words, trusting him instinctively after he had revealed his own secrets to her. She had no doubt that this man understood her, though it did not make what he said any easier to absorb.
‘We’ve been able to give you as much of a functioning female anatomy as we thought we could,’ Cayce said. ‘And of course, we have.. smoothed away masculine contours from your form, especially on your face, and in other ways — with hair and voice. These were simple enough. So firstly, you should be able to experience intercourse as a full woman, but I cannot say how much pleasure you will receive from it.’
‘I never got much anyway,’ she replied, grinning. Besides, for years she had never gone that far because she ran the risk of being discovered.
Cayce ignored her dry humour, stalling over his next sentence. ‘You’ll also still… You will be unable to have children, and.. there’s no way we can encourage natural menstruation.’
Lan suspected as much, though always retained that vague hope of having the option, but now that hope had ultimately died, a small light in her heart went out for ever.
‘Aside from that,’ he continued, ‘and given that gender is a fluid notion — we are not Neanderthals who deal in binary on Ysla — I think you have many good reasons to be happy,’ Cayce concluded. ‘And are you happy with your physical state?’
‘I always felt like a woman anyway, but, you know, it’s so much more meaningful now? This isn’t just about how I look.’ She allowed a contemplative pause, and it was only in this silence that she realized how much more softer her voice had really become. ‘How much of this will remain a secret?’ Lan asked. ‘I wouldn’t want any of this getting out, is all. How many people know of what you’ve done to me?’
‘I understand.’ Cayce peered up. ‘A small network of cultists will be aware, but that is it. Besides, with all that ice around to worry about, who else will care?’
‘I’ll care.’
Cayce folded his arms, hands under his armpits. He gave her a look of deep empathy. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lan said. His words were all very pleasant, but wasn’t she still some experiment to them? This was a mutual arrangement, after all. ‘There’s just so much to cope with.’
‘I told you there would be. People come looking for physical changes all the time, but they don’t understand just how connected the body and mind can be.’
‘I understand,’ she replied.
‘You may always have ghosts,’ Cayce warned. ‘Do not think they vanish overnight.’
Before Lan departed she didn’t quite know what to say. Cayce merely stood there, alongside a doorway at the top of the stairwell leading down to where she’d be transported back to the freezing ice-wastes of Jokull. Others from the island had gathered in their multicoloured clothing — faces with which she was distantly familiar. The sun was intense, as it always was here. She gazed behind into the distance to see Villarbor, and its hundreds of hub communities stretching across the many shades of green that comprised the landscape. What a view… She would certainly miss this island, but was honoured to have at least witnessed such exoticism.
Cayce guided her to the steps. ‘The local tribes like to point out to us that for rebirth, first you must choose the path of death. I would recommend that it is an opportunity to let go of the person you were.’
‘I will,’ she replied. ‘I’ll go to Villjamur — I have just a little money saved, but yeah. No more life at the circus for me.’
‘Very wise,’ Cayce replied.
‘Cayce, I don’t know what to say…’ She was welling up, and thinking her emotional outburst absurd, but how could she thank this man who had given her a new life, the life which she naturally felt for all these years, which was both ever-distant and as close as a dream?
‘The pleasure is, indeed, all mine, sister,’ Cayce said gently. ‘I have explored new science here, and my order are thrilled with the work we have done together.’
She suddenly embraced him, unable to hide her gratitude, and then she turned down the stairs, under the gazes of others, back towards the musky darkness.
To a new life.
FOUR
There was some kind of military operation under way — she could at least be certain of that. Thousands of red-skinned rumels were massing on the snow before her, all garbed in alien clothing, carrying banners with bizarre insignia, and ranked in eerily precise rows. Orders were being issued in that base, guttural language of theirs, and then the sound of marching muted by the snow.
But in the distance she could see thousands of those… things.
Verain shuddered. She cringed at their ragged movements, at their monstrous insectile appearance. Those shells and claws. Though some distance away, they still put the fear of Bohr or indeed any other god into her. Each of them seemed to loom above their nearest rumel counterpart, yet despite the physical dominance, they were somehow subordinate to the red-skins.
Verain and the other cultists — what few of them that were left by now — stood dumbly examining this movements of a civilization across the landscape, through the Realm Gates. This was the tail end of an invasion force and she knew, without knowing how, that they were making war on the cities on the next island south. From what she had seen of their work already, she felt remorse for whoever would have to oppose them.
Dartun’s words were mumbled sentences at first, until the wind died down. He urged them on, his strong voice calling out for them to hasten their progress. Dogs barked and tugged on their reins, their four sleds skidding forwards, the brightness of the light now like some vision of a heavenly realm, but no sooner had they moved through the thick flakes of snow when they came to a halt.
She could feel her pulse in her throat. I just want to get out of here, please…
A few of the red-skin rumels approached them on horseback and for some reason she could not get used to the fact that this variation of the race could exist in another dimension. Three sentries examined Dartun in the blinding light of the Realm Gates. She observed the matrix of tiny purple lines within a much brighter glow — that was where home would be. That was where she longed to return.
There came orders from behind, and in harsh tongues, there appeared to be an exchange between silhouettes in the Realm Gates’ light, and the rumels before them.
Presently the cultists were all ushered forward, free to go now, finally, with nothing but sleds and dogs. The cultists of the Order of the Equinox set out across the snow and back into their home-world.
*
Later, much later.
And from the sanctuary of her hood, Verain peered back over her shoulder, but thankfully could no longer see the gates. Snow stormed around their small group, vicious spirals of whiteness that obscured both the horizon and the foreground. Moments of calm revealed rolling hills or ice sheets, blackened trees that clawed the grey skies. Everything here seemed identical to the moment they left, the same vistas, the same terrain, the same forests and villages.
And the ceaseless snow…
They paused, their sleds sliding to a stop. Strands of her coal-black hair wafted before her eyes and she tucked them behind her ears. She appeared to be, and felt like, a mess. She was slender before she had come all the way out here, but now she felt dangerously malnourished.
There were ten of them. Ten, from the dozens who had journeyed out beyond the Realm Gates, trailing Dartun and his lust for answers and the knowledge to extend his life. Now garbed in thick clothing and furs, they had little sense of where they were headed. A couple of dogs barked, a bizarre tinny edge to their cacophony. They, too, had been altered — she knew it, though her mind wasn’t clear as to how or why.
Her mind was not clear at all.
Dartun Sur stepped out alongside her. There was a silvery sheen to his face, and patches of some substance could be seen beneath where his skin had been ripped along his neck. If she stared hard enough she could see that his eyes were glowing red, his movements fluid — yet it was still him, the leader of their order, the man who had dominated the culture of the cultists in Villjamur. A man who pushed for progress and had great visions for the
