Jez

Jez, for all appearances, seemed to be a normal sixteen year old boy. He was being well trained by his adoptive father, Sir Kenneth Rodelle, the knight who had lead the company that saved Jez and his companions from slave traders seven years earlier. Jez was about normal height, with auburn hair that he kept about three inches long, and hazel eyes that changed, more often than not, with his moods. The neutral shade of his eyes was a gentle, calming shade of green, reminding one of a tranquil forest glade at dawn. He was a bit on the scrawny side, but made up for it with his agility, his lithe movements always supple and graceful as could be.

Yet Jez had a secret that he shared only with the twelve year old girl that Sir Kenneth had adopted as his own daughter and Sir Kenneth himself.

Jez was really Jezebel, and he was a girl.

Jezebel had chosen to grow up as a boy, mostly to distance herself from the common misconception that a woman’s body was frail and weak, and also to dull the pain of all that had happened to her when she had been a young girl. Slave traders were, after all, not the most gentle or tactful of people, and although she was now as safe as she could be, she still remembered the cruelty and atrocity that she had lived through. She had seen villages slaughtered just so their children could be taken away and sold as slaves, she had seen mothers die trying to protect their children, and she had seen children deemed too young killed in front of his or her parents.

She didn’t want to remember all the painful things she had known as Jezebel, just the happier days she had known as Jez, Sir Kenneth’s adopted boy.

Growing up as a girl who was only pretending to be a boy was difficult. She couldn’t go out and join in when the boys went swimming - at least not when she turned eleven, and realized that, although it wasn’t much, her breasts were starting to grow. And it was also that milestone year, eleven, when she began her monthly cycle, bleeding out the protective coating of her uterus because she had no growing child inside her. The girl that Jez had had a hand in saving that day started the cycle two years later, at age nine, and relied upon Jez’s advice, given only in secret, on how to best deal with the pains and the stains.

It was a bit of a lie when she told herself only Miranda, the younger girl, and Sir Kenneth knew, because a maid knew as well, and kept track of when the time was nearing so it would not catch either young girl by surprise.

When Jezebel had turned thirteen, her breasts had become more pronounced, and she was forced to start slightly binding them in order to keep up her boyish look when in her training tunic and breeches. She had talked Sir Kenneth into teaching her swordplay, as if she really were his son, and also claiming that she needed to know how to protect herself and others in case slave traders or bandits ever tried raiding the house and hurting her younger sister, Miranda. Sir Kenneth had agreed, albeit slightly reluctantly.

And finally, at the ripe age of sixteen years old, Jezebel was finding it harder than ever to hide the parts of her femininity that would give her away. Her breasts were filled out so well that it made her slightly breathless when she bound them, but she ignored it and went through her daily routines. Her figure was also shaping up, becomingly quite womanly and attractive, with curves that some women would die to have. Her face stayed smooth and was gently splashed with freckles, and although some who knew her as Jez would just think she had boyish charm. Jezebel could grow no beard, as her friends, the ones she trained in swordplay with, teased her constantly. Her hands were small, and she had slender fingers that were deft with mending her own clothes or playing the piano that Sir Kenneth owned. As much as she didn’t like it, her legs were very much the legs of a woman, taught but not disfigured by muscle. Her feet were smaller than a boy’s of sixteen, for which a few of her friends had teased good-naturedly.

What’s more, Jezebel developed feelings of attraction toward a few of the boys during the past year, sometimes only pulling her gaze away just in time to parry or dodge her practice partner’s blade.

All in all, Jezebel was turning into a young woman. She could do little to stop it, and it unnerved her, shaking the foundations of all she had built up around her. She knew she had to tell everyone soon, tell them that she was not a boy, not a young man, but a girl in disguise. They would hate her, she was sure, for not dressing in a dress and stockings and slippers and jewels. She would be hated because she dared to believe she could stand on her own in the world of the men, and had succeeded until her body caught up to her. And even though she knew she’d have to tell them who she was, or show them, she was frightened of being forced away from all she’d ever known.

Miranda often told Jez that she would be a beautiful young woman if she just grew her hair out and showed everyone the real Jezebel. At times, there was nothing Jez wanted more than to let others know just who she was, but then the crushing weight of her painful memories would hit her, and she shook the thought off. Staying a boy, she would tell herself, was the best course of action for the time being.

What was more unnerving to the girl with the boy façade was that another boy seemed to be watching her more closely than ever. As intuitive as his father, the only blood child of Sir Kenneth seemed to be noticing more feminine traits about Jezebel, and try as she might to pull off the act, he always had the air of knowing more than he needed to. About her.
Even worse than Evan knowing something was off about Jez was that the Jezebel side of Jez was developing stronger feelings for him than for any of the other boys. With his father’s sandy blonde hair and his late mother’s exuberant green eyes, his perfectly chiseled features, and the voice that was much like his father’s - smooth as satin, sweet as honey - Evan was the type of nineteen year old that made any girl’s heart flutter. Jezebel had seen him shirtless on several occasions, not only he but all the other boys, yet each time he peeled a sweaty garment from his torso, she had to force herself to focus on something else. His skin was tanned from all the days spent training, and volunteering to help the poor farmers on the outskirts of the city. Not only was Evan Rodelle the epitome of gorgeous men, he was kind hearted as his father before him, and helped out even when his assistance was not needed.

Jez was always unable to fathom the depths of her emotions, for if she purged too deeply into her memories she would fall into a depression that could last for several days on end, with nightmares occurring nightly and the images even flashing through her head in her waking moments.

She sighed, clearing her thoughts as fully as she could. She glanced in the mirror of her room, tightly binding her chest as she did so and doing her best to hide the feminine part of her that she could. Curves were another thing, but her slightly large shirt and the tabard she wore over top of it did well enough. Buckling her sword belt over the tabard, Jez made sure it was secure before putting on her leather boots and stepping out of her room into the hall.

“Jez,” a voice said, and the girl in disguise turned to find her caretaker, Sir Kenneth, striding up the hall. He was a giant of a man, with sandy hair, cerulean eyes, broad soldiers, and a kind yet stern disposition. He stood two heads taller than Jez, and a head and a half taller than his son. Drawing even with the waiting girl, he said, “I’d like a word in my study if you don’t mind.”

“That’s fine,” Jez said, in her normal voice.

As she was a girl, and her voice did not crack nor change as dramatically as those of her male compatriots, she had faked it when she was thirteen and had since adopted a slightly deeper voice when in their presence.

Following the larger man back the way he had come, Jez felt slightly apprehensive. It was this feeling of apprehension that had made her recall all that she had thought of that morning, when it had first struck her. A strange sense of foreboding had caused her to wake a bit earlier than normal, and it kept her awake brooding. Was he perhaps going to tell her that she had to finally leave so she could learn to be a woman again?

For leaving was the only way Jez had thought of that would allow her to start again as a woman and not a man. The populace would not generally understand why a blossoming sixteen year old girl had been masquerading as a boy since she was nine. They wouldn’t understand her reasoning, nor did Jez deem it likely that she would still be accepted in this town in which she had matured in.

Would any mother honestly want her son wed to a boyish woman, a girl who had spent seven years of her life as a man just so she could escape the pain of her past? Or, rather, would any mother understand why a girl would want to spend all those years living like the men do? Jez felt, with a sense of fierce hurt in the region of her heart, that no mother would allow the marriage of their son to a girl like her. So it made sense, Jez thought, that she leave the capital, somewhere after leaving she would change into a dress, and travel a for a few days or weeks, and end up in a town that didn’t know her but accepted her as a poor orphan looking to start anew. It was the only option that had occurred to Jez, but she did not want to leave all of her friends, and so she hadn’t decided to be true to her real gender yet.

Jez alerted herself to the present when Sir Kenneth opened his mouth to speak.

“Jez, I know it’s…a difficult decision, but you know…” he trailed off, the normally very charismatic man seemingly finding it hard to voice the topic which he desired to converse about.

“I know I need to revert to my gender soon,” Jez voiced aloud for him, “yet I am apprehensive.”

“Apprehensive? You’re a lovely young lady beneath your façade and your boyish actions, Jezebel, so what is there to be apprehensive about?”

“Sir Kenneth,” Jez said softly, not meeting his gaze, “I…as I am now, I feel accomplished. I feel like I can do something with my life. As a…as a woman, Sir Kenneth, I’ll be confined to a home, sewing and darning socks and perhaps cooking meals. I won’t be taken seriously with my opinions, nor will I be allowed within five feet of a blade. I’m not ready to condemn myself to the life of a normal woman. And also…” she trailed off, searching for the words.

“You’ve too much fire in your heart to let yourself be forced into such a dull role,” Sir Kenneth told her, facing her with a critically analyzing eye from across his oak desk, “but what of the other reason you’re apprehensive?”

Jez took a breath, seemingly examining the titles on the bindings of the books lining his walls, and opened her mouth to speak, “I fear the only thing keeping me from forever dwelling on my painful memories, those that I wish I could forget, is the daily actions and training I must endure as a boy. I feel more comfortable in the skin of a sixteen year old boy than I would in the skin of a vulnerable sixteen year old girl, Sir Kenneth, for if I am a girl, what’s to stop a drunkard from noticing if I’m walking alone?”

“You are not vulnerable,” the older man sighed, somehow understanding what Jez meant, “but you are hiding behind your mask so you don’t get hurt, Jezebel.”

“Can you blame me?” Jez asked, and she took a shaky breath before looking up into Sir Kenneth’s eyes. “Can you blame me for wanting to forget hearing my mother’s scream as she watched my father killed? Hearing as it was cut off and the sound of her body hitting the ground? Do you want me to remember the toddler I watched die, from beheading, while his screaming mother was shot down by arrows from behind, still clutching his hand? What about the mother of a newborn child, killed while holding the baby. And the baby, which had rolled out of her hands…do you want me to remember the sight of that baby forever, mutilated and disfigured and dead because some slave trader’s horse was startled when the baby landed at his feet? Do you?

“Do you blame me for wanting to forget the screams of the older girls at night, when any innocence they had left was taken from them to satisfy the urges of those disgusting, brutal men? And every night, every night, the thought going through my head was when will that be me, and I never once doubted it would happen eventually.

“Don’t you understand why I want to forget?” Jez asked, doing her best to hold back the torrent of tears that threatened to fall. Anger was also part of the cause, so much so that she couldn’t bring her tirade to an end just yet, and she continued, “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to remember all the villages I saw destroyed, the babies and parents I saw killed because the traders couldn’t be bothered with keeping them alive. The adults will rebel, they always said after they slaughtered them all, looking up and down the line of children they had chained. The adults will rebel and we don’t got time for takin’ care o’ no babies. They cared only for the money, and the money they could get without much of a fuss. Most of the kids they picked up were older than five and under eleven. Occasionally a docile fourteen year old would be swept into the fray, and since they were older they’d usually get taken first. In more ways than one. It’s not something a seven year old should have had to deal with. It’s not something I should have had to get used to, to accept as one of the certainties of life. But it happened, and I grew to accept it, and being Jez rather than Jezebel helps me to repress it.

“I know,” Jez had let her tears fall, and her last few sentences had been broken by sobs, but she continued, “I know I need to remember to be able to overcome it, but it’s hard. Whenever I remember, I have nightmares for weeks, and the boys notice something’s wrong, and I cry myself to sleep, and I can’t focus on anything during the day because of the nightmares from the night. I know I need to remember to get over it, but I just want to forget!”

“Jez, don’t cry,” Sir Kenneth had been patting her shaking shoulder for a few minutes now. “You’re a strong girl,” he told her soothingly, “you’re strong, and brave, and rather outspoken. You may not have the traits of a normal girl, but you’re still a girl. You still have emotions, even if you don’t want them. But Jezebel, in the end, it’s better to remember.”

“How?” she looked up at him, her eyes a muted greenish-brown, “How is it better to remember when it causes so much pain?”

“If you remember, Jezebel,” Sir Kenneth said, looking right back into the girl’s eyes, “if you remember, you’ll know that you’re in better care right now. You’ll know that things must get worse before they can get better. You’ll understand that what happened then helps mold you into the beautiful young woman you could be today. If you let yourself remember, it could help you find yourself again.”

“But can you blame me?” she asked quietly again. “Can you blame me for wanting to forget it all?”

“Everyone wants to run from their pain,” Sir Kenneth told her gently. “Everyone wants to hide from it, simply because it has hurt them. What some of them don’t understand is that the pain they go through makes them the people they become.”

Sniffling, Jez shook his hands from her shoulders and wiped her eyes angrily.

“Maybe,” she said, a tremble in her tone, “maybe one day I’ll let myself try to accept my past and move on with the memories, as Jezebel. But not today. Not right now.”

With that, she left Sir Kenneth’s study, returning to her room to wash her salty-streaked face in the washbasin that had been filled with warm water. She finished, and although she noticed her eyes were slightly red and puffy, she strode purposefully from the room, prepared to face the new day.