Girl For A Spell
By Ellie Dauber

Email Ellie Dauber

Monday

The alarm went off much too early, the way it always did on Monday morning. I reached over to shut it off, but stopped short. My arm! It wasn't Alan's hairy arm I was looking at. It was smooth, slender, and very, very feminine. It was Alice's arm. I was still Alice!

I sat up in bed and looked down at myself. Two breasts still tented out my Sixers' T-shirt. My hair was still down to my shoulders. "Aunt Therese!" My voice was still Alice's soprano instead of Alan's tenor. "Aunt Therese, help!"

I was out of bed, out of my room, and part way down the hall by the time Aunt Therese came out of her bedroom. "Alice! What's the matter?" Then she realized what she's said, what had happened. "Oh, my Goddess! You haven't changed."

"No, I - I haven't. Why? Why haven't I changed into Alan?"

"I don't know, dear. Please follow me."

We went back into my bedroom, and she had me lay down on the bed. She sat down beside me and placed her hands on my forehead. "Close your eyes, dear, and try to relax. I'm just doing a reading, not casting a spell."

I closed my eyes and tried to calm down. I saw flashes of color as if I'd looked at a flashbulb go off. My body tingled the way your arm tingles when the circulation comes back after it's been asleep. I found myself thinking of nothing in particular, simple math problems, days of the week. It was as if something was keeping me from concentrating on anything specific, especially from concentrating on my current situation.

I'm not sure how long it lasted. I couldn't keep track of time either. Eventually, though, I heard Aunt Therese's voice. "You can open your eyes now, Alice."

"So what's the verdict? Can you change me to Alan?"

"Let me tell you a little story, Alice, and please don't interrupt."

"Umm, this doesn't sound good, but okay."

"One of your - of our great, great grandmothers was a Carpathian witch, a Druid priestess of vast power whom our great, great grandfather met while traveling through Central Europe around 1850. Ever since then, _some_ of her female descendents have had the potential for witchcraft. The girls in the family are tested by an older relative before their fifth birthday. That way, if they lack the power, they're too young to even remember being tested."

"Boys never have the potential, so they're never tested. Alan still doesn't have it. But Alice does. In fact, you have a great deal of potential, possibly as strong as my own. You have no training, but, subconsciously_, you're using your potential to fight the transformation. Since I didn't expect you to want to stay being Alice, I didn't, shall we say, build any reinforcement into the spell. Your untrained potential is enough to stop the transformation."

"But why, why am I fighting it?"

"Be truthful with yourself - and with me, Alice. You like being a girl. You've fallen in love with Rick. You've even had sex with him - something that I never expected, by the way. I intended Alice to be shy just for that reason, to prevent her from getting serious about anyone. I believe your magic potential overcame that part of my spell."

"It made me fall in love with Rick? Why would it do that?"

"Oh, Goddess, no. Magic can't cause Love, because Love is stronger than Magic. Your potential just smashed the wards - the artificial wards - that I put up in your mind to keep you from falling in love."

"Then what I feel for Rick -"

"Is absolutely real, dear. Congratulations."

"But what are we going to do about Alan, about me?"

"In the short term, it's already done. While you were recovering from my reading, I called the school. Poor Alan's not feeling very well today, and he won't be in school today."

"And tomorrow?"

"That's for you to decide, dear. You have two choices."

"What are they?"

"You have great potential, but it's untrained. I, on the other hand, have years of training. I can rebuild the wards, so that your feelings for Rick are gone. Then I can easily change you back to Alan. In fact, I can channel your potential to end the spell, something I couldn't do otherwise until after your period, which will be coming in about a week. In fact, I'll _have_ to end the spell to keep this problem from happening again every day. Alice will be gone forever, never to be heard of again. And so will your magic potential."

"And the other choice?"

"I can use your potential to make the change permanent. Alan would be the one to disappear. You would be Alice forever, but I could train you to use that potential of yours."

"But what about Alan's life? Won't people wonder what happened to him?"

"That can be taken care of. Alan wouldn't disappear, because, as far as most people were concerned, he would _never_ have existed. You would have always been Alice Weber."

"You can do that, change reality that way?"

"No, but we - my coven and I - _can_ change memories, so everyone would believe that you had always been Alice. And we can change the documents of your life, so they all say 'Alice', rather than Alan."

"Can I think about it a while?"

"Yes, dear, but don't take too long. Whichever you choose, the spell will require time to perform properly." She smiled and left me alone in my room.

It wasn't easy. Alan or Alice, one of them - one of me - had to die. How could I choose? I thought about each of them.

Alan was who I was born to be, who I'd grown up as. He had friends - even if they were Phil and Jerry. He had a life and a future - even if he had been wasting it making trouble for himself, for Aunt Therese - and for Aunt Liz before her, and just about every other adult who came in contact with him.

Alice was who I was - now. She didn't have a life, but she was making one. Grace had become a good friend in a really short time. I wondered for a moment why I hadn't thought of Grace when I'd been thinking of Alan. Wasn't she part of his life, too?

No, I guess she really wasn't, not anymore.

Grace was Alice's friend. And Rick, Rick was her lover. I loved him, and I wanted to keep on loving him, being with him, making love to him. But if Alice was going to be with Rick, then Alan had to die.

Or did he?

There was more of Alan in Alice than there was Alice in Alan. If I chose to be Alice, a part of Alan would live on in her. If I chose Alan, then the little bit that was Alice was going to disappear. Just like Alice's potential for doing magic would disappear.

That was something else to think about. To be able to do magic, real magic, was a wonderful possibility.

I sat up in bed. "Aunt Therese, I've decided!"

I'm not sure who all I expected to be in Aunt Therese's coven. I knew that Mariah from Le Moderne was. She'd admitted it when I went into her store, but who else? Jennie, the hairdresser from the "House of Style" came in with a couple of women that I didn't recognize. Ms. Hollcraft, one of the teachers at my old Junior High School, showed up about ten minutes later.

I was sitting on a chair in the center of the living room, wearing the panties and T-shirt I'd slept in beneath a white cotton robe. There was another pentagram chalked in the rug around me.

Four women showed up together, having come from the airport in the same cab. "Only a few of the members are local, dear," Aunt Therese said. "I've sent out a call to the Grand Coven, several hundred women across several states to make certain that enough can be here to properly cast the necessary spells."

By two thirty, there were about a dozen women in the room. I thought that this would be all, since no one had come for about a half hour. Then there was a knock on the door.

"Aunt Liz?" I was so surprised that I tried to get out of the chair and walk over to hug here. The - what did Aunt Therese call them - the wards, were in place, though. I could stand, barely, but I couldn't walk out of the pentagram.

Still, I didn't believe it. Aunt Liz, the woman who raised me was a witch. It couldn't be. Could it?

Aunt Liz walked slowly over to me, leaning on a cane as she walked. "Yes, Alan - excuse me, Alice. I'm also one of the witches in the family, although my powers aren't nearly as strong as Therese's are."

"But if you're a witch, why couldn't you heal yourself? That has to be easier magic than changing me into a girl."

"Actually, dear, it isn't. My illness is genetic, something like Hodgkin's Disease that only shows up in later life. It's a part of me at the most basic level. The healing spells have been cast, but they'll take over a year to work. During that time, I couldn't possibly do anything as strenuous as care for a boy like you - like Alan. Or a girl like Alice. But I _did_ want to be here to help bring you - bring Alice into the family. I love you, dear, and I'm very proud of you."

"As am I," Aunt Therese said, coming over to join us. We all hugged one another. "Shall we begin?"

Five of the women, Aunt Therese and Mariah among them, sat down at the points of the star within the pentagram. The others stood behind them, joining hands. Aunt Therese began to chant something in a language that I couldn't begin to understand. The others picked up the chant. They got louder and louder. I could almost feel the power of their voices passing through my body.

Suddenly the women began to glow, Aunt Therese first, then the rest of them. The glow was pulsing, green in color, like a living neon light between them. Then it flowed forward along the lines of the pentagram and towards me. It hit me from all sides at once. It felt like standing in the surf as wave after wave hit me. I felt it flow through me, warming every part of my body. It was a strong, a powerful feeling, and I enjoyed it.

Then, as quickly as it hit, the feeling seemed to leave my body. It shot upwards. I looked up to see a golden pulse fly to, fly through the ceiling and disappear.

I looked at Aunt Therese and silently mouthed "What?"

"The spell has changed you, Alice. Now it's changing everyone and everything else in the town. In a few moments, there will be no memory, no evidence that Alan Webster ever existed."

I stood up and found that I could leave the pentagram. In fact, as I stepped forward, the pentagram left me. The chalk marks just faded from the rug. I hugged Aunt Therese, then Aunt Liz, then all the other women.

Aunt Therese smiled at me. "Why don't you go upstairs and get dressed, Alice?"

I ran up to my room. There was no sign of Alan. Now all four walls were pink. So was my PC. The clothes in the closet and in the dresser were all girl's clothes. There were pictures on the wall, Grace and I in Girl Scout uniforms at summer camp, a ten-year old Alice in a ballet costume with a pair of pink slippers hanging down from the frame. There were a bunch of old dolls on a shelf where my old baseball glove had always been.

It was Alice's room. It always had been Alice's room.

I stripped off the T-shirt. It was still a Sixers' shirt, but now the emblem was on a pink shirt with a female cut to it. I tossed it and the panties into the hamper, and got a new panty and bra set out of the dresser. I put on my lovely, frilly _girl's_ underwear, then pulled on a pair of jeans I'd nevr seen before.

There were several more pairs of jeans, plus a few pair of slacks in the closet. I guess Aunt Therese's restrictions didn't apply now that I was Alice for real.

I picked out a pretty blue blouse and put it on. Then I sat down at the make-up table and applied a bit of lipstick and a little blusher. A bracelet on my left wrist and a pair of sandals on my feet, and I was ready to go back downstairs.

I thought that I'd only been a few minutes, and I expected all the women to still be there, so I could thank them again. But, by the time I came back downstairs, they were all gone except for Aunt Liz.

"I just stayed long enough to say a proper goodbye to my pretty new niece," she said kissing me gently on the cheek. "Don't worry, by the way. Not even the rest of the family remembers Alan."

"I'm taking Elizabeth to the airport," Aunt Therese said. "I won't be back until her flight leaves, sometime around 5:30. If you're willing to put on a dress, I shall take you out to dinner to celebrate your new status."

"That sounds wonderful, Aunt Therese." I hugged her. "Thank you. Thank you for everything."

"You may think otherwise once I begin your training, my girl. I'm told that I can be a true witch - spelled with a 'w' or a 'b' - as a teacher."

Aunt Liz winked at me. "Don't believe her, Alice. She's a pussycat." She hugged me. It felt just as good as when I was five. "You apply yourself, and you can show me what you've learned when I come back in a few months for a proper visit."

"Let's get going, Elizabeth, before you completely undermine my authority." Aunt Therese tried to sound angry, but she was smiling as they both headed out the door.

It was almost four when I heard the door again, too early for Aunt Therese to be back unless something was wrong.

I was watching TV. Even if I was a girl now, I still couldn't get into soap operas. I was watching an old war movie on one of the cable channels. The action parts weren't as much fun as they had been for Alan, but I did enjoy them some. Besides, there was a romance between one of the soldiers and a French partisan that Alice was enjoying.

I went over and answered the door. It was Grace, Grace and Johnny MacGuire and, best of all, Rick.

"Hey, Alice," Grace said. "They told us you were sick. Can we come in?"

"Oh, yes. It was just some kind of stomach flu. I'm feeling much better. In fact, Aunt Therese says that I'll have to go to school tomorrow."

"Great," Rick said. "I missed you." He gave me a polite peck on the cheek.

"I brought some homework from a couple of your classes," Grace said. She handed me a sheet of paper. I recognized the handwriting of two of my teachers. Read more of _Jane Eyre_ and study the next chapter of Spanish. Johnny also had an assignment sheet for me. I had about a dozen Algebra problems to do and was reminded that my civics paper was due on Friday. Mr. Holgar said I could have an extension if I sent in a note from Aunt Therese saying that I wouldn't be back to school before Thursday.

"I guess I'd better get started," I said.

"The heck you will, girl," Grace said. "Your friends are here for a visit and you're stuck with us for a while."

"Yeah," Rick said. "You wouldn't want to be rude and chase us out, would you?"

"Never," I said. I hugged Grace, Johnny, and Rick. I put a little extra when I hugged Rick. I gave him a little kiss, too. I turned off the TV and we sat on the couch, Johnny and Grace sitting next to each other and holding hands. As far as they were concerned, they'd been dating for over a year. We just sat there, talking about nothing in particular, the way longtime friends - what we were now - always do.

The End

Copyright Ellie Dauber, 2000. This may be posted to other FREE sites.