She undressed in the dark and stashed her clothes and shoes on the shelves, then looked inward at her structure, deciding what form she wanted for this purpose. She started making changes, reducing her size and altering her structure. Twitching her whiskers and sniffing gingerly at the door, she slipped quietly into the corridor and scurried down it towards the front parlor.

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Part 18 of 22

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

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

After she finished eating, Launuru laid down again, but couldn't sleep. She got up and paced the tiny room for a few minutes, wondering again what Terasina intended. It seemed clear that she wanted Verentsu and Launuru to be together, but beyond that, Launuru couldn't figure out what was going on.

Some while later, after she had lain down again, the slave girl who had brought her food and escorted her to Verentsu's tent came to the door again.

“Ma'am, you asked me to tell you when the men had left the hall after supper.”

“They're gone now?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. I'll be there soon. You needn't wait.”

She rose from bed and went to the clothes-horse where all her decent clothes were hanging. The dress she'd worn that morning was dry now, but too dirty to wear to supper, its back and seat covered with dirt from where she'd sat in the tomb; the dress she'd put on later was cleaner, but still slightly damp. She sighed and put it on, then walked down the corridor to the dining hall.

She heard laughter from up ahead as she approached. As she entered the room, she saw Tsavila standing on the dais at the head of the room, flanked by Lentsina and another older woman — she thought it was one of Tsavila's aunts on her mother's side, but couldn't recall her name; the women were talking about Tsavila and the wedding, and Tsavila was blushing furiously.

Launuru looked around and found Kazmina; fortunately there was an empty seat near her, though not right next to her. She slipped in and sat down as quietly as she could, though not without several people noticing her; she saw various eyes turning away from the group on the dais to regard her with frank curiosity.

“How are you feeling?” Kazmina asked quietly, leaning across the woman sitting between her and Launuru.

“Better,” she said; “better rested, anyway.”

“That's good.” Kazmina looked bored; she'd probably been listening to Lentsina and the other woman talk in Ksiluri for a while. But it didn't seem to suit for them to chat in Tuaznu now, however quietly, not with someone else sitting between them. Launuru listened to the woman, whom she gradually figured out was Tsavila's Aunt Nantsuno, telling silly stories about Tsavila's childhood.

“When Tsavila was about three, she and her brothers came to stay with me and their Uncle Orintsu for a month. I took them for a walk one day, and we as we passed the home of one of my neighbors, his dogs started barking at us — he had three or four guard dogs in his front garden, the smallest of them taller than Tsavila or Verentsu, and the biggest of them almost as tall as Iantsemu. Verentsu was obviously scared of them, and I think Melentsu was too, though he tried not to show it. But Tsavila just looked at the dogs and yelled: 'If you bark at me I'll bark at you.' And they stopped barking.”

Kazmina, who'd been fidgeting and looking around at everyone but the women on the dais, said, “I'm going to the garderobe,” and rose from her seat. Launuru wasn't sure if that was code for “Let's go somewhere we can talk privately;” she looked at her friend uncertainly and started to rise, but Kazmina waved reassuringly at her and turned to go. Launuru sat back down and listened to Lentsina tell how four-year-old Itsulanu had knocked over and broken a vase a client had left with her for an unbreakability enchantment; from the corner of her eye she saw Kazmina leave the room.

Kazmina had spoken with almost all of the wizards present, either at breakfast or during the iavalem game or lunch or supper, and in most cases she'd managed to introduce the topic of slavery into the conversation; but the attitudes of her interlocutors ranged from complacent to cynical. She would have to work alone, if she was going to do anything for Psavian's slaves before she left; there was no one she could trust to interpret for her or otherwise help her.

And she was getting bored, listening to Lentsina and one of Tsavila's non-wizardly kinswomen tell apparently funny stories in Ksiluri. It wouldn't have been quite so bad if the people around her weren't laughing so hard; she'd gotten used to being left out of conversations, over the last few days. But she'd had enough for now, and wanted to see something different.

She left the dining hall via the corridor through which the men had retired after supper; she heard loud laughter from up ahead, in the front parlor. Before she reached the parlor, she found an unlocked closet door she'd noted earlier, and ducked inside, almost but not quite closing the door. She undressed in the dark and stashed her clothes and shoes on the shelves, then looked inward at her structure, deciding what form she wanted for this purpose. She started making changes, reducing her size and altering her structure. Twitching her whiskers and sniffing gingerly at the door, she slipped quietly into the corridor and scurried down it towards the front parlor.

The parlor was smaller than the dining hall, but had about as many people squeezed into it; furthermore, the men weren't all sitting around laughing at someone telling stories about the bridegroom, but were on their feet, most or at least many of them, walking around, or perhaps dancing; Kazmina wasn't sure. Her time-sense was off a bit in this form, and it was hard to be sure how fast the men's feet were moving — plenty slow enough for her to avoid them, anyway. By staying near the wall, in dark places under chairs and tables, she managed to avoid being noticed, and found some vantage points from which she could watch the proceedings and figure out what was going on.

One of these giants was blindfolded, and being led around the room by another; various others were milling around near these two, now and then reaching out and touching the blindfolded man with a fingertip, or even jabbing a finger into his ribs, then dancing backward as the blindfolded man — it was Itsulanu, she realized — groped with the hand that his guide wasn't holding, perhaps trying to retaliate on the ones who'd jabbed him. What sort of game was this?

She watched for a while, and finally recognized the man leading Itsulanu by the hand as Pautsanu (her small eyes weren't good at distinguishing the features of giants, and the parlor was less well-lit than the dining hall). She noticed that when Itsulanu managed to catch one of the men who'd jabbed him, the man found a seat and dropped out of the game, amid jeers from the others. When there were only a few men left standing besides Itsulanu and Pautsanu, the latter took a more active role in helping him move toward the remaining players. Itsulanu caught them, one after another; finally only one was left, one of Verentsu's older cousins on his mother's side, and there were raucous cheers from the seated men. They sang a song in Ksiluri as Pautsanu removed Itsulanu's blindfold. The bridegroom and the last player he'd never caught bowed to one another, and they took seats on the best divan.

Psavian rose then and spoke to a free servant who had been standing by; he withdrew via another door than the one Kazmina had entered by. A few moments later four slave girls entered the room bearing trays with pitchers and mugs. They moved among the seated men, serving something — Kazmina couldn't see it, but it smelled like beer.

All four were young and, within the limits of Kazmina's vision in her current form, beautiful; none of the older or plainer-looking slaves had been assigned to serve here tonight. She noted with increasing fury that, in the absence of the women, the men were treating the slaves even worse than usual: probably more than half of them, while the girls were pouring their beer, reached out to fondle their half-covered thighs or bare breasts; one man even reached up under the youngest slave's skirt. Kazmina impulsively scurried from her current hiding place to dash under the man's chair; she regretted it almost at once, but no one had noticed her, their eyes probably being on the slave girls. Kazmina looked up through the legs and seat of the chair, its dead wood going transparent to her wizardly vision, and contemplated his structure and that of the girl he was molesting. Various ideas for punishing him stumbled over one another in her mind, but she restrained herself, trying to avoid anything too obvious. Probably half of the men present were wizards, and though they were all distracted and many of them were drunk, she couldn't cast a major spell without drawing their attention to herself.

Promising herself she would do something worse to him later, when she found him alone, she focused on his testicles and transformed them into inert lumps of fat. The man withdrew his hand from the girl's skirt with a yelp and grabbed his crotch. For a moment Kazmina was apprehensive, and she drew back further into the shadows under the chair, ready to dash for another hiding place if necessary; but deep laughter met her ears.

To her relief, she heard a snatch of Rekhim conversation as she made her way under the chairs toward the door by which the slaves had entered.

“Was it you who stung Metsaunu?” one of the older wizards asked another. Kazmina was under the man's chair and couldn't see him, and though she could hear him clearly enough to understand what he was saying, she didn't recognize his voice as it sounded in her tiny ears.

“No,” said another, sitting next to the first; “I think it was someone toward the other end of the room. Good work, whoever it was — I couldn't trace it, with so many minor spells in effect here already.”

Kazmina continued making her way to the door, then, when no one was near, dashed out and down the corridor.

After Lentsina and Tsavila's aunt had run out of embarrassing stories about the bride and bridegroom, Tsaikuno rose and sang a song in Rekhim. Launuru was surprised; she thought the girl was still a beginner at the language — but of course she might have memorized such a song while being yet unable to hold up her end of a conversation. Glancing around, she saw tears in the eyes of some of the wizards when Tsaikuno reached the end; even not knowing a word of the language, Launuru could appreciate Tsaikuno's singing voice, which she found more pleasant than her ordinary speaking voice.

Several others, mostly Tsavila's younger kinswomen, sang various songs in Ksiluri, and most of the company joined in the choruses of the better-known songs. Launuru stopped herself just in time from joining in on the first chorus of “Tuapavi's Lament”; a foreigner like Shalasan would probably not know it. Later, she allowed herself to join the later choruses of some of the longer and simpler songs, which she might plausibly have learned from hearing them sung several times by the others.

Launuru was so caught up in the singing that she didn't realized how long Kazmina had been gone until she returned, nearly an hour after she left. She settled in beside Launuru with a scowl.

“What's wrong?” Launuru whispered.

“I'll tell you later,” Kazmina whispered back.

Had she been sick in the garderobe...? It seemed unlikely; wizards tended to be unusually healthy until they died, usually suddenly without any previous sickness. Besides, Launuru had the impression that the trip to the garderobe was cover for something else, though she had no idea what.

After the singing, the formal program was over; various conversations sprang up all over the room, and several women got up and walked around, stretching their legs and talking with different people than their dinner-partners. Launuru and Kazmina rose and meandered into a corner of the room, where Launuru asked again: “What's wrong? When you got back, you looked — ” She couldn't think of the Tuaznu word for Kazmina's sour expression.

“I saw some of the slaves being mistreated,” Kazmina said. “I... I don't want to talk about it just now. Psavian's likely to look into your mind at some point, while removing the geas for instance, and I don't want to antagonize him more than I already have.”

“You think he'll be mad at you if he sees in my mind that you were talking about how his slaves were treated...? Maybe. I'm sorry... Where were you?” She saw Kazmina's look, and retracted her question: “Never mind. You're feeling well, though, otherwise? Just upset about the slaves?”

“Pretty much.”

They stood there in uncomfortable silence for a while, neither of them willing to talk about what was on their minds. One of Tsavila's aunts approached them and said, “Shalasan — I don't know what's going on, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I hope things will be all right between you and Verentsu.”

“Thank you,” Launuru said, embarrassed and confused. Did everyone know? Or rather, what did everyone think they knew? Who had talked? Not Tsavila or Verentsu, surely... But ten or twelve people had been spectators of the scene in the back vestibule this afternoon.

She endured several more such expressions of commiseration before she finally gave up and decided to return to her bedroom. Kazmina was talking, not very animatedly, with one of the younger wizards; Launuru decided not to interrupt her, but just waved at her and headed for the servants' quarters. But before she got to the door, Tsavila broke from the circle of women clustered around her and dashed over to intercept her.

“Ah, Shalasan,” she said, and then in a lower voice, “How are you feeling? I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to talk to you again —”

“I'll be all right,” Launuru replied.

“I spoke with Verentsu — he wanted to apologize to you, but you weren't at dinner. Maybe at breakfast...”

“Maybe,” Launuru said. Whatever Terasina was planning, she would probably do it tonight, given that she'd asked Launuru to hide the twisted strands of hair near where Verentsu slept; and maybe reading the note she'd left on his cot would soften him as well. So perhaps tomorrow... “Yes, I'll see him at breakfast.” She glanced at the women standing nearby, gazing at her with curiosity and pity, and decided she'd had enough of that. “Good night,” she said, and returned to her bedroom.

She still hadn't gotten to sleep when Kazmina returned and got into bed, perhaps half an hour later, nor when Kazmina started snoring, perhaps a quarter of an hour after that; but she did, sometime before morning, sleep.

Verentsu was in Master Tsekaunsu's geography class; he'd sat on the back bench as usual, hoping not to be called on, but as usual, it did no good. “Verentsu,” the instructor said, “what is our chief import from Nemaretsu?”

“Um,” Verentsu said, and as the silence grew uncomfortably long, “Obsidian?” he guessed.

“No,” Master Tsekaunsu said severely. “Who can tell us...? Yes, Launuru!”

Launuru was sitting to Verentsu's right, not in his usual place on the front bench; Verentsu hadn't noticed him before. “Silk, sir.”

“Very good! The rest of you boys should be ashamed to be outdone by a girl; imitate Miss Launuru's diligence.”

Verentsu glanced at Launuru again, and realized in shock that it was true; she was a girl, and an unnervingly beautiful one.

“What...?” he asked in a whisper, and then “How...?”

“It's still me,” Launuru whispered. “Please don't go away.”

“Verentsu, can you tell us what is so important as to interrupt the class?”

Verentsu stammered incoherently. No one else seemed to think it strange that Launuru had become a girl, or worry that it might happen to them too; they would think him mad if he pointed it out. Launuru was staring at him with pity, like most of the other boys — most of the boys.

“Come here,” Master Tsekaunsu said, and as Verentsu rose and squeezed past the boys to his left — he didn't want to touch Launuru, lest he become a girl as well — the instructor continued: “Go to the headmaster's office.” When Verentsu reached the front of the room, Master Tsekaunsu handed him the red-painted wooden stick that would give him permission to be in the corridors and signal to the headmaster what his offense was this time.

Verentsu left the room, blushing and hanging his head, and walked down the corridor to the staircase... But it wasn't the staircase in the north tower of the academy, it was the stairs in his family's city house, and they went up, not down. He followed them and came to his mother's bedroom.

“Come in, son,” his mother said kindly. She was sitting at her desk in her favorite housedress, and she had an account book open on the table before her, but she pushed it away and put down her pen as Verentsu entered. “What's wrong?”

“I'm afraid me and the other boys will turn into girls too,” he said.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Launuru is special; don't be afraid of her.” She ran her fingers through her hair, dropping a couple of loose strands on the table before her as she spoke.

“I'm not afraid of her; I'm afraid for her. I'm afraid of hurting her.”

“Don't be. You're her closest friend; isn't she your closest friend too?”

“Yes...”

“Do you think you can trust her?”

“She's changed,” he said. “I want to trust her, but I don't know...”

“She hasn't changed as much as you think. Ask your sister. Launuru needs you, and you need her — you love each other, and you suit each other; it's a rare and lucky chance when those things come together. They didn't for your father and me.”

“I know.” He thought of the scenes he'd witnessed between them over the years, and more and more often in his last few visits home, and started to cry.

She ran her fingers through his hair, making wordless comforting noises; after a few moments she looked up and said: “Come in.” Verentsu turned and saw girl-Launuru at the door, looking uncertain. She entered at his mother's invitation.

“Please don't be angry with me, Verentsu,” Launuru said.

“I'm not angry,” he replied, “but I worry about you.”

“Perhaps you should,” she said. “If I don't find a man who loves me and has good prospects, my father and mother will arrange a marriage for me; and I might not be as lucky as Tsavila. Most girls aren't.”

“I'll find a way to change you back.”

“No, please don't,” Launuru said, and “That would make things worse,” said his mother.

“Come here, my children,” she went on. Verentsu and Launuru both approached her, and she wrapped them in a fiercely protective hug. “I love you, my children,” she said. “I want to protect you, and I will if I can, but you have to stay close together.”

Verentsu and Launuru began to cry on their mother's shoulders.

And Verentsu was crying as he woke up. It was still almost pitch dark; the rain was still drizzling, a steady pattering on the oilcloth of the tent. He hoped it would clear before noon, when the wedding was to take place. He realized that Launuru's note was still clutched in his hand, where he'd held it as he fell asleep.

It was too dark to read it, but he didn't need to; he remembered it well.

“Dear Verentsu,

“I apologize for running off and giving you and Melentsu so much trouble today. I know I asked a great deal of you, but can you not realize that you asked me for even more? If you will have me as I am, you will make me happy and I will do my best to make you happy; but let us not try to change one another.”

In the lower left corner was what a casual observer might think an S-rune, but which Verentsu recognized as Launuru's sloppy L-rune, with its lower loop not quite closed. Whatever else the transformation had changed, her handwriting was still the same.

He lay there for some time, but couldn't sleep again. When the darkness began to be tinged with dawn-light stubbornly pushing through the drizzling clouds, he got up and got dressed.

The full novel is already available from Lulu.com. I'm serializing it here in twenty-two parts, at least one chapter per week if I can manage it.