Baby Grows Up

Sure enough Janet found the little store again. The gypsy woman was seated behind her counter like last time, watching over the shelves and tables of antiques. She nodded to Janet as she came through the door pushing the stroller. Baby Sarah's awareness of her surroundings was haphazard these days. Most of the time, her thoughts concerned only with a dry nappy, warmth, food, and Mommy.

Janet was in good spirits. She practically bounced through the store. Her body was lean and tight and her breasts firm and proud, nothing like they would have looked if she had actually been pregnant and given birth to her daughter. Her wavy blonde hair extended halfway down her back, in sharp contrast to the baby's jet black.

"Hello again," Janet said as she wheeled up to the counter with a big smile on her face. "I wanted to thank you so much for the help you gave me and to show off my new daughter."

The old woman returned her smile, knowing that the infant before her had been Janet's husband only a few months ago. Her smile conveyed the satisfaction she felt at transforming another uncaring male into a child who would grow up to be a compassionate person.

"I see everything worked out well then," she said to Janet. "For tricking you into becoming pregnant, your husband gets to grow up as your daughter."

"Yes and she's such a cute little thing," Janet cooed as she lifted Sarah out of the stroller to allow the old woman to hold her. "This way, I get to be Mommy without having to be pregnant. "He is the one that wanted the baby experience, now he gets to experience it from the inside out. I doubt he is enjoying it as much as I am though," she said with a smirk.

As she cradled Sarah in her arms, the gypsy's expression changed.

"You told me that your husband tricked you into becoming pregnant!" She said in a sharp tone.

"Yes, I did," Janet answered, looking down at Mrs. Ramirez; the old woman was at least a head shorter. Her whole manner was as if to say, 'So What?'.

"I was very particular when I asked you what happened that day you came in here. I saw that you were upset and you told me that you were pregnant. You said that your husband had gotten you drunk. That he knew when you were most likely to get pregnant and that he practically raped you!"

"Well…It wasn't quite as bad as that," Janet said, back-pedaling, "but he was so self-satisfied about me being pregnant! He knew that I didn't want to have children and lose my figure."

The old woman sniffed at Janet's whined explanation and said, "If he had been completely blameless, you would not have been able to transform him at all. But I can see that this baby who was once your husband was not the evil person you made him out to be! He truly loved you and you destroyed him because you were more concerned about ruining your figure!" Mrs. Ramirez was starting to work up a full head of steam in her tirade at Janet.

"Your husband is still buried within the child."

"You mean he is aware that he was once a full grown a man? Now that is amusing."

"It is impossible to tell how much of his past life he has retained. If he had deserved this fate he would be gone and only the young child you carried would be there. There is a price to be paid!"

As far as Janet was concerned, the gypsy might as well have been going, "Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah." She had tuned her out after the first few words. This sounded like more of the creepy voodoo she had spouted when she had been here last time and bought the things she had used to change David into her precious baby Sarah. While she was zoned out, thinking of David made her think of how Sarah used her tongue when she was nursing that reminded her of what he used to do during foreplay. It was probably just a coincidence though.

When it appeared that Mrs. Ramirez had finally run down, she just smiled and said, "Yes…Yes. I'm sure that things will work out. Look…I'm enjoying having her as the sweet little baby girl that she is. Don't you have a potion or something that will keep her this way?"

The gypsy physically recoiled from Janet. What had she connected herself with here? She was perfectly happy to trick and transform the men who came into the shop, but she made the decision as to who she changed. She had felt sorry for the sad woman who had come into her store those months ago, crying about being with child. Her story had painted a picture of an uncaring husband who had willfully impregnated his wife in total disregard for her desires. Now it turned out that her customer was not entirely stable. She really did not want to subject the former man to any further torture, but he was not aware of much now anyway. Perhaps she could do something to help him to adapt to his new situation.

Besides, she was in business to sell things. She opened a drawer and took out a small vial that contained a glowing white liquid. Janet took it from her, looking closely at the small bottle as she held it up to the light. She shook it slightly to make it slosh back and forth.

"Be careful of that!" Mrs. Ramirez snapped. "I don't have any more yet and it takes five years to make more."

"What?" the gypsy said in response to Janet's surprised look. "Do you think that magic is just squeezing berries to make a potion and a few incantations? Creating something powerful like this takes time."

"Will this really keep her a baby?" Janet asked a bit skeptically.

Mrs. Ramirez shrugged and shook her head in denial.

"No, nothing can do that. This will only slow down her growth. If you feed this to your daughter, she will grow only half as fast as normal. But it will only work for five years. She will develop rapidly after that."

Janet nodded her head in glee. She wished that David could appreciate his predicament, but Sarah had not shown any signs of understanding the world around her for weeks now. Oh well, her husband did make for a cute baby. She was going to have so much fun dressing her and showing her off. And there was that thing that Sarah did with her tongue when she was nursing that reminded of what her husband used to do during foreplay...It was probably just a coincidence she thought.

Totally ignoring Mrs. Ramirez's explanations and warnings as so much blather, she willingly paid the rather steep sum the gypsy demanded and slipped the little bottle into Sarah's diaper bag. She left the store humming happily, thinking about how much fun it would be to have her baby around for years to come. Maybe she would come back later to get some of the potion for herself. Then she would be able to be a young mother forever.

When they were home, Janet carefully poured the contents of the vial into one of Sarah's bottles and then topped it off with milk. Interestingly enough, all of the potion oozed into the milk bottle, leaving no residue at all behind.

Janet waited until Sarah was ready for another bottle and the baby seemed to drink the spiked bottle of milk in just moments. Janet watched expectantly, apparently thinking that the baby would start glowing or something. But nothing spectacular happened and Sarah seemed to just snuggle a bit deeper into her blanket before falling asleep.

* * * * *

As the days and weeks passed, Janet could see that the potion had worked after all. Sarah remained the same child she loved to dress up and show off, but appeared to have stopped growing. In addition to not growing, Sarah's physical development appeared to have been put on hold as well. Despite her age, child never learned to roll over or sit up. She continued to eat normally, but she continued to need to be bottle fed. She seemed unable to learn how to even swallow baby food. Because she just did not grow, the same clothes continued to fit her, with no problems of suddenly being outgrown.

Janet was slightly annoyed that her new daughter required a bottle every night and sometimes in the middle of the night, but she had to accept it as part of having a baby. She was able to use her infant like honey draws flies. There were plenty of good looking guys to choose from; especially when they knew that they were not being considered as 'daddy material'.

Janet took great pleasure in dressing her daughter in the most frilly, girly clothes. At first, David, as Sarah, had kicked and cried at being dressed as a baby and being only able watch his wife enjoy the company of other men. When Sarah would begin to fuss, Janet would just shove the special pacifier into her mouth. The moment the pacifier was in, it was like a gauze curtain was drawn between David's thoughts and Sarah's baby brain.

From the time Janet had brought Sarah home from the gypsy's store, David had had a vague awareness that something was not quite right. He already knew that he was much smaller and weaker than Janet and he was unable to even form words to speak. When he tried to communicate with Janet to ask her what had happened to him, nothing intelligible came out. In his frustration, cried like an infant and became the baby girl Janet wanted and she would plug his mouth with the damned pacifier and he would seem to go away somewhere. He hated feeling like an observer in his own body. As time went on, David came to learn that acting like a baby girl meant that he could remain lucid for a period of time.

Over time, David's resistance to being treated like a baby girl faded. It was not so much that his spirit had been broken, but that he realized that he had no power over what his, now her, life had become. Instead of fighting his transformation and trying to continue to be David, who had been transformed into a baby girl, he allowed himself to relax and become Sarah, the baby girl who had been David.

Once Sarah stopped fighting Janet's treatment, the fun went out of it for her. She still dressed Sarah in soft, pink dresses and tied ribbons into her curly hair to make her look cute for church services and parties, but she started spending less time with Sarah. The live-in nanny she hired took more responsibility and control in the nursery as Janet's presence faded.

Because she always seemed to have meetings at work, Janet would never take Sarah to her pediatrician appointments, so she had the nanny take her instead. The doctors were always concerned with Sarah's apparent lack of growth but were satisfied with her overall health. What concerned Janet was that the doctors wanted to do some tests to find out why the child was not developing normally. Finally, she would just cancel appointments or decline to make them when the office called. It cut down on the hassle.

The potion had worked as Janet wanted, to a greater extent than she had expected. She just had not anticipated that it would take much longer to toilet train her daughter. At three, Sarah was still crawling and had shown no signs of learning to walk and her mental development was as slow as the rest of her body. Janet thought nothing of it; she let the nanny deal with it. Sarah didn't notice anything anyway. His entire universe had shrunk to be the nursery.

Nanny was around all of the time, but Sarah was always happy to see Mommy when she came home from work and played for an hour or two. Eventually though, the novelty of having a cute baby girl wore off. If Janet had thought about it, it was rather similar to having a pet. They both needed to be fed and cleaned on a regular basis. Janet's visits to the nursery became less frequent and shorter in duration. Sarah became ever more attached to her nanny.

Janet enjoyed having her transformed husband as her daughter. At one time, she had felt some guilt about turning him into a baby girl, but that faded over time. Her sense of righteousness solidified such that she actually believed that he had tried to trap her into motherhood and he deserved what she had done to him. She took great pride in showing off her daughter to her dates and dressing her in most girly clothes she could find. It was just too bad that David couldn't comprehend his situation like she wanted him to.

Being an attractive woman, she was often out to dinner or drinks. Quite often, she would bring one of those dates back to her bedroom. Because the nursery was next to the master bedroom, Sarah often heard the noise of their lovemaking. At first it upset her, she wasn't sure why her mother making those noises made her tummy hurt, and it just felt wrong.

Over time it no longer meant anything to Sarah or distressed her and Janet just started leaving the nursery door closed. There was no longer any fun in making it clear to her husband that he was being cuckolded when it made no impression upon him. David hadn't manifested in Sarah's behavior in a very long time. He appeared to be gone. Even when Janet would hold up pictures of David to remind him of his lost life in an attempt to get a reaction, Sarah failed to react.

* * * * *

By the time Sarah reached school age, calendar-wise, her development barely matched that of a four year-old. Janet was more than a little annoyed that the public school system would not take her daughter because they felt that she was developmentally disabled. The effects of the age potion had finally run out though.

This was something that Janet had not anticipated as well as the fact that she had aged five years while Sarah did not appear to have done so. She was approaching forty years of age and she had a baby that she would have to put into pre-school until the child had caught up a little. Once more, Janet's self-centered personality came into play as she somehow felt that it was Sarah's fault that she could not attend school with children her own age. Janet now had to bear the stigma of being the mother of a mentally handicapped child.

To add to her annoyance, the lines and bags on her face were becoming more pronounced, which was a byproduct of her partying, smoking, and drinking. It had not escaped her notice that she was no longer one of the first fillies cut out of herd at dinner parties and the invitations to dinner and drinks were becoming less frequent. The fact that she was now a vice-president in the marketing department helped to gloss over the facts though.

Janet's visits to the nursery had already tapered to a couple of times a week, but now they became a once-in-a-while occasion. Sarah was thrilled to see her mother each time and never really noticed how seldom she actually was seeing her mother. It did hurt Sarah to have Janet speak to her like she was an idiot, even though she wanted her mother's attention so desperately. What hurt her feelings was what Janet would say to the nanny right in front of her.

"Is she still stupid?" I'm glad that she's finally toilet-trained though. Buying those disposable diapers was killing the budget." Her voice conveyed the sneer of disdain that her expression did not.

Sarah understood everything, even though she was unable to communicate clearly with the adults around her. It was almost as if her ability to control her body had been scrambled in some way. Even though her mother didn't talk nice about her, she was sure that her mommy still loved her. The nanny told her so.

Something strange happened to Sarah one night sometime after Janet's visit. Her mother had brought another boyfriend home and had gone into the master bedroom.

Sarah's control over her body had progressed rapidly to the point where she was able to get out of bed to go potty in the middle of the night. This had been heralded by nanny as a major milestone because it meant that Sarah could finally where panties to bed instead of a pull-up. When Sarah heard grunts and moans coming from her mother's room, she had slipped out of bed and gone into the hall. Her mother's door was open and she went to look in .to make sure that the man she had seen come in was not hurting her mother.

What she saw shook her. Janet was kneeling over a man in bed. Janet's back was to her, but it was obvious that she and the man in bed with her were completely unclothed. From where she stood, she could not see what was happening.

She felt something welling up inside her, whether it was from her belly or somewhere in her head, it felt like pushing and squeezing at the same time. Just as it seemed that the feeling would turn into pain, it stopped.

At that moment, David found himself standing at the hallway door of his wife's bedroom and she performed oral sex on a stranger. Everything that had happened to him from the time he had been magically transformed into a baby girl until this moment came crashing into his baby-sized mind.

The claims made by experts that infants see and remember everything are true. But Sarah's mind was not equipped to have David's mind and memories suddenly sharing the same space. The result was a little girl suddenly crying out at seeing her mother doing something strange in bed with someone else. Sarah's crying interrupted Janet's animal pleasure and made her turn around to see her daughter in the door.

Janet took her time turning around and going to the door. Her boyfriend of the week covered himself with a sheet as he claimed that it creeped him out to have a little girl seeing his junk. Janet did not bother covering herself as she silently picked her daughter up and carried her back to the nursery. Putting Sarah back to bed and covering her, she leaned over and said, "Did you enjoy that? I know that it was good for me."

She smiled with pleasure at knowing that David might not be completely gone and she closed the door firmly behind her. She made a mental note to have some pointed words with the nanny. As much as she had taken pleasure in cuckolding her former husband, she didn't like being interrupted while she was doing it. The nanny would make sure that it did not happen again or else.

Janet stopped into the nursery the next day and spoke to the nanny. Sarah acted no differently than she had been before last night. It was like the child had suffered a flashback and then forgotten that it ever happened. Still, Janet gave instructions that her daughter was to be dressed in her girliest outfits and only allowed to play with her dolls. The nanny was horrified that the little girl would line her dolls up in their frilly dresses and pretend that they were soldiers. Thankfully, she only played that way for a few days and she stopped playing with her dolls altogether after that.

School officials had suggested that Janet enroll her daughter in a pre-school program for the disabled to see if it might help her development. It was completely a coincidence that Sarah was in pre-school for an extra year while the effects of the potion wore off completely.

As Mrs. Ramirez had warned, Sarah began to develop rapidly and caught up with her age group in both size and intellectual ability. Her progress was astounding in comparison with her classmates. As she gained more control over her body, Sarah was able think and communicate more clearly. When she started reading a child's picture book without difficulty, everyone began to suspect that she did not belong in the program and the school agreed to put her into the final half-year of kindergarten.

Janet attended a few of the school functions that a parent is invited to, just to show that she was an attentive mother, but she felt that this was an intrusion upon her life. More than once, she regretted her transformation of her husband. If she were still married to David, she could have left him with their daughter and she could have had a life. But she had saddled herself with a child, even if it used to be her husband. Her position with the company prevented her from abandoning Sarah at an orphanage, she was stuck being a mother.

One of things that continued to annoy Janet over the years was Sarah's occasional questions about her father. All of her friends had a father of some form in their lives; she was one of the few who did not. All Janet would tell her is that she did not know who Sarah's father was. She had been adopted when she was just an infant, she shouldn't worry about it. She just had a mother now.

* * * * *

The girl grew so rapidly that she was as big as her fellow students when she finally started first grade. Her early years were a grind; everything seemed to be so easy. She was a beautiful child. Where Janet was blond and freckled from too much sun, Sarah was in direct contrast with jet black hair and porcelain white skin. It never seemed to matter how much time she spent in the sun though, she never burned or even tanned. She went through the chubby period all children seem to experience, but she finally came out of it looking tall and somewhat willowy. Of course, the boys would catch up to her in height within a year or two.

But the boys noticed her and more than one tried to chat her up and be more than friends. When Sarah related how nice the boys were to her and how much fun they were was to talk with to Janet, a couple of phone calls to the boys' parents after Sarah was in bed scotched that. The rumors got around to the other boys that it wasn't worth the trouble to try to be friends with Sarah.

She barely noticed that the boys were giving her a wide berth. Janet had decided that her daughter would do all of the things that she herself had wanted to do when she was growing up. Sarah found herself signed up for music and ballet lessons. She did everything she could to win her mother's approval and worked hard at her lessons.

That is not to say that Sarah disliked the piano or ballet, it was just that between them and school, she barely had time to do anything for herself. Sarah really had no personal time to be social with friends anyway. Her days were taken up with school, school work, or her various lessons. But Janet still expected her daughter to attend the house parties that she still hosted, to help with the guests or to entertain them. Janet had no concerns about whether Sarah could sleep with the noise of those parties.

Of course, Janet did not take her to lessons or attend recitals, this all fell to the nanny. The nannies had started to be replaced each year, but Sarah never knew why. The result was that Sarah had no one to become close to. This was actually intentional on Janet's part. Someone at work had pointed out to her that by not spending time with Sarah, she was forcing her daughter to look for affection and friendship from the nanny. Janet started replacing the nanny each year so that this did not happen. The nanny just became another fleeting person in Sarah's life.

Sarah was never allowed to play at someone else's house and her friends were never allowed into her house. The only time saw her friends at school. She was also never allowed to sleepover at a friend's house. Janet was very paranoid about allowing her daughter much freedom. Visiting with friends was only one example of this. Things got worse as Janet's social activities waned and she would read Sarah's mail and email.

When Sarah discovered that her mother was reading the things she was writing in her diary, she stopped using the diary. After all, she didn't want her mother reading some of her private thoughts and desires. Instead, she fooled her mother by keeping a fake diary where she entered banal entries. It was harder to be able to hide her emails. She resorted to using a new email address that she only used at school. It wasn't the best arrangement, but it was less embarrassing.

Janet was an indifferent mother at best and a cruel one at the worst. Sarah would bring home a picture she had worked hard on or an art project made especially for her mother. Janet's only response was to point out what was wrong with it and tell her how it could have been done better. There was seldom a 'Thank You' and never a compliment.

* * * * *

It had been years since Janet's transformation of David and the curse upon David finally came to end. Sarah had completed the development her early years had only hinted at. She was as tall as her mother now and her girlish appearance had filled out to reveal a pretty young woman in her early teens. The boys had started hanging around her again, but they were always put off by her telling them that her mother would not let her date, so they moved on to the next girl.

The years of growing up with Janet had not affected her disposition in the slightest. She almost always had a friendly look on her face and laughed easily. The one thing that had come of her early years was that she never met a person who did not start out as a friend. She had endured so much rejection that she could not show that behavior in herself. That isn't to say that she actually recognized any kind of rejection from her mother. Sarah knew her mother loved her, she just did not show it very well. Why else would she have provided her with the nannies that stood in for her? Sure, she wasn't always polite and she didn't always show a lot of appreciation sometimes, but that was just how her mother was.

She was sitting in her bedroom window seat watching it rain on another lonely weekend afternoon. She'd just been informed that she would be attending an all-girls boarding school two states away at the start of her seventh school year. She would be living at school for the next 4 to 5 years, except for visits home on holidays.

What had resulted was the first major conflict between mother and daughter. In the past, Sarah had quietly and happily done whatever her mother demanded of her. This time however, Sarah had rebelled. She did not want to go off to some boarding school and leave what friends she had made at school. She had actually been hoping for more freedom now that she was starting high school. Boarding school threatened to take any freedom at all away.

Janet didn't care that Sarah would be leaving friends and everything that was familiar to her. She wasn't even trying to be cruel. Sarah was just in the way around the house and sending her off to a school would allow her to get an education without having her underfoot at home. Sarah had no say in the matter and Janet threatened to put her in juvie if she couldn't control her daughter.

Sarah's will to fight had collapsed at that threat. There were rumors around school about kids who had been sent to Juvie School for a year or more. The boy or girl that came out was not the same person who went in. It was like they were always afraid after that. They didn't laugh and they didn't try to make friends with people. No one she knew had ever seen one of those kids though.

After the argument was over, she had sent Sarah to her room and said that she had some paperwork to finish. Sarah curled her knees under her and leaned back, feeling very lonely. Even though she was accustomed to her mother's distant behavior, she still continued to hope that things would change.

She wasn't like this when Sarah had been David.

That thought brought Sarah up short. What did that mean? Where had that weird thought come from? She frowned as she considered it. As she thought more about it, more memories started floating up, some of them incomprehensible at the start. It was difficult for a thirteen year-old girl to understand much of memories that suddenly were flooding into her mind. It was like watching a movie stuck in fast-forward.

Being a boy and growing up with a mother and a father. Going to school and college. Playing on the basketball team. Kissing a girl. Having sex with a girl. Marrying Janet. Having sex with Janet. Being changed into a baby girl by Janet.

At first, it seemed like some kind of dream. Maybe it was because she was growing up; after all she had her first period just last week. The nanny had to show her what to do, even though Sarah had been through the health classes at least twice at school. Her mother hadn't expressed any interest in the event, even though it was a major rite of passage for a girl.

The memories were almost overwhelming as they washed over her. A lifetime of memories, some of them not suited for a girl her age had to be absorbed in mere moments. The more she reviewed them, the more real they were to her. There was a name that stood out…David Prince. That name felt so familiar and right. Something that said…Me.

When it was over, Sarah felt both warm and happy and also cold and alone. David had had a happy life and he had loved his wife very much. But the love of his life had turned out to be anything but that. The woman who claimed to be her mother was, in fact, the wife. The wife who had claimed to love David had tried to destroy him instead. Sarah hopped off the window seat and went over to her computer desk. She decided to see what the internet would tell her about men with that name.

It only took a few minutes to begin read through the search results. It was a shock to Sarah to find a picture of David Prince that looked exactly like the man in her memory. The images she had of this man were not pictures though; they were more like what you would see in a mirror. Maybe while shaving or brushing your teeth. She found a brief description of David Prince along with the image. The narrative said that he had been married to Janet years ago. Apparently, he had experienced gender confusion and had transitioned into becoming a woman. He had disappeared years ago.

Shutting down her computer, Sarah reflected that David had become a woman, at least not in the way the article said he had. All she could really grasp was that David had become the victim of a witch's curse and had been changed into Sarah.

She spent the rest of that afternoon sitting in the window, with her chin on her knees and looking out at the fields. She had cried for hours when she had accepted the truth. When the tears ran out and despair set in, she had actually considered ending it all. But the thought of throwing herself out the window or using a piece of broken glass to slash her wrists was something she could not get her thoughts to approach. Even options of a less grisly death did not appeal to her.

Eventually, anger replaced sorrow and grief. Various plans for revenge of one form or another went through her mind. Attacking and hurting Janet would only end up hurting her as well, even if she succeeded. The other thing that Sarah realized was that hurting or killing herself would only benefit Janet. It had been obvious for years that Janet had come to regard Sarah as a bother. Janet was similar to a boy who pestered his parents for a dog and then became tired of the pet once he had it. Killing herself would give Janet back her freedom that having a child took away. Even just hurting herself would let Janet play upon the sympathy of well-wishers as the mother of an emotionally troubled daughter.

She finally arrived at the conclusion that the best revenge was to do well for herself in life. That didn't mean the Janet had to be a part of that life or that Sarah could not get a modicum of emotional revenge out of things. Armed with her new knowledge, admittedly knowledge that was almost a decade and a half old, Sarah smiled as she returned to her computer and started planning out the course of her new life.

Yes, she had been David Prince. But she was Sarah Prince now, she didn't know why Janet had not divorced David and taken her own name back. Sarah's life had been changed by some sort of magic and David was gone, but it was not like he had never lived. He was her and she was him.

This was a unique situation where her psyche was a blend of male and female. With some thought, she would have an insight that no one else possessed, the possibilities were almost endless. Rather than regret what had been done to David, Sarah planned to celebrate it. She had a chance at a new life and was determined to take advantage of it and not make the same mistakes David made the first time around.

She found it relatively easy to change her viewpoint and see things as David. He knew that things should be distressing. Here he was, in the body of a thirteen year-old girl, but he couldn't find it within himself / herself to be freaked out about this. The more he contemplated his life as Sarah, the more he realized that he had been with Sarah all of the time. The years together had allowed them to meld into a single person. The absence of David's memories had prevented him from overpowering the person that Sarah had become.

It was more comfortable to be Sarah than to hold on to the David that was gone. She found that she actually liked being a girl. From the things that Janet had said to Sarah as an infant, this was not the intended result. Janet had wanted David to be aware of what she had done to him because she wanted him to suffer and force him to deal with being a woman. The reason escaped her though. Perhaps she just found it amusing to make him into the baby so that she would not have to deal with the pregnancy. Or perhaps she wanted him to understand the loss of her looks and figure in the same way that Janet was now.

Whatever the reason, Janet had no concern about how David would have felt about the transformation or if his psyche / personality remained. Then she realized that Janet had come to the conclusion that David had faded away within Sarah and that was why she had given up trying to torment him. Janet just had not realized that the second spell she had purchased from the witch had just made it difficult for David to express himself. As a result, David had relaxed and gone with the flow while he had grown up and become Sarah. David had been protected all this while. He had been aware of things as they happened and allowed himself to meld into the mind that he was already a part of.

Allowing Janet to know that she remembered her old life and what she had done would probably be very unwise. While she now possessed the memories and skills of someone twice her age, she was still a thirteen year-old girl and subject to the control of her mother. Even though she had been adopted by Janet, she could do nothing. Barring proof of some kind of abuse, Sarah was bound to Janet until she was an adult. Once past that hurdle, she would be free and Janet would have no authority over her.

In his former life, David had been an accountant, but she decided that she did not want to walk the same path this time around. Perhaps it had been the treatment she had undergone as David and then growing up as Sarah that made her see things differently but she had found herself with a deep empathy for people. As a result, she wanted to make life better for people and decided to look into a medical career, perhaps a surgeon.

There were government programs that would actually subsidize her education if she elected to pursue a medical profession. This fit in with her overall plan as she did not expect much assistance from Janet. She had put her plot for retribution into motion that night of David's return.

* * * * *

The boarding school and finishing school Janet had shipped her off to had actually been good for Sarah, especially as it had been an all-girl school. Her experience with boys had been limited to seeing them in school before she had come here. She had been very fortunate that the ladies in charge had made sure that that part of their education had been addressed as if it were another part of the curriculum. The girls who graduated from this institution would be well equipped to deal with the male of the species when they got out in the world. Alumni were taught how to be well-behaved ladies and were comfortable in any social situation.

Most of the regular coursework was the information that every school threw at their students and expected them to memorize. Sarah could still remember it all from David's life and she excelled on every quiz and exam. While this could have made her the unpopular, brainy girl for blowing the grading curve, her friendly personality and willingness to help others learn the material served to make her far more friends than enemies.

Being a girl with the memories of a man in his late twenties was a bit strange at times. She had been a bit uncomfortable the first couple of times she had to shower with twenty-five other girls, some of whom were pretty good looking. When she realized that she was being checked out by a couple of the other girls, she realized how she was coming across to some of them and she relaxed.

She had long ago come to terms with her new sexuality and found that being a girl was okay. She was just a girl with something extra...an alternate mind that remembered what it was like to have been a guy. It came in handy as well.

One of her friends spent the evening crying her eyes out on the couch in the common room. Her boyfriend at home had sent her a Dear Jane letter and she was very upset. Sarah had spent that evening passing her tissues and listening. The advice she had the girl helped as well. She explained that boys at that age are just looking for someone to be with and they are not mature enough to handle having their girl away at school.

Sarah quickly gained a reputation for being able to give advice on all manner of subjects. Things like how to handle a boy when all they seem to want is sex or how to get along with someone they didn't really like. David's experiences were not always the best to draw, but they did give Sarah perspective.

Having friends was another wonderful thing about boarding school and Sarah suspected that Janet hadn't realized that Sarah would be able to make friends. Prior to shipping her off to school, Janet had kept Sarah practically insulated from the company of her peers outside of attending school. The result was that she had no true friends at home at all, but she had loads of friends and acquaintances at school. Life here at school had started out as good from the get-go and had gotten better from there.

Sarah's visits home on holidays and long breaks became interesting. She kept her contacts with Janet to a minimum, while it seemed that Janet wanted her around more. Sarah even spent one Thanksgiving alone at school rather than go home for the holiday. It seemed that after Sarah had left for school, Janet had found herself in the unenviable position of becoming a cougar in order to get some companionship. When she found a candidate who was young enough and had enough stamina to keep up with her, her boy toy became part of the household.

One of Janet's conquests was a stud named Rick who stuck around longer than most and was around for the first couple of summers Sarah had come home from school, but she never really had contact with him. His whole attention was focused on Janet, which was where the money was. And then Rick was just gone when she had come home for the Christmas break. Janet never spoke of him and Sarah did not ask. It took her a while to figure it, but when she did it was a surprise.

Janet was lonely.

The letters from Janet had been infrequent for the first couple of years and never shared any of Janet's plans or activities. Interestingly enough, letters started coming every other week or so about the same time Sarah figured out Janet's situation. The tone of the letters changed somewhat as well, as if Janet was reaching out to Sarah for something.

Since her revelation or awakening of having been David, Sarah no longer connected the concept of motherhood with Janet, rather, Mother was merely Janet's honorary title and Sarah thought of her with either that label or her name. Sarah's mother had been a series of nannies, some of whom she remembered fondly, who educated her about growing up. Sarah still sent cards to them on Mother's day. Everything else Sarah had learned at school. It gave her a little satisfaction to know that Janet was in her current situation.

Janet probably thought that Sarah's polite distance was due to the emotional upset of being sent away to school. Sarah still gave Janet a hug when she came home and when she left for school again. Sarah always addressed her as Ma'am or Mother (with a capital M), which Janet loved because it sounded so refined. Being called Mom or Mommy was immature and low-brow. She didn't connect the formal address and just more distance between them.

Janet's letters seemed to communicate a whining tone as she complained about a maid or handyman she had hired for the house. She complained about being lonely and not having anything to do socially. She was still a vice-president in the company, but financial cutbacks had seen her opportunities to date and party drop off. There was only a single line in a letter that expressed any interest in Sarah. There were no questions about how classes were going, if she liked them, what activities she was involved in, did she have any boys she was interested in. Just a lone question: How are you? Even that was unusual as Janet had never even asked that before in a letter.

With the start of her final year in school, she decided to put her plan for revenge into motion. The additional years between David's awakening and this point in time had allowed her to think through her plot and to refine it. She sat down to compose a letter to her mother telling her about a project that she would be working on that term. The letter, in and of itself, was not unusual. Sarah had dutifully written a letter each week to her mother.

Even though her feelings for Janet as both a daughter and as a husband were numbed, Janet still represented some continuity in her life. Until such time that she found someone special that she wanted in her life, Janet would suffice as someone to communicate with. But never to confide in, Janet had forfeited any right to that.

In her letter, Sarah described what her project involved. As a presentation intended to help her to compete for a medical school scholarship, she intended to trace her genealogy and medical history. She closed out her letter by asking Janet for any information regarding her adoption, and her biological parents and their medical history. She smiled as she wrote those lines, knowing that there was no paperwork about Janet becoming her mother. Sarah assured Janet that it didn't matter if she could not find the adoption papers as she had already requested the same information from the state and county.

This was intended to essentially frighten Janet with the possibility that she might have to explain to Sarah and the authorities as to how Sarah had come into her custody. When it became apparent that there was no documentation about an adoption and Sarah's DNA profile had nothing in common with Janet, the next step would be to accuse her of kidnapping.

What made it feel especially gratifying was that Janet would have to essentially stew in her own juices because she would be unable to pick up a phone and call Sarah. While some students smuggled phones in, standard policy was to funnel phone contact through the administration. Of course, the age of computers made phones obsolete for those who knew how to use Skype. Janet had never bothered to communicate with Sarah by anything other than mail, so that would be the only way she would be able to express herself.

Of course, she could always place an emergency call to Sarah. Which is what she did. The postal service took the average amount of time to deliver her letter to Janet. Sarah knew that the letter had arrived because she was called to the administration office one morning where she waited for Janet to phone.

Janet never wasted time on pleasantries when speaking to Sarah and the phone call began the same way.

"Sarah, I'm concerned about this research project that you wrote me about." She wasn't shouting, but Sarah could feel the tenseness in how Janet spoke.

"Hello Mother," Sarah said. She was getting pretty much the reaction she had been hoping for and intended to enjoy it. After all, it was almost twenty years since David had been transformed and Janet had taken a perverse pleasure in trying to torture the girl he had become.

"Is there some problem with my project?"

"You say that you are going to trace your genealogy and find your birth parents," Janet said carefully. "All the paperwork from your adoption has been long since filed away. It would take a long time to find it.

"Mother, the days of never knowing who an adopted child's parents are long gone. I have the legal right to know where I came from. All I need to know is what agency you used and when I was adopted." It gave Sarah some pleasure knowing that using words like 'my parents' would be painful to Janet. Janet still thought of herself as Sarah's mother, even though she had never tried to act the part.

"I just don't like the idea that you might put all your time and efforts into trying to find your parents only to be disappointed. I want you to find a different project."

This was typical behavior for Janet to try to dictate to her, even when she had little control over her now. Sarah let the air out of Janet's bluster when she said, "I can't Mother. I have already submitted my project proposal and it has been accepted. I can't change it now without being disqualified."

She was rewarded with silence on Janet's end. "Chew on that, bitch!" were the thoughts that went through mind as she waited for Janet to say something. If Janet tried to force her to give up the project, she would be faced with the fact that Sarah might not earn a scholarship at all. She could then find herself somehow forced to help Sarah with her advanced education.

If Sarah continued with her project, the truth that Sarah had not actually been adopted and Sarah's very beginnings would be investigated. The transformation of a man was into a baby girl is impossible, so there would be the suspicion of kidnapping and possible murder. Because no one had reported a kidnapping, it was possible that Janet had attacked a pregnant woman to steal her baby. There had been cases like that in the news recently and Sarah was sure that Janet was astute enough to realize the possibilities.

Sarah let the silence go on for a few more moments before she said, "I'm sorry Mother, I have to get back to class. Don't worry; it will be a great project. You'll see." The delivery of those final two words had an ominous tone to them, like they were some kind of threat. She hung up the receiver and pushed the phone back to the secretary. She thanked her with a smile and left the office.

She headed off to her next class humming with happiness. She had never enjoyed a conversation with Janet more. The letter she composed to Janet a day or two later contained even more material to bother Janet. Sarah explained all about how her project would work. She knew that most of what she talked about would make Janet's eyes glaze over with the details that she put in. She did make it clear that she planned on doing comparisons of various DNA samples and writing about her findings. She dropped a bit of a bomb on Janet when she said that, in addition to her own and Janet's samples, she planned on getting samples from various strangers. The goal of her project was to show the similarities between strangers.

Before this letter could reach Janet, Sarah left school for the weekend on a field trip. As a senior and because of her age, she was able to leave the campus for the weekend by just signing out. She gave her destination as New York for the purposes of shopping.

David's parents actually lived in a suburb of New York and she had already verified that his parents were still alive. She had funds saved from over the years and she was able to afford a train ticket to close to where William and Estelle Prince lived.

While Sarah had looked her former parents up on the computer several times and knew exactly where they lived, she had never tried to contact them. What could she possibly say to them? She couldn't tell them that she was actually their son. That truth would be just too incredible to expect anyone to believe. To them, David had disappeared years before and was assumed to be dead. The stories Janet had told about him had been hurtful to say the least. Sarah did not want to cause them any more pain than they had already endured.

Now that she stood on the street she had grown up on so many years ago, she felt nostalgia more than she did any kind of fear or uncertainty. William and Estelle were past being middle-aged and approaching being considered elderly, so she was sure that they were at home. Her anonymity as Sarah gave her confidence as she walked up to the door carrying her purse and a sample case.

The door was answered after a minute or two by a white-haired woman who looked remarkably healthy for the age that Sarah knew that she was. Estelle could only stare at Sarah for almost half a minute before she blinked and spoke.

"I'm sorry young lady," she said. "You bear a striking resemblance to my son. He disappeared so many years ago. Who was your father?"

Sarah smiled a bit uncertainly. She hadn't really considered this kind of conversation. She knew that she bore more than a passing resemblance to David Prince, but she had not considered how that might affect her contact with David's parents. All she could do was try to keep from hurting them any more than Janet had hurt them so many years ago.

"I don't know ma'am," she answered. "My mother has told me repeatedly that I'm adopted. I saw an article about my adopted mother's husband and I thought that I saw a resemblance. I'm doing a research project at school on genetics and I had the idea of testing my DNA and yours to see what the results might be."

Sarah actually wasn't sure what the results of the tests would be. She was sure that she still had David's DNA, at least to a certain degree, but didn't know what it would show. Would it show that she was completely William and Estelle's child or would it show her to be David and Janet's child? She dearly wanted to embrace the woman in front of her and comfort her. Sarah hadn't realized until this moment how much she had missed her parents for all of these years. The grief she felt at that loss was a sick knot in her stomach and she fought back the surge of sadness that swept through her.

"Of course, dear," Estelle said as she ushered Sarah into the parlor. "I would love to find out that I had a long-lost grand-daughter. Did you say that you do not know who your parents are?"

"Yes ma'am," Sarah replied. "My mother has told me several times that I am adopted and one of the things that my project will do is to attempt to determine who might my birth parents might have been."

"What do you need to do then?" Estelle asked. The thought of possibly finding her son or his children gave her hope that had died years ago.

Sarah quickly described the procedure that she needed to go through to gather her samples and proceeded to collect Estelle's contribution to her project. The two of them sat together in the family room that Sarah remembered from his youth and just chatted. It had been decades since David had been in this room, talking to his mother. Sarah heard stories about David that she had never known, as David.

The love Estelle had for her son was in every word she spoke about him and the longing to know what had happened to him was there too. Sarah wanted so much to tell Estelle that her son was sitting right in front of her, just changed into a school girl, but she couldn't possibly tell that story without sounding like some kind of gold digger.

A couple of hours later, there were sounds in the back of the house and David's father appeared at the kitchen door. He still had the look of a hale and hearty man, even at his age, and his brown hair had turned completely gray. When William came into the family room where the girls were his eyes widened in shock and his mouth dropped open as he saw Sarah.

As his eyes went between Estelle and Sarah, his wife stood and went to pull him into the room. After she settled him onto a couch, she explained the purpose of Sarah's visit. Sarah had to explain to her father that she had been adopted by Janet and that she was not presenting herself as their relation at all. She did not know who her parents were, but that she hoped to find out who they were.

When they heard who Sarah's adopted mother was, Sarah's former parents reacted with anger. It turned out that Janet had been less than friendly with them when they had tried to find out where their son had disappeared to and she had been offensive when she spoke of David. Their distrust of Sarah declined greatly when she described her childhood years and her mother's behavior. William was happy to add his tissue sample to his wife's, after getting Sarah's promise to share the results of her science project with them.

Sarah had to decline their invitation to stay for dinner as she had to return to school. They did exact her promise to stay in contact and to visit for dinner soon.

Only when she was in her seat for the trip back to school did she give into her tears. They had been building all day in her belly like some sort of stomach cramp that grew tighter as her time with her former parents had gone on. It hurt to see how they had aged, because they had still looked young when she had seen them last. Now they looked ten years older than they really were, almost certainly because of David's absence from their lives.

She cried for the loss of her parents, the loss of David, and her own loss of the love of Janet. Even though her memories as David had come back to her years before, this was the first time she had actually felt the pain of it. She wished that she could give them some kind of closure, even a decades-old skeleton would help.

Her anger and hate at Janet for her selfish actions flared again. She wished that she could hurt her as much as she had hurt the people around her. But the more she thought about her plan for revenge, the more it came home to her that she was making herself into the woman who had been his wife and was now her mother.

Yes, she could go through with the whole scheme to frame Janet for kidnapping a baby and raising it as her own daughter and, maybe, frame her for David's murder. Her transformation of David into Sarah was exactly like murder, the only difference was that David as a person died in order for Sarah to come to life. But she didn't want turn herself into a version of Janet though. It was quite apparent that the woman had never loved David and considered Sarah to be a burden.

After a couple of hours of crying and mopping up tears, Sarah's new course of action became clear to her. She would complete her senior project and earn the scholarship she wanted. But she would not use it to attack Janet. If the woman was upset about what she was doing, it was too bad as she could not do anything to stop her. She would at least enjoy that amount of discomfort.

Her project called for several different donors of DNA and then an analysis of the results. She had long ago secured a sample from Janet, so she had what she needed from everyone involved in this particular tragedy. She planned on gathering many more as she didn't think that using her own parents was necessarily wise.

Sarah had no idea what a comparison of her own DNA with David's parents would show. Would they show that she was actually their daughter instead of their son? Or would she be David and Janet's daughter? Or would she be unrelated to them all?

There were two things that she was absolutely sure of: she had no intention of telling William and Estelle that she was somehow related to them and she also had no intention of maintaining a relationship with Janet after she completed this final year of schooling.

If she told William and Estelle that she was their granddaughter, she didn't want people accusing her of playing on an old couple's hope. It didn't help her decision that Sarah had recently read 'Anastasia'. She would have to give her decision more thought. She knew that they would be thrilled if she could prove that she was related to them and she really would like her parents back in her life as well.

* * * * *

Janet's letters had been coming every week now. Their tone had shifted a bit as she was now concerned about Sarah's project. She still wanted her to drop it, but could not do much as Sarah essentially ignored the subject in the letters that she sent back. That annoyed Janet in each of her letters. There were other complaints in Janet's letters though, illustrating that the woman was feeling lonely and alone. The only way she could express that was by complaining about the staff around the house or about her work.

Sarah had long ago dropped the plan of proving that adoption papers were a fiction and forcing Janet to explain how she had become Sarah's guardian / parent. That hadn't kept Sarah from taking a shot every once in a while by stating that she was still waiting for the state or county to respond to her request for information about her adoption.

The results of her research project were almost anti-climactic. Using a collection of samples, Sarah was able to hide the results for herself, Janet, and her former parents. Those tests were not part of the report she submitted. There were projects that were just as impressive as hers was, but Sarah was awarded the scholarship on the merits of the analysis of her samples.

Janet made an appearance at the awards banquet, being her typical narcissistic self. When it had become apparent to her that nothing was going to come from Sarah's requests for documentation of her adoption, she had relaxed again.

She had been seated at the table with Sarah and two others students with their families. Conversation between Sarah and Janet was polite, but limited. Janet had always managed to turn Sarah's victories into a triumph of her own, almost as if to say that she was directly responsible for Sarah's success. Sarah had experienced Janet's behavior for years and allowed Janet to have her day in the sun as she intended for it to be the last time.

After the presentations and dinner was over, Sarah bid her mother a polite and brief good night before leaving the hall. She would be graduating in a few more days and leaving the school after that and she did not plan on returning to the house she had grown up in. Typically, Janet could not let her go without acting like the proud stage mother.

"Well! Sending you to this school was a good decision. You've won a full scholarship to start you on your medical education," Janet said as Sarah turned to go. The tone of her voice conveyed her satisfaction that she was happy that she would not have to fight about paying for Sarah's college education.

"Yes, it was," Sarah as she turned to face her mother. The corridor was empty, so she was not concerned about anything she might say. "You won't have to pay for a thing."

"I've noticed that you don't call me Mom or Mother any more Sarah. Why is that?" Janet's tone seemed to be an attempt at being friendly.

Sarah was immediately on guard as she had seen this behavior before. It meant that Janet wanted something from her. As much as she did not want to deal with Janet, she really did not want to fight this evening.

"We've never been that close, especially since I've been here at school. It's always been obvious that you considered me to be some kind of burden."

"Well, we can fix that when you come home after your graduation," Janet said. "I'll be staying in town until you graduate and we can go home together."

Sarah could see that she was not going to be able to avoid a confrontation. She'd been imagining what this would be like for a long time, but she found that actually having a fight with Janet was something that she wanted to run away from.

"I won't be going with you after graduation. I have an apartment and a job waiting for me near the college in New York," Sarah said. As much as she hated the woman, she didn't want to fight with her.

"But I thought that we could get to know each other again," Janet's voice had a bit of a plaintive tone to it. "I know that you have been stuck here at school for the past four years and I've missed having you at home."

Sarah heard the tone in Janet's voice, almost a whine, but there was something else there as well.

"You haven't had any use for me for years. Are you telling me that I'm worth being around now because I'm an adult?"

"Of course not Sarah," Janet said, sounding hurt. "I love you and I always have."

That statement was the final straw and Sarah pulled herself up and back to look at Janet fully. She just as tall as the older woman was and she found herself almost nose-to-nose with her.

"Excuse me?" The outrage she felt had her almost rigid with anger. "You shipped me off to boarding school because I was in the way around the house. You're crazy if I couldn't see that you wanted me out of the way while you played with your various boy toys!"

"What's the matter? Haven't you been able to find another teenager to take to bed?"

"How dare you?" Janet snapped. For a moment, Sarah thought that Janet wanted to slap her in outrage. "I'm your mother and I expect you to show me some respect!"

"No Janet," Sarah responded. "You love me just as much as you loved your husband."

"David?" Janet asked in a surprised voice. "That little faggot!" That was all she had to say about her former husband. It was as if she had totally forgotten about what she had done to her own husband.

Sarah finally reached the point where she had to fight back.

"No Janet, David was never gay. He loved you very much, but he didn't have much in the way of self-confidence."

It was becoming obvious that Janet had come to believe the stories that she had invented about her husband's disappearance. Maybe it was a combination of guilt, grief, and alcohol over the years that made her want to forget the truth. Or maybe repeating the story enough times made it true to her.

"He left me at the same time that I adopted you. He couldn't handle the responsibility and he must have decided to go off with his gay friends."

That was the final straw for Sarah.

"I know exactly what happened to David," Sarah snapped, looking Janet in the eye. "All of my memories came back a few years ago." She paused to see Janet's reaction and was rewarded to see that Janet's eyes widened with a look of fear as she gasped slightly.

"I remember that you were pregnant and I thought that we were both happy about it. You can't believe how sad it was to find out that you didn't want to be pregnant and that you actually hated our baby. Did you know that the spell you got from that gypsy didn't transfer David into the baby? What happened is that I was made to be the same sex as our baby would have been and turned into a newborn.

"It's like our daughter never existed. I try to tell myself that her soul just moved on to another child," Sarah said quietly. She had grieved for the daughter that never existed several times, but it was obvious that Janet had never considered just what the magic she had purchased from the gypsy had actually done.

"I really did wonder if I was the daughter of you and David or just a feminine version of David," Sarah said. "I compared my DNA with yours and with David's parents. I don't know how I can tell them that my DNA says that I'm their daughter and not yours! I have none of your DNA, which means that the law would assume that I was adopted somehow or stolen from my birth mother."

Janet had been listening to Sarah's story with her eyes wide and her mouth open in shock. If she had seen herself in a mirror, the paleness and lines in her reflection would have made her think of a ghost. She had never expected to be confronted with the evil that she had perpetrated on David and appeared to be trying to come up with some sort of explanation. The possibility of problems with the law had been lost in the realization that she could have actually destroyed her daughter.

"But...but I didn't know that would happen to the baby," Janet started to say, but Sarah cut her off.

"What did you think was going to happen when you decided to turn me into your baby? Was I going to share my body with another soul? Admit it Janet, you weren't thinking about anything other than yourself. I've seen it for all of the years that I was growing up again around you. That is why I'm not going home with you. Having to boost your ego and let you somehow take credit for everything I do has gotten very old. I don't have to take the lack of compassion and love any longer."

Janet looked like she was in a complete panic. As Sarah walked away from her she begged, "Please Sarah...David. I'm sorry about what I did to you. I need you in my life. Don't leave me. Please."

Sarah didn't stop until she was back to her dorm room. As senior, she had merited her own room this year, so she had no roommate she would have to explain why she was crying. Yes, it had felt good to unload her anger at Janet; it had been building for years. And even though Janet had been an indifferent parent, she had still been part of her life. It had hurt her as much to say those things to Janet as if she herself had been on the receiving side.

Righteous anger does more harm to the person carrying it with them than it does to its target when it is finally unleashed. Sarah knew that she couldn't just walk away from Janet as it would probably hurt them both. She hoped that Janet had not left the banquet hall yet as she hurriedly dried her tears and repaired her face.

Sarah found her sitting at a table weeping while the catering staff worked on the other side of the room. She wasn't surprised that they were keeping their distance. A crying woman could be trouble or require sympathy that few people were equipped to provide. The students and faculty who had been in attendance had left once the caterers started their cleanup, so Sarah and Janet had plenty of privacy.

The presence of David's life experiences had helped greatly over the past few years, even though it had given her a cynical view at times. It also helped her to have a more mature attitude that tempered her sometimes impulsive nature. She halted a few steps away from Janet where she had her head in her hands. Knowing Janet the way she did, Sarah knew that Janet was probably crying because she was being left alone and not because of what she had done.

"I really wanted hurt you for what you did to me," Sarah said, quietly. Her approach had been quiet enough that her words cause Janet to jump slightly. She obviously had not expected Sarah to come back.

"I don't want to be alone," Janet said through her tears. Sarah could see that getting an apology from her would probably never happen. What had ever possessed David to marry her? She was so self-involved that nothing she did would ever be in the wrong.

Sarah took a seat across the table from her and said, "I can't think of you as a mother or as a wife Janet, hardly even a friend. But I can't leave you alone either."

It was true. Janet was the only connection to her past. David's parents couldn't really be a part of her life in the same way as parents are supposed to be. Even though Janet had been indifferent toward her most of the time and sometimes mean, Sarah had grown up with her as her mother and most of David's memories were good as well.

While she would never allow Janet to be an integral part of her life, the reality was that the two of them were really all they had. As much as she had wanted some kind of revenge for being made into a girl, that desire had somehow been burned out of her over the months. Being faced with actually going through with being cold and vicious, she just could not do it. Destroying Janet wasn't what she wanted now, but she had no idea what she did want.

This past year had made her think about her lives. As David, he would never have wanted to be a woman and had never even considered wearing his mother's clothes or Janet's. But the last 18 years had been spent as a girl and there was nothing wrong with it. With the exception of her period and being weaker than the guys, there was a lot to recommend it.

Upon reflection, he had gained in the scheme of things. He had been permitted to live two lives and he had gained youth as well. In addition, pursuing a medical career would be far more satisfying that being an accountant.

Janet was only just reaching the point where she was realizing that she had lost in the transaction. David would have grown old with her and been her companion forever. She had transformed David because she did not want a baby to damage her beauty. But that precious beauty had faded with time anyway, while David was enjoying the bloom of youth.

She was looking at a life of loneliness now.

This is what Sarah had sensed in Janet's letter over the last year. Life was leaving the woman behind and she thought that her daughter would fill that gap. Janet didn't know how to reach out and bring Sarah back to her.

"I know that I could hurt you by just walking away from you Janet. But David would never have done that to you and I can't either. It's very hard for me to get over that and I can't live with you."

Janet could only nod jerkily in acknowledgment. There was nothing she could say that could change things or deny the facts.

Sarah sighed and continued. "I can't cut you out of my life either. As much as I do not like to admit it, you are still the most important person in my life."

Janet reached her hands across the table toward Sarah. "I made a mistake Sarah and I'm sorry. I've been alone for months and I thought that you would be coming home. I never thought that you would abandon me; we have been together for almost 25 years, as man and a woman and as mother and daughter. We have still shared those years. Weren't some of them good?"

Sarah had no illusions that home life would be any different than it had been when she was growing up. Even with the revelation that she remembered her life as David, Janet would probably be the bossy and demanding person she had always been. Of course, Janet might actually want to spend time with her if she were as lonely as she claimed. But Sarah had spent years armoring herself against Janet and couldn't expose herself to that past behavior.

"I won't come home with you Janet. I have a job waiting for me in the city and I will be starting classes almost immediately after I get there. But I can't cut you out of my life as I intended. We can still have a relationship, but it will be different from mother and daughter or husband and wife. Despite our age difference we will be equals. Maybe even learn to be friends again. I won't make any promises."

As she spoke, the dullness in Janet's eyes was slowly replaced with a look of hope.

"You still have your job back there so you can't just move up here. I think that we should get to know each other again and we can do that with letters and phone calls. When things settle down, you could come for a visit for a couple of days. Does that sound okay with you?"

Janet was like a drowning man grabbing at anything that might save him. Her eyes lit up at the thought that her life wasn't in the ruin that it had appeared to be a few minutes ago. She smiled and nodded in thanks.

The two women sat and talked during all of the time the caterers did their cleanup work. They were still chattering away when they were finally ushered out of the room and the lights turned out.

* * * * *

Sarah dropped the twins off at their gymnastics class and decided to stroll around the outdoor mall to kill the two hours that the girls would be practicing. They really enjoyed the jumping and tumbling exercises. Later in the year, she had been told that they would begin learning what was involved in the floor exercises. They were looking forward to those lessons. She smiled as she thought of the two girls clustered on the floor in front of the television to watch the Olympic gymnastics. It brought back memories of her childhood when she felt safe and loved. Her first childhood, not her second.

She made a mental note that she needed to stop at the grocery on the way home. Janet would be coming to visit for a week and she wanted to pick up enough supplies for the meals she planned on fixing. At Sarah's insistence, Janet had mended her fences with her former in-laws, telling them that her behavior was driven by the fact that she was upset with losing David. Janet was visiting them for a couple of days at their invitation and would be coming here from their town.

David's parents had been reluctant to accept Janet into their lives to any degree, but had thawed over the years. Janet represented one of their last links to their son, Sarah was another. Their granddaughter. She had never told them the truth about the DNA tests she had done. She let David's parents believe that she was David's bastard child and she had never been able to find out who her mother was.

Sarah knew that Janet wanted to do the grandmother thing with the girls, but she never allowed the woman to be alone with the children. Sarah and her husband Walter were reluctant to let Janet be a grandmother to their girls, knowing the kind of person Janet was. But they were very happy to let William and Estelle visit whenever they liked. As a result, the girls got spoiled by the older generation. She had never told Walter about David, other than the story that David was her father. After all, who would believe that a man had been transformed into a baby girl? No one other than a magic user or someone who had actually been transformed. It was better to let the world believe some version of the story Janet had created years ago.

Work was very satisfying. She had originally thought about pursuing a surgical specialty, but found that a general practitioner was where she wanted to be. She and Walter had been lucky that they had become parents just a couple of years after they had gone into private practice together. She couldn't even think of what her life would be like as a surgeon and a mother.

She was window shopping before a dress store when she felt a light tap on her shoulder. She turned to see a small, older-looking woman standing behind her. Her coloring was darker, almost what would be called swarthy and she was a bit shorter than Sarah. Her age was questionable. While she was older than Sarah, she could have been anywhere from seventy to ninety years old.

Sarah's eyes widened at the sight of the woman. She hadn't seen her in decades and she had been an infant when they had met, but Sarah would have known her anywhere. She would have stepped back to put distance between her and the gypsy woman, but her back was essentially against the store window.

Mrs. Ramirez stood there, one hand at her side and the other holding her purse, with a slight smile on her face. She did not step forward to intrude into Sarah's space, but she did not move back to give her room either. She appeared content to stand so that Sarah would have to edge around her to escape.

"How are you my dear?" the gypsy asked her. The way she asked the question made Sarah think of the old woman in the Sleeping Beauty story, right before she gave Beauty the poisoned apple. Sarah reflected that the idea for the old woman could have been inspired by the very person in front of her.

"Wha…What do you want?" Sarah gasped out. It had been years, but she knew what Mrs. Ramirez could do and her fear was very real.

"Why nothing," Mrs. Ramirez replied, "I saw you here and I wanted to say hello. I really am interested to know how you are doing now."

The old woman's disarming manner emboldened Sarah and she said, "I'm fine, thank you." She started to move to one side so that she did not feel trapped between the gypsy and the store front.

Mrs. Ramirez made no move to keep her in place and just turned as Sarah moved. "I had hoped to have a chance to give you my apology when you got older. I did not know that your wife intended to use the items I sold her on an innocent. I am glad to see that you are well."

At the old lady's words of apology, Sarah froze. A white flame of anger flared in the core of her being as she fastened on the gypsy with a glare.

"Apology? For helping the woman that I loved turn me into a cuckold and then an infant girl? You don't really care about that do you?"

Mrs. Ramirez blinked. She had not anticipated such an angry response from the girl. If anything, she had half-expected a smile and a thank you. It appeared that this child harbored a great deal of hostility toward her. If the girl was not careful, she could find herself in more trouble. How dare she act this way toward her? Her smile thinned and her eyes narrowed.

"You should be careful child. You know what I can do," her tone was quiet, but it carried depths of threat.

Sarah stopped herself for a moment and blinked at Ramirez. She took a deep breath and let it out.

"You're right. I do know what you can do and I must be careful," she said calmly. "I have learned things in my second childhood that have served me well. My life is fine now. If you will excuse me, I will be moving on."

The old gypsy stopped her for a moment with a raised hand and asked, "Can I do anything for you? Do you need any help?" There was a crafty undertone to her voice that a less careful person might miss.

Sarah shook her head and said, "No. I do not want for anything, thank you." She started to move away and paused. She turned back, looking thoughtful.

"It occurs to me that now that you are here in town, this might not be the last time our paths cross."

Mrs. Ramirez nodded, looking mysterious.

"Because of that, I am going to tell you something that I have learned over the years." Sarah paused to order her thoughts. She began her speech, looking the gypsy woman directly in the eye.

"I offer you no insult or injury. I will accept no gift or trade. I have nothing I wish to give you and I want nothing that you have to offer. I ask you to leave me and mine alone for now and forever."

The words were spoken calmly and clearly. They were not chanted like a magic spell being cast, but the words hung in the air and seemed to almost ring with power.

The old woman stepped back in surprise at hearing Sarah recite a ward against people like her. The drawback to this particular spell was that it must be cast against each person whose influence and attentions you did not want. But it would work well enough against her. She could do nothing for or against Sarah or her entire family for generations to come. In fact, when she left Sarah's presence, she would actually become non-existent to them.

"Now…You didn't have to do that child," she scolded mildly. "I was only offering to help you after what you have been through."

Sarah's anger was still very much in evidence, but she was in control enough to know that a wrong word could cause the ward she had just cast to collapse.

"Help me? All you offer is magic spells and items that hurt people. I don't want something like that."

Mrs. Ramirez nodded sagely. "Yes, I do sell magic to people. But I can't control what they do with it. It's not my fault that a person gets hurt by it once in a while. I couldn't have known at the time that your wife only wanted to be rid of her pregnancy and that she blamed you for it. She just did not want to assume equal responsibility for her condition."

Janet laughed shortly and the woman's statement. "Not responsible? You're just like the gun dealer who sells someone a gun and then says that it is the person who bought the gun who is really at fault. No Mrs. Ramirez, I want nothing to do with you or your store. The trouble you represent is too dangerous."

Sarah turned her back and strode off down the sidewalk. As she turned the corner, the magical ward that she had created took effect. The dark mood she had been in lightened and she shook her head, wondering for a moment what had been bothering her. She shrugged and resumed her browsing. Looking at her watch, she saw that she still had a while before she had to pick up her daughters and get home. Walter would be home from his trip tonight and she was looking forward to getting the twins into bed early. She absently wet her lips in anticipation.

Behind her, Mrs. Ramirez watched her walk away and disappear around a building. She felt the minor tingle of Sarah's awareness and connectedness to her suddenly cease. She thought about what the girl had said to her and had to agree that she was, to a large part, in the right. After her encounter with Janet all those years ago, she had never sold another transformation spell to someone without knowing what was going to happen to both parties and being comfortable that both parties merited the transformation. She did feel bad about what had happened to David at the hands of his wife and she would have done what she could to make it right, at least within the limits and requirements of the store and her magic.

She shrugged. Oh well…Considering that could have happened to the girl and her family if she had taken Ramirez up on something from the store, they were probably better off. She turned and shuffled off toward her store, there were always other suckers who deserved to buy something from her.

* * * * *

Returning to her store, Mrs. Ramirez closed the door behind her. Immediately, there was a flash of colorless light and she was no longer standing in her store. The room she stood in was about the same size as her store, with most of the space taken up with tables that curved around in a semi-circle. The gypsy stood in the focus of that semi-circle.

The room was warmly lit with indirect lighting so that there were no glares or reflected light. She recognized the room as the main council chamber where the Elders met to make decisions and render judgments. The room décor was a combination of earth and sky tones, to reflect the focuses of the magic the order espoused. Behind the table sat her order's ten Elders. Ramirez realized that the price for allowing her magic to be misused those years ago was finally going to be exacted.

"Velda!" The voice came from the grey-haired man at the middle of the group. Leadership was shared among the members of the group and it was just his turn. His voice was deep and seemed to fill the room when he spoke.

"The council has already reviewed your transgression and the steps that were taken and not taken to mitigate the damage that was done. You are here to hear our judgment. There is no defense and no discussion."

All she could do was nod in acknowledgment at what was being said. She had expected that she would be called to account at some point and was resigned to whatever punishment might be meted out to her. This was the price for being able to work magic and enjoy its benefits.

"It is our judgment that you will live as a mortal for a lifetime and relearn their faults, their virtues, and their vulnerabilities. You will have no memory of the order or your abilities until you return to us."

"Where will I live?" It was the only question that was important to her right now.

"Your last victim is about to be impregnated tonight. We believe that you will benefit from living as her son for the next several decades. Prepare yourself."

Her last thoughts as Ramirez were that growing up with Sarah as her mother was not all bad, even if it was as her son.