Help! Evil Wizards Turned Me Into A Girl!

The putrid green gas oven from the seventies in Norman’s kitchen was extremely well kept for its age, apart from a few scratches on the door and worn paint around the burners. The clock hands stuck to around quarter after five, but the timer still worked, and none of the plastic knobs that controlled the burners were broken. Luthial pulled down the oven door to look at the racks inside. The oven walls had been scoured after the last use. They were clean enough to pass the white glove test. A faint and highly unfamiliar odor of oven cleaner struck her nose.

“It’s like a miniature cave,” she said, “So this is used for cooking. How does the fire burn without wood?”

Nefri nursed a glass of ice water at the kitchen table, “You shouldn’t tamper with magic you don’t understand. Remember, we’re only guests here.”

Luthial closed the oven door and joined Nefri, almost nose to nose yet the other didn’t seem to mind, “Tell me, what do you think of this realm?”

“It seems like such a peaceful place, but then we’ve seen so little.”

“Maybe we should explore some, find out what things are like. Maybe we could borrow one of those enclosed chariots that move by themselves.”

“You shouldn’t-”

Luthial interrupted sarcastically, “-tamper with magic you don’t understand. I want to explore. I want to see all the things. I want to go for a ride in one of those chariots. I want to see one of their towns. I want to try their strange clothing! There are so many wonders here. I could spend a year and not know them all.”

“Why don’t you play with the talking box some more?”

“I’m tired with it. The only thing it ever says to me is ‘If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again. If you need assistance, please dial the operator. Thank you.’ I tried talking to it, but then it just blares a loud noise in my ear: Burr Burr Burr Burr Burr Burr! Sometimes I envy Nadia, she can summon all sorts of voices with it.”

“I think they use it to talk to people who are far away.”

“They must not like to yell.”

“I meant completely beyond earshot far away.”

Luthial slapped her hands down on the table, “They can talk to ghosts!?”

Nefri shook her head, “I already asked, they have to be alive, and you have to press the right buttons. Plus, they have to be near another talking box. So that’s probably why you are hearing the angry voice so much.”

The front door opened without warning. Nefri almost dropped her ice water. Norman entered. He laid a towel on the sofa before going to the kitchen, where he filled a plastic bucket with ice. Dew followed with Nadia in his arms; she was unconscious. He laid her on the sofa before removing her protective fencing vest. Sweat drenched her clothes and soaked hair; her blouse clung to her frame, and her jeans were wet from the knee up.

Dew felt her forehead and her velvet red cheeks; they were burning hot. A check with a thermometer registered a hundred and two-degree fever. Norman gave Luthial a plastic bag filled with ice and told her to place it on Nadia’s forehead while he retrieved fans from upstairs. On the way up, he turned the ceiling fan on to full speed. Nadia awoke while he was upstairs and pushed herself up. Nefri gave her a glass of an iced sports drink Norman had prepared, which Nadia devoured in one voracious gulp before she fell back to the sofa. She looked pale, like she was ready to faint again.

“What’s wrong with her?” asked Luthial.

“She outdid herself. She needs time to recover,” Norman said on his way back downstairs.

He threw the girls some folded towels and asked them to dry Nadia. They finished in fifteen minutes. Dew kept watch on the steps, and the girls stayed in the kitchen until midnight as Nadia slept on the sofa, shivering with the chills. Dew was going to stay awake through the night, but Norman dissuaded him because he needed some time alone with his daughter. She had fallen into a delirious sleep, and he didn’t want him to hear her say anything embarrassing. He leaned in his arm chair and talked to her in a quiet voice.

“You really did it this time. This isn’t at all from the fencing defeat, you’re tougher than that. You faced an enemy you were scared to talk about.”

“Incubus,” she whispered. “So- afraid.”

Norman thought silently to himself until he fell asleep while sitting beside her.

At three o’clock in the morning, Nadia’s cries woke him. Her legs tucked together, she grabbed the sofa cushions and reached above her head with her right arm while mumbling. The fever had gone down but still persisted, so he placed a cold damp cloth on her forehead.

“That’s cold. I’m okay mom,” she muttered, “I’m fine, really.”

Norman squeezed her hand and she fell asleep again.

-----

Nadia awoke in the early morning to find her father hunched over a chair with his mouth hanging open as he slept. She carefully sat up so as not to wake him before trudging upstairs to take a nice hot bath and get some clean clothes on. The dried sweat made her skin feel tight. The bruises on her stomach and back were extremely sensitive; it hurt to go up the steps. She believed the fencing match had been ill timed. Her spirit was drained and her body battered from all the battles.

Nadia decided to stick around the house and take it easy for the day. After her bath, she put on a pair of soft pink pajamas and went to the kitchen with the intention of eating a bowl of cereal. Dew scrubbed the kitchen floor while on his knees underneath the table. Nadia almost tripped over his legs and fell back to the oven with a frightened squeal. He apologized for frightening her, but didn’t bother to stop working. Before getting the milk, she kicked him in the rear hard enough to make him yelp in protest. But he remained busily at work while she crunched her cereal; finally, she looked under the table after taking a fresh mouthful.

“What are you doing? Would you please go away so I can eat in peace?” she asked with her mouth full, spitting droplets of milk over a freshly cleaned floor. Cleaning the kitchen was her job, so she didn’t care about the milk, and she certainly didn’t feel like going through the effort of having manners while Dew was underneath the table looking over her legs. It didn’t matter that they were covered by pajamas. She didn’t want him looking at them. The roar of a vacuum cleaner came from upstairs, diverting Nadia’s attention toward the living room. Nefri scrubbed the sofa pillows with a bucket of sudsy water and a brush.

“Your father wants you to be able to rest for today because your training is going to be all the tougher until it’s time to go back to Pozalm,” Nefri explained, “He asked us if we would help with the chores. Seeing as we are staying here free of charge, we couldn’t refuse him.”

Nadia swallowed, laughed, “So he conned you into cleaning too, you better not slack. He’s a real neat freak.” She slurped the last drop of milk and took her utensils to the sink for washing. Dew pulled her shoulder from behind to stop her.

“We’ll handle that. Your father said you must rest for today so you can overcome your exhaustion. The sickness must work free of your system. Your bed has been cleaned, and made ready for you.”

She didn’t feel like arguing against it. Her bruises were still tender and she was incredibly tired, even somewhat faint to the point where she could barely keep her eyes open. When she made it to her room, she crawled in bed, pulled up the covers, and fell into a deep sleep almost immediately. She remained there until the next morning.

-----

The side of Nadia’s hands were quite acclimated with the fine art of chopping logs lengthwise. Yesterday’s rest had restored her, but little remained to be done since the house had been cleaned by the others. She wasn’t comfortable with being shut inside her room in self-imposed exile anymore, so the pile of chopped logs grew, even though barely a dent was made in the imposing pile of firewood. Nadia kept her total concentration on the wood. She did the work silently, breathed calmly, and kept an even chopping pace.

Every minute another log thumped against the old stump; the sound of chopped wood hitting the pile soon followed. Nadia thought her father hadn’t put her through any rough training lately and she thought it possible that he didn’t think she was capable anymore. If only he knew the hell I’ve been through, she thought with a grim frown, then he wouldn’t take me so lightly.

A few beads of sweat fell across her brow, so she took off her shirt, wiped her forehead, and threw it aside, continuing her work in a sports bra. A branch creaked above her, alerting her to a presence above. A halved block of wood hurtled upwards; it smashed squarely into the middle of Dew’s forehead. He fell from his perch into a pile of leaves and debris. Nadia blushed, quickly found her shirt, and pulled it back on as Dew laid with his nose pressed into the lawn.

She continued chopping wood with a twisted smirk, her skin a deep shade of red.

Dew finally sat up, “I was only checking to see if you were all right. I’m completely innocent.”

“Is that why you were hiding in the trees?”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen any part of you that I haven’t seen once before or will see again when you are my wi-”

The other half of the first block struck his forehead in the same spot. As he lay half conscious, he noticed Nadia wore shorts that allowed him to stare at her legs from the ankle to the knees. Almost as if she knew what he was thinking, Nadia took a bunch of chopped logs from the pile and dropped them over his head. Finishing with him as such, she knelt beside him and pushed one of the logs away so she could see him.

“Dew, I want to make this clear right now. If you ever spy on me, or mention me and marriage in the same breath, ever again, I’ll cut out both your lungs among some other things that come in a set and make you eat them. Got it?”

Dew blinked in protest, frowning.