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A second-person-viewpoint narration of a Pagan journey through a year-and-a-day of the familiar, to find the mystery behind the mysteries. Yes, this is a magical gendershift story. ---------------------------------------------------------- Between Two Fires --Kiai 24sep03/29jul06/05mar07 Perhaps it is being brought up Pagan that has brought you to this. Where other religions segregate the sexes with walls of guilt and shame, never to meet except for brief distraught skirmishes in darkened rooms, no such isolation was ever taught you. You have grown up, instead, with a casual knowledge of how girls are shaped, even how they look when they proudly leak blood... but it leaves you to wonder: is this all there is? Partnership based on shape alone? Side by side, complacent and calm, except when the differences are tucked away in each other? All because of the one accidental chromosome issued when that happens, a role assigned by a pedestrian collision? Perhaps the mystery of women's mysteries is the lack of mystery, the simple fact that they're just like you except for what shape their bodies take, what part they play in breeding. Why, then, this diffidence? Why this mysterious dissociation from your part in the dance as dictated by what you wear between your legs when you are skyclad? As Beltane approaches, it slowly comes to you: there is something here, something deep, and it is closed to you because you only know the one shape. The mystery is not absent, then, instead it is at a deeper level. Now it taunts: how should this be solved? Alone, you take the problem to bed with you, communing first with the gods and then the power and then sleep, and awaken with a desperate solution in your mind: to understand the mystery, and why it is a mystery, you need to see both sides. You need to know what the other side experiences, by experiencing it. Can it be done? Can it be willed? It is one thing to feel the power rise like a prickly tide within a circle, driven by the thrumming of deep resonances, deeper than sound, when all the adult voices in the gathering are humming the power awake. The magic it does, though, is all unseen in its working, all subtle, designed to pass as happenstance and coincidence. The power hides from those who seek to misuse it, or to misuse those who touch it. This magic will be blatant, impossible to hide. Dare you ask something so overt of the gods? Dare you not? As you make your way through the trees towards the gathering-point of day and night, where the firepits are being cleaned and filled in preparation for the ritual at dusk, you privately take your intent into prayer, then with you to the circle ritual, communing with the gods even as you join the dance at the Maypole. Your own need is plaited into the Maypole weave as, unbound and incomplete, you meet each woman's face and form as she raises or lowers her ribbon to pass you by, silently asking, who are you? What are you? How can you be? The questions go unanswered. You feel the necessity hardening your resolve. Not only can you dare, you must dare. You will ask but once, and, if it is possible, it must be done; so mote it be. That one thought fills you as you jump between two fires, carrying across with you a wish to somehow leap across the vast space between skins, that lifelong gap between chromosomes in the shadows of each cell. As the ritual drums falter into silence, you wander out into the darkness and find a place in the forest to sit down. Not alone: you are partnered with the gods in this. You sit crosslegged against a sturdy tree and smooth your robe about your legs, noticing the tingle in your member, the periodic tightness in your scrotum. It is Beltane, after all, but your need is about more than mere ritual coupling. You rise above that distracting sensation as the the magic calls, feeling your aura touching the tree behind you, the leaf-strewn grassy earth beneath you, the dark and dewy night sky above you. You feel yourself expand into all of this, and give yourself to the process, whatever it will be, if it will be. Time seems to dissolve as you commit yourself to the embrace of those powers, expecting to rouse with at least an inspiration, a insight into the mystery. You wake up in the morning on the dewy grass, wearing a robe such as you never put on, one that's cut low to show a little of your cleavage. It's got familiar markings and stains, such as the wax clinging to the cuff from where you got too close to the working candle last year. It's yours, not someone else's, but it's changed now... like you. The gods have chosen how to answer your prayer; now you must deal with the gift they left. You get up and amble homeward across the dewy grass, exploring your changed balance as you go, feeling the jiggling that wasn't there before. The breasts are obvious, and they're distracting, but it seems like there's even a little bit of jiggle to your rump. It's padded now, of course, but... that much? Oh, yes, you're quite a healthy girl. How will you explain it to everyone? They will know it is you, of course; there can be no secret there. But, how will you explain why? Can you? Or must you withdraw from all who expect you in the other form? Perhaps you can go to another school now. You can envision yourself staying home in the afternoons because you don't fit in with the boys anymore but none of the girls are quite sure how to handle it yet. Must that be? They're from Pagan families, mostly. They know that magic is all around, and sometimes it swoops in close and touches someone. Will they accept that it has reached in for someone they know? It is commonplace for those your age to be bored of the stability, but that's because it's familiar, not because it's unwanted. Now you have made that stability seem illusory to them, leaving them with nothing to react against except you. In changing, in growing, you and they need that structure, that order, that fixity of form; and now you've changed all that, emerging from between two fires with your triangles and spirals as inverted as your groin. Can they accept the familiar person within the unfamiliar form? Or must they turn you out for taking them at their word? You need have no fears of being forced. You're touched by the Goddess now; in their eyes you're special. They will know better than to arouse the anger of whoever it was whose finger reached down from the infinite skies to touch and rearrange you into Her shape. Your family seems tight-lipped, but they're just giving you your space; they know that you need it. Your mother seems to accept it the most easily. In the quiet of your bedroom she takes you through the steps, showing you how to dress, how to make it more than just putting on clothing. Nature mostly favors the males for bright plumage, after all; the females must arrange for their own. A little of this, a touch of that, just a hint of a blush, and then it's time to survey the result. Yes, you're quite an attractive young lady. Now everyone else can see it too. Then she must return to her own activities. "If you need to talk..." At loose ends, you wander down, following her into the kitchen to watch her prepare dinner. She seems complete in her practiced movements, and you silently sit, a companion in that shared space, while you're trying to feel how the role must feel to her. And perhaps that in itself is sufficient. Some things have changed, but some things cannot. You are her child, no matter what shape you wear, and the closeness that comes >from that elemental relationship helps in some fundamental way to bind back the connections that have slipped because of your change. Your father is another matter. There's an added feeling of isolation now. You two never got along too well; there was just too much of the male challenge, the bluff facade that repels curiosity and affection before it can find weakness. There was always an edge to everything, as if you threatened his primacy by beginning the journey to manhood. Now that that implicit confrontation is gone, rather than a renewed closeness, it's as if you see each other through a window, an all-too-visible glass wall, an extra isolation formed of questions held, unasked but obvious, in his uncomprehending gaze. Why would you do such a thing? Did you want to be a girl all along? Was that it? Did we do you an injustice by birthing you in a male body? By now the silence has become thicker, too solid to pierce with words, because the first word will be judged even before the next is spoken. By expression alone, you try to answer, conveying in your mute response that, no, it was just something you had to do: a part of your life that needed exploring, Something that wouldn't wait. You had already surmised that the end of school days was not the desperate break for freedom that it was made out to be; why else would it be desperate? Already, in your observations of those around you, you could see all the trappings of the working world: commitments, schedules, all the clutter that ties up one's calendar and pins down one's life so that it cannot move. Now all that trapping is held in abeyance. Nobody knows what you're going to do, not even yourself. All you have so far is a quiet wondering, as you mutely take in all that must adjust to such a simple change, just one little chromosome. All the costuming and the markings, the roles in the banter, the positions that are open in the community, all of those, for you, have changed overnight, on Beltane night, the consummation of the great marriage between sky and earth, between the Lady and the Lord who hunts her, when the Lady takes the Lord into herself. Somehow the lance and the grail have exchanged places in your life, and you need to work out why, in that moment of transcendent awareness and hyperclarity, this was the inevitable choice. None of this really communicates, and you know it. There's a gulf of comprehension, and all of the meanings fall into the void between along with the questions. Finally, still in silence, he extends a hand, and you take it, letting his large hand envelop your own for long moments. At least there is peace. *Litha, Summer Solstice* Sunbright, and the whole town gathers, dancing in the wooded grove, rejoicing in the sun even as it begins to fade, leaving its heat behind. Here the oak king and holly king meet in ritual combat. Perhaps that might have been you, testing your horns against your father in joust. Now, though, you are the lady that watches, the ritual prize, affected by but unable to influence the inevitable outcome. By now, old friends start to eye you in a new way. They are getting over the strangeness and seeing your beauty now. The girls are more casual in accepting your presence among them. The boys court them in their artless way under the summer sun, looking for a spark amid the midday heat. Perhaps they tease you, too, a little. Are you chased yet? Are you yet chaste? Next year, perhaps. *Lammas* First harvest, the harvest of the grain, and the ripened stalks in fields, standing so proudly erect, are mown down like soldiers. In the high heat of summer, war is at its worst, flaring up in hot tempers and hotter lead, here presented in ritual form: John Barleycorn must die. So it's not just about the Goddess, is it. This is a sacrifice just for the men. You're no longer threatened by that, in fact you're ineligible now. You already gave at the orifice, bleeding with the moon. Instead, you join with the other girls in helping the women at their bread-making. It's simple work, simple fun, and an excuse to socialize and to share. Maid, Mother and Crone can together accept the offering of the slain, and work it into something to give back. Two of your new friends have something in the oven. They giggle to each other, with rueful grins and lustier complaints for their shared experience, surrounded by the well-meant advice of all those who have gone before, Mother and Crone both. Listening to them all, you find an unnoticed corner in which to press your belly tight as you try to think how it would be for it to no longer softly depress. There would be no give left, instead there would be a swelling, a rounded erection that would take months to come, and show itself as a different kind of bulge in your pants. Not yet, though, not for you: this is the Maid's mowing, and you are still the Maiden. With clever hands, you work the dough into manniquins and breadsticks to pass through the oven and then offer back to the men, a token payment for all of their seed which is safely stored away. *Mabon, Autumnal Equinox* Second harvest, the harvest of the fruit, and your group goes apple-picking. You lift your apron to carry the load >from the tree to the waiting baskets, then return for more. The expectant ones carry smaller loads in their aprons, but they do put in their turn; it is the Mother's mowing, after all. They make a bawdy comment about how these are sexual organs here, or their leftovers. These were once flowers, now swelled and hard. You grin and call back, "Just like you!" You offer to paint their bellies red and glue on stems. One lifts her apron and proudly points to her bellybutton, already sticking out a little, and laughs, "See, I've already got a stem!" There is shared laughter at that, an easy acceptance of your implicit part in all of this. Maybe they don't know why you changed, but they know that you're one of them now. You've paid the blood price, once every moon, preparing to ripen as they have. *Samhain* Third harvest, harvest of the kine, when the weak are sent on to wait, their bodies blessed with the salt of the earth so that they will keep, to feed those still here. This has always been the time of the choosing of the slain, the Crone's mowing. In their passage, perhaps the veils between worlds are disturbed, enough for glimpses beyond. This is a time for scrying, for seeing what you will see in the mirror of mists. Perhaps you see yourself in a simple maternity gown, radiant in expectation. It is a simple task if one ignores the labor before the labor, all the work of carrying that messenger around before the message is delivered. Farther still, you might see yourself in gray, labors done, tithing now in knowing. You work your way deeper into the mists, to find next the man you might have grown up to be. Might he have become a father? A king? He might yet. A year and a day is not forever, it's only made to feel that way. But is that the right course? It is summer's end, and choices must be made. Preoccupied, still you join in the celebration, bobbing for apples, mouthing these organs, as you ponder, knowing full well what else is shaped like that. You have one within you, bleeding apple-red with each turn of the moon, but is it your rightful burden? Is this what you were meant to bear? This is the Season of the Witch. You're touched: of course they come to you. Perhaps you can pierce the veils and see what is ahead or behind, or all around. In the still of the occulted light, you lose track of time: what day is it? There is no time, because there is no time, so see and comprehend everything in an instant if you can. It is overwhelming, that tide of brilliance, washing over your awareness in a wave of everything that might possibly be. It's like rising above the clouds to measure your progress by the sun, and finding that you've risen into the sun by so doing. Every direction is valid for its own purposes, its own logic. Below is wildness, filled with unruly shadows and storms, all the turbulence of wild forces that sums into the Wild Hunt. You spy out their course, see what they hunt, see whose spoor they've caught, hastening to fasten the details within your mind. You know that, as you advance into the dark quarter with everyone else, descending inevitably back into time's relentless rush, whatever you don't clutch closely to you will be washed away, forgotten. "Well? What did you see?" Now you are trying to parse the unfathomable. All courses run so deep in a sea of change, you are lucky to sift out a few observations which might prove useful in a moment of clarity, for the others and thus for yourself: This must be done thus, to avoid that. Make this change here to point straight through the coming year. Don't stop, don't look back. Darkness advances, but only because it's natural. It is wild, nevertheless, and precautions must be taken. Even as you settle back into the dim closeness of this one evening, there is the feeling of wind inside you. You never felt less like a person, not sure if you're a girl or a woman, even driven forward by the tides of blood. Perhaps, later, musing on your visions, you think of yourself as alone and wish to be otherwise. You are dreaming of a slain lover who is yourself, coupling with him in your fantasies, imagining him taking you to his barrow lair; but his cold seed cannot quicken, and there is starlight behind his eyes. It's as if he has already joined the Hunt and gone beyond. Was this wrong, this change of horse mid-course? As the dark time advances and the pools freeze, wrapped and curtained by chill rains soon to become snow, there is no bright conviction, and you find yourself crying yourself to sleep sometimes, and wondering why; it is so hard to be so unsure. *Yule, Winter Solstice* It is the relighting of the light, the rebirth of the sun, and, for once equipped for this subtle midwifery, you dress warmly to attend. While the men sleep undisturbed beneath the blankets, the women are up before dawn, preparing for the arrival. In a halo of candles, now you join them, all dressed like angels, poignant reminders of things resolved and resolving. The role is special for you: angels are travelers between earth and sky, openers of the way for the overt touch of magic. Were there others like you? There must have been; this kenning is too important to have been granted only once. Never mind that now. There is a feast to prepare, and gifts to be brought from hiding. With gentle touch and gentler embrace, mother and daughter share the work, and in that sharing the discrepancies between parent's wish and child's will can be accepted and perhaps forgiven, and both can take comfort in each other and this time of shelter. There was a time when she was your shelter, after all. "How do you bless a house?" "I'll show you how I do it." The two of you go softly through all the chambers of the house, holding candles and carrying oils. You can see the glow around her finger as, like the frost, she does her writing in light upon the glass. It gleams faintly on every door, every window, as she renews the bindings to keep out the dark but let in the sun. There is a new Yule log burning, started with the last of the last, in a ritual unwillingness to forget: it is reminding the sun, or the son, to eventually return. Later, after gifts have been exchanged and the feast has been shared, it is time to venture out over the snow. With crisp breath strengthened into song, you go a-caroling and a-wassailing, cheered by every bright doorway and heartened by each dipperful of warmth given for a song. Your party encounters and joins with others also adventuring this night, another party with one that has caught your eye within it. As bundled up as you all are, there is less visible difference, boy or girl, but you notice him for his voice, and recognize him by his smile, and offer him yours back. Arm in arm you continue, sheltering in each other's warmth, harmonizing in each other's song. *Imbolc* In the belly of the Mother and of the earth and of the sky, there is a knowing: it is the time for seeking new wisdom of the fire in the cauldron, the blessing in the well. It is Bride's time, the bride's time. Will you be one? Will you marry a man? Be his wife? Bear his children? Tend his house and make it your own by making your mark all through it, covering it all with the binding of your attentions? The blessing is maiden's milk. Afterwards, in solitude, you squeeze experimentally, wondering what it would be like to give milk to make nourishment within your body. It is a secret art, so secret that only women can ever know it. There are ways for men to do it, but only by much coaxing, or by wounding them with needles so that they bleed white, and then it's inflicted from outside. Only women know how it erupts from within, that milky emission a woman makes, with gain higher than unity: at input he has but one, while at output she has two, with clear secretions below, milky above. Alone at last, you indulge in fantasies about a few of the boys, and then one in particular. He is still too shy, too unsure, but perhaps the mounting fire in your well can warm his affections. *Hieros Gamos, Vernal Equinox* It is the time of the heavenly marriage of earth and sky. There is a quickening in the wind, a warming breeze, powerful in its mildness, and it occurs to you to wonder: how can mildness have force? But the breeze is like water: neutral and yet onrushing, slipping past every challenge without answer, ignoring all such questions. You remember being male, and imagine what it would be like to have one now, to feel it now stir and rouse, to harden instead of soften -- the hardness that provokes the softness. Is that what brings the warm breeze? You see the green shoots, the erections of life all around. All the plants are flowering, flaunting their organs. They are teasing the air and sky. The earth herself is erect and ready... and the air is warm and moist... And there is the inversion of role. If earth is the body and sky is the spirit, here is how there can be both men and women in the dance. Here is how you have danced between two fires. Now satisfied in your mind, you stand hand in hand, and shyly look over at him, seeing his confused look: he is not sure how to take your approach. You know that feeling well. You lean and kiss him, and smile, telling him without words that his caution is accepted and appreciated but that you are ready to take a step forward. He smiles back, understanding at least the feeling if not the intent, and that's enough for now: it's time for ritual. While the wise woman shows you how to hold the knife, he patiently waits with the chalice held out. He has no idea what he holds, but then, you've never seen it yourself, you've only felt its lip and its power. Now you're reminded of how intimate and yet unfamiliar it was to the touch, buried deep and waiting, and marked by a spring gushing forth. You feel yourself redden at the thought. Even now, dry-eyed and flushed, you can feel yourself start to weep with happiness and hope. He is offering yourself to yourself for violation, and you plunge the blade into the water. Completing the circuit, you engage yourself to yourself, at once inviolate and veteran. "Let the Lance ensoul the Grail -- "Let the magic come to Light!" ...and the commitment is made. His gaze catches yours, and you wonder. He is your working partner; will he be your partner when the working is complete? You go home alone, wondering how it would be with him in another turn of seasons... or sooner. There is Beltane, after all. Will his wand be willing? Filling? Do you so will? These thoughts tease you as you help with the various birthings, helping to bring out the tiny new forms. You observe them one by one as, once their stems are cut, their simplest, most desperate needs are met. They watch silently with unfocused eyes, still stunned with the immensity of the possibilities, just in from the infinite. *Beltane* As it was a year ago, twin fires are prepared, and now you know what those fires are, for you carry one of them inside. It's a familiar feeling by now, that longing, and you look forward to its fulfilment with equal anticipation and dread. Aside from him, there is the Goddess whose form you wear to be faced, after all. What if this is how you will always be? What if you want to always be this way, but wander back across the line by mistake? Could you? Should you? The young mothers are at the feast, heathen-proud as they put their newborns to breast. You shyly watch, trying to imagine yourself as the banquet for someone from within yourself. Could you content yourself with being the mother? You turn away in thought, only to catch him gazing at you. Your eyes meet. Perhaps that will be reason enough. After sunset, the bonfires are lit, replacing the sun's hot light with their own. The Maypole is erected with its streamers splayed like errant broomstraws. Then the call comes, and all take their places, alternating, male-female, male-female. The drums begin, and then the sound of drumming feet, as, ducking and arching by turns, all make passage within for all. Again and again you face him as, one with the women, you wind your own spiral against that of the men. It's hard to concentrate as the binding of the spell draws the two of you inevitably together. With dancing eyes and artless stumbling footwork, you two meet and draw apart again, again and again, in the dance of the dual helix, interweaving your energies and your paths, breathlessly grinning at each other with every approach. There's something uniquely personal about the feeling of this dance, even as you are surrounded by others equally engaged in it. There seems to be no end to the dancing couples in the ruddy darkness, as if they are spiraling out of and back into other circle dances in other rites elsewhere around the globe this night. 'We are all between two fires', you think to yourself, and you wonder if it was like this for your parents on the night they made you. You wonder if you will come away with child, your womanhood confirmed and dedicated to the cause of new life. If so, his fire will be as much a part of it as your own. There is the smoldering, now, in every shared glance, and a heat that rises to flushed cheeks, hot enough to make palms sweat. The bonfires laid in the firepits are not the only twin fires burning. There are, no doubt, other fires blazing all around you two, but yours and his are all you have room to notice. When the drums fall suddenly silent, the pounding in the blood continues, echoed in every tight breath. Hand in hand with him, now, you leap through the space between the fires, across the crossed brooms that are laid there, and then hand in hand you walk into the darkness and settle in the shadows to climax this rite. He folds you protectively in his arms even as he begins to strip you bare, and you adjust to allow him to pull your robe entirely away, then help him with his own. Now there is nothing between you two but the difference of a chromosome expressed in flesh, and you two begin working on merging that. Then he surprises you between kisses: "What's it like?" You are left dumb with the impossibility of describing all the differences, the inadequacy of comparisons where there is no experience that can compare because the angles are all wrong. There are no words to describe it; but then you see in his expression that none are needed. All of this occurs to you as you stare into his eyes, seeing the immensity of his quiet bravery, his determination to dare the dark of the unknown; and not only for his affinity with you, but for his own soul's completion. You realize that the fire in his eyes is familiar: you shone the same, a year ago. This changes things; but not all of them. "You are thinking of..." "I thought I might..." "Then let us do this right." "Will I remember you?" "You will remember everything." Your words feel like a benediction, and then you feel an extra radiance around you, rising, brightening in feeling if not in seeing, the approach of the goddess within. The Bride-fire is rising within you even as your well is overflowing. Now the dance resumes, of flesh on flesh and fire on fire, celebrating life by living it. Eventually his lance is pressing in beween your legs, seeking your grail, and then it is nestling within, put here for safekeeping again and again, finishing the weaving that began at sunset as two fires spread into one greater one, so hot that you cannot draw breath. Now at last you see how it will be: the magic is more than within you, it is you, and you are the magic, now, taking control and choosing the pathways between you. You won't stop because of that, you wouldn't think of stopping. It is enough to choose the course between two fires, to annihilate the difference and the distance, as two fires blaze bright enough to become one, burning away everything impure, even thought. Eventually you rouse, feeling the night breezes across your flesh. He sleeps at your side, his arm still protectively across you. You watch the change begin, feel the capability rise within you to feel the change spell from the outside, to know its lines, its courses, how it is runed in blood and fire. You see him reduced to simpler form, hewing to the first shape she had within the womb, soft and delicate. She is becoming such a lovely maiden. You watch the blossoming of her breasts and you look upon her fondly even as you absently cup your own breast, measuring her rise against your smoothing. Is this all? A sharing and a passing? No. Here is the difference: now that the spell is run, its paths are available for you to change yourself. When at last her changes are complete, yours can begin, and then you feel an old friend rise to greet you. You nod: yes, this is as it should be, for now. You rise up onto one elbow to watch her breathe, rubbing the soft hairs on your chin where there might someday soon be enough for a beard. You consider tickling her with them, but then you decide to let her sleep. She needs it: she needs time to dream. Now responsible for the man's role in the dance, you embrace her protectively, pull her to your hard chest, and shelter her in your hard arms. Eventually, she rouses, and glances first at you and then at herself. "Oh. I changed." She looks up sleepily, then, and sees you clearly, and smiles. "So did you." She sits up and reaches to pull you close. "But you didn't leave me; it is you." She leans back once more, and her eyes take a shy survey of you. "Will you stay this way now?" You shake your head at that. "Not always. I have more to learn from the wise women. I can be this way when we're together, though. I can do that now." "I'd like that... but I don't think I'm ready for..." She falls silent, hesitant to offend. You lean forward, gently taking her into a kiss, then, smiling, whisper, "I know. Maybe next Beltane." She thinks about that, and then her smile grows to a little grin and her eyes sparkle. "If not before then..." There is that soft, trusting smile again, as she yawns and says, "I'm not done, am I." "No. Dream now; talk to the Lady." You kiss her eyes shut, gently easing her down against you and down to sleep. Your gaze caresses her naked form awhile, memorizing its landscape, planning eventual journeys of discovery. Then you reach within, travel along the paths again, and then her cheek is nestled against your breasts, dimpling their softness. Both of you are hardening against the late night's chill, so you pull up the robes and look them over before draping them across the two of you. Hers has changed, while yours is still as it should be. You still owe the Lady one more day, after all. The Lady is trusting you; perfect love and perfect trust. The power is already there, though, for you to decide. It crackles into the night air as you rub your slender palms together and then spread them. The sky is starting to lighten. It is May Day, one more day to be given to the Lady whose gender you wear. After that one day, which shape will you wear? What skin will feel the light of tomorrow's dawn? When you may-be either, which, witch? You are trying to remember the feeling of being above and throughout everything, that feeling that you first found on the other side of the year. Enlightenment comes from seeing every color at once. Wisdom comes from knowing how they combine, and which shades are right for when. Now you are remembering that height of awareness, and seeking the difference in perspective from that height for your having two perspectives, a parallax which illuminates by discrepancies. Carefully choosing a path while within that viewpoint, knowing all and choosing for more than the moment: that's the difference between a whim and a chosen destiny, between a want and a Will. If it harm none, do what thou Wilt. What is your Will?