Note from Calise:  I’m posting this story serially, and at the moment you’ve reached the end of the shared chapters.  In the meantime, enjoy this teaser scene from the beginning of Chapter 2.

Chapter One          Barry Home

2

Lessons

 

Barry woke up grumpy, although he didn’t immediately remember why.  Something about his birthday, and bad dreams about fairies and breasts…

His eyes flew open and he threw off the covers to look at his body.  The air rushed out of him as he saw it was normal.  He was himself, and male and not sparkly or magical or any of that!  He was still bleary; had it been a dream?  It had felt too real, and yet so surreal at the same time.

He checked his phone.  It was the day after his birthday.  That was certainly a strike against hoping it had all just been some kind of pre-birthday anxiety dream.

Yeah, the more he thought about it, the more he seemed to remember about the day before.  He groaned in frustration shoving his face back into the pillow, wishing he could go back to a week ago, where everything was normal, and he didn’t have a fairy name, and he’d never experienced having wings, or a wand… or girl body parts.  Life hadn’t been perfect, but he’d had a handle on it!

Wait, he thought, sitting up.  He’d felt something… when he’d listed his wand in his mind.  There it was again.  It felt like when you could tell someone was looking at you.  Or when you were a kid and would spin around with your eyes closed, but could still tell when you got close to the furniture.  It was like a spacial awareness, but for something not even in the room.  Like being able to feel your toes… if they weren’t attached to your feet.

What had he done with his wand the day before?  He’d clung to it intensely, all morning long, as it felt like his one way home to his maleness, his ruby slippers back from a nightmarish Oz.  Eh, he didn’t like that the metaphor he’d thought of involved high heels.  He’d used the wand to power-down, obviously, but then he had wanted to forget the whole thing, as much as humanly possible.  He hadn’t had much success; despite a birthday evening of cake and video games, nothing had been able to fully distract him from feeling like the future that his birthday had been supposed to represent, was instead being yanked from his grasp.

Anyway, he’d set it down somewhere, probably on his computer desk, beside the mirror where he’d watched himself power-down?  He didn’t see it over there.  There was the awareness sensation again, but it was hard to place.

Where did his mother’s wand go when she powered-down, he wondered.  He knew she didn’t keep it in her purse or anything; and yet it was always handy when she needed to power-up.  It was one of those things he was sure she’d explained over the years, like all fairy logistics, but none of it had felt pertinent, to be honest, prior to getting sucked off a barstool by magic and being forced into a bodice, corset, thing.  (He wasn’t sure what to call it.)

When she would power-down, she’d usually stick her wand in her pocket, or even in her sleeve, where it would just sort of vanish, he recalled, in very similar fashion to when she’d warp away somewhere via magic.  She’d teleported him places before—it was one of the best things about her powers—but it’d been a long time.  There was some fairy name for the place where a fairy went, when they teleported.  He vaguely remembered being taught that was where objects came and went from, when his mom made them appear and disappear, but the whole thing felt like trying to remember chemistry vocabulary in the middle of summer break.

He tried picturing the wand, the wood stained with low-saturation soft purple.  As he did, he felt it yet again, a tinkling bell in the back of his mind, tied to the wand.  He closed his eyes, so intrigued despite himself, honing in on the feeling.  He knew where it was… the wand.  It felt distant, in a place outside of regular space and time, a misty, pink sort of place, but the wand itself felt so tangible, ready and waiting for him.  It was like he could grab it, from the marbled sherbet clouds it drifted amongst, and it was even hopeful he would.

It just needed an avenue, a pathway, into his hand.  Clothing?  He wasn’t sure how he knew that if he reached into his clothes somewhere, it would work as a conduit to pull his wand from that strange other place where he could sense it, but that seemed to be what it was telling him.

Not really believing it would work, Barry reached into the sleeve of his sleep t-shirt, willing the wand to him.  He was completely shocked when he felt his fingertips wrap around the thin rod, which he extracted into reality.  Definitely not a dream, he thought, gaping at the purple stick in his hand.  Such a strange, tangible tie to the whole world which was now a part of his life, whether he wanted it to be or not.

There was a knock on one of his doors, and Barry dropped the wand in surprise.  “Um,” he said aloud, looking down to where he’d dropped the wand, but not finding it on the bedspread where it should have been.  He rifled through the covers briefly, but couldn’t find it anywhere.  He sensed it back where he’d pulled it from, that not-place.  Weird.  “Yeah?” he finally called to the knocker.

The door to the bathroom that connected his room and Nick’s, Jack-and-Jill style, opened, and Nick looked at him in bed.

“What?” Barry asked when Nick didn’t say anything.

“I’m just kinda surprised not to find you wearing a nightgown or something, ‘Grape,’” Nick replied with a smirk.

Apparently there was no question in Nick’s mind if the day before had really occurred.

“What do you want, Nick?” Barry asked flatly.

“Mom said if we’re going to get to my soccer practice on time, we should get to the DMV soon, in case it takes a while, and so you’re not rushed doing the drivers’ course.”

Right, his license, Barry realized.  It was surreal in its own way that he’d forgotten.  It’d been the only thing on his mind when he’d woken up the day before.  “Okay.  I gotta shower, but I should be ready in like half an hour or so.”

“I don’t know why you even need a license anymore,” Nick poked further, “now you can just become a pretty little butterfly at will.”

“I don’t know why you need a brain, you don’t get very much use out of that,” Barry retaliated.  He didn’t think it was an especially good comeback, but it was the most obvious one and he was too tired for anything clever this morning.

Nick glared at him, and Barry was surprised his childish insult had been remotely effective.  “She also said she made more bacon that you can eat on your way out.”

Barry appreciated that thoughtfulness from Dania, and wondered if his mom was trying to make up for the roughness of his birthday morning.

“Although, you can always leave it for me,” Nick left him with a final taunt, while closing the door, using a mocking sing-song, “y’know, if you’re watching your girlish figure.”

 

Barry buckled his seatbelt and checked the car’s mirrors, before turning the key in the ignition.  Hopefully, if his test went well this afternoon, he’d be able to do this without his mother in the passenger seat.  And without Nick in the back, which would be a welcome relief.

“You’re going to do great on the test, honey,” Dania smiled, watching him go through the routine.  “You’ve been such a fast learner with your permit.  You’re a really great driver now.”

He gave her a tired but genuine smile.  “Thanks Mom.”  He put the car in reverse and turned to look out the back windshield, backing the car out of the driveway, and then started off in the direction she’d pointed the GPS.

“Makes me excited to start magic lessons with you!” she beamed.  “I bet you’ll be such a good student!”

Barry glowered at the road, and fussed with the air conditioning.  Maybe if he didn’t reply, she’d stop talking about it.

“It’s good you have a summer birthday,” she went on anyway, “because it’d be harder to take time out for lessons, if you were back in school.”

Barry noticed he was accelerating the car in agitation, and purposefully slowed down.  Stuff like that wouldn’t fly with a test proctor in the passenger seat.

“This way, we can have a lesson almost every day, and you can learn to use your powers really quickly!” she enthused.

Barry exhaled frustratedly, glancing at Nick in the rearview mirror.  His brother was obviously paying close attention, while pretending to be casual about it.

“Mom, I don’t even want to be a fairy,” Barry said tightly.  “I certainly don’t want to spend every day of the rest of my summer break learning to be a fairy.”

He could tell she was hurt by his ongoing attitude about it.  “Think of it in lieu of a summer job, Baz,” she tried.

“I’d rather have a summer job,” he said.  “I’d get paid for that, and I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t have to do it in heels.”

Nick snorted from the backseat and Barry regretted handing him ammo for mocking him.

“I know the uniform is uncomfortable for you, sweetheart,” Dania said, trying to be understanding, “but you’ll get used to it.”

‘Used to’ wearing a tutu and heels was something he definitely didn’t want to become.

“Then, won’t it be cool learning magic?” she smiled hopefully at him.  “Sky’s the limit!”

He didn’t answer, under the pretense of focusing on where the GPS was saying to turn.

“I’ll teach you about the ins and outs of wish granting, and time limits, and summoning etiquette and…” she listed off her lesson plan with excitement.

Feeling like he was gonna pop, Barry pushed the radio button in the middle of her speaking, and a current rock song played over the car speakers.  He looked at the traffic across the median, ignoring her gaze that was obviously on him.

“Subtle, Baz,” Nick commented sarcastically from the back.

Dania sighed at her older son.  “You can blow me off for now,” she said, and he glanced at her determined blue eyes, “but Sunday is your first fairy godmother lesson, and that’s final.”

 

True to his birthday wish, the DMV wasn’t crowded, and the driving test went well, as Dania had predicted.  Barry came to full-and-complete stops, over-checked his mirrors, and even did okay on parallel parking.  His driver’s license picture was awkward looking, but better than the one on his permit from a year before, so at least it was an improvement.  As they went back out to the car, Barry looked thoughtfully down at the card with his photo and full name, that he’d longed for since he’d been a preteen.  He should be elated, but he just… wasn’t.

“Baz, look at me!” Dania caught his attention.

He looked up in surprise, in time for her to snap a photo of him on her phone.

“Gotta get a pic of our new racer,” she beamed.  She checked the image.  “Oh, it’s a cute one.  Honey, you’re looking so grown-up.”

Despite himself, he leaned in to look.  He almost wondered if they were looking at the same picture.  The teenager in the photo looked stunned, and not just because his mother was catching him candidly.  He looked like someone who had been shown a vision of the awful fate of the universe, and wasn’t happy about it.

They got back into the car and Barry sat thoughtfully for a moment, as Dania talked to Nick about the logistics of his soccer practice.  He flipped his license over in his hand, pulling out his wallet to stick it inside.

He’d anticipated the personalized piece of plastic he now held, as the symbol of so many things: of freedom to go anywhere he wanted and do anything he wanted, of control over his own destiny, and maybe most of all, as a rite of passage into manhood.  But becoming a fairy, it seemed, negated each of those things, to the point that he had no idea what lay in store, and felt like a driver’s license barely dented his hopelessness.  Magic had taken all control and destiny from him, stripped him of freedom, and made part of him irreversibly female on a whim.

So much for rites of passage.

Chapter One          Barry Home