We sat up and stretched our arms and wings. “Okay, we’re up,” we said with both mouths, and were sorry when we saw Taylor’s startled, worried look.

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The Other Half of My Soul

Part 8 of 11

by Trismegistus Shandy

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My latest novel, The Bailiff and the Mermaid, is available in EPUB format from Smashwords and Kindle format from Amazon. You can read the opening chapter here.

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We opened our eyes, all four of them, and yawned.

“About time you sleepyheads woke up,” Taylor said. She was perched on the edge of the pillow above us, the soles of her dangling feet a paler blue than the rest of her skin.

We sat up and stretched our arms and wings. “Okay, we’re up,” we said with both mouths, and were sorry when we saw Taylor’s startled, worried look. So we glanced at ourselves ruefully and continued with just one mouth: “You want to go outside and look around?”

“Seems like a good idea.”

We all took off and flew through the nearest open window.

“I wonder if your link is getting stronger,” Taylor mused as we hovered a couple of hundred feet above the palace. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you talk simultaneously.”

“It is,” we said, careful to use just one mouth.

“Well, hopefully it will get weaker again when we’re back in our own world... Serenikha, do you recognize anything?”

We hadn’t been flying for long, and hadn’t seen much of the palace from an aerial perspective in the twilight or moonlight. We had a little trouble remembering which body was called Serenikha, but we picked what we thought was the right one and said with that mouth, “The sun is that way, and the women’s quarters are in the south wing, so they must be in that direction.”

Taylor nodded and flew after us. A few minutes later we found a garden we recognized, and an open window onto a corridor near our rooms. We hesitated a moment between Leslie’s room and Serenikha’s, but headed toward Leslie’s when we remembered that Taylor had left her staff there.

On our way, we met Bhavalikha and Michiko, apparently on their way to the baths. “Your Highness!” Bhavalikha said, “where have you been?”

“We went out flying and explored some parts of the palace we hadn’t seen before,” we said with the mouth that was probably Serenikha’s. “Don’t worry.”

“I can’t help worrying. Everyone is talking about how you transformed in the middle of the banquet and then flew all around with a couple of other pixies... when is the Tenacious One going to change you back?”

“Soon,” Taylor said. “If we don’t get interrupted again.”

And soon we were in Taylor and Leslie’s room. She found her staff, still pixie-sized, lying in the spell-circle she’d used last night.

“Wait a few minutes while I contact the Gray One,” she said, and we flew over to sit on the edge of the bed, looking out at the vast gulf between the bed and the sofa, and Taylor’s tiny spell-circle in the midst of it. It reminded us of games Leslie and Taylor had played years ago, with our Fisher-Price toy people standing on the edge of Taylor’s dresser and pretending the space between it and the bed was the Grand Canyon.

Being pixies was more fun than being nagini or human, we decided, but we had to be able to nurse Sakhi. Maybe we could get Taylor to turn her into a baby pixie, and adjust us so we’d lactate? But that might not be a long-term solution; without a psychic link to entangle with, the transformation spell on Sakhi probably wouldn’t last as long as the one on us. We’d have to ask Taylor or the Gray One when they weren’t busy.

And... on further thought, we didn’t want to abandon all our responsibilities as Serenikha and Leslie. It did make sense to have the mages turn us back, if they could. But did it have to be right away?

We heard one side of a conversation there below us, and fluttered down near the spell-circle to listen closer.

“...They don’t have exact clocks here, so I can’t be sure if it was at the same time I changed Leslie or a minute or two later... Yes, whenever it happened, it was all over in a few seconds. Not hours like when Leslie synced with Serenikha... No, the portal spell was working fine, but I didn’t want to go home and leave Serenikha like this... I haven’t tried yet, I wanted to talk to you first... Okay, I’ll try that and get back to you... Actually, why not just tell them I had a little problem with the portal and I’ll try again soon. They don’t need to know the gory details... Thanks.”

Taylor fluttered into the air and settled down again outside the spell-circle. “The Gray One gave me some tests to do. Leslie, get into that circle and I’ll make a new one for Serenikha.”

We flew one body into the circle she’d vacated, and stood still with the other as Taylor drew a new circle around it. Then she started casting a spell on the one we thought was probably Leslie. Before we felt or saw any physical change, we got a feeling like our skin color was wrong, somehow; it shouldn’t be green, but something else... Then a minute or two later, the skin of that body turned chalk-white, and a few seconds later the other body’s skin faded from dark green to light green to white.

“Hmm,” Taylor said, and walked over to the circle enclosing Serenikha. She chanted for several minutes and struck the circle with her staff, and the hair of that body turned pink, followed moments later by the hair of the other. Again, we felt a vague dissatisfaction with our violet hair a minute or so before it actually changed.

“I think that was faster, wasn’t it?” Taylor asked.

“Yes,” we said, absent-mindedly using both mouths. Taylor looked worried again.

“All right, I think there’s room for both of you in this circle,” gesturing with her staff at the one the Serenikha body was standing in. “Let me try something else.” We flew the Leslie body over to stand next to the other one; much closer than we would have stood to anyone else, though the circle was wide enough we could have stood a little further apart.

Taylor looked at us and began chanting and waving her staff again. This time the feeling of wrongness was much more acute, more distressing and — more familiar. We’d felt something a lot like it when the Patient One tried to swap us back prematurely, when Serenikha had been in her own nagini body but felt like she should have a human male body. We looked at one another anxiously. Our breasts were too large, weren’t they? No, we shouldn’t even have breasts... Then both bodies changed at once, those too-large breasts shrinking to nothing, hips narrowing, each clitoris enlarging and changing its structure while the vagina everted into a scrotal sac...

That felt physically satisfying, but as soon as our breasts were gone we missed them for another reason. “You’re going the wrong way!” we said. “We need to be able to nurse Sakhi, remember?”

“Quiet, let me concentrate,” Taylor said, but she looked even more worried. “Something’s different about your link, and it’s not just the way the transformation spell has gotten entangled with it.”

“It’s a lot stronger,” we said with both mouths.

“No shit,” she muttered. “Anyway, I can turn you back into lactating nagini as soon as I’ve got a spell-circle big enough to hold you. Go sit on the bed while I work.”

We got bored pretty quickly, and snuck off to play tag again. We tried to be more cautious about being seen; we were male at the moment, and we remembered the uproar there was last time a man was seen in the women’s quarters. And we found that tag wasn’t much fun now that our link was so strong; we couldn’t surprise ourselves. So instead we practiced fancy flying maneuvers, initially staying in the suite of rooms assigned to Taylor and Leslie, but venturing carefully out into the corridor after looking both ways and seeing no one. We stayed near the high ceilings, trusting that people usually don’t look upward unless they have a particular reason to.

We flew in tightening and widening spirals down the hall, passing a couple of servants with a cart of dishes who didn’t seem to notice us, and a couple of ladies on their way back to their rooms from the baths. It occurred to us that we had been sticking close together since our link strengthened, and we wondered if that was really necessary. With one body we flew out a window into the nearest garden, and with the other we stayed indoors, slipping into one room and then another and watching the oblivious people below us. We didn’t get confused by the completely different scenes presented to each pair of eyes, or the different conversations each body might overhear: a lady in her chamber instructing a servant how she wanted her hair done for the day, a couple of early risers breakfasting in the garden and gossiping about our sudden transformation in the middle of the banquet.

After a while we sent the nearest body back to Taylor’s room to see if she was ready for us. She wasn’t in the room, but her staff was leaning against the bed, back to full size, and a large circle had been drawn on the floor. We started searching for her with both bodies, bringing the other one in from the garden. In a nearby corridor we found her, back in her previous nagini form; we flew down and hovered in front of her.

“Are you ready for us?”

“Yes, for the last ten minutes! Where’s — are you Serenikha or Leslie?”

We shrugged. “We split up to search for you. He’ll be back at the room by the time we get there.”

She narrowed her eyes at us. “Something is very weird about your link today... do you intuitively know where he is?”

“Yes.”

“Leslie didn’t, a few nights ago when we were lost in the north wing. He had a vague feeling of what direction you were in but he didn’t feel sure about it, and the vague feeling turned out to be wrong. And now... Oh shit. We all slept right next to each other last night!”

“Yes...”

“And the Gray One said for you two not to sleep within a couple of hundred yards of each other! We’ve got to figure out what happened...”

“Don’t worry. It’s good.”

“Leslie’s my little brother and I’m entitled to worry about him.”

“I know.” (“We know” didn’t seem like the right thing to say, though it was true.)

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We returned to the room, where our other body was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the vast circle. “Serenikha, go sit in the circle too, but not too close to Leslie... Leslie, why don’t you move over a bit and make room. And when your tails start growing out, try not to scuff the chalk.”

We positioned our bodies about three yards apart and two yards from the edges of the circle, and Taylor went to work. After she’d been chanting for a few minutes, our legs started to feel like a split tail — we’d felt that before, all right — and our penises to feel superfluous. And we felt the hugeness of our surroundings more acutely than we’d felt it since we first became pixies. So it felt satisfying when our legs started merging into naga-tails, even before we had grown very much; we coiled them as they grew to keep them from scuffing the chalk. Soon both bodies looked like Serenikha.

“Can we nurse?” we asked, and squeezed the right breast of each body with its left hand. We nodded in satisfaction at the drops of milk that emerged. “Good. Let’s go see Sakhi.”

“You’re going to freak Dhamarikha out if you go in there talking in unison like that. You’re freaking me out... it was odd enough when it was just a short phrase now and then, but seriously, what is up with you two?”

“We’re... both of us.”

“Okay... stay right there. I’m going to talk to the Gray One again.”

Soon we overheard her side of the conversation:

“...The results of those transformation tests were pretty much what we expected, and I’ve got them turned back into twin nagini, but now we’ve got another problem. Last night, I don’t recall if I mentioned, we flew around a lot in pixie form, and got lost, and just sort of bedded down where we found ourselves when we got sleepy. And — yeah, we kind of forgot about how they weren’t supposed to dream too close to each other... No, ma’am, I should have remembered, you’re right... Well, they’re talking in unison a lot. Not every time they open their mouths but fairly often. And Serenikha said she knew intuitively where Leslie was. And... just now they said ‘We’re both of us.’ I think they might be merging into a group-mind or something... Would you? Thanks, I’ll — Oh. That would be great, I’m getting a little tired.”

She fell silent; she was coiled so most of her tail was in front of her, and she leaned forward, her arms resting on the coil of her tail.

“Stay right there. The Gray One’s coming.”

“All right.” We used only one mouth that time, to try to reassure her.

A few minutes later Taylor suddenly stood up straighter and looked at us. “Good morning,” she said. “Let’s have a look at your link, shall we?”

“Gray One?” we said with one mouth.

“Yes. Before I start casting diagnostic spells, tell me what feels different about your link now.”

We weren’t sure we wanted to be totally honest with her. Taylor had been acting like our stronger link was a bad thing, and she wanted to weaken it to how it was before. “What are you going to do?” we said with the body on the left.

“I don’t know yet. It depends on what I find out and what you want.”

“You won’t do anything without us saying it’s okay?” we said with the right mouth.

“Probably not — unless I think you’re in danger and not thinking clearly.”

“We’re thinking more clearly than before,” we said with the left body. “Both of us know everything that either of us knew, and other things we’d forgotten,” with the right. “And we can see out of all four eyes, and when we’re pixies we can fly in perfect formation. And —” (hesitating, trying to find the right words, and switching mouths when we resumed) “— when Taylor transformed us, we could feel it. Not just feel our bodies changing, but... we think we felt the spell working, too.”

“That is intriguing. Did you feel some unfamiliar sensation before your bodies started visibly changing?”

“Not a sensation, exactly. It was more of an emotion, or a disconnect between what we felt and what we thought we should feel. Like when the Patient One put us back in the right bodies at the wrong time, and our legs felt wrong... our self-image changed before our bodies changed physically.”

“Hmm... You said you can see out of all four eyes? You mean that both of you see what either of you sees?”

“That’s right.”

“Leslie, please turn to face away from me; Serenikha, you’re to look at me.” We arranged our bodies as he instructed. “And now... Leslie, how many fingers am I holding up?”

“Four,” we said with the head that was turned away.

“Interesting. I’m going to transform you again, and I want each of you to raise your right hand as soon as you feel your self-image changing as you described. Keep your eyes closed throughout the process, and make sure you’re not touching... just as you are is fine.”

We closed all our eyes and waited. Several minutes later we felt something shifting inside, and we raised our right hands; we realized our tails felt wrong, like squished-together pairs of legs. Then they were legs, and we had something dangling between them.

“You’re going to change us back soon, right? Sakhi needs a feeding.” The human nurses could help Dhamarikha in a pinch, but human milk wasn’t ideal for a naga baby.

“Yes, right away. You can open your eyes now.”

We turned and looked at our bodies: both looked like Leslie had looked when we arrived in the baths.

“All right, I’ll change you back into Serenikha-twins. Just a few moments... why don’t we do that same test again, just for fun. Close your eyes and raise your hands when you feel the change starting.”

It was more than a few moments, but faster than when Taylor transformed us. We were soon back in mommy-form.

“Can we take a break while we nurse Sakhi, please?”

“All right. Will you want to go to where she is, or have the nurse bring here here? I’ll come with you, or stay and watch, either way.”

We pulled the bell-rope, which one of our bodies could just reach from inside the circle, and summoned a servant. “Have Dhamarikha bring Sakhi here, right away if she’s not asleep, or else as soon as she wakes up.”

“Is Bhavalikha around the palace?” the Gray One asked, before the servant left. “Or if not her —”

“She’s here, probably not far away.”

“Good. Miss, please find Bhavalikha and send her here as well, as soon as you’ve delivered your mistress’s message to Dhamarikha.”

When the servant had gone, we asked: “What do you think? Taylor was freaking out about it. But we like it this way.”

She sighed. “I’m not sure what to think. I need to cast some diagnostic spells; if we find that Sakhi is asleep, I’ll do that next, otherwise it can wait until after you nurse her. Do you feel like you’re still two people who can communicate much better than before, or one person with two bodies?”

We hesitated, not sure how honest to be. But she’d probably figure it out once she started casting diagnostic spells. “It’s hard to say exactly. One and a half people, maybe?”

She nodded absently, and looked down at herself. “We should probably get dressed, shouldn’t we?”

“Can we break the circle?”

“Oh, yes, go ahead.”

So we found sari-camisoles and got dressed, helping out the Gray One when she couldn’t figure out how to loop and tie hers. While we were working on that, the Gray One said: “When Bhavalikha gets here — or perhaps after you’re done nursing Sakhi — I want Leslie to go into another room with me, while Serenikha stays here with Bhavalikha. I want to see if you can carry on two conversations at once without arousing Bhavalikha’s suspicions.”

“We can probably do that.”

We’d just gotten decent when Dhamarikha came in carrying Sakhi. She was alertly looking around, and when she saw us, she reached out her little arms. We picked her up with one body, and with the other body’s arms we loosened the sari we’d just put on the body that was holding Sakhi, so she could nurse. She’d drained one breast and we’d shifted her to the other breast on the same body when Bhavalikha arrived.

“Is now a good time, Leslie?” the Gray One asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yes,” we said with the body that wasn’t nursing Sakhi.

“Then let’s go into the next room, or wherever we can talk privately.”

We went into the sitting room attached to our bedroom, and the Gray One closed the door behind us. “Are you still aware of Serenikha and her surroundings?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s find out,” she said in English, “if you can carry on a conversation in English with me and in another language with Bhavalikha.”

“I don’t see why not,” we said to her in English, and to Bhavalikha, in our other native language: “What have people been saying about me, Bhali?”

“Oh... I’ve heard a couple of different stories about how you transformed during the banquet and what happened after that. Someone said you flew around the room a couple of times and sprinkled pixie dust on the food...” said Bhavalikha, while the Gray One asked: “You said you felt like one-and-a-half people. Can you elaborate on that?”

I replied, “It’s like I want everything Leslie and Serenikha want, and I know everything they know, but I can look at Serenikha’s problems with Leslie’s eyes and Leslie’s problems with Serenikha’s eyes, and they don’t bother me as much,” while listening half in horror and half in amused detachment to several other ridiculous rumors about what I’d done since becoming a pixie. I didn’t even know what pixie dust was, exactly, but I was pretty sure I hadn’t manifested or excreted any, either as Serenikha or Leslie. “Don’t believe that,” I told Bhavalikha. “I did fly around a little, just getting used to my wings, but when I figured out what must have happened I perched on Sienpai’s shoulders and asked her to bring me here.”

“Well, you shouldn’t hole up here with the Tenacious One, you should circulate and talk to people, contradict the rumors. Sienpai and I sent Wushao and Tirishu a note of apology on your behalf, but you should pay her a visit now that you’re a naga again.” The Gray One looked thoughtful, and said: “How far does this, hmm, detachment go? Do you still care about getting back before the end of Spring Break?”

“I’ll do that soon,” I said to Bhavalikha. “When the little gaping maw has drained this breast I’ll let her have a go at Leslie, and you and I will go pay a call on Wushao.” And to the Gray One I added: “Yes, but if I can’t get back in time it won’t be devastating.” Privately, we were worried that if Leslie went home it would weaken our link to what it had been before. But maybe it would get this strong again over time, as the worlds got closer. And we couldn’t put our life as Leslie on hold while we waited for that.

Bhavalikha was satisfied with that, and settled back quietly to wait for me to finish nursing Sakhi. We were satisfied too, not that we’d been particularly worried about getting the two conversations confused, and we spent the next couple of minutes singing a silly song for Sakhi while we continued talking with the Gray One as Leslie.

The Gray One asked us more about what our link felt like now and whether it felt like it had been strengthening ever since Leslie arrived in this world. Finally she said: “I’ll cast those diagnostic spells now, if you don’t mind.”

“Serenikha has to go do damage control,” I said, “apologizing to people for transforming in public, dispelling rumors and so forth. And she wants me to nurse Sakhi and watch her while she’s busy with that.” We slithered the Leslie body toward the door, and burped Sakhi with the other body.

“Serenikha,” the Gray One said as we entered the bedroom, “I need to cast those diagnostic spells sooner rather than later. I’m supposed to swap back with the Tenacious One in another couple of hours.”

Bhavalikha looked confused, and we realized we hadn’t told her Taylor had swapped with the Gray One. We sighed with both mouths, and said with Serenikha’s:

“All right, if it won’t take more than a couple of hours we can visit Wushao afterward. Bhavalikha, please send Wushao a note and let her know I’ll visit her around lunchtime if she wishes, or at any later time that suits her better.”

The Gray One waited impatiently while we gave Sakhi the milk in Leslie’s breasts. Then we laid her down on the bed to play, and let Dhamarikha watch her while the Gray One drew a circle around both our bodies and cast her diagnostic spells.

We got various sudden sharp sensations, most of them affecting both bodies at once and equally, but sometimes differently: for instance, at one point we felt like our Serenikha back was being rubbed with sandpaper while our Leslie back had oil or warm milk or something dripping down it. We duly reported each of these sensations to the Gray One. At last a twisty strand of light appeared in the air between our heads, glowing first one color and then another, through the whole spectrum, and gradually settling on bright white.

“What does that mean?” we asked when the Gray One scuffed a gap in the circle and said we could move.

“Do you want to dismiss the nurse?”

“Very well... Dhamarikha, you may go. Sakhi will remain with us for now.”

With the body that we weren’t talking to the Gray One with we slithered onto the bed and encircled Sakhi, who was rolling over on her back and then onto her belly; she babbled excitedly and reached for our tail. We flicked it back and forth a couple of times before letting her grab hold of it.

“Your link is clearly much stronger,” the Gray One said. “On every level... Parts of your souls are directly connected that were only indirectly connected, the last time I examined your link. — Which was several years ago, now that I think about it. I should be checking you more often, but it appeared to have stabilized after the first year...”

“How is it going to work when Leslie goes home?” we asked.

She shrugged. “Impossible to say ahead of time... it must grow weaker, or at least affect you less strongly, with one of you in a low-magic area. But probably stronger than it was before Leslie came here. We could do a preliminary test, you know... see how strongly your link affects you when you’re thousands of miles apart in the same world. Mention it to the Tenacious One when she returns... If there’s nothing else, I’ll be going now.” And soon she swapped back with Taylor.

“What did she find out?” Taylor asked, and we told her. She nodded tensely.

“I phoned Mom and Dad while I was in the Gray One’s body,” she said. “They’re disappointed that we’ll be a little later getting home but not too worried, I think.”

“Did you tell them about our link?”

“No, I didn’t want to worry them any more. Let’s do that test the Gray One mentioned, putting thousands of miles between you —”

“Not now! We’re getting hungry, and Serenikha should meet with Wushao soon.”

“Hmm... I’m pretty hungry too. Let’s call the servants and ask for something. And there’s no reason we shouldn’t test it while Serenikha is meeting with Wushao.”

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Four of my novels and one short fiction collection are available from Smashwords in ePub format and from Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors more than other retailers.)

The Bailiff and the Mermaid	Smashwords	Amazon
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon