“Come,” she said playfully, “I have no romantic illusions about my own brother — I know perfectly well she loves you a hundred times better than you deserve. If it were any other woman, I would try to discourage her by telling her embarrassing stories about you, but Launuru already knows them all, so I'll just have to accept your good fortune.”

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Part 17 of 22

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or list. You can also create derivative works, including adaptations to other media, or new stories using the same setting, characters and so forth, as long as you mention and point to the original story.

An earlier version of this novel was serialized on the tg_fiction mailing list from December 2010 to March 2011. Thanks to the people who posted comments on that draft.

Launuru was exhausted from running, and crying, and trying to explain things first to Verentsu, then to Tsavila and Kazmina; in spite of the turmoil of her thoughts, she eventually fell asleep. When she woke, it was darker still, Kazmina having put out the lamp. Kazmina was lying next to her. “Are you awake?” she asked in Tuaznu.

“Hmm? How are you feeling?” Kazmina asked sleepily.

“A little better. No, a little less terrible. I don't know what to do. I suppose I'd better just play the role of Shalasan until after the wedding, then slip off to the city with you and let you change me back into my old self so I can go home. And try to avoid Verentsu in the meantime.”

“I'm sorry,” Kazmina said. “Are you sure you want me to change you back? You don't sound sure.”

“No, I'm not sure, but — it's going to be horrible either way. I'll be hopelessly in love with Verentsu if I remain a woman, and I'm afraid I'll be hopelessly in love with Tsavila if I become a man again...”

“I'm afraid so. But you'd probably get over her eventually...”

“Maybe in ten or twenty years... And becoming a man sounds disgusting anyway. But explaining to my family why I'm a woman is hardly any better. And no matter what, things will never be the same again between me and Verentsu — I've lost my best friend, without gaining a husband.”

“You'll still have me, whatever you decide,” Kazmina said. “It won't be the same as with Verentsu, I know, where you grew up together as boys — but whatever good my friendship will do you, you have it. You're stronger than you think; many men would have gone mad just from the exile geas alone, much less all the shocks you've been through in the last two or three days. You can get through this too — changing back or telling your parents why you won't.”

“Thank you.” She squeezed Kazmina's hand with the hand that wasn't holding Terasina's long, grey hair.

After finishing their plans for the evening, Verentsu and Iantsemu went to tell their father what they'd decided, while Riksevian and Melentsu went looking for their wives. Verentsu still hadn't decided whether and how to tell his brothers about what he'd learned from Launuru and Tsavila; he'd put it off during the meeting. But he wanted to ask his father about it, and if he didn't get a chance to speak privately with him, he'd risk the throw and tell Iantsemu at the same time.

He needn't have worried; after briefly reviewing the plans and ratifying them with a couple of minor changes, his father said, “Iantsemu, please convey our orders to Rapsuaru and Kansikuno. Verentsu, stay for a bit; there's something else I want to talk to you about.”

When Iantsemu was gone, his father said: “Well, how was your picnic excursion with Shalasan?”

“You know who she is, Father. Don't give her the false name.”

His father looked sad. “Yes — I just wasn't sure if you and she had found an occasion to speak privately. She insisted on being the one to tell you; I wasn't going to tell you if she had not yet had the opportunity. So you gave Melentsu and Nuasila some distance, or they you, and she told you everything?”

“She told me a lot — I still don't know how much of it to believe. Tsavila confirmed some of it, though — she said you put a geas on Launuru to exile him, and then Kazmina brought him back here as a woman. Why —?”

“If you stop and think, not as Launuru's friend but as Tsavila's brother, you'll see why. I couldn't let Tsavila make the same terrible mistake I made. Perhaps I was too hasty and drastic — there may have been a cleaner way to decisively break off their dalliance without treating the boy so harshly — but I was distraught and angry. If Launuru no longer holds a grudge, now that she sees Tsavila and Itsulanu happy together, can you not forgive me as well?”

“If he — How do I know you aren't tampering with his mind? Obviously you've done it before, to make him leave the country, and Tsavila confirms that you put another geas on him just two days ago — are you responsible for him thinking of himself as a woman, too? Or —”

“No, that's the effect of Kazmina's transformation spell. Within a short time, anyone transformed by it feels themselves naturally at ease with their altered form; think of how horrible a torture it would be if they were not!”

“Oh... I suppose. But why can't she change back into himself?”

“She can — Kazmina could change her; she may have told you that we discussed it last night? But I don't think we should force her to change back if she doesn't want to.”

“But it's a spell that's making her not want to change; can't Kazmina undo that spell and let him think about it as himself?”

“Perhaps; I could ask her... But I suspect it is simply the nature of her magic. She could change Launuru into a man against her will, but as long as she remains a woman, she will think as one. And that includes — ah, there's something you're not telling me.”

Verentsu hated it when his father did that. “Yes, there's no need for me to say it if you can see it so plainly in my mind, is there, Father?”

“I didn't mean to, but you're thinking about it so intensely I'd have to keep my wizardly eyes half shut not to see... Still, it would help if you tell me as well, or give me permission to look deeper and more carefully; I see only fragments of what is disturbing you. Did Launuru tell you that she loves you?”

“Yes! Who has made her like that? Is it another part of Kazmina's spell? Or one of yours? Or are your spell and Kazmina's interfering, or could one of your enemies be amusing themselves at her expense...?”

“My son, calm yourself; think, and put yourself in Launuru's position.”

That was hard to do, but Verentsu tried. His father went on:

“If Kazmina's spell were a crude, superficial alteration only of her body, not affecting her soul, like some of the older transformation spells which Znembalan's invention improved upon, she would not only still think of herself as a man, and be constantly tortured by the wrongness of her body, but she would still be in love with Tsavila, and feel a furious jealousy toward her and Itsulanu. Znembalan's great discovery was a way for his transformative magic to work with nature, not against it — that is why it is permanent when cast on living beings, and requires another spell of the same power to reverse its effects. Launuru is no wizardly monster, but a natural woman; she is inclined, like any healthy woman, to love a man and desire to be his wife. But which man in particular? Just as the unlawful passion he felt for Tsavila has transmuted into womanly friendship, for that passion would no longer be natural for her, his friendship for you has taken another form. Have you ever known a woman and man, who were not sister and brother, to be simply friends as you and Launuru were before?”

“No,” Verentsu conceded, “and I've rarely even heard of it... But it does happen.”

“Under unusual circumstances; the love Launuru feels for you is the more natural course of things. Put away fear; there is nothing perverse about the attraction you felt when you met her as Shalasan. If you wish to court her, you have my blessing; there may be some awkwardness when you visit her parents and ask for their daughter's hand, but I'm sure we can arrange things somehow.”

“But I don't wish to — Launuru is my friend; I won't take advantage of her — of him, when he feels this way under the influence of magic.”

“Recollect what I've said! The way she is thinking is entirely natural; the only spell on her now is the geas that prevents her from telling anyone but yourself who she really is.”

“Then remove that geas! — but how can you say that's the only spell on her, when the very fact we must say 'she' is a result of Kazmina's transformation spell?”

“I have promised to remove the geas before Tsavila and Itsulanu enter their hermitage; we have only to devise a story to explain why Launuru disappeared for six months and returned as a woman. As for Kazmina's spell, it was a momentary thing — without rummaging through her memories, no wizard could discern that she was ever other than a woman.”

“The fact that her spell leaves no mystic traces is irrelevant.”

“It is not a matter of mystic traces, but of the duration of the spell's activity. But come, you have still scarcely told me of your picnic. When did she tell you, and what did you say to her? Did you have any difficulty keeping Melentsu and Nuasila from overhearing?”

Reluctantly, Verentsu gave his father a curtailed version of the morning's events; how Launuru had wept and run away when he remonstrated with her, how he and Melentsu and Nuasila had discreetly looked around the house for her, and then he and Melentsu had started searching the woods and fields for her, but Melentsu had encountered her already on her way back to the house. He mentioned no specific times, hoping (probably in vain) that his father would not realize how long Launuru had been missing, and didn't mention that Tsavila had tried and failed to locate her by magic.

If his father saw these omitted matters in his mind, he did not mention them or reprimand Verentsu for omitting them. He listened and said, finally, “So Tsavila and Kazmina are taking care of her...? Good. Let us speak with Tsavila quietly, if we may, sometime before we see Launuru at supper.”

After they had lain there in the dark for some time, there came a knock at the door.

“Shall I answer that...? But if it's not Tsavila, or some other wizard, I won't know how to answer,” Kazmina said.

“I'll see who it is,” Launuru said. She got up; as she was groping for the clothes-horse and her clean (or less dirty) dress, Kazmina spoke a few words of a spell, and there was a sudden blaze from the lamp, illuminating the room for a moment like a flash of lightning before it died down to the moderate glow normal to such lamps.

“Oh, sorry — I nearly made the thing explode,” Kazmina apologized.

Launuru laughed, put on her least dirty dress, and went to open the door.

It was one of Psavian's house-slaves. “Ma'am, Tsavila sent me to tell you how supper's near ready, and we're to bring you somewhat to eat here if you don't wish to come.”

Launuru conveyed this to Kazmina. “Do you want to go?” she asked.

“If you don't mind... Will you be all right, staying here by yourself?”

“I don't really want to see Verentsu again so soon, especially not sitting next to him as I would at supper. Maybe I'll come later, when the men have left the hall after supper. I'll ask her to bring me something here.” She spoke to the servant, asking her what was to be served for supper, and then asked her to bring or send some bread, butter and ham. “My cousin will come to supper in a moment; I'm not feeling well, I'll eat here.”

Immediately after Kazmina and the slave had left, Launuru combed her left hand through her hair several times until she came up with a loose strand. She set it on the table by the lamp and the small bundle of clothes and writing materials, then went to work on the strand of Terasina's hair. She had no knife, but by biting it and twisting it backward and forward, she managed to break it in two before the slave girl returned with a platter of food.

“Thank you,” Launuru told her.

“Will you need anything else, ma'am?”

“Yes,” she said, and then paused, unsure of the best way to ask. “I want... Could you show me where Verentsu is sleeping tonight? In a tent, isn't it?”

The slave nodded, unsure perhaps if she should tell.

“I want to get a note to him,” she said, going to the table. “But not directly, not during supper for instance. I want him to find it when he retires for the night.” She unwrapped the bundle, removing the papers, plume, and bottle of ink from the cheap tunic she'd wrapped them in. “Can you show me the tent he'll be sleeping in, the very cot or pallet that's his?”

“Yes,” the girl said, apparently having decided that this was not something she'd be punished for.

“Then — can you wait a few moments?” She wasn't sure what to write, now that she'd come up with this plan; she'd been planning to secrete the twisted strands of her own and Terasina's hair somewhere in his bedsheets under cover of delivering the note, but she hadn't planned it out. Finally, she decided, and wrote as quickly as she could.

A few moments later, she followed the slave down the hall to the back stairs, out into the space between the carriage barn and the garden. There were a dozen or more tents and pavilions set up there; she had seen some of them on the way to and from Terasina's tomb that morning. The rain had slowed to a drizzle; the slave didn't hesitate, but plunged into it and headed for one of the tents pitched near the carriage barn. Launuru hid the note in her bosom to keep it from getting wet, then dashed after her.

“This one,” the slave said, ducking inside a certain tent. “This cot is master Verentsu's.”

“Thank you,” Launuru said. With one hand she tucked the note into the sheet, one corner of it showing, and with the other she slid the twisted strands of hers and Terasina's hair under the pillow.

“I should get back to the kitchen,” the slave girl said. “Will you need anything else, ma'am?”

“No... Yes. Could you come back to my room and tell me when the men have left the dining hall after supper?”

“Very well, ma'am.” At the entrance to the house they parted; Launuru returned to her room, removed her wet dress, hung it up, and sat down to eat.

After leaving his father's study, Verentsu went to the front parlor, where Itsulanu and several of the guests were playing psanalem. He exchanged greetings with some of the players, then watched the game quietly for a while. When a round ended, and the buzz of conversation increased while the players discussed whether to play another round or do something else, Verentsu took the opportunity to ask some of the guests for help with the evening's festivities; they were willing enough, and Saitsomu promised to favor the company with a couple of songs, while Pautsanu agreed to be Itsulanu's guide during the blindness game.

He declined an invitation to join in the next round of psanalem, and went looking for Tsavila. He didn't find her right away; he spoke to several other guests, asking them for help with the evening's festivities, and finally met Tsavila as he was going through the dining hall and she was emerging from the hallway leading to the servants' quarters.

“How is, ah, Shalasan feeling?” He didn't think the slaves mopping the floor at the other end of the hall were in earshot, but he thought it safer to speak as if they were.

“Poorly,” Tsavila said. “Let's go somewhere else.” She went upstairs to her own room, and he followed. When he'd shut the door behind them, she said:

“She's horribly depressed about you rejecting her. I wasn't there, I don't know for sure what you said and did or what you could have done better, but she said you gave her the impression you were disgusted with her, that you — ”

“I didn't —” Verentsu began. “I'm not disgusted with her; she's innocent in all this — it's Kazmina I'm angry with, and Father — I don't know who is more to blame for her condition. Do you?”

“What do you mean?” Tsavila asked. “Kazmina changed him into a woman, but he agreed to it. And Father put that geas on her, but I don't see what it has to do with anything — besides, he's promised to take it off soon, and I'll hold him to it. If you're angry at Kazmina, why not be angry at Launuru too? And in any case, what would you have done differently in their position?”

“They could have — ” he began, but found that he didn't know what else they could have done. “I don't know what kinds of magic Kazmina can do, besides transforming people — but really, once she got him to Nilepsan, he knew his way around better than she did; he should have been able to find a way to come see you without letting her transform him again — at least not so radically...”

“So you're blaming Launuru, then.”

“No!” But perhaps he was.

“You think she was wrong to let Kazmina transform him?”

“Well — yes, if he wasn't already under her wizardly influence, not free to tell her no. Not as much to blame as she is for suggesting the idea, and I don't think he's to blame for the state he's in now —”

“But he agreed to become a woman; if being a woman is blameworthy, why is she not?”

“I don't mean that — I mean — She said she loved me; who did that to her?”

“Oh, that's what's bothering you. There's no love spell on her; the way she's feeling is natural enough, if a bit silly.”

“What?”

“Look, she's a woman — it's natural she should love a man. And normally it would take longer, some time getting to know him first, but when she met you she'd already known you for years when you were boys and young men together; that made it happen almost at once, her friendship toward you turning into love. And if you'll admit it, you felt the same way!”

“No — I thought she was — That was different.”

“Yes, you thought Shalasan was an exotic foreign lady, beautiful and charming; it was natural enough you should begin to love her — but even before you knew who she was, I think your soul recognized hers. You've been friends for years; the same resonance between you that made you friends as boys and men made you love her when you met her as a woman.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“Doesn't it? Think about it — don't let the chance slip away. I doubt you'll meet any other woman half so suitable for you before Father decides you're taking too long and arranges a marriage for you.”

That was quite possibly true, if he could once admit the possibility of — no, it was too disgusting.

“Come,” she said playfully, “I have no romantic illusions about my own brother — I know perfectly well she loves you a hundred times better than you deserve. If it were any other woman, I would try to discourage her by telling her embarrassing stories about you, but Launuru already knows them all, so I'll just have to accept your good fortune.”

“Tsavila,” he said, wishing she would be serious, “I've just remembered something else — what was going on earlier, when you tried to locate her by magic and couldn't? You thought there was some other spell interfering with yours — ”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly frowning. “It's probably nothing — I might have miscast the locating spell, or the protective spell on Mother's tomb might have — ”

“Mother's tomb?!”

“Yes — oh, dear. Don't spread it about, but she hid in Mother's tomb for a while after you jilted her — that's why you and Melentsu couldn't find her.”

“Why would he...?” He wasn't sure what to think of that — his mother had been fond of Launuru, but in his present unnaturally transformed state, it seemed almost a desecration for him — her? — to go into a holy place like a tomb.

“She said she had a dream about Mother last night,” Tsavila said; “she talked about how Mother was always kind to her, and... anyway, that's probably why she thought of the tomb as a safe place to hide.”

“I suppose... I shouldn't blame her for anything she does in this state, he's not himself.”

“She's herself, though.”

“That's the problem...! Never mind; we need to go. It's not long until supper. I'll apologize to her, in general terms if other people are around and then again more specifically when I can speak with her privately; I won't talk to her again about changing back until after the wedding. Are you sure we can trust Kazmina to do it?”

“She will if Launuru asks her to — I don't see why she would transform her on your say-so, though.”

He shook his head in frustration. “Let's go.”

But Verentsu had no opportunity to apologize to Launuru; she wasn't at supper. Kazmina arrived a few minutes late, and sat with some of the younger wizards; it wasn't until supper was ending and the men were about to withdraw to the front parlor that he had a chance to speak with her briefly.

“Whether your cousin feels well?” he asked.

“She rests,” Kazmina replied. “I will tell her that you asked about her health.”

“Say, please, that I wish to her of health.” It was time to go; he had responsibilities in the front parlor. He rushed from the room and hastily conferred with Pautsanu about their parts in the wedding-eve games.

The full novel is already available from Lulu.com. I'm serializing it here in twenty-two parts, at least one chapter per week if I can manage it. This week's chapter is early because I will be busy around Thanksgiving, so the next chapter will probably be posted eight or ten days hence.