BUILD YOUR OWN WORLD Like what you see? Become the Master of your own Universe!

Remove these ads. Join the Worldbuilders Guild

New Boy

There have always been trans people. In honor of that fact, for Rin Garnett's Trans Day of Visibility challenge I decided to explore how a life-spirit in the wrong body would navigate my world's Neolithic culture with its deeply ingrained divide between male and female roles. Spoiler: it's not great. But it's also not hopeless.
Please, wait! You know me. Will you at least hear me before you leave?   I cannot go back to the village. I left there many moons past.   No, I was not made to go. I went. I had to. My life was ending!   Stop! Come back, please! It was not because of a spirit. Not a sickness spirit. It was blood.   No, no, I was not injured. If you will only wait--stop--sit--listen...please.

That day, I woke in blood. On myself, on my sleeping net, on the mats under me. The sight of it threw fear into me. The dream spirit had visited my sleep, taunting me with the sensation of being trapped half in the ground, reaching for things that kept sliding away from me. Had it done this to me also?
 
My mami woke to my crying. Now, what do you think a woman should do who sees her child wearing blood and weeping? Cry out in alarm? Offer comfort? Go to Spirit-talker for help? She did none of these things. She laughed at me. Why was I upset, she asked, when I knew this was coming? Had she not warned that it would happen to me soon?
 
The whole village woke to my screaming. I did not know. I did not know! Yes, she had told me about the blood that comes to growing girls. "Old Tree gives it to us," she said. I answered "That is a hard thing for girls," and was quietly glad that I would be safe. Old Tree would know better than to give it to me. It was this understanding, that I was wrong and other spirits that changed girls' bodies would also change mine, that caused my voice to leave my throat in a sound I could not control, bringing woman after woman to the front of my mami's house to hear her good news.
 
More than my body changed that day. After my mami cleaned me--my hands so shook that I could not do it myself--she said "No more playing with boys all day." And she began teaching me. Not her leather work, which I know well. Blood knowledge. How to make the plugs that I must use many times a day to hold the blood. (I hate the feel of them.) Where to find the leaves that I must chew when the blood brings pain with it. (Their taste is bitter.) What to eat that would help the full-belly spirit make the blood become a baby. (I felt too sick to eat.)
 
The best part of the day was wasted before she released me. I tried to go and find my friends, but the girls found me first. They had heard, they said. Was it true, they asked. Tell us all about it, they demanded. I did, as briefly as possible, hoping they would let me go. But as soon as I was done, another girl came and I had to begin again. In this way they kept me trapped until all the others began gathering in the open middle of the village. I had forgotten it was the night of brightest moon, and there was still the wishing to endure.
 
Too late the thought came to me of hiding in my mami's house--when I moved to slip away, one of the girls took hold of my arm and dragged me into the procession up to the moon peak. Chatter surrounded me, laughter, a little song. Only I was silent.
 
At the peak, Spirit-talker stood with the wishing drink in two pots instead of the one. When my turn came I stood in front of the one for boys and children, and only then remembered that I had not carried a cup with me. I thought I could go back for it, and that way have a reason to not be at the ceremony. I wanted to be alone that night. But suddenly my mami was there with a small bowl for me, and Spirit-talker put into it the drink from the wrong pot, the one for women and grown girls. I tried to say it was a mistake, but Spirit-talked would not give me the right drink. "You are not a child anymore," is all that she said to me.
 
It is impossible to be alone on the night of wishing. There are so many people all together, pushing and searching for a place to stand. Suddenly I was in the middle of the laughing girls again. I paid no attention to them, wanting only to be back in my mami's house, to sleep and forget everything that had happened. I watched bright round Old Tree climbing over the faraway hills--so slowly! Then she reached the top, and it was time.
 
All together the grown girls drank from their bowls, and the voices surrounding me shouted "I wish to become a woman!" as if they came from a single girl. I almost dropped my bowl, so surprised as I was. They laughed when they saw that I had not done what I did not hear them tell me to do. I would have to make my wish late, and hope that Old Tree could remember what I said.
 
I trembled. That was one wish I could never make! What if Old Tree did hear me, and made it come true? But with all the girls watching me, there was nothing I could do but drink.
 
You know what it is like, the wishing drink. Warm in the pot, cool in the cup, soothing in the stomach. Right away I began feeling better. Why should we not all be happy on the moon wishing night? Old Tree sees us and hears us, to give us the things we want most. What could be more good than to be on the mountain top, everyone together sharing the same joy?
 
I wished. "Old Tree, this is what I want. Friends around me, and a happy spirit within me." The girls liked my wish, even though it was not the same as theirs. When the song began, I joined. It was good, singing with the others all the way back to the village. Even when my mami gave me a wrap to keep the blood from soiling the mats, I went to sleep happy.
 
I woke up in fear. Someone was touching me--my mami, I thought, but she was not the woman I saw. Would you scream if a strange woman stood over you in your sleeping net? I tried. She closed my mouth, told me "Quiet! Come!" and pulled me to my feet and out of my mami's house.
 
Old Tree's bright face poured light into the middle of the village, showing that I did know this woman who had been a girl not long ago. Other girls stood around the fire pit, grown girls, all of them looking at me. Then one of them spoke the words that start the story game.
 
You know the story of Old Tree, but you also do not. There is more. I heard it all that night. Women bleed because Old Tree bleeds. Her blood goes into trees and makes women, but women's blood goes into a nut and makes babies.
 
You do not believe? Did you ever see full-belly in a small girl? No, because this nut they hide from girls until their blood comes. Then they take that girl out of her sleep in the middle of the night and they give her that nut. The nut that brings full-belly. And they gave it to me.
 
I took it in my hand and tried to go back, but they stopped me. "Eat it," said one girl. "Eat it." Another. "Eat it." "Eat it." It became a chant, all of them speaking at once.
 
I looked for a way to escape, but they closed around me and chanted faster. My hand went to my face. I had eaten nothing that day. The nut smelled so good. It went into my mouth. My tongue saved me, caught the nut and held it underneath. This did not end the girls' chanting. I bit, feeling the nut collapse into pieces. My tonuge pushed them to the outside of my teeth, and with a great smile I did not feel I swallowed nothing. The chanting became a cheer.
 
That was only the beginning of the night. The girls would not let me go back to my net. They raised a fire in the pit, and one after another took my arm to sit with her so she could talk at me. There were jokes, games, stories, songs, and so much food! They had been saving it all day for this celebration. I was hungry, but ate carefully to keep the pieces of nut out of my stomach. Not once did I find a moment to get away and spit them out.
 
Soon I came to be glad to be with the girls that night, and in a little way I am glad still. I learned much about how to care for myself while the blood is leaving me, more even than my mami told me. I have used that knowledge gratefully all the time since. I did not think of leaving, not then.
 
Not until the girl saw my hair.
 
I hate the short hair of women. Every head the same. Boys' long hair can do so many things, and each has his own way of setting it. My mami has no hair knife and thinks that I go to another woman to cut it, but I do not. During the day I tie it together in a little knot, so no one can see how much there is. But I untie it when I sleep, and that is how my hair was at the celebration, coming down from my head like a rainstorm.
 
This girl put her hand around some and held it out, pulling it painfully. "This long hair!" she said, laughing. "You look like a boy! Wait, and I will get a knife to cut it for you."
 
As she hurried away, another girl playing a game turned suddenly into her path. They met with a shout and sounds of pain. Both fell, one rolling too near the fire. Other girls leaped up to pull her away. For just that moment every face was turned away from me. I slid back away from the fire, got up, and took quick steps into the shadow of the nearest house.
 
Can I explain to you why I did this? Will you understand at all? Have you ever heard words that changed your life in a moment?
 
You look like a boy. Hearing this brought a spirit into me that I never knew was in the world. More than happiness--more even than joy! It was... It was as... If you...
 
...
 
If all your life it had been cold night, and then suddenly the sun was in the sky and its warmth touched you, you would have this spirit, I think. But it abandoned me when she spoke of the knife. If I stayed, if I let her cut my hair, if I continued to sit with them like one who is in the wrong place, I would never find that spirit again.
 
It was a hard choice. My mami's house was my shelter all my life. The village was safety. But the women, the girls, they did not know me. If I stayed, I would stop knowing myself. How can I live as a stranger inside my own body? It was an easy choice.
 
No one saw me go. I went into the only house I knew had no woman in it, and--yes, I did this--I took her tools, all that I could both use and carry. In her trash pot I meant to leave the full-belly nut, but when my tongue reached into the shelter of my teeth, there was nothing! Even with all my care, I had swallowed the nut unknowing.
 
There must have been a sickness spirit hiding in the pot, because it jumped into me and out again with everything I had eaten. I am sure the nut came out with it. I hope it was not in my stomach long enough for the full-belly spirit to find me.
 
Shame chased me from the woman's house. It was not a good way to leave, by taking her things and leaving sick trash in her pot. As fast as I could I went between houses, between the food trees, through wood-gathering forest, until all was behind me. There I paused. Women do not dare to enter the wild forest alone. How could I think to? Alone was not what I wanted. I needed the road.
 
Women gather less wood during the rains. I found this place. I made a shelter for myself, and here I have waited. I...yes, I did this too--it was I who laid all the sticks across the road. I had two reasons for this. The second is that if any women came, I wanted them to see no wood to gather and so go away without seeing me. The first is that I feared the next boy pack to come might pass by while I was away finding food. I did this...to make you stop.
 
And now I ask--I beg--will you allow me to join your pack? I do not come with nothing! I know things that women do not teach to boys. The weaving of warm mats. The making of leather from animal skin. Do you want a fire drill? I have one. I have never carried a head-burden, but I will learn. I can walk as far and as fast as I must to stay with the rest.
 
Please. I cannot go back.

You will?! I may?! Oh, I am grateful to you! More than that--you have given hope to my life.   Must you call me that? It is a first girl's name, and does not belong to me.   ...I can choose? Any name? Then I choose "Boy".   Why not? To hear this word spoken in name-tones brings that spirit back to me.   Ha ha! I will rejoice when an angry woman shouts it at me!
Please do not refuse me this name. It is the sun's warmth. It is Old Tree's gift.

Comments

Please Login in order to comment!
Apr 7, 2025 22:11 by Rin Garnett

I'm so happy the boy pack accepted him ❤ It will be a hard road ahead, but I'm glad he got his wish!

⭐ Cause problems in wow that's a lot of stars
✏️ Take a WA unofficial survey
⛱️ Vacation with ghosts in Su-mehr Qiamp