You stumble into the moonlit clearing, drawn by the flicker of firelight and the eerie strains of feminine chanting. As you find yourself upon a scene that would not be out of place in a horror movie, you decide that it would be best to leave. But before you can turn to flee, a striking woman emerges from the shadows to block your path. Her hair is an untamed crimson, her eyes molten amber in the dancing flames. “I’m afraid I cannot allow you to leave, child,” she says, her full lips quirked in an enigmatic smile. “You’ve seen too much. Our secrets must be kept… and you will help us keep them.”
Indignant protests rise in your throat, but she silences you with a look. “Hush now. What you want is irrelevant. Your fate was sealed the moment you were conceived.” The witch spreads her arms, her voice resonating with ancient power. “Even now, my coven reaches back through time, back to the very moment of your conception. That Y chromosome that made you a man? We’re plucking it away, changing that single sperm to an X. Ensuring you were born a daughter. Ensuring you joined our ranks!”
The world seems to tilt around you as a haze of memories flutter through your mind. You see a childhood birthday, your hands unwrapping a porcelain doll in place of the toy soldiers you thought you remembered. Hazy recollections of dress-up and tea parties, of weeping in your mother’s arms over your first time of the month, the lusting over the jocks in the football team. As these memories flow, foreign sensations ripple through your body, making you shudder and clench your thighs against a sudden ache. Your hips widen as your waist pinches inward, your pecs swelling into tender breasts that strain against your shirt. It feels so right, so inevitable. This is how you are meant to be. This is how you’ve always been.
The witch’s eyes burn into yours. You were taller than her just a moment ago, but now you are level with her height. You’ve always been level with her. “And that’s just the beginning. We’re reweaving the tapestry of your life, darling girl. Arranging for you to cross our path again and again, until you being here in the woods became as inevitable as the turning of the seasons.” Memories flicker through your mind in a dizzying cascade. A cloaked figure smiling at you from across a busy street, a tarot card slipped into your locker with a winking black moon. Hushed giggles and chanted invocations in slumber party basements. An endless chain of incantations and signs, drawing you into the coven’s embrace.
The witch’s voice continues, now echoing deeply in your head. “Yes, just like that, my sister. Let the truth of your history solidify. You’ve always been one of us, from the womb to this very moment.”
You squeeze your eyes shut against a rising tide of vertigo, a sense of yourself being unwritten and rewritten with every shuddering breath. When you open them again, you are no longer facing that woman. Instead the fire is closer, your delicate bare feet moving through the grass. You’re slender female form clad in the same white dress as your sisters, long hair spilling over your bare shoulders. Time seems to compress, years of clandestine rituals and arcane studies compressing into a single night. You remember the shy delight of initiation, the heady rush of sisterhood and dark power. How could you ever have believed yourself to be anything else? Anyone else?
As you continue to dance with your sisters, incantations spilling from your pretty lips, you feel nothing is amiss. This is who you are. This is who you have always been. You are of the coven, now and forever.
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