You've Got Another Thing Coming

”Double, double toile and trouble!” sang Egon as she stirred the mixture in the large dented cauldron.

Marlin had conjured up a table, and she was now leaning over it and checking off things on a piece of paper.
“Eye of newt and toe of frog,” she murmured and crossed said things out. “Wool of bat and tongue of dog… Where is the blind worm’s sting?”

“Chrissy had it the last time she was cursing Rihanna,” answered Lynnea, who was over by the fire pit, tossing powder in it making it turn all the different colours of the rainbow.

Chrissy looked up from a description of a magic spell written in Latin, and smirked. “It’s over by the dragon scale and grained mummy.”

“Oh, okay,” said Marlin and went to find it. After she picked it up, she read the label carefully before shrugging and pouring everything mindlessly into the cauldron.

The Grandmother stepped up to her, gazing into the mixture.
“Very well done!” she praised. “I commend your pains. If everything goes right, we have lots to gain.”

Once again she gazed into the mixture, found it was at her liking, and clapped her hands.
“Everyone! Positions!” she ordered, and the females went to stand in a circle around the large fire. Before the witch had the time to run over, I grabbed hold of an arm and pulled her close enough to whisper in her ear:
“Lynn-Marie! What’s going to happen? What are you doing?”

The youngest girl of them all, no more than ten years old, reassuringly patted my head as I sat on a small pedestal some few feet away from the newly formed circle. I had been placed there by three cheery Ekman girls with well-meaning faces and no information what so ever.

“We decided that we did owe you some kind of compensation, and this new spell is going to just that.” Lynn-Marie tore herself away from me and went to join the circle.

The Grandmother clapped her hands again.
“Now, everybody; round about the cauldron sing - like elves and fairies in a ring - enchanting all that we’ve put in!”

And so, they started dancing. It was quite humorous to watch, had it not been for the strange, greenish blue smoke that rose from the cauldron and headed straight towards me. Faster than anyone could have comprehended, except perhaps for Edward Cullen and suchlike fictional characters, I was covered in smoke and my vision blurred.

I felt a slight tingling sensation begin in my lower abdomen, and it spread like a rapid fire into all my veins in a freakishly familiar way – which got me thinking that the last time this had happened I had been overwhelmed by the ugliness of that greenish blue dress. Maybe it was the greenish blue colour’s fault that I kept being transformed into different sexes all the time?
What ever was the case, when the smoke cleared, all the witches of the Ekman family stood before me, grinning from ear to ear.

“Do you like it?” asked Chrissy.

“Does it feel comfortable?” asked Iulia.

“Are you all right?” asked Marlin.

“How does your groin feel?” asked Egon, which caused all eyes to turn to her. “What!” she defended. “I’m curious!”

I stood up on trembling legs, supporting my newly gained manly weight on the shoulders of Tilda and Lynn-Marie.

“So?” asked the Grandmother. “Are you pleased?”

I lifted my eyes to meet hers, and I felt tears of anger well and almost spill. “What the hell have you done to me?”

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“I thought I was waking,
But far from it dearie;
Suddenly I'm dreaming,
Of fairies and wizards and all things weird-y.”

Someone poked my back and I shuddered, forcing the last word of my little make-shift chanson from my lips. However, I bit back on my cry of despair, and continued:

“I thought I was normal,
But that was unwisely;
This land is infernal
And now I’m a man, so… un-nicely.”

Two hands grabbed my shoulders and roughly shook me. It caused me to snap out of my trans-like state and lift my head from the pillow I was using as a shield from the rest of the world.

“What?” I hissed, so angry it was hard for me to get the word out. I was in that state of mind where I thought, that if someone interrupts another’s special time of insanity, then that person should suffer a very violent and painful stomach ache.

Rose sat on the bed beside me, her legs dangling off its side and her head cocked to the right.
“It’s time to leave, Cal,” she informed me. “We need to get to the hulleon.”

I squashed my face back in to the pillow. “I’m busy. And I don’t want to go out.”

Rose straightened her neck out, and then let her head fall to her left instead.
“But you have to, Cal,” her voice was soft and light, as if she was speaking to an unruly child. “You have to deliver the package to the Queen, like Mr. Pears told you to.”

“I don’t wanna.” My words came out muffled and stale, with no real edge to them.

Rose’s tone suddenly turned business-like and sharp.
“Well, you’re gonna,” she told me, and gave me a hard shove.

I tumbled down on the floor in a nice medley of tangled sheet and external limbs.

Reluctantly, I propped myself up on all four and sighed heavily.
“I can’t show myself like this,” I whined, and repeated my previous statement: “I don’t want to go out!”

Rose took no notion of my distress. Instead, she started flinging things at me from the bags, which I found to be pieces of clothing, a bottle of milk and half a loaf of bread.
“Get dressed and eat,” Rose ordered, and, to my own great surprise, stepped out of the room.

I did as I was told, and I even – however grudgingly – packed the bags and cleaned up the room as well as I could.
I had thrown a little fit earlier, and the room was not quite as beautiful as it had been when I had woken up this morning.

When I was finished I sat down on the bed and brought out the package I had gotten from the wizard. Just as I was beginning to examine it, there was a knock on the door, and it fell open.

“Can I come in?” asked a high voice, and the face of young Tilda peeked inside.

I surveyed her suspiciously, but deemed her rather harmless and invited her in.

“I noticed you weren’t quite happy with our spell,” she told me, and I snorted in loud sarcasm.
She shot me an apologetic smile, and carried on: “Well, Grandma thought that I should give you these as some sort of compensation before you leave.” She presented me with two flasks, one a passionate blue and the other a nauseating green. “We are very sorry we’ve caused you all this stress; I swear, it was all with good intentions.”

I accepted the flasks from her outstretched hands, and weighed them in my own.
“What are they?” I wondered.

Tilda looked at me, uncertain. “I’m not quite sure, actually. Grandmother only told me the descriptions. But they’re supposedly helpful.”

“Descriptions of what?” I held the potions up against the light, and noticed the nice, blue one was clear and pleasantly see-through, and the green, yucky one looked as solid as rock and was incredibly viscous.

“Grandma said,” Tilda clearly cited this from memory, “that ‘the blue is for the pleasant passion; it’s the one to bring truth and clarity to you’.” She gave said flask a nod. “Personally, I think it means that it is a truth serum.”

“And the green one?” I urged, shaking the flask slightly only to see the potion move no more than a fraction of an inch inside its container.

“Grandma said,” repeated Tilda, “that ‘the green is for the one in pain and suffering; it is nothing but the last outcome for those in desperate need’.”

I shuddered at the apocalyptic words. “That doesn’t sound very nice,” I commented. “And I’m not a violent person, and I don't have a lot of enemies hiding behind every mouse trap in the pantry; why would I need poison?”

Tilda glanced around at the room where evidence of my rampaging could still be seen, but chose not to say anything for the sake of peace.

“But I suppose I should thank you for thinking of me,” I unwillingly concluded. “So, thanks.”

I stretched out a free hand and Tilda latched onto it with a great big smile.
“I’m glad to see you liked it,” she beamed. “Now, you’d better get going. Your friends are waiting in the bar.”

I nodded and got to my feet. I grabbed a hold of our bags and tossed them easily over one shoulder, and thought a most forbidden thought about how I actually liked being stronger than a girl.

“Hold on to my hand,” Tilda ordered. “That way you won’t get lost.”

I did as I was told, and walked out of the room led by the hand of a small ten year old girl; feeling, for some reason, very secure.