“I think the transformation spell is interacting with your link with Serenikha. It’s making you look more like her.”

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The Other Half of My Soul

Part 3 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 were tired from our long hike, and Taylor was especially tired after casting several spells, so she laid down on the bed to take a nap. Though there was room for me there as well, I sprawled out on the sofa instead and relaxed, but didn’t fall asleep.

A little while later, a servant tiptoed in and seemed to hesitate, wondering if we were awake. I sat up and looked at her.

“My lady,” she said, “do you or your sister require any refreshment?”

“My sister’s asleep,” I said. “I’d like some tea, if you don’t mind.”

“I shall bring it at once, my lady. Her Highness bid me to say that when you and your sister are rested, she will receive you in her chambers.”

“All right,” I said, “or if you get me some paper so I can leave my sister a note, I’ll slither along and see Serenikha now.”

She returned with a pot of tea and paper, ink, inkstone, water, brushes, sand — all the stuff you needed to write before pencils or ballpoint pens were invented. I hadn’t had occasion to use them during my brief earlier visit, but I found, on picking up the block of ink and the inkstone and looking at them, that I remembered how to use them — another skill I’d unconsciously picked up from Serenikha. I wasn’t sure if Taylor had given herself knowledge of written Draconic as well as spoken, so I wrote my message both in Draconic and in English, and left it on the little table by the bed, along with the pot of tea.

I followed the servant down more long, twisty hallways to a large room brightly lit by skylights. Serenikha uncoiled and slithered toward me as I entered.

“Leslie,” she said, “you look lovely. But where is the Tenacious One?”

“Taking a nap,” I said. “I expect she’ll be along later, when she’s rested from casting all those spells.” I didn’t ask her how she’d recognized me; it was obvious after a moment’s thought.

Several of the women I’d seen for a moment in the baths were there with Serenikha, along with a couple of others I recognized: Bhavalikha, an older nagini who had been my chaperon during my previous visit, and Shiyama, the bonsai kodama my Dad had swapped bodies with during that trip. She and Serenikha had become friends while they were visiting my world in mine and my Dad’s bodies, and Serenikha had kept me posted about her during our dreams over the years.

Sienpai, the tall woman who’d wanted to castrate me, was staring at me now. “Is this the man who intruded on us in the baths?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Serenikha said acerbically. I didn’t mention that for someone without our link it might not be.

Sienpai just smiled and nodded briefly. “This satisfies honor,” she said.

Serenikha ignored that. “You can only stay for about a day, is that right? I’ve got everything planned — you’re here earlier than I expected, so we’ll have more time to visit as you don’t have to travel halfway across the city to get here from your portal. Would you like to see Osalikha?”

“Would I!” I’d seen Serenikha’s dream-image of her any number of times since she was hatched, but I’d never thought I could see her in person. Standing this close to Serenikha, I could feel the overflow of her maternal feelings toward her baby daughter stronger than ever.

“Tiaopai, go to the nursery and see if Osalikha is awake. If so, inform Dhamarikha that I would like to see her.”

The servant — one I’d met when she was working at the naga embassy years ago — nodded and went out. Serenikha gestured me toward one of the empty seats, and we coiled our tails and relaxed.

“I’d like to ask you about something,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Just about the time you arrived here, I started having strange feelings in my tail... you recall how it was when the Patient One put us back in our own bodies but did not undo the spell that made us comfortable in the other one’s body?”

“Do I ever! Yes, I had it too — just after I got here, I started feeling like my legs ought to be a tail. Not as bad as it was back then, not enough to keep me from walking, but I think it made me a little clumsier, so I had to walk more carefully.”

“Ah. Yes, it was like that for me too — until an hour or so ago.”

“About the time when — uh, the Tenacious One transformed me?”

“I think so, yes. The feeling suddenly went away not long after we left you in that alcove so she could work her magic.”

I nodded. “And my tail stopped feeling wrong once it was, well, a tail.” I didn’t ask her if she’d had a sensation of a phantom penis, or mention my momentary sensation of phantom breasts; maybe if we’d been alone, but she hadn’t sent away all the other ladies-in-waiting and servants, and anyway the worst part of the dysphoria I’d suffered was in my tail. I mean, my legs.

“I remember that feeling,” Shiyama said, “or something like it, when the meddling mage pulled me back into my own body for a few intermittent moments... When I first arrived in your father’s body, I felt crippled to not have the link to my tree. But I quickly grew used to it, and pleased with my new stature and strength; and then I felt wrong when I returned to my own body out of season, my tree feeling like a hugely diseased limb and my mobile body small and distorted.”

I nodded. “What about, um, Tisicho and Altimeth?” They were the kitsune and sea-elf that Taylor and Mom had swapped with that time. “Have you heard from them recently?”

“I invited them to my wedding,” Serenikha said, “and Tisicho came, though Altimeth was at sea at the time. Altimeth paid his respects at the palace when he returned from that voyage, a few months later; but I have not seen them since.”

I wasn’t surprised, since I hadn’t heard her talk about them during our dreams. But what Shiyama had said reminded me about them and made me curious.

Just then another nagini slithered in, older than Serenikha but younger than Bhavalikha, and holding a squirming naga baby. Her torso was about the size of a human baby at four or five months old, but her tail was as long as my arm; she wore a simple white satin sari-camisole on her chest and a diaper wrapped around the end of her tail. My heart melted at the sight of her.

The nurse or nanny brought her over to where we were coiling and held her out; she looked around and reached out for her mommy. Serenikha took her, and she gurgled happily. “O, Mommy’s little Sakhi is in a good mood today! This is a very exciting day, little Sakhi. This is your uncle Leslie, whom I have told you all about.”

Shiyama smiled at that, but I was barely aware of it, my attention focused on the tiny form in Serenikha’s arms. She was coiling her tail around her mommy’s right arm, and with her right fist she dug into her mommy’s sari-camisole and untucked the end, so it came loose on that side.

“What,” Serenikha said in mock indignation, “are you hungry again already? Did nursie Dhamarikha not have enough for you? Oh, very well, if you must...” She loosened the sari the rest of the way and let Sakhi nurse.

I sat close to Serenikha, watching her nurse her baby, vaguely aware of the ladies-in-waiting chatting about something. When Sakhi had had enough milk to satisfy her, Serenikha asked, “Would you like to hold her?”

I held out my arms. “Come see Uncle Leslie?” Sakhi looked at me curiously for a few moments, then held out her arms and uncoiled her tail from around Serenikha’s arm. I took her gingerly and held her in my arms, her head lying against my right breast; her tail coiled around my left arm. She watched my face intently for a little while, and then grabbed hold of my sari and tugged at it.

Serenikha laughed, and so did I; I wasn’t sure how much of my amusement was directly from watching Sakhi and how much was spillover from Serenikha, nor did I care. “Sorry, little one, there’s no milk in these breasts. You’ve had two breakfasts today already, isn’t that enough for you?”

She remained hopeful, however, and kept tugging clumsily at my sari until it came loose. I decided to let her find out for herself that my breasts were empty; I might not able to really nurse her, but I was curious about what it felt like, and I figured this would be the next closest thing.

That was how Taylor found us when she came in, escorted by Tiaopai.

“This is my sister,” I said, remembering that nobody here had seen her since she transformed, “the Tenacious One.”

“Sakhi, stop being so greedy and say hello to your aunt,” Serenikha said.

Sakhi gave up in disappointment about then, and looked up at the sound of her mother’s voice. Taylor slithered over next to us.

“This is your baby girl? Um, Osalikha?”

“That’s her nagini-name,” Serenikha confided. “She also has a passel of dragon and kitsune names given by her father and paternal aunts and godmothers. If you hear Pientao talking about Satien, he means Osalikha.”

Taylor looked around the room, and then back at Sakhi resting in my arms and looking back at her. She said gravely to Sakhi, “It is good to meet you, little princess.” Then, to Serenikha: “Would you introduce me to the other ladies of your court, Highness?”

“Oh, yes — I am remiss today, everything has happened so fast. Everyone, this is Leslie Kendricks, who has the other half of my soul. This is his sister, the Tenacious One, who has transformed herself and her brother into nagini to do honor to my court. Honored visitors, you already know Bhavalikha, who came with me from my homeland when I first arrived at the embassy. This is Lady Sienpai, a cousin of my husband, Prince Pientao. Lady Michiko is a cousin of Lady Hanuseri, whom you know...” She introduced us to all the ladies present, including some who hadn’t been in the baths when we arrived. There were some women she didn’t introduce, and I inferred they were servants — it wasn’t always obvious, though on average the ladies had fancier clothes and hairdos than the servants.

After that we all went out to one of the many gardens around the palace, and ate lunch. After looking alertly around for a while, and babbling earnestly at intervals, Sakhi fell asleep in my arms, and I surrendered her to Dhamarikha to take back to the nursery.

“I planned a dinner in your honor for tonight,” Serenikha said, “though I wasn’t quite sure you’d be here in time. You should return to your room a couple of hours ahead of time to refresh yourselves and dress for dinner; I’ll send servants to help you.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you sure you don’t want me to give you another room?”

“No, we’d rather share a room,” Taylor said, putting a hand on mine. “It’s been five years since I had a sister, and I was a man at the time. So I’m looking forward to some girl talk.”

“We used to share a room, when we were little,” I added. That was when we lived in the apartment on San Salvador Avenue, before Mom and Dad bought the house they lived in now, when I was seven and Taylor was nine.

“If you wish to use the baths before dinner, you should probably go now,” Serenikha said. “I’ll join you... my bath this morning was kind of interrupted.” She smiled, as if to show there were no hard feelings about that.

“Oh!” Taylor gasped, “I forgot all about the portal... it’s still open there in the baths!”

“I’ve had eunuchs posted at the door since everyone cleared out,” Serenikha said. “No one should have disturbed it.”

“I’ll work on it, make it dormant so nobody can stumble into it by accident.”

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Since Serenikha wasn’t the only one who hadn’t gotten as clean as they wanted before our sudden arrival, several others returned to the baths with us. Taylor went in alone, first, to work on the portal and make it safe so nobody could wander into it by accident. She was in there what seemed like a long time, though I hadn’t any clock — I’d left my cellphone in my luggage in our room. Serenikha, Shiyama and I chatted about palace gossip, but after a while I grew distracted and didn’t contribute much to the conversation, thinking about how long a time Taylor was taking with the portal.

Then she slithered out, wearing what I was sure was a fake smile.

“All done,” she said. “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

I followed her, seeing that the portal was gone or at least invisible. “You hid it so nobody can stumble into it?” I asked.

“Yep!” Again, too forcibly cheerful to be real. I waited until we were undressed and in the bath, and made sure I was closer to Taylor than anybody else. All the other women wanted to be close to Serenikha, it seemed, so it wasn’t hard to let some of them get between me and her.

“What gives?” I whispered to Taylor, our voices covered, I hoped, by the louder conversation from the other end of the bath.

“Something’s wrong with the portal,” she said, “it’s too small.”

“What?”

“When I came in here it had already shrunk down to about eight inches in diameter. And it was still shrinking... I tried to enlarge it, but I only got it up to about two feet wide before it shrank again. I think the magic level on the other side is fluctuating more than I expected — it might fall so low the portal collapses entirely, or it might increase enough that I can get us home through it...”

“Shit.”

“So I closed it down to a couple of nanometers,” (that word was in English), “and hopefully that will avoid depleting the local level of magic over there so it has a chance to build up again. But we’ll need to leave as soon as I can get it working again.”

“If you can get it working again.” I realized I was breathing too fast, and willed myself to calm down.

“Don’t panic,” she said. “We might miss the rest of the semester, but we’re not going to be stuck here for the rest of our lives. The worlds are getting closer together and there’s one of those magic surges in North America every few months, one somewhere in the world almost every month... if this portal collapses, I can get the Gray One or some of my fellow students to help me open another one somewhere else.”

“Good... I guess.”

Shiyama swam over and splashed us. “What is so interesting that it cannot be shared?” she teased.

“Oh, nothing much,” Taylor said with another fake smile. “I was reminding her how Dad used to give us baths when we were small.”

“A boy and a girl together?” She sounded interested, not shocked.

“It was when we were very small,” I said. “I barely remember it.” I’d seen photos of us in the bath, me at two and Taylor almost four, but the photo-images had replaced the real memories by now.

We scrubbed each other’s backs, and chatted about inconsequential things. Gradually other women started getting out of the baths and drying off, and Taylor and I followed. Shiyama showed us where there were wraps and robes we could wear back to our room, and Serenikha said she had assigned servants to lay out our clothes for dinner on the bed.

“And they’ll help you do your hair and so forth, too — just ring the bell when you are ready.”

“We will,” Taylor said. “But I shall linger here for a few moments to check on the portal spell. And — if possible, Your Highness, I would like to speak with you privately before dinner, or perhaps after.”

“Before dinner, then. I’ll come to your room when I’ve finished dressing.”

I stayed with Taylor while everyone else put on their wraps or robes and left. She took up her staff and pointed it at a spot in the middle of the air, roughly where the portal had been, and started chanting. A minute later a tiny sphere of darkness appeared and expanded, then a dim greenish light appeared in the center of the sphere. But it got no bigger than a foot across before she withdrew her staff and let it shrink to almost nothing again.

“It’s not recovered yet,” she sighed. “Well, we might as well eat something.”

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The servants were still braiding our hair and plaiting ivory rods into it when Serenikha called. Another servant came in and said, “My ladies, Her Highness the Princess Serenikha is here.”

“Send her in,” I said, and a moment later she slithered in.

“You said you wished to speak with me privately, O Tenacious One?” she asked.

“Yes,” Taylor said. She told Serenikha what she’d told me about the portal; she switched to English, probably so the servants wouldn’t understand.

“Oh, no! Then you’ll be unable to go home?”

“For a little while, perhaps — but I hope the portal will recover enough for us to pass through it by the time dinner is over. And if not, I should be able to open another portal to somewhere in our world within a month or two.”

“You are welcome to stay at the palace as long as you need to, of course. And if you need anything, any materials for your spells or a large space to work, it is yours for the asking. Or I could ask one of the other mages at court to assist you.”

“I’ll just need access to the women’s baths later in the evening and maybe during the night. I hope the portal will be recovered enough to dilate fully within two or three hours, after dinner, but if not I will get up several times during the night to check on it; and we will have to leave quickly when the opportunity arises, without taking time for goodbyes.”

“I wish you could stay as long as you’d planned,” Serenikha said after a moment’s thought, “but I hope you will not be forced to stay longer. In any case, you are welcome... Is there anything else?”

“I think that’s it.”

The nagini hairdressers kept working on our hair; they were almost done when Serenikha remarked: “I see that you’ve changed Leslie’s scales... are you going to change your own to match?”

“What?” I asked, and Taylor looked startled. She twisted her head around to look at my tail, causing Talarikha to pull her hair; I, being perhaps more at home in a nagini body, moved my tail instead so I could look at it without moving my head. Sure enough, there at the end the last few bands were green and blue, like Serenikha’s, instead of the coral-pink, yellow and teal pattern that Taylor had given us when she cast the transformation spell.

“Hmm,” Taylor said, peering close at me, and then, with a glance at Serenikha: “Aha.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m not sure yet... Let’s keep an eye on it and see if your scales keep changing.”

“You know something,” I said; “spit it out!”

“Well... I think the transformation spell is interacting with your link with Serenikha. It’s making you look more like her.”

“Can you stop it?” Serenikha asked, and I added: “What part of look don’t touch don’t you understand?”

“Sorry! I didn’t think it would... I mean, even the Gray One doesn’t fully understand how your link works, how am I supposed to figure it out with less than a hundredth of his experience?”

“For now, you can avoid casting any more spells on me,” I said, forgetting that I was the one who’d asked her to transform me. “Is this going to turn me into Serenikha’s twin?”

“If we wind up staying here until I have a chance to open another portal... probably so. But I can break it and recast it more carefully, so it doesn’t get tangled with your link next time. And it would wear off by itself anyway, it’s not permanent.”

“I don’t mind having Leslie be my twin,” Serenikha said, “but we’ll need to tell people about it, and ensure that we dress distinctly so people don’t get us mixed up.”

“And if you break it, Sienpai and her friends will be upset about me being the man who spied on them in their bath,” I added. “I guess we can leave it alone... but you’d better talk to the Gray One about it before long.”

“I’ll contact him this evening, if we aren’t home by then.”

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If you've enjoyed this and the other free stories I've posted here, you may also enjoy these novels and short fiction collection -- 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