No, it was more than like–it was the beginnings of love. When I was with Pat, I felt something I had never felt before. The loneliness which had claimed me since my transformation melted like snow in the warmth of his affection. It wasn’t that I was unable to stop myself from responding to him; I wanted to respond to him.

I was a little self-conscious when the boys appeared. I was uncertain as to what Brice would notice. Would he note how closely his father and I stood next to each other? Would he notice how our hands brushed together? Would he notice the contented look on our faces? If he did, he said nothing. The same was true of Eric. That is to say, he said nothing. I thought I could detect a hidden smile on his face though. Well, since he was almost certainly Eros, he had to be pleased with the results.

I was still in a good mood Monday morning. Brice had been delighted to see me with his father. He had run up and given both of us a broad hug with as much strength as his little body could muster. Pat and I had taken Brice out for dinner, and it had felt as if we were meant to be a family. I had never wanted or needed a family before–or at least not since I had been a child–so the feeling had been both unusual and fulfilling to me. They had dropped me off at my apartment after a wonderful evening. Of course, I would have been very happy to find myself in Pat’s bed once again, but that wouldn’t work with Brice around.

Then Sunday, we all went back to the park together, followed by a movie. It was as if we were a family. I found much to my amusement–and satisfaction–that I had no trouble acting the part of a young mother. Brice seemed to accept me as such, and I found myself thinking of him as my own son.

My wonderful mood evaporated as I saw Marge Dale. She had come out of her office obviously to stop me before I reached my classroom. I could tell from the expression on her face that something was wrong. “Ally, could you come in the office for a moment?”

My smile became a look of concern to match Marge’s own. “Sure. What about my class?”

“Dana will watch them for you.”

Nervously, I followed her into her office. Seated inside was a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t identify her. She wore an austere dress of dark brown which was draped chastely over her knees. Her flat-heeled shoes and brown tights added to nothing to mitigate her plain appearance, and with her almost nonexistent makeup and straight, featureless brown hair, she almost made nuns look stylish. She was also, I should add, a shade, although I had come to realize that being a shade made her no less real.

“This is Ms. Munson, one of the members of our school board,” Marge announced nervously.

Ms. Munson placed her hands on her knees in a gesture which I took to mean that there would be no friendly handshakes. I was actually surprised to see a wedding ring on her finger. Apparently there really was a someone for everyone–even prudish shades.

“Ms. Reynolds, I’ll get right to the point,” she began in a shrill, pompous voice. “My husband and I saw you at Winston’s Saturday night.”

So that was where I had seen her before. I remembered vaguely a frowning woman a few tables away, but I had thought nothing more about it until that moment.

“You and a man were behaving in a most unseemly manner,” she continued.

Unseemly? Pat and I had been laughing and having a good time, but that hardly constituted unseemly behavior, I thought.

“And on the next morning, we saw his car parked in front of your apartment building,” she went on, sounding for all the world like a district attorney going in for the kill.

My eyes narrowed. “I hardly think my conduct is any of your business.” I also realized she didn’t just ‘happen’ on Pat’s car being at my apartment. She had apparently known who I was and checked on me on purpose.

Her own eyes narrowed to match mine. “As a member of the Ovid School Board, it is most certainly my business. Teachers must set a moral example for their students. If my husband and I observed this sort of behavior, others probably did as well.”

But others probably wouldn’t have cared, I thought to myself.

“I have asked Principal Dale to see to it that you are removed from the classroom pending disciplinary action from the Ovid School Board at this evening’s session. I will be making a motion to have you terminated at once.”

I don’t know what I would have said to her if I had had the chance, but as she rose and stormed out of the office, I was still too stunned to say a word. When she had slammed the door behind her, I turned to Marge. “Can she do that?”

Marge nodded sadly. “Oh yes, she can certainly do that. I’m afraid you made a very powerful enemy, Ally. She wields a lot of power on the school board. She got elected on a platform of waning morality in our schools. The rest of the board has been reluctant to follow her, so I think she’s been looking for someone to take to task since she was elected last fall. Oh Ally, why did it have to be you?”

Just a few days before, the prospect of being thrown out of the classroom would have had significant appeal to me. I wanted no part of being an elementary teacher. But the few days I had experienced with my class had changed my mind. I had discovered that this was the role of a true teacher–not gallivanting around the world on expeditions designed to impress fellow academics. And I had found I was actually good at teaching as well.

What would my class think? How would Wendy cope with this? She had begun to trust me and confide in me and become comfortable with herself as a girl. And what about Brice? For most of the weekend, he had treated me almost as if I was his mother. If I were dismissed, it would be almost as if he had lost his mother again. To make matters worse, the word would get around as to the reason for my dismissal. The poor little guy would probably blame himself and he’d retreat back into his shell. And what about the other kids? They had already lost one teacher during the semester. Now they were about to lose another.

For that matter, what about me? I couldn’t exactly go back to my old life. I was stuck in Ovid as Ally Reynolds for the rest of my days, but if I couldn’t be a teacher, how would I earn a living? My reputation would be ruined. I might as well wear a scarlet A on my dress. What would there be for me to do in Ovid?

“Ally,” Marge began tentatively, “do you have an attorney?”

Come to think of it, I suppose I did. I nodded.

Marge put a motherly arm around me. “Maybe you’d better see your attorney right away.”

I did what anybody–or at least any woman–would have probably done then. I turned to Marge and cried miserably on her shoulder. Well, maybe not just any woman would have done that, but I did.

Susan Jager was very sympathetic on the phone and cleared her calendar to meet with me at once. I must have been a nervous wreck when I was ushered into her office by her secretary. Susan’s face showed concern as she wobbled to her feet to greet me.

“Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” I said, taking her offered hand.

“You sounded as if you needed help in a hurry,” she replied, motioning me to a comfortable leather wing chair. She eased herself down into a similar chair next to me. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”

I felt my face flush. The last time I had met with Susan Jager, I had ignored her advice. I had embarrassed her in the Judge’s courtroom. Yet here I was now, desperately seeking her help. “Ms. Jager...”

“Susan.” She gave me a warm smile that almost caused me to start crying again.

“Susan,” I repeated, “first I want to apologize for my actions in court.”

To my surprise, she laughed. “Don’t be concerned about that. I was probably just as pompous as you when my trial was held.”

I frowned, suddenly curious and forgetting my own problems. “Your trial?”

“Oh, of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t know about that. Everyone in Ovid–except the shades and the Judge’s ‘associates’ of course–goes through the same process. We have to face a trial.”

Actually, I had figured that out, but I said nothing. I had just not stopped to think about Susan going through this process. She seemed so natural that it was hard to imagine that she had ever been anyone else. Would I be like that someday as well?

“I was a prominent attorney when I came to Ovid,” she explained. That didn’t surprise me. There was something about her that belied her youthful appearance. Behind those pretty eyes was a keen legal mind, I was certain. “A prominent male attorney, I should add.” That did me.

“But...” I began.

“I know,” she laughed with a wave of her hand. “You thought I had always been a woman. Besides, what kind of a former man would ever allow himself to get knocked up?”

She took the words right out of my mouth. I nodded dumbly. I spite of how I had reconciled myself to my new situation, I had a difficult time imagining a prominent male attorney adjusting so well to her new sex.

“I suspect you’re already starting to understand how it could happen,” she observed, “or you wouldn’t be here with the problem you have.”

I gasped. “You already know about my problem?”

“Yes. Ovid is, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, a small town. I heard about your problem from Dory, my secretary. She had heard it over lunch from her daughter who’s a student at Ovid High. She had apparently heard it from one of her friends, but that’s as far back as I can trace the gossip. You know what they say about small towns–the only reason people take the local paper is to see how much of the gossip they’ll dare to print.”

“Then it’s hopeless,” I groaned. “Everybody will know. My reputation is ruined. I’d leave town, but I probably can’t even do that.”

She nodded. “You’re right on that last point. Nobody leaves Ovid–at least not for good. On the first point though, don’t be too sure just yet. Why don’t you start by telling me what really happened.”

So I told her. Yes, I told her everything. The funny thing about it is that I noticed I wasn’t in the least embarrassed about making love to Pat. That is to say, I wasn’t embarrassed talking to Susan about it. Was this how women bonded? If we had been two men (or perhaps I should say if we were the men we used to be), we might have bragged about our sexual liaisons–or not, depending upon whether or not we were gentlemen. But as women, it seemed simply natural to discuss making love. The key phrase was ‘making love,’ though–not ‘having sex.’ Had my tryst with Pat been just having sex, I don’t think we would have been able to speak of it as freely.

Did I really love Pat? I had only known him a few days. The old me could have known a woman for months–perhaps even have slept with her–and not become as close to her as I had come to Pat. I was beginning to realize thought that as a woman, my needs were different. No longer did I want to strive for new honors. It was as if the facets of my personality which had striven for such honors had been turned inward, seeking instead security and companionship and–dare I say it–love. I had always been a goal-oriented person. Now, those goals were more modest. Or maybe they weren’t so modest after all. They included the love of a man and the respect of my students. How odd, I thought, that I could change so much in such a short time. Magic? Of course it was, but I found I didn’t care. This was who I was.

Susan smiled at my revelation. I hadn’t so much as told her all of that, but there was something in the way I told her the facts that told her what she wanted to know.

I frowned though. “I screwed up, didn’t I?” I asked her.

“Not necessarily,” she responded. “I realize all this is new for you. I think sometimes the Judge changes some of us into women just so we can release all those feelings we kept bottled up as men. Sometimes, we don’t know how to handle them and go a little out of control. It might not be so bad normally, but as an elementary teacher, the moral standards get set a little high. I had an elderly aunt who used to teach school in some little town in Kansas many years ago. She told me she was prohibited by the school board from dating because it wouldn’t look right.

“Now we’ve come a ways since then. I don’t mean to imply that you couldn’t date a man in Ovid without getting into trouble. The problem is that you went to bed with him and one of the town bluenoses found out about it. In fact, Ms. Munson is starting to develop quite a reputation around town.”

“Just my luck,” I groaned. “The first week in town and I manage to piss off one of the bigwigs.”

Susan shifted to a less uncomfortable position. “I wouldn’t call her a bigwig exactly. She got elected to the school board last fall on one of those ‘back to basics’ campaigns. You know what I mean. She believes our society coddles students too much and if we just went back to ‘reading, writing, and ’rithmetic’ we’d all be better off.”

“Purely simplistic,” I commented.

Susan nodded. “Exactly. She’s the same way about morals. I think she and her husband must have a platonic relationship because I could never imagine her having an orgasm.”

We looked at each other silently for a few moments before bursting into laughter. The thought of that old dragon gasping in orgasmic delight was too much for us to bear.

“Okay,” Susan said at last, wiping a tear from her eye. “Enough of that. We need to figure out how to fix your problem. Now, I won’t be able to say much if anything tonight. This isn’t a trial after all. But the very fact that I’m there might intimidate Ms. Munson’s would-be supporters a little bit.”

“How much support does she have?” I asked.

“It’s hard to say,” Susan replied honestly. “No one on the board would support loose morals, of course. After all, this is a small town–in the Bible Belt no less. The question is how to mitigate what happened between you and Pat so that the other members of the board don’t rush to judgment.”

I sighed. “How do we mitigate the fact that I jumped into bed with him?” I looked away. “Maybe I am a slut at heart. Here I’ve only been a woman for a few days and I’ve already been screwing guys–or at least one guy.”

Susan patted my hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s not as uncommon as you think.”

Was that the voice of experience? I wondered. Very possibly. “So what do we do now?”

“Well, we better have an objective in mind. Do you just want to get out of this with your reputation intact, or do you want to keep your job as well?”

“Why, keep my job,” I replied, almost to my own amazement. As a college professor, I loathed going into the classroom. It took me away from what I perceived as my true job. Maybe I had even been right in viewing things that way. After all, I had made some very important finds during my years in the field, and my latest discoveries were even more important, even though they would never be known now–at least as my discoveries.

Things were different now, though. I had no other mission to distract me from my role as a teacher. There was probably a little magically heightened maternal instinct in me as well. I was coming to think of each of the children as I would my own child. I wanted to see them grow and learn, and I felt pride in being a part of that process. This then was my mission in life–or at least in the new life I had been given. To be forced out of it would be even worse than the blow to my reputation.

“Then we have a lot of work ahead of us,” Susan said.

Susan asked me a few more questions. Mostly they were background questions. Of course, my entire life as Ally prior to my transformation had been contrived by the Judge. Still, I answered the questions with such confidence I could almost believe the answers were real. Then she sent me on my way, telling me she and Dory had a lot of preparation to do.

“Wear something conservative tonight,” she called out to me.

“What’s wrong with this?” I asked, motioning at the outfit I was wearing.

“The skirt is too short,” she replied with a critical eye. “Try to look a little matronly.”

Matronly?

I did my best. I was still a little new at dressing appropriately. Of course, I had found that if I just let myself go, my body seemed to know what to do. Apparently I didn’t have a lot of clothing that could be called matronly. My wardrobe was appropriately fashionable for a young woman in a professional occupation, but I did manage to find a long black skirt–a hostess skirt I later learned it was called. It had a slit up the side, but not far enough to be daring. Rather it just seemed to be there to make walking easier.

And speaking of walking easier, I wore flats instead of heels. It made me look a little shorter and maybe just a little more vulnerable. It was odd how I had gotten used to heels so effortlessly. It felt almost funny to get all dressed up without heels.

Then I slipped on a bulky turtleneck sweater. It was gray and drew attention away from my breasts, giving me a modest, demure look. I set it off with a gold necklace with a small gold heart dangling from it and small earrings well hidden by my long hair.

When I had applied my makeup, I did so lightly, giving me a fresh-scrubbed look. All I needed was a hymnbook in my hands and I would have looked as if I was on my way to church.

I didn’t look like the same woman who had entered the apartment just a couple of hours before. It was incredible how just a change of outfit and makeup could make such a big difference in the image I was projecting. Of course, men could do it, too, but not as definitively as women. It was as if I could be a dozen different women–sexy, athletic, demure, pensive, helpless, whatever. No wonder women spent so much time on hair and makeup and selecting the right outfit. This was a valuable lesson I would have to remember.

I drove alone to the school board meeting. I thought about calling Pat but decided against it. It was bad enough that I would have to face the possibility of public censure without forcing him to endure it as well. Maybe I could even keep his name out of it. I didn’t want him in trouble. And then there was poor little Brice. What would happen if he saw his father humbled before the crowd?

I hoped there would be just a handful of people at the meeting. How many people attended school board meetings? I had no idea. Surely it couldn’t be many people, especially in a small town like Ovid.

My heart sank as I pulled into the parking lot of the Ovid Town Hall where the meeting was to be held. It was twenty minutes before the meeting and the parking lot was already full. Just my luck, I thought. I wanted to keep this private and low key, but the number of cars meant there would be at least a hundred people there.

Meekly, I made my way through the crowd. I didn’t recognize many of them with the exception of Marge Dale and some of the teachers from my school. No, I realized suddenly–it wasn’t some of the teachers from my school: it was all of the teachers from my school. Marge saw me, smiled and gave me a thumbs up sign that had to be noticed by the five board members who were already seated at the front of the room.

Susan motioned me to a seat next to her. I rushed up and sat down beside her, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible. I wasn’t able to avoid an icy stare from Ms. Munson though. If looks could kill...

“What are all these people doing here?” I asked her when I was seated.

“They’re here because of you,” she replied with a confident smile as she patted the back of my hand.

“Me?” I nearly cried. I had visions of all these people coming to see me chastised and terminated. I imagined that they were all God-fearing people who would cheer the school board for protecting the moral climate of Ovid.

Susan suddenly realized what I must be thinking. “No, that isn’t why they’re here,” she laughed. “They’re here because I called them.”

I gasped, “You called all of these people?”

She shrugged. “Well, not all of them. Dory and I just called some of our friends and they called their friends. You know how it goes. This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody.”

I was near tears. What was Susan thinking of? It was bad enough that the board would be there to witness my disgrace, but it seemed now as if half the town would be there.

Susan put a hand on my shoulder. “Buck up, dear, I know what I’m doing.”

I nearly jumped at the sound of a gavel. I turned my attention from Susan and looked at the five people who would be deciding my fate. There was Ms. Munson of course, looking as severe as she had looked the first time I had seen her. She wore a conservative business suit, and with her hair arranged back into a bun she looked as stern and unapproachable as she had looked in Marge’s office earlier in the day.

The other four looked a little less like the judges at the Salem witch trials. The only other woman on the board was a good deal younger and prettier than Ms. Munson with her red hair styled in a short but feminine fashion. She looked very serious, but there were little crinkles at the edge of her mouth which told me she could smile naturally when she chose to. She was probably a mother herself, I realized.

Of the three men, all I could say is they looked to be cut from the same cloth. Each wore a dark suit, white shirt, and conservative tie. One was mostly bald with a fringe of dark hair, one–the chairman–was a little older with iron gray hair and a small moustache, and the third was as young as the redheaded woman. All five board members were shades, but all looked and acted like normal people.

I couldn’t really get a feel for what any of them was thinking–with the obvious exception of Ms. Munson. While she glared at me with a vindictiveness that nearly made me cringe, the others appeared to be avoiding me entirely. None of them looked particularly stern or lax. Instead, each appeared impassive. I almost longed for the stern demeanor of the Judge. His mien was at least discernable.

“We seem to have quite a crowd here today,” the chairman observed blandly. Then, allowing himself a small smile, “I assume not everyone is here to watch us open the bids for repairs on the roof at Ovid High.”

That actually got a small laugh from the audience. I even smiled a little myself. I was actually a little relieved to see that the chairman had more of a sense of humor than Ms. Munson. Of course you didn’t?

The chairman looked at his fellow board members. “Then I would assume that you are all here because of the hearing on Ms. Reynolds.”

I turned as I heard someone shift in his seat and stand up. The standing man was about medium height and wore a suit as conservative as the members of the board. And like the members of the board, he was a shade. “That’s right, Henry. Most of us in here have a child in Ms. Reynold’s class. They’ve sort of elected me to speak for them.”

“This is really out of order, Mr. Chairman,” Ms. Munson growled, her eyes still fixed on me. “This is the business of the Board.”

“Begging your pardon, Ms. Munson,” the man said, refusing to back down. “Since we’re talking about who teaches our children, I think it is my business.”

I still didn’t know which side the man was on, but it was obvious he didn’t care much care for my friend, Ms. Munson. Of course, Susan had stirred all of these people to be there, I realized. I still couldn’t figure out for the life of me why she had done it. It seemed to me that there was a better than even chance that the parents who had packed the room would be happy to see their children’s morally deficient teacher ridden out of town on a rail.

The chairman got in the act. “I think we can be flexible about this,” he said, scratching nervously at his moustache. “Go ahead, Mr. Palmer. What’s on your mind?”

Palmer! This was Wendy’s father. I shifted nervously, craning my head around to hear what he had to say.

“Now I don’t know what Ms. Munson has her pantyhose in a twist over, Henry,” he began, “but I know my daughter just adores Ms. Reynolds.” He paused for a moment. “Wendy’s a sharp little girl, but she’s been having some real problems in school. When I ask her about them, she just says something about not belonging in school. Now, I know a lot of kids go through that phase, but I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that Joan and I have been pretty worried about her.

“Then here last week, Ms. Reynolds took over the class.” He looked right at me. “Ms. Reynolds, Joan and I haven’t had a chance to talk to you yet, but I just want you to know we know you’ve been spending a lot of time with our Wendy, and to tell you the truth, she’s a changed girl. I don’t know what you’ve been telling her, but it’s done her a world of good.” He looked back at the chairman. “So you see, Henry, when we heard Ms. Munson here was out to railroad Ms. Reynolds out of...”

“Mr. Chairman!” Ms. Munson practically yelled. “I must protest this behavior!”

“Don’t get personal, Charlie,” the chairman admonished him. “Nobody’s going to be railroading anybody here tonight.”

Was it my imagination or did the chairman suddenly look Susan right in the eye? What was going on between Susan and the chairman?

“Sorry, Henry,” Wendy’s father said. “I just thought you ought to know that we’ve got a lot of parents here who have reason to think Ms. Reynolds is a fine teacher. And we don’t want to see her good name dirtied or her job threatened.”

There was a loud murmur of agreement and even a little applause from the assembled crowd. I could see the board–except for Ms. Munson–was looking very uncomfortable. Ms. Munson just looked fit to be tied.

The chairman tapped his gavel again to quiet the room. “Now Charlie, we don’t want to drag anybody’s reputation through the mud, but Ms. Munson has brought some very serious charges to our attention.”

“I’d like to address those charges, Mr. Chairman,” a familiar voice called from the back of the room. Most in the room didn’t recognize the voice but I did. I gasped as I turned to see Pat standing in the doorway.

“I’m afraid I don’t know who you are,” the chairman said hesitantly.

“My name is Patrick McHenry. The reason I’m here is that I’ve been given to understand that Ally–Ms. Reynolds–had been accused of improper behavior. If there was any improper behavior, I guess I’m the one she was being improper with.”

Well, that certainly caused a collective gasp in the room. Anyone who hadn’t turned to look at Pat was certainly doing so by then. As for me, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I have to admit though that I felt a warm glow all over just knowing that Pat had leaped to my defense. No matter how this came out, I knew I had made the right choice giving myself to Pat. If I had it all to do over again, I would have done it just to be there watching him at that moment.

“Then you admit to improper behavior with Ms. Reynolds!” Ms. Munson said triumphantly.

“I admit to no such thing,” Pat replied evenly. “Since when is showing love and affection for someone improper behavior? What Ally and I did or didn’t do is absolutely none of your business. And it certainly has nothing to do with her ability as a teacher. I heard what this other fellow said about what Ally has done for his little girl. Well let me tell you, my son worships the ground she walks on. I didn’t think he’d ever come out of his shell after his mother died, but Ally has shown as much love and affection for him as she would her own child.”

“The two of you were shacked up!” Ms. Munson screeched.

The gavel came down again. The look on the chairman’s face would have melted iron. “That will be enough of that, Ms. Munson!” He gave a quick look to Susan, then turned back to my accuser. “The board does not condone slanderous remarks.”

Ms. Munson knew when she was beaten. She slumped back into her seat, aware that none of the other board members were even looking her way.

“Mr. McHenry,” the chairman began uncomfortably, “I understand your position. The only problem we have here is that Ovid is a small town, and it’s a little hard to condone the sort of relationship you seem to be admitting to.”

Pat nodded. “I understand, Mr. Chairman, but I believe I have a solution to the problem.”

Silently, the chairman nodded for him to proceed.

Pat slipped his hand into his coat pocket as he strolled purposely down the aisle. To my surprise, he stopped in front of me. Then he got down on one knee. “Ally, I had hoped to give you a little more time and do this in a little more romantic setting, but it seems we have the welfare of the community to think of.” He gave me a little smile as he showed me the beautiful diamond ring in his hand. “I think I fell in love with you the minute I first saw you. Then as we spent some time together, I felt that love just grow and grow. Ally, will you marry me?”

They say when you think you’re going to die, time stops and your life passes before you. Apparently that happens to some people when someone asks you to marry him. For the first fraction of a second, I thought, how can I marry this man? I’m not really a woman. Then for the next fraction of a second, I became acutely aware of my body and the fact that I was, indeed, a woman and likely to remain so for the rest of my life. Then, I began in still another fraction of a second to realize that not only was I a woman, but that I was a woman in love.

“Yes.”

The word just sort of slipped out, but I didn’t regret it for an instant.

“I have to credit you with an interesting solution to our problem, Mr. McHenry,” I heard the chairman say. “Now, I think it’s time we put this issue aside and move on to those bids for the roof repair.”

I assume he said all of this with a mischievous smile on his face. I couldn’t tell for sure, because all I could see were Pat’s eyes...

So that’s how I ended up standing nervously in the vestibule of the Ovid First Baptist Church waiting for the organist to start The Wedding March. I was going to make a lovely bride, I realized with one last look in the mirror.

Everyone was waiting anxiously for the ceremony to begin. Someone had thankfully provided a chair for my Matron of Honor–Susan Jager. She still had a few weeks to go but looked to me as if she could deliver at any time. She was handling it well for a former man. I hoped when my time came that I could do as well.

Marge and Dana stood beside her, telling her the usual horror stories of how it was when they delivered their first child. Susan’s eyes were predictably wide. I was lucky to have friends like them, I thought, as I watched the three of them, each looking radiantly beautiful in their rose bridesmaid’s dresses. I had never appreciated friends before my transformations. My world then had been divided between colleagues and rivals. Now... well, now I had friends.

Pat’s friends looked equally attractive in their dark tuxes. Both groomsmen were friends of Pat’s from work. One of them–Darren Cache–was apparently Pat’s boss. He seemed nice, and his wife was a beautiful Amerind girl who I felt sure would become a good friend in years to come.

Of course, Pat was already at the altar with his best man. Brice looked so cute in his little tux, and who better to stand with his father? I loved them both with all my heart.

“Is it time yet?” a small voice popped up. It was Wendy, my little flower girl. She had actually volunteered to take that role, surprising me with the request my first day back in the classroom.

“You’d have to wear a very feminine dress,” I had cautioned her. I had learned in my conversations with Wendy that the only time she ever wore a dress was when her mother forced her to, and on those days, she avoided everyone she could with an angry scowl on her face.

“Well, so will you,” she had replied with a little grin. “I guess if you can wear one, so can I. Besides, everybody will be looking at you–not at me.”

I didn’t think that was true in retrospect. Wendy made an absolutely adorable flower girl, and I had no doubt many eyes would be on her.

“In a hurry, are we?” another young voice called out. It was Eric, our ring bearer. I couldn’t help but think that he didn’t look like a child standing there in his tuxedo. He looked more like a small adult. Of course when I stopped to think about it, he was the oldest in my wedding party–save one.

“This dress is too thin,” she explained, “and I’m cold.”

“Really?” Eric said in mock surprise. “That’s a shame, because the dress looks terrific on you.”

Wendy looked a little shocked. “Do you... do you really think so?”

Eric nodded. “Wendy, I don’t think there’s any doubt. You’re the prettiest girl in our class. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. Tony Hunter said so, too.”

Wendy’s eyes were wide. “Tony said that?” Every little girl in my class stole at least one glance a day at Tony. He seemed to be the subject of every little girl’s fantasies.

Eric nodded. “Yeah. By the way, he’s going to be at the reception. Maybe the three of us can get together.”

Don’t overplay it, Eric, I thought. Well, I supposed when you’re the God of Love, it’s hard to take time off–especially at a wedding.

“Are you ready, my dear?”

I turned to see the Judge, resplendent in his tuxedo. Since I had no family as Ally, the Judge had agreed to give me away. I had found out from Susan that it wasn’t the first time he had performed that duty. It was actually rather appropriate, I thought.

We were out of earshot of the others, so I smiled and said, “You certainly found a way to distract me from my discoveries.”

He smiled an indulgent smile. “Is it so terrible to be a woman?”

I shook my head. “It isn’t terrible at all. In fact, to be completely honest with you, it would be terrible to go back to my old life. I’d lose so many friends... and Pat.”

He nodded. “I understand. As for your discoveries, don’t you think now it is better if the world doesn’t know?”

“I like to think that is the case,” I replied with a sigh. “It’s hard to be sure.”

He took my arm in preparation for our walk down the aisle. “In this, you must trust me, Ally. There is more at stake here than you could ever know. If your discoveries had been unveiled, you might have been responsible for more chaos and destruction than you could ever imagine.”

I nodded silently. Thomas Winslow would have argued the point with him, but Ally Reynolds didn’t have the immense ego to feed that my former self had. I made a vow then and there–a vow no less important than the one I would be making to Pat in a few minutes. I would never again speak of my discoveries–or even think of them if I could avoid it. The Judge was probably right, and who was I to say he was wrong?

My thoughts were interrupted by the pounding notes of the church organ. There was a flurry of activity as everyone found their places for the processional. The Judge gave my hand a fatherly squeeze, and I rewarded him with a daughter’s smile.

Fame is not important, I reminded myself as it was suddenly our turn to start down the aisle.

Love is.

There were tears in Diana’s eyes as my consciousness returned to the gentle clatter of the restaurant.

“Darn!” she said in a choked voice. “I always cry at weddings.”

“You mean you weren’t there?” Susan asked. “I thought maybe you came as someone else.”

“I wasn’t invited,” she sniffed. “I haven’t met Ally, but I will. I need to meet the person who almost...”

She stopped suddenly, and for the first time, I was sure she had almost told us something we weren’t meant to know. Although I had come to consider Diana a good friend, she was still one of the gods. And whatever reason the gods had for creating and nurturing Ovid, Diana knew.

“Just what did Thomas Winslow discover on his last trip to the Mediterranean?” I asked pointedly.

Susan nodded. “It must have been pretty important for the Judge to want to get his hands on him so badly. But why such an elaborate plot? Why fund him in the first place if the Judge was going to do this to him?”

Diana sighed. “We couldn’t be certain he’d find out... what he found out. We thought the secrets were well hidden. We knew what he had set out to prove. We just never thought he could to it. We aren’t able to predict the future–at least to that degree. What he discovered though is one of our most important secrets. As much as I’ve come to know and love the two of you, I dare not tell you what it is.”

“Will we ever know?” I asked. “I think all of us who have been changed by Ovid would like to know why.”

“I’m sure you would,” Diana agreed, “but thankfully, that isn’t my decision.”

Before I could say anything else, Susan’s eyes became wide. “Uh... guys, I think it’s time.”

“What?” I asked stupidly, still thinking about the secret.

“It’s time!” Susan said more insistently. “The baby, stupid. I’m going to have a baby!”

“Now?” I blurted.

“Damned quick!” was the response.

A cell phone suddenly appeared in Diana’s hand. There were no cells in Ovid, but I was certain that wouldn’t stop her. She punched in a number. “I’m getting an ambulance,” she explained, taking charge quickly.

“Uh... Di?” I interjected as I felt a strange motion from inside my body.

“What is it, Cindy?”

I replied, “You’d better make sure that ambulance can take two patients...”

The End