Of Moonlight And Black Cats free porn video

Of Moonlight and Black Cats. By Tanya H. Black Cat Junction. Black Cat Junction signalbox, where I once worked, had endured an age of Northern weather, countless snorting steam locomotives and the weight of time since way before I was born. It had ceased to be commercially important in the 60s, when the nearby station closed, but remained on the railway map as the point where the branch line from Lentonmill joined the old route from Manchester to Leeds. Even before my Dad toddled his first, decades of men had already climbed the box's steps and I should have been the last. I'd spent more time in that signalbox than my own house. Of my thirty seven years working the railway, thirty two of them I spent under that roof; controlling the passage of trains, dealing with the problems, watching the seasons change on the cutting sides. On that night, when my life got properly turned upside down and inside out, only one week remained before the demolition crews were due. Perhaps, with all the hair and skin and sneezes I'd dropped in there, with all the box's dust and polish and miasma I'd breathed in, Black Cat Junction and I were mingled somehow. When the box's long expected closure had been announced they'd offered me a position in a smaller, quieter, less-doomed box on the other side of the moor. I'd said yes to the new job, and considered redundancy as the terms were reported to be generous, but hadn't put a lot of thought into it.Thirty seven years a signalman, what else would I have done? If you're interested in such detail, the box had been built by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and was a standard pattern for that company. The ground floor contained all the mechanics, electrics and dusty, oily stuff the technicians enthused about. Going up the steps and through the door marked Private, you'd have been on the operating floor where the day to day work of controlling the trains occupied the time of signallers like me. We had full length windows down all four sides of the operating floor, so we could everything going on around us. Even then, with the end only a week away, we kept it as clean and tidy as we could. On my last evening there the linoleum floor gleamed under my boots, heavy and homely scents of wax polish and woodsmoke filled my nose. The box's gentle lamplight shone from the polished brass telegraph instruments and the scoured steel handles topping the forty chest-high levers paraded along the box's front. In its heyday, as a big, important coming together of routes each of those tall, mechanical levers had once had a function; to change the points and set routes for the thundering expresses and clanking freights, or to lift the signals telling the drivers their routes were safe and set and clear. Now less than a dozen of the levers still functioned, the remainder disconnected and stilled. Progress they said; I wasn't convinced. When I started there, a beardless youth, you hadn't a moment to sit and call your own between heavy steel trains, endless coal and snaking expresses. On that last shift the time had stretched heavily between the short, overfilled boxes they crowded passengers into while modern freight clogged the roads and choked the kids. Back in the day the box was open twenty fours hours, except Sundays, and even your night shift's peace would be interrupted by rumbling, smoking diesels and long, clattering loads of raw materials. At the end it opened morning and afternoon only and while I didn't really miss the night shifts I feared for the railway. That last, momentous shift I sat staring at the levers and neglected paintwork thinking of the few remaining days and wondering if the box sensed its end; as if all the men who'd toiled there had left enough of their consciousness in its timber and steel for it to feel sadness. Dad had often called me a dreamer, but dreaming and thinking hadn't done me much harm in my 59 years. I had a little house and a little garden, a little car and I demanded little from life. My name, back then, was Phil Wesley; average size, a little tubby and with a full head of slightly thinning mousey hair. I doubt you'll find many folk who'll remember me now. So there I was, leaning on a lever and daydreaming about my signalbox's feelings when work, or more precisely a Leeds-bound train, brought me back to the moment. Wheels thudded through the junction points and the train's lights flashed past the windows. A scream lifted through the racket for a second. Something hurting? I wasn't sure, but whatever had happened I had a job to do before investigating. I pushed signal levers back into the frame with a series of satisfying crashes. Then I had to set up the route for the next branch service, due in thirty minutes. Done. What was the scream? Nobody else should have been down there. You had the best part of half a mile in either direction before you got to a bridge and nobody with any business at the box was due before the next day. Some kids? None in the vicinity, the nearest house stood at a farm close to the cutting's top and I'd never seen children there. Still, I decided I'd heard a scream and decided I'd better have a look - I'd never have settled otherwise. Moonlight washed the bottom of the cutting and bathed me in silver as I stood at the top of the signalbox steps. It softened the waste land where there were once sidings and sheds and docks for the handling of every type of goods you could imagine; the moon even prettied the rubble where the Victorian elegance of the station once stood. Back in the day, when Dad was a porter there, twenty eight men and two women the station. Only two were left by then; me and Sal -she worked the opposite shift to me and had taken redundancy, booking herself into a seminary for retraining. Her crucifix hung above the signalbox desk, but I had no place for Jesus. Not since Robert and Helen were taken from me. The February night fell chill and my breath steamed as I tramped down the steps to the trackside. At their foot a boarded crossing lead over the rails to the path leading up the cutting side to the lane where we parked our cars. Silver moon darkness spread along the tracks in each direction, broken by red signal lamps. Then, there, near the crossing, a green spark flashed, almost hidden behind one of the rails and bobbing out of sight as my torch light swept closer. "Hello?" A shadow moved beside the rail - two green sparks now. I took a step, curious. A squeak stopped me - one plaintive mew. My torchlight transformed the shadow into a black cat, slight and sprawled - one of its hind legs stripped and red, dragging painfully as the cat clawed away from the ballast to escape me. "What's up, puss?" I made some chuck chuck noises, softened my voice. As I squatted down nearby it hissed, bared its teeth and flattened its ears to scare me. I shone the light away from its staring eyes; its hurt pained me, like it was my own. "That leg looks nasty, moggy. Got clipped by the train, did you? Lucky you wasn't squished." Silence came between us. The cold forced a tremble. "Why don't you come inside with me?" Against regulations of course, but who would know and the cat needed help. I'd call a vet and we'd get the poor thing fixed up. Its fur gleamed with moonlight, its eyes steady and fixed on me - staring the way cats do. "Warm in there, puss," I said, inclining my head towards the signalbox, to the cosy lamp glow and promise of my good, coal fire. It chirped. Acquiescence? I'd have to pick it up. Good chance of getting scratched, Wes. Another chirp, it tilted its head in such a way I could have sworn it knew what I planned and it sensed I mean no harm. "I've always wished I could have had a cat, or a dog," I told the cat, edging a little closer. "But Helen was allergic, and so house proud, I never did." The cat listened calmly, its tail tip twitching. Blood from that back leg made bold spots on the granite ballast. "Could have one now, I suppose, couldn't I? She won't mind now, will she?" But it had never seemed right to bring a pet into her house, even with her gone. I kept it just the way she'd left it, neat as a pin and everything in its place, for the memory of her - more meaningful than the headstone I'd had planted over her grave. "Will you come?" And it nodded towards that bust back leg, like it knew what I'd said and thought me daft for thinking it could walk. So I reached out and it never flinched as I ran my fingers over the short, cool fur between its ears. A slight pressure came against my fingers as it responded, as calm and composed as if we'd been sharing a house for years. I'd always been good with animals though. When I was only a nipper I found a wren that next door's cat had caught, shaken about then dropped when I yelled. I took the bird in, and even though Dad moaned about a bloody waste of time and milk and breadcrumbs Mum took my side and, as usual, had her way. 'Waste of breadcrumbs, Donald! Listen to yourself, sound like your mother.' That shut him up - he didn't like being compared to that old bag. Anyway, the bird flew free a few days later and I was chuffed. I even made friends with next door's cat, then at weekends I found myself a mucking out job at a riding stables up the road from our terrace. 'Got a way with the 'orses, the boy has,' the owner said when Dad went up to investigate. I was a calming influence on them, even the big stallions, she said. Dad hadn't been convinced - 'bloody 'orses, where's the use of them these days?' Didn't mind the money coming in though, did he? I could have made it as a vet, if such a thing was ever created from our street and my school, but it was always ever going to be the railway for me. 'It's good enough for me, it were good enough for my Dad and his Dad and it'll be good enough for you, lad.' At least Rob had found his own way, I was pleased when he did; even though it killed him; and then Helen. So I fussed the injured cat a moment or two, until a little vibration in its throat told me the creature was purring and then, speaking softly to it, I eased my hands underneath and scooped it up. Something must have hurt, for it growled, but never tried to bite or claw me. As gently as I could, I carried it back to the box and laid it on the armchair by the fire, careful not to knock that leg. It wouldn't matter if a bit of cat blood got on the cushions - the chair would be in a skip next week. "Now then, puss. How's that? Bit better?" It never took its eyes from me as I ran some warm water into a mug, got a clean cloth from under the sink and explained how I'd better wash some of that blood away, so I could see the damage. As gentle as I was it still winced and whimpered as I bathed away that blood, but as far as I could tell nothing had been broken; I only found flayed skin and torn muscle. It'd be walking with a limp, that was for sure, but walking again. I kept talking to the cat, all while I turned the cloth pink and the water cooled. Then, as I stroked its lean body, it treated me to a light, breathy purr and closed its eyes. All the crashing and rumbling from the next train didn't bother it a bit. In fact, by the time the telegraph bells were rung so me and the next signaller down the line could be sure the train was safely on its way, the cat had curled up contentedly, a paw over its eyes, for a snooze. Sight of it stirred me to go into my snap bag to fish out my sketch pad and pencils. Sketching was something else Dad hadn't seen the point of. One day though, not long before I'd started on the railway, he'd come across me in the garden at home while I sketched one of his pea vines. Dad loved growing veg; never saw the point in flowers - except for three rose bushes in the tiny front garden. The back garden, such as it was, he filled with good, seasonal vegetables - much tastier than the supermarket's. Anyway, I'd found myself in the sunshine watching the way the pea plants looped and curled their way around the twigs he used to train them. I'd been taken with the plain prettyness of their white flower buds and sat there happily drawing them until Dad had wandered up and taken the sketch book from my hand. 'Bloody waste of time, lad,' he'd said as he handed the pad back, with a smudged, grubby thumbprint on it, 'but you might have an eye for it.' There! Probably the one and only time I'd had a compliment from him, for an activity that didn't relate to something Dad judged worthwhile and I'd sat there, after he'd gone, feeling absolutely grand. Sketching could be a pleasant way of passing the time between trains, when I'd finished the newspaper and didn't fancy whatever book I'd picked up from the library. I liked to draw the rabbits that prospered on the cutting sides, or the pheasants strutting importantly along the track, or the wren that knew its way in through the draughty gaps in the windows downstairs and came to catch flies when the sun shone. That evening I sketched the injured cat as the fire's warmth sank through it's gleaming fur and it uncurled to show off its full, stretched length and midnight tummy. My heart clearly wasn't in sketching though, for I got the cat's proportions all wrong making it looked a little like Michelle Pfieifer's Catwoman. Shaking my head, I screwed up the paper and dropped it in the fire before the buzzer sounded its warning of a train approaching from the branchline. The points were already set so all I had to was clear the signals then venture outside again to take the single-line token from the driver. Returning to the box I found my companion sitting tall on its chair and watching me carefully, perfectly still beside the twitching of its tail tip. "Felling better, puss?" It chirped back, conversationally. "Good. Can I have a look?" Obligingly the cat extended its back leg. "Something unusual about you," I said, bending to have a peep. It looked a mess still, but there'd been no more bleeding and the cat clearly enjoyed some movement from it. "I could say the same about you," said a woman, a light voice lilted with something of Lancashire in it. The words came from behind me and I twitched, but when I twisted to look I was alone. Oblivious to my discomfort the cat yawned, curled up with nose under tail and closed its eyes. "Long day, Wes," I said to myself. Thinking of a cup of tea I filled the kettle and set it to boil. Forty minutes stretched until the next train, another hour after that until I could close the box and go home. Maybe I'd stop off on the way and get myself a pizza; I had a taste for some ham and pineapple. With the tea mashed and steaming from my mug, I settled down in the less comfortable of the box's easy chairs and picked up my book. And must have fallen asleep, because when the book fell from my fingers and clattered to the floor, two women stood, just a few feet away, staring at me. One had black hair that hung down her back as straight and glossy as an Indian princess's. Eyes like jet dominated her pale and pointed face, while her full lips quirked into an amused line. She wore a narrow black top and wide, flowing trousers; her bare feet looked tiny under her flared trousers and shone with glossy black nails and complex tracings of black tattoos. Shorter and thinner, her companion had hair of browns and reds, wide green eyes and a pinched, sceptical mouth. She wore a baggy white shirt under a tan, suede waistcoat and a rag-hemmed skirt in sunshine shades over blue Doctor Martin boots. What I should have said was something along the lines of, 'You can't be in here, ladies - regulations!' The bosses were very strict on having visitors in a signalbox and some of the drivers would report you if they thought you were entertaining. Not that I ever did, you understand. I preferred me own company anyway. But I didn't say anything, just sat there feeling woolly - like I was still asleep and ought to be waking up before the telegraph bells sounded the next train's approach. Without blinking the two women looked down on me, then the black haired one gestured towards me and I caught, amongst words rustling like leaves in a soft wind, one distinct sound - witch. The tawny lass shook her head; her mouth sneered a little more. She lifted her hands and held them before her, a few inches apart, then lowered them in straight lines to her waist height. She finished the gesture by making a wriggly worm symbol with one index finger. Her friend laughed silently and her eyes creased at the corners. She shook her head. They whispered under my hearing again, with perhaps the echo of witch once more, but I couldn't be sure. Anyway, a pinging telegraph bell had me stumbling from my chair, heart racing, senses wild - trying to recall where I was. Alone in a darkened signalbox, that's where. Lifted from a short, guilty snooze into breathless agitation, heart fluttering in a way that made me wonder if I shouldn't spend a bit more time walking and less sitting about. Of cat or women I saw no sign, but for a couple of blood spots on the chair saying I hadn't dreamt the whole episode. The signalbox door was properly shut and as I tried to settle myself I peered around the operating floor, as though the cat was hiding and laughing. I went back to the levers to make sure all was set for the train and a bubble of trapped wind blew out with an ugly belch. Fatigue wobbled my legs then made my whole body almost as heavy as my eyes. That easy chair by the fire sang siren songs of sleep, just a few minutes before the train. Pacing to the door I threw it open and welcomed the slap of the cold, night air. I belched again, pressed hands into my belly - something had disagreed with me. As soon as the train had rumbled past I'd have to take myself out to the bog for an emergency shit. Quick wave to the driver, reset the signals and set the road for the last train of the night, then I hurried outside and into my cobwebby toilet. The emergency wasn't worth the title - nothing but a long, trumpeting fart that made me chuckle with its length and musical variation. With the non-emergency over I stood at the foot of the steps a moment enjoying the still. Around me the night bewitched with its contrasting range of shadow blacks and moonbeam silvers. I tilted my face to the craggy moon, it's glory touched my bare skin like sparkles and I laughed again at the sudden, wild notion to strip away my clothes to stand there bathing in the magical beams. Still chuckling, shaking my head at the notion of Phil Wesley even thinking such a thing, I went back to the box's warmth. But I stopped just in the moonlight, at the threshold of the dead, electric lighting inside, and found myself reaching back into the moonbeams, like the last caress of parting lovers. I don't know how long I might have stood there had not the buzzer summoned me to deal with the last train coming from Manchester. I don't know how long I had been there enjoying the moon, but I had the indistinct feeling I'd lost some time. So I hurried to the instrument shelf to accept the train and telegraph it to Barry in the next box, but one of my shoes slipped off. I stumbled, twisting to look back, dumbly unable to imagine how it could have fallen off with laces still fastened. My sock flapped loose at the end of my foot, as though stretched or something. Something more important pulled at my attention - the signalbox seemed longer than usual, and slightly curved. I shook my head - like I was drunk, though I never touched a drop, only on my rest days. Sooner I was home, the better. But I didn't I have something important to do? The train! One shoe off, one shoe on I hurried to the signal levers and my trousers slithered my hips - like I hadn't tightened the belt properly when I'd finished on the bog. I wrenched the belt tighter, grasped the first lever and hauled it back. The steel felt cool and alive, humming - tingling - like the box really was more than just bricks and mortar and timber and iron - like I could share it's joy in running the trains. When the train's headlights pierced the darkness at the end of the cutting, I found myself at the box door, hand on the lightswitch. As soon as its clattering had past I switched off the lights and the moonlight flooded me, like a warm shower. I sighed at its touch, kicked off my other shoe and ran through the silver shadows to telegraph Barry the train was heading his way. Then came to a ragged halt, looking down at my chest and my trousers sagged again, until their descent caught on my hips. Something about the points pushing my pullover out of shape and they way they quivered as I moved around the box made me frown. The telegraph! I must tell Barry the train had passed - that was important, more important that trousers falling or swollen nipples. Reaching for the telegraph instrument turned into a losing battle to lift my arm. Maybe a little sit down, to gather my breath. Though I'd only run from the door it felt like my feet were mired in treacle. I yawned heavily. Lots to do, lots to do, couldn't remember a bit of it. Chair looked good, I tottered that way thinking a sit down might make me feel better, but I only got a couple of steps before the silver went grey and everything turned black. Running Wild. To wake with a rattle at my door. Curled on the floor, arms pillowing my face on the seat of a chair where a cat had bled. Gleaming moon dark made the operating floor glorious. "Hey up, love?" said a rich, Yorkshire voice from behind me, near the door. Footsteps scuffed the floor. Two sets, four feet. They edged in carefully, one went left, the other right, but they were okay - caution flowed from them, and care. They were worried about me. I had collapsed. Everything came back; the disorientation, leaden feet, slack useless arms. All gone now. I felt... "Can you hear me, miss?" Another voice, another man. ...amazing. My knees were drawn up beside the chair, the floor hard under them, my back curved where I was folded onto the chair. I shouldn't have been able to tolerate that position, not with my knees being what they were, but I felt so lithe and smooth. Lifting my head dislodged a tumble of thick, black softness, it blanked my view of the door so I absently pushed it away from my face - hair! I felt the pull at my scalp, making it my hair - but I had started balding at only twenty seven. As I moved the footsteps stopped. I heard their breathing, their hearts. Time to stand. Mysteries surrounded me. I felt wrong; slender, lithe, light on my feet. Hair curtained me, heavy, dark and silk. Two police officers in black kit and bright orange jackets stared at me, asian lads both of them - one with a turban and full beard, the other with a neat, slick hair cut and a trendy trimmed beard. But they weren't the most interesting thing at that moment. I looked down, to see why I felt so strange. That hair fell forwards as my head dipped, closing down my peripheral vision so all I could see was my chest - points of petite breasts outlined by fine black fabric, the shadow of a modest cleavage dipping out of sight. "Miss?" one of the coppers said. Only reluctantly did I look away from my changed body. "I'm right confused, lads." My voice came high and tight in my throat. "What's your name, love?" asked Turban. I could only laugh at that, because my name would make about as much sense to them as those little boobs did to me. Where my shirt and trousers had gone was anybody's guess. What had become of my good, round belly and saggy man-boobs couldn't be judged, but under the little bosom, and where my bland, beige slacks should have been, swirled the black mass of a full skirted dress and two little white feet peeped from under it; feet that most certainly did not have the coarse, gnarled toes and toe nails I'd become used to . "Don't laugh, it's rude," said the other cop, with a light tone so he meant nothing by it. Curiosity and concern shone from him. "We're looking for Phil Wesley. He's signaller here, have you seen him?" said Turban. "Lads, I'm right confused." Confused wasn't the right word though. I was... alive! Pushing hair away from my face, plenty of it and really heavy, I soaked up moonlight and laughed again. What the bloody hell had happened to me? And why did it feel so good? "We're here to help, darling. We're good at that. Joined up to help, didn't we?" "Too right. Can you help us find the signaller, love?" "Not sure." I tried a smile, wondered what my face was looking like now. Probably not jowley and sagged any more. It didn't feel like I had more than one chin. "Lads. Does these look like boobs to you?" I pulled out the impossible dress and looked down it to stare at two, firm, high breasts each topped with a small, dark pink nipple. So they could see, I pulled the dress's fabric tight over the breasts "You don't need to do that." "Our bodyworn cameras are on, whole world'll be watching this if you're not careful." "But do they?" "Yes," Turban nodded. "They do. Now can you stop that? My mate's really shy and he only likes fat lasses anyway." "Oy! I do not, don't listen to him. He's a bloody Bradford inbred." Helen had been from Bradford, but that didn't matter either. I let the dress hang loose again and wondered about looking underneath, but decided not to - to spare them the embarrassment and because I knew my cock had gone without having an undignified look. I probably should have been a bit more annoyed about the missing cock, not that I'd had much excitement with it since Helen had died, but amongst everything else going on it didn't much bother me. "Do I look like a woman to you?" 'What do you think you look like?" "Just tell me, please. It'd be right helpful." "All woman from where I'm standing." "Me too, you look like a lass." "Thanks." I could still de dreaming - hopefully - but if awake I probably wasn't mental. Even if I was a woman. A bloody woman! "Tell us your name, go on love. Make our life much easier it would." "Can I see some ID, please?" I stalled. "ID? Love, we're cops. Check out the kit - badges, handcuffs; the lot!" "Can't be too sure," I said, thinking fast. Black cat turns up then two women, one black haired the other tawny - that word 'witch' - then they're gone. I fall asleep and wake up female being pestered by cops. Occam's Razor tells you that if you hear hoofbeats, look for horses not zebras. (Unless you're in Africa.) More simply put; if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably a duck. "Miss?" They took a couple of steps to close me down, probably thought I was soft in the head. With some justification. "There were two women here earlier. They know what's happened to Phil Wesley." "That's useful," said Turban. "Do you know them?" Shaking my head produced a hair avalanche I pushed back smoothly. "One had black hair, wearing black trousers, the other was red haired in an orange skirt." "Where did they go?" 'If you find them, I'd be interested." They weren't in here, and I wasn't going to find any answers by going with the cops. Moonlight called me. I rested my hand atop one of the steel levers, it was humming like a live thing beneath my skin, like I could feel the heat and energy that had forged them a hundred years gone. "Tell us your name then, love." Two steps and I reached the window, lifted the catch and slid it open. Usually the old, warped timber frames creaked and resisted anybody bothering them, but now they moved like perfectly greased machinery. Chill, night air washed in. Ten feet below me the rail tops gleamed silver in the moonbeams; Phil Wesley would have hurt himself if he'd tried that jump, but this body moved like silk and I grinned with its potential. "Oh no you don't!" said one of them. Boots clomped loud on the polished floor, but I'd gone. My new dress billowed over my face as I jumped, I hardly felt the chill over my bare skin and landed feather light on cold steel - balancing like a cat atop one of the shining rails. Turban persuaded me energetically from the window while his mate clattered down the signalbox steps. My moon shone glorious from an open sky and I drank it through my skin. "Sorry, lads. Have fun." Then I turned and ran and ran and ran, dress and hair streaming, surefooted along the top of the rail while the steel sang and the wind whispered and I laughed with the sheer joy of whatever was flowing through me. What had happened? Hadn't a clue, but it was wonderful. The dark hid nothing from me. Even in tree shadows in the cutting bottom all was clear in silvers, greys and whites. Rabbits scattered, a badger stopped and grunted at me, bats dived and fluttered, abandoning their hunts to follow. I passed the signals I had been responsible for and sprinted on, cold, clean night air filling my lungs, heart pounding, legs pumping - laughing with delight. I couldn't tell you when I'd last been able to run like this, never probably, so I ran and ran for the sheer pleasure of the running. My feet didn't miss their step on the railhead once; I breathed hard and while my muscles told me how hard they worked they didn't feel tired. I passed more signals, these protecting a level crossing five miles from Black Cat Junction. I laughed some more, "You've just run five miles, Wes," I whooped to the night. I knew I could go much further - my capability exhilarated. I ran on, into the floodlights over the level crossing. A car's horn blared, tyres screeched as its nose went down from emergency braking. A moment of panic spilled into me, but I didn't stop - I jumped, oh you should have seen me! My feet pattered over it's bonnet, I grinned at the two lads staring dumfounded from inside. For a moment I felt the engine's heat as I ran over the bonnet then I jumped again my feet finding the rail so I could run on into the night. Eventually my feet took me to a peaceful spot on the edge of town - the cemetery, all in darkness of course thanks to the trees lining the boundary and keeping the street lamps out. I didn't need light to show me the words carved on the two headstones before me, for I knew them by heart after all the hours I had spent here. Helen and Robert, side by side the way she would have liked. I'd given her a plain stone, similar in style and shade to that which the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had provided for Robert. She hadn't wanted him to join the Army, perhaps sensing what would happen, but I'd been keen to let the lad have his way after the way my Dad had pushed me onto the railway. A tank driver should have been safe enough, but a roadside bomb big enough to flip over a Scimitar tank killed him and two of his mates in Helmand Province. Killed Helen too, as good as. On the first anniversary of his death she'd quietly overdosed on the anti-depressants they'd given her. I'd been at work, part of her planning for she'd not wanted me to find her. "Rum do this, Helen love." My voice felt light and tight, with no depth to it. What little breeze there was kept pushing lengths of ebony hair across my face. "Some catwomanwitch has done this to me and now I don't know what to do." Squatting down, so the dress's hem crumpled on the wet grass, I brushed my fingers over her name. She had always been so calm and quietly competent, but even Helen would have been stumped by this one. I bet she'd have found something to tie back this bloody hair, though. "Don't know what to do, love. I feel different, not just the body, neither. All wild and magic, if that don't sound daft." It did too, even to my own ears, but that was how it was - as I saw it anyway - and nothing to be done, just get on and find some reason for it. As much as I loved to come and say hello to Helen and Robert, I didn't have much more to say to them at that moment. Besides which, I needed a pee and wasn't nearly wild enough to let it go in the churchyard. Having no watch I couldn't tell what time of the night it was, but the town sat still and peaceful, all spread out before me under the glow of its streetlamps. For want of anything better to do, I walked towards the town centre and the terrace where my house was - much good that would do me, this dress had no pocket for housekeys even if I had thought to pick them up when I ran from the box. What had the police come for anyway? Must have been Barry calling them when I hadn't belled him to close down after the last train had passed. He must have rung too before taking desperate measures like calling the cops. I felt a bit bad, for a moment, for having put him to that trouble and stress. That moment passed quickly though and I came to a halt, my bare feet on the centre line of that road into town and I thought on all the time I'd spent doing the right things to make other folk's life easier. Dad and Mum, then Helen - though I didn't resent a minute spent making her happy - Robert too, when his needs had been pushed into my life. With the night breeze making a nuisance of my new black hair and twirling my new black dress I stood and thought about my refusal to stay for the cops, the way I had run and run along the railway line (a serious breach of transport law) and a grin spread over my new face. I'd never, ever been wild before and do you know what? It felt brilliant. And do you know what I did next? I hitched up that dress, gathered armfulls of its darkskirts into my arms so the dark triangle of my pubic hair was bared to the moon and, recognising my ability to stand and pee had been suspended, I squatted down. There between my spread and much sleeker thighs were the pink delights of a woman's vulva. Before this moment I'd never seen any but Helen's and until I relaxed I'd never seen a woman pee; not even Helen - she wouldn't have liked me watching. Boy did it jet out! I concentrated so much on the stream and the puddle I made that I ignored the approaching headlights and only raised a hand to acknowledge the car when the horn beeped. "Just a minute," I said. "Busy." Splashes of blue started reflecting from the hedges and stone wall alongside the road and I grinned a little wider. "Bloody hell, love. You can't piss there in middle of road." "Nearly done." "Move out of road, love." A second man's voice. "Nearly done." And I was. I shimmied my hips a little, to shake the last drops, stood, let my dress fall and turned to face the two coppers. Not the pair from the signalbox. These lads stood before a great BMW four by four with Battenberg markings and dazzling line of blue lights sparkling from the roof. One was tall and lean, the other short, dark and squat. Both of them had a gun holstered on their legs and all manner of law enforcement paraphernalia stowed across their kit vests. "Control from Lima Five Two," said the shorter one into his radio. "We've found that lass the railway police were looking for. She's on Cemetery Road in Ellerbank." "Alright, love?" asked his mate. "Been looking for you we have." "I'm alright, thank you. Cheers." I turned, waved over my shoulder and stepped out again, letting my feet fall along the white centre line, but avoiding treading on the cat-eyes reflectors - that seemed rude. "Wait up, lass! One of them called. You can't be wandering about in road in middle of night, you'll get yourself run over." "I'm sure I won't. Not with you following along with all your lovely blue lights on." "We haven't time to escort you around town, flower." I didn't turn around, or stop. "I'll be fine, thanks." Maybe I could have run again, but my tummy gurgled at that moment and spoilt the notion. "Can you tell me your name, flower? My name's Danny, me mate's called Sean." Danny was following me, the tall one, his footsteps soft on the tarmac just a few feet behind. The other one, Sean, trundled along in the BMW, its big engine mumbling as it ticked over. "Flower." "Flower?" "That's my name, you guessed right." His good nature was starting to prickle now, I could feel it in his tone, his footfalls; his heartbeat and breathing. "Have you a surname?" "Not yet." "Would you stop and talk to me, please? I don't like talking to your back." Without a reason not to I stopped and faced him, pushing hair from my face. "Thank you." He stood a few metres away and tried a smile. "Have you got an address and date of birth?" I shook my head. His face filled with regret and I saw he was about the age Robert would have been had that roadside bomb not killed him. He shared Robert's build, even eye colour, but Robert had been darker haired. What would my son have thought to see me walking the street like this? "Can't have you wandering about like this, lo-. Flower. Just a dress, no shoes... Peeing in road. That's an offence, you know. We'll have to lock you up if you don't tell us your name and address." "Lots of girls walk home at this time of the night in just their dresses and no shoes, peeing in road." "True, but that's a Saturday night and this is Wednesday and they're pissed and you're not." "Are you going to give me a lift then?" "Where to? You'll have to tell us where you're living." Our little terrace? With its little garden, front and back, and the bird feeders and all the things Helen had bought and I'd cherished after she'd gone. With the clarity of a moonbeam I knew I didn't belong there. Helen would never have worn such a dress as this, never left the house with her legs bare and hair down - there was nothing for me at home. My shoulders dropped and I sighed at what had been done to me - at what had been taken away. "Flower?" "Just a mo, Danny." "Okay." "Can you take me somewhere I can have a cup of tea? Please." A cup of tea felt like the finest thing in the world. "I can do better than that. I can take you home, Flower. Then I'll make all of us a brew. How about that?" "I don't have anywhere I belong now. No address, no name, no birthday." "You must have." "Not a bit of it. Just Flower, and you gave me that." His sigh made a big, moist cloud about him. "Come on, love. I don't want to lock you up. You're much too pretty for our cell block." "Nobody ever said I were pretty before." "Now that is a crying shame. Come on then, get in back. We'll take you down nick and let the bosses sort out where you're from. It's way too cold to be stood around here." Stepping back to the BMW he opened a back door for me, indicated inside with a flourish. There wasn't much room, what with all the kit they had stuffed in there; I would never have fitted in when I was a chubby lad, but now I reckoned even my wider hips would fit. Before I could swing them in, the Sean beckoned Danny over and whispered in his ear. I could still hear him though; he wanted to handcuff me. Danny shook his head at first, but the other one insisted and he came to me with his cuffs in one hand and sorrowful expression. "Sorry, Flower. Best you put these on, safety. You know." "Mine or yours?" "Ours mostly." I held out my arms and he said thank you and clicked them on as gently as he could. I sat with my hands folded in my lap while he leant across and fastened my seatbelt. The cuffs were cool about my wrists, they looked a bit big because he didn't really cinch them up very tight. Even so, I felt the steel singing to me - faint breathy sounds of heat and pressure and joy in strength that were different and the same to the way the signalbox levers had felt at Black Cat Junction. Being so intrigued with the handcuffs I hardly noticed we'd got moving and didn't really listen to Sean and Danny. Beyond that the radio burbled some pap tunes and the police radio squawked about a fail to stop somewhere. I could sense the handcuff's components all precisely fitted together inside, all the teeth on the bracelets and the little slides and levers in the locks. Not the plastic bits, they were dark and dead to me, but I marvelled at the simple, machined excellence of the steel. As I looked I saw how they worked - how this spindle turned that lever and withdrew that bar so the cuffs would open. Then, because the forged steel liked me, when I asked them to open they did. "Your cuffs have fallen off," I said mischievously, and handed them back. "Dozy," said Sean. "I'll put them back on again, if you like. Don't want to get you into trouble?" "No worries," Danny said and reached back to take them from me. Our fingers touched, for just a moment, but enough for him to transform so suddenly I jerked back, like he had electrocuted me, raising my hands like I could ward him off. "What?" his eyes were wide, I could see them clear and blue, but the rest of him shone a red-gold colour, almost too pure to look upon, but which failed to illuminate the dim interior of the car. Behind his left eye was a shadow, the size of a pea, so dark it swallowed the light shining from him. Blinking furiously, shaking my head like I was trying to dislodge a spider, meant that after a few heartbeats the copper was looking how he should. His lips moved, talking to me, brows furrowed together. "Flower?" "Go to the Doctor," I said, urgently. I couldn't have told you why but I knew for certain that he must go to the doctors and get that awful, dark spot behind his eye looked at. "There's something in your head, behind your left eye and it's going to kill you." "Them's the voices, love," said Sean. He laughed, but Danny didn't. He stared at me, then touched his brow, near the spot I'd seen - as though he could feel it. "You must. Promise me you will." "Nowt to worry about. Just headaches, pressures of job." But his voice wasn't sure and he looked troubled as he turned back to the road. He didn't try to handcuff me again, nor did he speak or even look at me. I'd changed - not just being a girl, that was just the outside. All the people I had been close to and I'd never experienced anything like that. I wanted to reach for him again or lay my hand upon his mate's shoulder to see what he might look like. Though the idea of that kind of second sight sent sparkles of fear through my guts. Witch. I'd heard that dark woman say it, and the other had shook her head. "Here we are, lass." They swung the BMW through a tall, barred gate that hummed closed behind us. Utilitarian brick buildings, dull under sodium lights, surrounded a staff car park, with a motley of police vans and patrol cars to one side. They pulled up beside a rectangular block whose walls were broken by brutal steel doors and blank, barred windows. They let me from the BMW and my bare feet looked small on the scarred concrete. We were buzzed through internal doors until I stood before a long, chest high desk behind which a lanky, bearded sergeant looked at me with narrowed, cynical eyes. "Now then," he said and I nodded. The room felt clinical and functional, it smelt of old, dirty bodies. From down a corridor came a bored, repetitive shout of, "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you." "What's she done then?" the sergeant asked. My captors passed uncomfortable looks between them. "Outraging public decency, Sarge." "Circumstances?" "We found her urinating in middle of Cemetary Road in Ellerbank." "You bring me this tonight, lads!" "She refused to provide her name, address or date of birth." "It's all true," I said, trying to be helpful. They'd been decent enough, after all. "She's the lass the transport police were looking for earlier, the one that made off from that signalbox. Summat to do with the missing signaller." "That's true as well." "Thank you, darling. But let me have a chat with these lads first, then you can have your say." Can't say I liked the way he called me darling, but I kept my mouth shut as he went through some more procedural technicalities with the two cops while the woman down the corridor kept at it with her weary fuck yous. "Now then, love. Best we have your details then. Name?" "Phillip Jacob Wesley." He looked up from his keyboard and pursed his lips through his beard. "Hear that?" He jerked his thumb towards the sweary corridor. "She'd been doing that since half past eight when she went in there. Imagine how I feel right now, imagine how much happier I'd be if I had a name to put to your face." "I know it sounds fantastical, sarge, but that is me name. I were born on May the 11th 1961 and I live at 85, Victoria Road in Ellerbank. I'm one of signallers at Black Cat Junction, on railway." They didn't believe me. Hardly surprising when I didn't believe it myself. Anyhow, after a tired and spotty female cop was found to search me - though I had nothing but that dress to find - I was put in a cell. I sat on the low bed, with little to protect me from the bare boards but a thin, foam mattress, and wondered what might happen next. It was certainly more interesting that what usually happened to me of an evening. A cup of tea, that came next - brought by Danny. Even though it came in a plastic cup it tasted dark and delicious. "You will go and see the doc, won't you?" I said when I'd thanked him. He looked both ways along the cell block, then leaned close towards the little hatch in the cell door. "I have been getting headaches, bad ones, right behind me eye." "Best get it looked at." He nodded, frowning. "You take care, Flower. You're not the kind of lass to be in here." He nodded towards the bottom end, where that unseen woman was still repeating fuck you with the weary monotone of a bored priest. Sleep wouldn't come easy with her carrying on like that, but I lay on my back, head pillowed on my heads and grinned at the ceiling. Adding to my list of firsts on this, my wildest night ever, I'd been arrested. What an adventure! Doing Witch. Instead of sleeping I thought about that weary, swearing woman. Then I thought about the way I"d undone the handcuffs and considered the steel inside the cell door's lock. When I laid my little hands on it and closed my eyes I could tiptoe through its bolts and nuts and rods and tappets and feel the way they all linked together. With a little encouragement they rotated and clicked and did their thing and I pushed the door open. I had the corridor to myself; identical rows of steel, cell doors went down each side and at the bottom end a fire exit, which I guessed opened into the compound outside. There might have been cameras, but I couldn't see and the unauthorised opening of my door didn't raise any alarm, so I crept along to the swearing cell. On the bed, mechanically banging a cup on the floor sat a skeletal wreck of a woman with lank, blonde hair, great staring eyes and grey skin. She wore stained grey joggers without shoes and her reek of piss and beer wafted through the hatch. Her eyes fixed mine, but she didn't break her rhythm of fuck you fuck you fuck you. "How do." "Fuck you." "I'm Flower." I smiled at her. She bared yellow and black teeth at me, but stopped swearing. "They don't care." I nodded back down the passageway towards the cheerless custody sergeant. "What?" "What you were saying. They don't care." Her haunted, sunken eyes stared into me a moment. She toyed with her cup. "I need some smack." "Heroin?" "Been remanded." Her eyes spilled with tears that she brushed at angrily. "Why?" "Stabbed a man, bastard." Her eyes narrowed. "Gave him a blow job, never gave me nothing for it, laughed at me." What to say to that? Her world sat well wide of mine. I wondered what act, what series of neglects or abuses had turned her to onto this path. "You're not one of them." She went on. Putting her cup down, she rose - slow and stiff - and shuffled across the cell towards the hatch. For a moment something of yesterday spilled fear through me. Yesterday I wouldn't have had anything to do with a woman like this, but yesterday I'd been in another world myself. "Who are you?" "Flower." Only inches apart, her breath reeked through the hatch, but I didn't flinch. "I need to score. I'm going to be rattling soon." "I don't know what that means." "What planet did you come from! Heroin, I need fucking heroin." She needed shampoo and conditioner in a long, high pressure shower, but being too polite for that kind of feedback, I offered a slender hand through the hatch. She flinched away, as if I'd claw for her throat, then a narrow eyed, cunning look filled her wasted features. Even though I read her intention I didn't so much as twitch when she seized my hand in both of hers. Her skin felt cold and clammy, her jagged nails were black with dirt. "Tell them fuckers to get me some fucking gear or I'll break your fucking arm!" "What's your name?" I didn't doubt she would have snapped my arm, for she radiated a desperate strength. She let some weight hang onto my arm so the cold, metal edge of the hatch bit into my skin. But I had run and run along a narrow rail, I had vaulted over a speeding car and knew she had no power over my bones. "Tell them! I'll do it." Voices came from the custody desk, phones rang, but nothing gave any sign of alarm. I peered through the hatch again. "What's your name?" More weight on my arm, but I could see her the way I had seen Danny. No blaze of light from her though; she glowed only with a faint, fungal sheen and I could have wept at what she'd been made into. Her feet were off the cell floor now, she hung from my wrist like a woman suspended over a flood while nothing more than a mild discomfort troubled me. "Who are you?" she moaned placing her grimy feet down again. "Flower, I told you."What's your name?" "Ann. Ann Lomas." Her voice had softened. "Some bad stuff in your head, Ann." Amongst the sparkles and glow inside her skull were grey, withered bridges, abandoned ways and down near the base of her brain a red and black hunger that boomed its narrow, selfish need so loud it swamped everything else. Now, I couldn't tell what had first made Ann wake that hunger, but there were plenty of bad tales that started with some vulnerable soul trying to find something to call their own with drugs or booze. That wet, red starvation pulsing inside her head and blotting out everything else saddened me. For about a second. Then anger rose. What could Ann have been without that? I wasn't quite sure what I did, I was mad remember, but it felt like reaching out and putting my fist around that bad place and then squeezing and squeezing until it had all gone. Then I snatched back from inside her, as if I'd done something wrong She stumbled back, sank to her thin mattress and hid her face from me. My hand looked ordinary when I drew it from her cell, but I buzzed with what I had just done. Had I really touched her addiction? Could I have made it go away? "Bye, Ann. I hope you find some peace soon." As I stepped away I heard a single, quiet word - thanks, but my belly rumbled spoiling the moment again. A face peered down the passage from the well-lit desk end as I walked quietly towards my own cell. It was the custody assistant, a broad shouldered man. For a moment he just stared, so I waved. "Sarge! The lass from F6 is out!" "Bloody hell!" Bodies filled the passage, bearing down on me, their faces filled with surprise and annoyance - the sergeant and his assistant, more than a match for little, female me so I sidestepped quickly into my own cell and pulled the door closed with a smug clang. The sergeant's face filled my hatch, consternation furrowing his brow. "What the bloody hell are you up to?" "Could I have something to eat please?" "Breakfast is at seven." "That's ages away. I'm real hungry, Sarge." I smiled winningly. "How did you get out?" "Door weren't shut properly." "It were, Sarge. I'm not daft enough to forget checking it when I put one in a cell." That was the assistant, outraged that his professionalism should be smeared. My door was rattled - shut fast again. "Well, it is now. No harm done. Get her some snap will you, Jon?" "Breakfast isn't 'till seven!" "I know, but... Just get her summat to eat, hey? Thanks." "Thank you. What's going to happen to me?" "Going to tell me your name yet?" "I told you, Phil Wesley." "Barmy," he said sadly. "Hospital for you, love if you can't do better than that." An idea came to mind, on the back of what had just happened with Ann. "Will the two lads who brought me in take me?" He laughed, hollowly. "Them! Firearms prima donnas? No chance. No more wandering about, eh darling? Jon'll bring you some scoff, but don't have an all day breakfast - they're minging." He brought me a portion of Lancashire Hotpot in a plastic dish - what Barry would have called a microwaved sad-bastard meal for one, but it tasted okay and filled a hole. I washed it down with strong, sweet tea and smiled to myself to hear Jon reporting that Ann was sleeping soundly down the passage. But that BMW cop, Danny - one of the firearms prima donnas, was on my mind as I supped the last of my tea and listened to the harsh sounds of some fighting coming from the custody desk as a swinging-drunk customer was subdued. If I could shrink and disperse the hunger corrupting Ann's life, maybe I could do something about that tumour I'd seen. Having been a man myself I knew what they were like. Aside from man-flu none of them liked to trouble the doctors until it was too late. "What have they done to you, Wes?" I murmured to myself, sitting on my mattress again, feet drawn up and dress tented over my knees. I examined my little hands, pulled some long gleaming tresses before my eyes and peeped again at the little breasts on my pale, hairless chest. Female, for sure, but more than that. Was I a witch? Was I just mad, they way they thought I was? Though they clearly thought I was a woman, unless that was part of my madness too. Maybe I'd had a stroke or a heart attack or something in the signal box and all this was a fantasy I was concocting while I died or lay in a coma in the hospital. Well I wasn't going to sit and wait for something to happen. Covered by the ruckus down the passageway, where it sounded like some more coppers had come to get involved, I let my thoughts slip into the door's steel again, swung it open and tip-toed along the passage, away from the fighting and intent on the stout, steel fire door at the far end. I checked on Ann first, sleeping fast, then stepped though the very cooperative fire door into the still, freezing car park. Two women waited for me, leaning casually on the galvanised post supporting a pair of CCTV cameras - or appearing casual at least; intent on me as I stared at them. What mischief had they in mind? They were responsible for all this. "Hello again." I said, conversationally. "How's the leg?" "Much better, thank you," said the black-haired woman in a bright, local accent. She gave me a faint smile and amusement glinted in her green eyes. She nudged her friend in the orange skirt. "Told you." "I'm still not going to eat my hat," said she. Her voice sounded husky, older than she looked. "I've never seen anything like this before." "That's because you've never been outside the UK, you silly." Slowly I folded my arms, under my stiff, little, alien breasts and fixed them in a glare. They looked like a pair of schoolgirls, sharing plotting glances and about to start with the giggles over something they'd pulled off. "You never even asked!" That focussed them. "Like it's a bloody game or summat!" "No," said Dark Hair, too quickly. She looked at the floor. "Yes." "Agatha!" snapped her mate. "Then left me, to fend for myself. Like... I don't know what." Agatha sighed, poked her toe at the concrete - she wore ballet flats now. "It was a test," she said. "To see what would happen. A challenge, to see just how special you are." "A test!" If I'd had some shoes on I might have stamped my foot. "Bloody hell! This is my bloody life here, not some game." "I'm sorry. Really. It's just... You're unique." "I appreciate your honesty. Now leave me alone." I turned in a flare of skirts and lift of hair, pushed it irritably from my face and faced the police station. Most of its windows were dark, but there was a lit door away from the custody block I thought would be a good place to try. A collection of police patrol cars were near that door, dwarfed by the imposing bulk of the BMW I had been brought here in. "Phil! Where are you going?" "Work to do." "Please wait. I'm sorry, for what I did." "Agatha! Enough." "Quiet, Tilly. Phil, come back. We'll have a cup of tea, somewhere more comfortable. Let me explain." It was tempting enough that I stopped, though I kept my back to them. "Go on." "Not here." "Here's all I've got at the moment, thanks to you." A cheap point, but I didn't have much else for her. Footsteps scuffed the tarmac behind me, but I didn't turn. Childish, I know, but I didn't owe her much more than my back. "I should have spoken to you, but I was so blown away by you, I didn't stop to think. You're exceptional, Phil, I've heard stories, but nothing like this has ever come up in front of me." That made me face her. Her eyes shone, her eyebrows pleaded. "I have no idea what you're talking about." "Blood and Iron, Phil. That's you. Tell me I'm wrong, but you got out of that door because you could feel it, you could make it move for you. Couldn't you? And that woman in there, you touched her pain, didn't you?" "How do you know that?" "I do blood too, that's how I transformed you - just blood though. Her, grumpy back there, she's Air. Good at it too, but you're iron and blood. You're potent, Phil. So powerful I could even feel it when you were a man, when you touched my injured leg. Oh it was deep, way deep, but I'm sensitive enough to know." "What do you mean when I was a man?" "Men can't do what you can do, what I can do, what Tilly does - any of us. God knows they'd love to be able to do it, that's why they've hated and persecuted women like us through the centuries, but you need a womb, ovaries and a woman's body to channel it. Now you have them too, you're one of us. You're a witch, Phil - a very powerful one too." A witch. Laugh out loud stuff, but I'd felt the moonlight, I'd felt my body change and I'd run like the wind along the rail top. "Come back with us, Phil. Please. Let us help you." "Can you make me back?" Tilly laughed, derisively. "Go back to that? Why would you do that to yourself!" Agatha and I ignored her. "I can't," she said. "But you can. That's the power you have over blood, the body. But once you're male again you can't do it again. All that amazing potential will be locked away in your head again." "What do you mean?" "Agatha!" She dismissed her friend with an irritated wave. "The power sits inside the brain, Phil. But it needs a woman's body to channel it. Before, when I found you, you were mismatched, I don't know why you hadn't felt it before, but you had a woman's brain, a witch's brain in a man's body." A woman's brain! I wanted to yell 'bollocks!' right in her face, but wasn't in the mood. How the hell did I have a woman's brain? Admittedly I'd never been what you'd call a man's man, I'd never been one of the boys with the drinking and the womanising - even before Helen and I met. Like I said, Helen was the only woman I'd ever seen naked, the only woman I'd ever loved or made love to. Even so, a woman's brain - a witch's brain. "Come with us. We'll get this sorted, one way or the other," said Agatha. "It's been a long night after a long day. Thing'll be different in morning." "I've summat to do, in there." I waved at the police station and started walking. "What? What have you got to do? Can I help?" "Dunno. Lad with a brain tumour. Can't leave him like that." "Phil! No. It doesn't work like that." "It does now." "Phil!" I didn't turn around again, just kept walking - intent on that door. I kept my focus on a lad who looked a bit like Robert would have done and my dad who'd died a squalid death from cancer. Steel and blood? Whatever that meant to them it meant I could defeat the door locks, find that Danny and find someway to crush the black spot in his head. A cool gust whipped up around me, though the night had been still. My hair billowed and my dress pressed to my legs. A blur of woman whipped past me, swerved and halted in my path with her own orange skirts trailing behind her. "Can't let you do that," said Tilly holding out her hand, like a copper stopping traffic. I stepped around her. She blurred again, back in my way - closer this time. "Come with us now. We can help, smooth all this over. We're sorry, we really are, but there are things you need to know. Protocols, agreements. Treaties. It's complex." "Complex for you maybe." "You go inside there and you're on your own. Wait to see what humanity will do with you when they find what you are. They won't burn you, but they'll find some way to destroy you. It's what they do. Think about it, come with us now and we'll show you a world you can't imagine or stay, heal your boy and then..." "Bollocks to you." I pushed past her, strode up to the door with fists and teeth clenched. "Last chance, Phillip Wesley!" The door was held shut by an electromagnetic lock disengaged when a card reader picked up the right code from an authorised access card. Or in my case when I put my hand on the lock and followed the lines of spindles and bars so I could encourage them to unlock for me. I closed the door behind me without looking back. On your own again, Wes, I thought as I took in my new surroundings. It was a shortish passage with a blocked off door to the right and an alcove containing a vending machine bright with crisps, chocolate bars and cans of pop. Past that was a T-Junction, voices came from the right so I headed that way and found myself in a large room, full of desks and computer terminals - most of them dark and unused. At the far end, sitting around a big rectangular table were four cops; two lasses, including the spotty one who'd searched me, and the two firearms lads who brought me in. They'd got mugs of tea, a paper bag of doughnuts and were not particularly happy to see me out on my own in the station. "Flower!" said Danny, sugar around his mouth. "What are you doing out here?" "Nipped out for a pee?" "Not on the road again I hope," said Sean. "That would make you a habitual criminal and the magistrates won't like that. They will quite literally wag their fingers at you." "Who are you with?" asked Spotty, craning her neck around like she was trying to see into the corridor. "We're supposed to be taking you down hospital when we've finished us brews." "Oh, they were busy. I didn't like to bother them." "Fucking hell, she's escaped!" That was Spotty's mate. She leaped to her feet, with commendable speed for such a stocky lass, and bore down on me with her hand already on the yellow grip of her holstered Taser. "Has she heck!" said Danny, resting a hand on her arm to still her. "She's not like that, are you, Flower?" "Actually, sorry about this, but I did. Then I felt a bit bad, didn't want to get anybody into bother so I let myself back in." "Good girl," said Danny. "Best we take you back then, before he goes ape. He can't have noticed yet, that's a good sign. Haven't dug a tunnel have you? That'll be hard to explain." I stared at his head, like I could see through his skin and muscle and skull to that thing behind his eye, but he was opaque without contact and I didn't just want to reach for him - he'd pull away for sure and I'd need maybe a minute to work my magic on him. 'Work your magic! Listen to yourself Phil Wesley!' I said to myself, but that's exactly what I meant to do with my woman's brain and my woman's body. "Alright?" he asked, under my scrutiny. "Do you think he'll be mad? He were a bit cross last time I saw him." "Oh him, he's right as rain. Just a bit touchy when folk like us bring him folk like you to deal with. We'll smooth him alright, won't we Sean." "No problem. How about we take her down hospital? That'd cheer him up." Still I hesitated, trying to impersonate a young woman of dubious mental capacity who might be frightened by a tired, gruff and impatient police sergeant. Danny looked at me, then at Sean who shrugged. Without having to resort to attempting to flutter my eyelashes they each offered me a hand. Now here's something for a bloke, no matter how his brain might be wired up; it took an age of build up and self-encouragement before I'd held hands with Helen, probably the only man I ever held hands with, as a man myself, was my Dad and then only when he was so far gone towards death. In that police station I hesitated for real. Both of them told me it was okay and how they would look after me so I held their hands and the world kept turning while the three of us went the short distance to the big, strong door leading to the cells. Danny probably never knew it, but while we walked and they talked, reassuring nonsense I pretended to listen to, I had a look inside his skull. That dark spot still sat malignantly behind his eye until I pinched it out of existence, grinding it down so small it couldn't spread somewhere. I felt good about that, and a quick check of Sean showed him to be okay, so I walked into the custody block and faced the indignant outbursts from the Sergeant, and the horrified surprise from the assistant, with my head up and a faint smile on my face. It might have been the first time in my life where I had directly done something to change a life and felt very proud of myself. Even so, after I'd been shouted at by the Sergeant and ordered from the police station to the hospital, as soon as the BMW came to a halt at a set of traffic lights I did my thing with the child lock on the back door and sprinted away from them. I felt a bit bad, they'd probably get into bother for losing me, but I didn't much fancy going for an mental health assessment down the hospital. They wouldn't believe I was Phil Wesley either and the prospect of some well-meaning shrink trying to stabilise me with some drug or other didn't appeal. I knew what I had to do, I knew what was right for me. So I ran again, with skirt and hair streaming, along the roads and down lanes. The gravel on the towpath along the canal didn't trouble my bare feet and the moonlight sparkled my senses and drove back the dark so I never missed a step until I was standing by the railway line looking up at my old signal box - Black Cat Junction. The spare key still lived under the broken slab around the side, just by the cobwebby toilet and I let myself in, brushed my fingers along the steel lever tops and smiled to feel them tingling under my skin. "I'll miss you," I whispered and maybe I felt a surge, gone before it was really sensed it, or I was just getting over sentimental again. Anyway, my bag sat in my little locker where I'd left it - it hadn't been disturbed. There were my pencils and sketchbook, my snap box and library book - a Walt Longmire murder/mystery tale. Best of all my car keys were in there and with them the means of getting into mine and Helen's little house. Driving home felt a little weird, being a different build to when I'd driven last, but I took it steady, reversed neatly onto the drive and let myself in. With the curtains closed and a mug of tea to hand I stripped off that long, black dress, folded it tidily and then, ignoring my slender female form, I sat on the edge of the double bed, where no woman had sat since Helen had passed, closed my eyes and thought about being Phil Wesley. About fifteen minutes it took, just like Agatha had promised, and then I sighed, put on my pyjamas and stood for a moment at the window, watching the moon and letting it see me. By then all I felt was second-hand sunshine on plain, old Phil Wesley. I kissed Helen's picture good night and may have cried a little as I fell asleep, but it didn't take long. Back to Phil. While I was on sick leave they demolished Black Cat Junction so I never saw the signal box again. To be honest, I stayed away - not wanting to see the box again when I couldn't be part of it's last week. When I finally walked to the top of the cutting only the box's foundations were left. A coupe of day previously Sal had come round and brought me a souvenir - the metal fire bucket we'd used to put the stove's ashes in. I almost cried again when she showed me, I was crying quite a lot on and off - don't know what Dad would have thought. "How are you doing?" she asked, leaning forward and squeezing my hands in hers. She was going to make a brilliant vicar. "Getting there," I said. "Still don't know what happened?" I shook my head. I'd told everyone who'd needed to ask; police, railway company, doctors, Sal and Barry that I'd had some kind of turn and woken up in an old, half collapsed hut down the lineside. Of course all the tests they ran to see if I'd had some kind of stroke or seizure came up negative - my brain was working fine, but they didn't test to see if I was a witch or a woman. The medics said I was in pretty good shape for a middle aged, overweight bloke. It might have been better if they had found something, but they didn't and that left the bosses and doctors wondering if I was fit to be working in a signalbox, with the job being safety critical, so they signed me off for a month. Leaving me too much time to think. Instead of staring at the house's walls I took up walking - it seemed like a good way to drop a few pounds as well. I got myself some stout shoes, decent waterproofs, maps and a daysack so each day I could pack some sandwiches, a bit of cake and a flask to explore the locality. That's how I found myself at the top of the railway cutting looking down on the place where my signalbox had been, watching the trains rattling by under control of the bold, new remote operated signals. Leaning on the fence I thought about a black cat and a long black dress, I thought about the moonlight on my skin and the blaze of life I'd seen and preserved inside Danny. When I finally turned around to head home I saw a billowing orange skirt hanging from a washing lane outside the farmhouse at Station Farm and near there, just a few minutes later I saw Tilly again. She drove past me, along the track leading to the farm, in a gleaming, scarlet Audi. The car seemed so at odds with my memory of the witch I'd last seen at the police station, I assumed I'd got it wrong. But the driver, with her hair drawn into a sleek bun, stared at me with such blatant recognition she had to be Tilly. She pulled over, the window came down and she waved towards the farm. "I'll put the kettle on." Even though my mind was set by then I still stood stock still, watching her car splash through the puddles towards the house. It would have been easier to turn my back, walk away, to concentrate on ordinary. But I didn't, I followed my heart towards Tilly's house. By the time I got there I'd turned damp with fear, almost trembling with agitation. "I wondered if I'd see you again," she said, leaning on the frame of the open front door. Her perfectly tailored grey skirt suit and immaculate make up a long way from my memory of her. All the times I'd driven to work and looked over at Station Farm, I'd never have imagined such a woman could live there. I'd assumed it remained part of the agriculture industry, but up close I could see the fence dividing the machinery sheds and granary from the house and gardens. She kept a clean, but worn house; bunches of herbs and meadow flowers were drying in bunches on windowsills and worktops giving the place a summery feel. She led me through to the kitchen, waved me on a modern styled chair by an old fashioned kitchen table and made tea. "I wondered if you'd change yourself back," she said. "Seemed like the right thing to do." "How did you find me?" "Ah, I remembered Agatha saying she'd been on her way to visit, that night she were knocked over and I reckoned you probably wouldn't want to be walking too far, if you were playing at being a cat. Then I saw your orange skirt on washing line." "Very observant. I like to colour up and loosen up when I'm not at work." She handed me a mug of tea and sat opposite, crossing her legs. "Look, that night. Aggie had a bit of a go at me. Said I'd been a bitch." I held up my hands, dismissing the accusation, but she shook her head. "She was right, I was. I'm sorry, I should have been more... empathetic. I mean, she really shouldn't have done what she did to you, very impetuous that one, but even so I should have done more to help. Look, it's not easy being like us, but there are rewards, and me - what I can do, air is my thing, I can move quickly - like the wind - and in bad light I can be practically invisible, which is cool, but you... Day 1, straight out of the box and you're fixing cancer, unlocking doors. I'm ashamed to say, Phil, that I was hugely jealous of you. Petty I know, you have to work with what you're given, but there it is. Like I said, I am very sorry for being a bitch towards you." She extended her hand across the table and when I shook it she seemed to relax a little, slipping off her shoes and rubbing the balls of her feet through her tights. "I'm a lawyer, by day - heels are part of the costume! Anyway, I'm pleased to see you're okay." So I recited my woolly, official explanation for my disappearance from the signal box and she looked genuinely sympathetic to hear they wouldn't let me work. Then she looked me in the eye and asked why I'd come. I'd hoped she would, for I wasn't sure I would have volunteered the information otherwise and then I'd have been kicking myself for an opportunity lost. "I'll show you," I said and reached into my daysack, propped against my chair leg. From inside I produced a carefully wrapped bundle and unfolded it gently - though not completely, it was too wide for that, so she could see the black dress I'd worn that night. "That's one of mine," Tilly said as I unfolded it. "Aggie's idea, I really should have stopped her." I snorted. "It was all part of it, strangely enough - never worn a dress before, never had the call to." I took a deep breath. "This isn't an easy thing to say, especially as I hardly know you, but what I want... what I'd like is to fit this dress again." Fleur. When I went up to the cemetery to talk with Helen I never actually imagined she listened. Despite everything I'd been through, what I'd seen and felt, life after death still seemed like folk clutching at emotional straws. Even if the dead folk did go to some different, even better place afterwards why would we expect them to waste their time endlessly peering at us. There would surely be better entertainment. Helen had always been a good listener though, and my best friend even after I'd let her down in many ways; I should have found some way to help her open up after Robert's murder - things would have looked a lot different then. But I hadn't, and they didn't - things were what they were, not what we wished them to be, or what they'd been. Robert was dead, Helen was dead. There was no going back to them, and no going back for Phil Wesley. "It's not that I want to be a woman, you understand," I said to her gravestone. I'd already cleaned it down, along with Robert's, trimmed the grass around it and refreshed the flowers. "Nowt wrong with been a woman of course, but that's not what this is about." Tilly had understood, I told myself that anyway. She wasn't nearly as grouchy as first I'd thought, a very warm woman to be honest - for a lawyer! Agatha had understood too - useful, as she'd be the one doing it again. "It's hard to explain, lass," I said to the gravestone. "What it felt like that night. What it were like running along that rail line, what it were like to feel the moonlight sparkling on my skin. The bats following me, the way I could see into the shadows - the feeling that I were alive; for the first time since... you know, since you did what you felt you had to do. The feeling of being wild and free and alive and... not just Phil Wesley from railway. Then there were what I did, to that copper and the junkie. I can't stop thinking of that. And I can't have none of it without being a woman." I ran my fingers over her carved name on the stone, the way I'd once run my fingers over her cheeks, her jawline, her eyebrows, and I missed her so much. "You remember when we went to Greece? You were desperate to see the Acropolis, and Delphi and all them other amazing places? But you were scared to death of the plane, weren't you - proper petrified. You did it though, you climbed aboard and sat there, on way there and way back. Hated every second didn't you? But it were worth it though, for the wonder on your face when we saw those things. That's a bit how I feel. I can't have the one without the other - I can't be a witch without being female." And I deeply wanted to be more than I was. "Ready?" Tilly asked a few minutes later at the cemetery gate. She wore a long broomstick skirt, so colourful it might been woven from a rainbow, with a black bolero jacket and white tennis shoes. She looked so bright, so elegant and feminine I almost ran away screaming. What kind of fool was I for imagining I could be a woman? Against her casual glory, my colour range ran through shades of beige and brown with occasional moves into grey for formal suits and once in a while an adventure in navy blue. "Think so." I had a look over my shoulder, though their graves were out of sight. "You can come back, you know." I forced a smile. "She won't recognise me." That made her pull a skeptical face. "Only joking." "You okay?" A nod. When she offered a hand I surprised myself by taking it. For all the resolve I'd built up to actually try and find Tilly, I wasn't so sure I'd have come to this point without her - my last few hours as a man. Aside from the clothes I wore and a few bits of very sentimental value, everything of my old life had gone. Priced to sell quickly the house had quickly sold and I'd handed over the keys a few days before; I'd told the estate agent I was downsizing, hinted about something incurable, and moving to hospice accommodation in Cornwall. Furniture and anything useable went to the Salvation Army, anything else went to Tilly's where we fed it into a brazier and watched it burn. Phil Wesley went up in smoke. Even if I changed my mind now, I'd left nothing to return to - all bridges burnt. Tilly drove me forwards, to her place and womanhood. I couldn't have articulated the jumble of emotions fighting over me, but weirdly scared and excited could have been a decent summary. Tilly had offered me a room when the furniture went, plenty of room for us to both to rattle about in that house, she'd said. Without other options, I'd taken her up on the offer - Tilly's company would be better than none at all as I set my old life aside. I'd hoped for some insights into what I'd committed to as well. - witch and woman. I discovered Tilly liked Scrabble, Risk, Crosswords, action films and slapstick comedy. Remember how sour she'd been when I first met her? Remember how squared away she'd looked in her workwear? You'd be forgiven for thinking she had some kind of weird twin sister to see her doubled up on the living room floor, howling with laughter at some nonsense she'd insisted on showing me. First time I'd just stared, open mouthed, but after that shock I couldn't help but laugh along with her. One time she even had to run from the room, still giggling and blushing with a hand clasped to her crotch and a wet patch spreading in her jeans. We even laughed at that, afterwards. I found her company very easy, towards that last male day I'd even relaxed enough to take off my socks in front of her. In between setting my affairs in order I'd started creating flower beds amongst the bland lawns and gravelled areas she called a garden, I kept on top of the housework and made sure she had samples of the simple, home-cooked food I'd survived since Helen had gone. "You will make a wonderful wife," she'd said, eyes fixed on mine after I'd done shepherd's pie for us. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I'd muttered, uncomfortably. That made her laugh, she'd reached over the table to squeeze both my hands. "I'm not going to let you go, I've never been so well looked after." Which made me wonder why she was single. "Never found a man I liked enough to settle down with, yet," she said. "Are you allowed to, you know... have relationships?" "Oh, yes! Of course with whoever you like. You might need to be a bit careful, to avoid any bonfires and ducking stools, but you can please yourself - play the field. Have fun." Though I wasn't sure about that. I'd never played the field when I'd had fields to play in - if you understand what I mean. So that last night we drove from the cemetery, back to Tilly's farmhouse and there were three strange cars in the yard alongside Agatha's little Suzuki jeep - she didn't always travel as cat. "Ready?" Tilly said again in the quiet after she switched off the engine. This was the hard bit, or one of the hard bits. "Nope." "Come on, they won't bite. We leave that to the vampires." "There are vampires?" "We tend to leave them alone and they return the favour." "How have you kept all this quiet?" "People choose what they want to believe. People like us, we're right there in the too difficult box." She held my hand across the yard, then just as we were about under the porch she kissed my cheek and led me in to meet the head of the Yorkshire Coven. "Miranda is very, very old," Tilly had warned a couple of days previously, "And doesn't take shit from anyone." "Phil, I have heard a great deal about you." Miranda said, standing to shake my hand. Her eyes were a golden brown mix and very direct - I wondered what she saw of me when she touched me, if she could see what Agatha had that first night. "Good to meet you," said I. "I've heard a bit about you too." "Really? Like what?" "You don't take any shit." To her credit, she almost smiled, then glanced towards Tilly who looked at the carpet. "I am foremost a Yorkshirewoman," she admitted; her voice came very cut glass, but you didn't have to speak full Yorkshire to be one of us. "Then I reckon we'll get along." "We'll see." Tilly had briefed me well - that Miranda had come to see me at all was a good sign. Not that I needed her approval, nor did Agatha need her permission, but if I wanted to get along in this new society I'd need a handshake from near the top. "It's a most unusual situation, Phil." "Not without precedent," Agatha put in. She'd had her bollocking - not so much for what she'd done, but the way she'd done it. If everything went to plan I could call upon about a hundred years worth of favours from her. I had no intention of calling upon any of them, but it did make you wonder what kind of power Miranda held over them, and me - potentially. "We're all aware of Kelly van Huyten," said Miranda. More awareness from Tilly - back in the 50s Kelly had been born without a womb. Her potential had been identified, much like mine, so somebody like Agatha had given her a uterus making her a witch. "Bloody silly, really," Tilly had said. "Needing a womb to do magic, but that's magic for you. Fickle it is, proper fickle." The thought of having one myself still made me shiver. "But Kelly's situation was radically different from Phil's. After all, Phil is biologically male." "Mentally female," said Agatha. "Men can't be witches." That came from a woman called Surenne - spike haired and well pierced around ears, nose, lips and brows. "Men have oppressed us and all women for too long." "I'm not men, I'm Phil." That ideological point went backwards and forwards and around the houses for the best part of twenty minutes, before Miranda asked what I would do - if the change were allowed. "She'll live here with me," said Tilly. "For the time being at least." She! That hit hard, even though I'd had a night of female pronouns already. "And then what?" One of the films Tilly had made me watch was Unbreakable. Have you seen it? Bruce Willis as the reluctant superhero who can sense evil when he brushes past strangers in the street? I think Tilly made me see that for a reason, though she never said anything more than it was a cracking film. I'd imagined that I'd become a nurse, or an auxiliary in a hospital - a children's or a cancer ward - where I could do my thing. Good idea, Tilly and Agatha had thought. Then they hit me with some buts. All about making choices, deciding who I could save or who I wouldn't. I'd die before I could touch everyone and save them all for my power was as finite as anything else in the world. And what if somebody realised what I could do? When they offered me money, power or they held me hostage for their own selfish plans. Though they never said no, don't do that, they made a powerful argument - one witches had been using over the centuries since society had burnt their ancestors. "If you help me," I said to Miranda - and by help, I meant take me on, give me a new identity, a backstory; things well within Miranda's reach. "I'll go to work on the railway again. A conductor or a dispatcher at a station, anywhere where I come into contact with people." Like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable - I'd find what I needed to find by discreet contact and then, if I could, I'd sort it. My mind was made up to do something along those lines no matter what Miranda said. She had other questions. Suranne raised other objections, centred on my biology and the historic abuse of women by men, but after maybe an hour Miranda nodded. I held my breath, but she smiled, stood and offered her hand again. "We're going to do it," she said. "Welcome, sister." Sister? Bloody hell. As much as I had been burning bridges that 'sister' thudded like the last door slamming shut behind me. From her handbag she produced a black, leather woman's purse and gave it to me. The first thing I saw was a driving licence. A young woman's picture looked stern on it, the woman Agatha had made me into. The name, my new name printed beside the picture. "Fleur?" I said. "These two said you answered to 'Flower', that night," said Miranda. I felt my cheeks colouring then - a pretty name like that couldn't be mine; but I remembered being her, I'd had a lot of idle to time to reflect and when all was said and done, I'd missed being Flower. I tried the name again. In reality I'd imagined taking Philippa and encouraging people to call me Phil, but in stepping away from the old me, into this new life wouldn't it be better to live with a new name? The picture didn't surprise me; Agatha had already asked how I'd like to look. I could have been anybody, any body shape, any size, colour. That had been the first moment of real discomfort in deciding to be a witch: what should I look like? Choosing options as though I was treating myself to a new car seemed wrong. So I asked her why she'd made me that particular shape on that particular night. "I knew a girl, at school - Karen Enderby - with long midnight hair, long legs and a tight body. She'd always been a frumpy little mouse of a girl. Then her mum walked them both out of her dad's miserable life and it transformed her - you'd never seen anything like it. She's a pilot in the Australian Navy now; your situation made me think of her and I didn't think she'd mind." Hands were shaken, nobody tried to hug me for which I was silently grateful. Even Surenne gave me a grin through her pierced lips. "Biology is overrated," she admitted. Then there were just the three of us, out in the yard before Tilly's house watching Miranda's tail lights trundle away down the track. Stars made bold patterns in the clear night sky, a silver backlight to the Pennines meant the moon would be rising anytime soon. "Ready?" Agatha asked. "Bit late now if I'm not." "Course it isn't," said Tilly. She squeezed my hand again. "It would be complicated, but not too late to back out." I squeezed back. "I'm ready." We walked along the track, then followed the path I'd once used when I worked the Black Cat Junction until we came to the lineside and the darkness filling the cutting around the junction. Where there had once been the welcoming glow from the signal box only shadows remained, broken by the harsh glare of those modern signals. "You can start now," I said, leaning on the fence and wondering if a train might pass while we were up here. "I already did." "Don't look at me while I change." Agatha giggled, like I'd said something daft. "Will you miss it?" Absorbed as I was in the moment, I didn't really catch Tilly's meaning until she wriggled her index finger suggestively. "Can't say I've had that much use for it of late," I admitted. On the 'a' sound of late my voice squeaked up a couple of octaves. "Your voice is breaking," Agatha said. "How can it break, you loony," said Tilly. "Unbreaking? Repairing?" I had a little cough as vague tightening sensations tickled my throat. I may have frowned as my jeans closed around my hips. All of a sudden coming out here, close to where it had started didn't seem like such a good idea. Something inside my pelvis creaked, I looked over the fields measuring the distance to Tilly's house and sanctuary. "It's all going pear shaped," I muttered, afraid to speak too loud in case my voice wobbled some more. "You what?" Both of them, almost in unison - with edges of concern. "Me! Going pear shaped!" Now I could feel the denim closing in on my thighs. Turning, I started back along the path. "Wait!" Tilly called. "These jeans are going to do me a mischief!" "Take them off," said Agatha, casually - like it was that easy. "Who'd see?" Tilly said. I should have remembered what happened with my shoes and my clothes that evening in the signalbox. Wriggling my toes told me how much extra room I had around them now. "Not going to happen." "The moon's coming out," said Tilly seductively, stepping up and resting a hand on my shoulder. "Can't you feel it?" Could I feel it? A tremble of anticipation, as though my body remembered that last night - the moon's kisses over my skin. The first curve peeped over the trees lining the horizon. When I turned back to her my mouth dropped to see her pushing down her skirt. Her laugher lifted, high and pretty, at my expression. Dropping the skirt she pushed down her tights and panties; I glimpsed the darkness of her pubic hair before looking away, but Agatha already had her pullover off and her hands were out of sight, busy unfastening her bra. I made some incredulous noise and started back towards the house. A shoe slipped off and the constraint around my hips felt more urgent. Arms encircled my waist, hair ticked my neck - mine or Tilly's? Her arms were bare and pale in the growing moonlight. Bumps showed through my jumper and I thought of running down that railway line, my feet unerringly finding the railhead, the simple unfettered joy of wild and magic. Her breasts pushed into my back as she deftly unfastened my belt. I made to stop her, then the moon showed herself over the treetops and made shadows around us. The light on my face felt like the first splash of a warm shower after a long sweaty day, the kiss of spring rain, the cool of a still pool as you dived in and I gasped. That moment's happy distraction was enough to see off the belt, then she popped the button and pushed down the zip. She laughed, a lovely tinkling sound close to my ear as I didn't try to stop her. My belly clenched, I belched - they excused me, with giggles. My chest felt so warm and alive it should have glowed through my clothes. Gas built inside me again and I desperately kept down the need to have a long, terrible fart as both women fought my jeans over my creaking pelvis and thickening thighs. As the moonlight washed my face and bared legs I fell from my last shoe and lifted first one leg, then the other so my jeans could be tugged free. A night breeze caught long strands of jet-black hair and swirled them around my face. I caught some with my fingers, smooth and silken and growing from my scalp. More churning down below forced a hiccup as something new elbowed space for itself; resilient weights on my chest were bared to the moon as Tilly had me raise my arms so she could strip away my shirt and jumper. Her arms were tight around my waist again, hands clasped at my tummy, her cheek to my shoulder, breasts warm to my back. Agatha stood to one side, smiling, but they weren't looking - like I'd asked. Looking down past those little breasts my tummy flattened until I could see the new spread of my hips, the luxurious black hair curling on my mound and underneath the shrinking fast shape of my cock. I waved good bye as it withered, turning instead the moon's beauty lifting into the sky - wonderful enough to lift a grin from me as I laid my hands over Tilly's and squeezed them. As odd tucks, squeezes and pulls suggesting my plumbing was under reconstruction I was more aware of the slight warmth of Tilly's breath on my shoulder followed by the softest of kisses. I only realised I'd been holding my breath when I sighed long and heartfelt into the night. "Are you done?" said Tilly. "I'm done." Naked and female I stood with them, soaking up the moon like a flower under the sun. "Hello, Fleur," said Aggie. "Flower," said Tilly. "Much better." Despite everything I smiled, then grinned some more. "Hiya," I said in my new, soft voice. My breath steamed, but I wasn't cold. I felt amazing - alive. "I'll go and out the kettle on," said Agatha, "Bring my clothes, Tilly." She turned and sprinted for the farmhouse; as she ran a wash of pure midnight ran from her hair over her skin before her body flowed, like ink running over a page. Without breaking step she went from woman to cat. I watched her go through the shadows, my new eyes easily following her bounding progress. "Do you think she'll teach me how to do that?" "I suppose, if you really want to do that to yourself! I'm going to adopt a really rough tomcat, that should wipe the smug smile off her face." We bundled up our clothes, still laughing. She took my hand and we headed back to our house.