by Sara Genge

* * * *

Like her previous story “Shoes-to-Run” (Asimov’s, July 2009), “As Women Fight” is yet another tale about gender. Sara tells us she’s been fascinated by the intersection of biological and social aspects of gender for quite some time. Her latest story evokes John Varley’s grand tradition as it takes unexpected twists and turns quite appropriate for such a complex subject.

Merthe stands next to the felled doe and casts a worried look at the sky. He’s aching to train for Fight. Between hunting and setting traps, he hasn’t trained for a fortnight, but it’s too late and he’s too far from home. He hoists the doe on his shoulder and heads back. Snow crunches like starch under his boots, reminding him of when he was a young woman and knew a dozen names for snow, all stolen from the dessert section of a cookbook. Whipped cream, soufflé, eggnog with a crisp burnt crust...

The doe is small and Ita will complain. She trusts Merthe only when she can see what he’s accomplished in a day’s work. She’ll want proof that he hasn’t been lazing around, or worse, training for Fight. As if he’s ever neglected to feed the family. As if he’d ever put his own future before theirs. He swears under his breath. Five years as a man is too much to bear and he vows he will not lose the Fight again even if it means training every waking hour that he isn’t hunting.

When he gets home, the children run to him shouting. He lets them tug at his beard, tries to hug them all at once. He senses them drifting away. No matter that he can still feel them tugging at his breasts. He is either the figure of authority, or the gentle giant. The clown. They come to him to play, but if the wound is deep, it is their mother that they run to.

“Did you hunt at all?” Ita asks.

He nods but says no more. He’s been a man so long that this flesh has imprinted its own ways into his mind. Male silence comes easy these days; he revels in communication by grunts—or kisses. He knows how much it enrages her; he sometimes tries to be more verbal. But not now. Anything that’ll annoy her may throw her off her game. She’s won five years in a row. He needs all the help he can get.

He winks at the children and nods towards the shed. They run off, bringing back the doe between the six of them, the toddlers contributing by getting in the way. Serga doesn’t go with them; shei is the eldest, almost ten. Merthe sometimes wonders if shei still remembers heir first mother, still remembers Merthe in Ita’s body. He fears shei doesn’t: shei was so young when Ita and he swapped places. And yet, Serga stares at him with understanding, a look of pity even. Merthe shivers.

Ita hurries about and Merthe lets her serve him. In the warmth of the winter hut, the children quickly lose their wraps. Merthe’s clothes crack open like a husk, revealing thawing feet and a wide chest that has lost its summer tan. He looks upon Ita to do the same and, finally, she obliges. She’s gained some weight since she took over that body. Her arms are rich and soft but Merthe isn’t fooled: he knows first hand the damage they can inflict in combat. She bounces about, all hips and breasts, and the toddlers stare at her as if she were food, following her with eyes and mouths round as Os. Merthe lets his eyes roam her body, disguising one desire for the other. Ah, to be in those hips again. Yeah gods, to inhabit them! There’s bounce to her skin and the marks of pregnancy stretch proud across her tummy. Some of them, Merthe put there when he bore Serga and Ramir.

She serves him and leans forward to whisper in his ear.

“Like what you see? Enjoy. You’re not getting back in here any time soon.”

He grabs her by the waist and tumbles her, eats her mouth, lets her feel the weight of his body on hers. The strength. She gasps in surprise and the children laugh. They’re still androgens, and too young to read beneath the surface and into the hidden struggle between man and wife.

She giggles with them, making Merthe’s ribs jiggle against hers. He lets her sit up—the children are awake—and nibbles her ear.

“I’ll be in there in no time, darling,” he says. He doesn’t specify what exactly he means by that.

* * * *

The weeks before Fight come and go so fast that Merthe wonders if he’s growing old. Time always seems to speed up the further along you go. Three days before the match, Elgir walks up to the hut at dawn. He’s their closest neighbor but Merthe doesn’t know him that well. The People don’t gather too close. Hunters need their space and the gender arrangement makes for frequent domestic fighting. Nobody likes to live close to noisy neighbors.

Merthe crawls out to meet him without disturbing Ita. The two men step inside the shed, neither knowing what to say.

Merthe offers Elgir a cup of tea.

“You’d make a good woman,” Elgir says.

Merthe grunts at the compliment. “Yes, I did make a good wife.”

“Ah yes, I forgot. The first two are yours, aren’t they?”

It takes Merthe a second to realize Elgir means the children. Merthe nods to hide his shame. It seems impossible that he can’t reclaim that body. And the whole village knows how much he wants it. He damns himself. It would not matter so much if he could appear not to care.

“Don’t beat yourself up. She’s so good she’s scary,” Elgir says.

Elgir himself has little to fear. He can easily defeat his partner, Samo. She’s a small woman and not too fast. She’s only been in a woman’s body for a year and relied so much on muscle when she was a man that she never mastered technique. Looking at Elgir, Merthe understands how someone inhabiting that body could grow complacent. The man could fell a tree with a backhand cuff.

“How are things at home?” Merthe asks. It must be hard on Samo, knowing that she’s going to lose. Elgir made a stunning fighter as a woman. The litheness that is Samo’s bane was an advantage when Elgir was in control. Merthe remembers a particularly impressive kick roll in which a female Elgir was too fast for the eye. Merthe misses that lightness. Some days, he trudges around with the grace of a bear.

“Samo doesn’t want to lose,” Elgir replies.

“Who does?” says Merthe.

Elgir’s eyes hold Merthe’s for a second. “Some do. Some like being men. Some don’t care either way,” Elgir says.

Merthe blushes; nobody can judge another person’s likes or dislikes, but some things are rarely said in public. Both men look down.

“The moss is thick this winter,” Elgir says.

“Yes. It’ll get cold fast.”

It is so quiet that Merthe can hear the snow fall.

“Say, how about we hunt together. If we get something big, we can split. We can keep the women happy and still have time to train,” Elgir suggests.

Merthe knows Ita will disapprove, so he grabs his things and goes with Elgir before she can object.

They spot a squirrelee wallowing up the dikes to get from pond to pond. It digs the snow with its front paws for nuts hidden the previous season. It’s only as big as Eme, Merthe’s youngest, but Merthe knows that most of its flesh is fat, good for thickening stews. It’s a worthy catch, even if the women will complain about getting only half.

But when the time comes to cast his spear, Elgir freezes up. It’s no time for questions, so Merthe shoots his arrow through air that tastes like sugared ice. The squirrelee falls.

Elgir goes ahead to retrieve it. Merthe wonders at the man’s hesitation.

“Nice shot,” Elgir says. He punches Merthe on the shoulder. “They say you cannot forget how to be a man anymore than you can forget how to suckle,” Elgir says, “but I seem to forget every single time. One year is not enough to relearn it all. I was female for so long before that...”

Merthe remembers. Elgir only lost last season because she caught the bluing cold. She barely escaped with her life—losing the Fight was a small thing compared to that. Everyone still wonders why Samo and Elgir didn’t postpone their fight until after her recovery. Was Samo really that desperate to win?

“Then why is it that you wish to remain a man?” Merthe asks. It is a bold question and he hopes he is not mistaken. But intuition isn’t just a woman’s gift.

“It’s not that...” Elgir says. Silence rings off the dusted pines. The men find a clearing and unpack their cheese-and-bread. The cheese has no smell. Merthe sniffs it, licks it.

“It’s good,” Elgir says.

“Yes. I wish I could taste it like she ... like they ... like the women do,” Merthe says.

“Wouldn’t make much difference. Smell’s all that counts towards taste. This cheese tastes good because it has a hot bite to it, but the smell is rather bland. Trust me. I remember.”

“But Ita says—”

“Ita is pulling your leg. This cheese has no smell.”

Merthe curses Ita and tucks in. Sometimes he wonders why he wants to be a woman so much, since he can’t even remember what it was like. But he’s kidding himself. Even if he can’t remember the particulars the overall impression remains. He recalls that first year after he defeated his first partner. Smells so much more vivid, skin so fine that it could feel the gentlest summer breeze, the touch of the sun ... he knows of men and women down south who never change bodies. They are content to live their whole lives as one sex. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, Merthe wants to do likewise. If those men manage, why can’t he?

But those men have the blessing of ignorance. They do not know what it is like to feel their bellies grow full. They do not understand the transforming pain of childbirth, the draining of milk from the nipple. The real smell of onion as it cooks.

“What is it then?” he asks. He’s suddenly angry at Elgir, for taking this so lightly.

“I like being a woman,” Elgir concedes. “I also like being a man. I like changing from one to the other. If you think about it, that’s how all of this started, right? We swap bodies the better to understand each other’s minds. We were meant to be balanced, equal. That’s why our women are faster than the eye and stronger than the ones down South. It makes us even. Swapping bodies was never meant to cause strife.”

“Interesting theological argument. Maybe if we pray hard enough, we can all be women. What do you think?”

Elgir snorts half-frozen milk up his nose. His eyes tear and he laughs, but Merthe wonders if he’s not also crying.

“It doesn’t matter which body you’re in. Sure, it’s great to be a woman for the first few months after a transition, but after a while you simply get used to it and you don’t make use of all those fantastic senses you’re supposed to have. Senses work by comparison—if all of your passions are strong, they fade against each other as certainly as if they’re all weak. That’s why swapping frequently makes sense. That way you can renew the strong feelings often and spend enough time as a man to learn to appreciate the subtler pleasures too.”

“What does Samo think of that?”

“She thinks I’m full of worm shit,” Elgir says.

They burst out laughing.

Suddenly, Elgir stops laughing and starts crying. Men’s tears, quiet, no fuss. But he doesn’t try to hide them. Merthe wishes they were women so that they could hug each other and cry and then laugh at their silliness. He loves the way Ita’s tears are unapologetic and arbitrary. They come and go like a morning sprinkle over nothing or they storm out and make him wish he’d never been born. Women have practice with crying. They communicate with tears. Men just sit there and cry.

But Elgir seeks him out to finish the last shudders in his arms.

“What is it?” Merthe asks.

“Samo doesn’t like being a man.”

“Neither do I. She’ll just have to get used to—”

Elgir shuts his eyes and shakes his head.

“What is it? What is it?” Merthe asks.

“She doesn’t take well to being a man. Not at all. She ... he ... is angry ... all the time.”

It sounds worse than just an argument. Merthe doesn’t understand. “Why didn’t you leave?” he asks.

But Merthe knows why he hasn’t left. He hasn’t left for the same reasons that Merthe hasn’t divorced Ita. He thought things would get better. He hoped for change. The children stay with the mother...

“What exactly is it that she ... he ... does?”

“He’s violent.” Elgir bursts out crying and Merthe is confused. Even in a man’s body, Samo is no match for Elgir. It makes no sense that Samo could batter Elgir. “It’s not me she hurts,” Elgir wails and, now, Merthe realizes he’s crying from shame.

“The children. As a man, he hit Tine and Vis,” Merthe says.

“That’s why I let him win last winter. I thought once she was a woman again, it would all be over. It helped, at first. But last night, I saw a bruise on Tine’s arm. The kid swears shei fell off a tree, but both of them are awfully quiet when their mother is around. Maybe I’m imagining things.”

“She’s still hitting them?” Merthe asks. “What are you doing here? What are you doing leaving them alone with her!” He stands up and paces, trying to decide whether to hit Elgir or run back towards his neighbor’s house to save those children from their mother.

Elgir grabs Merthe’s arm but Merthe wrenches it away. “How could you let that happen?” Merthe shouts. “You could have gone to the elders. Left without their approval, even. Stolen the children—whatever it took! How could you? How could you?” He hoists his bag on his back and heads home, forgetting the squirrelee. Elgir runs after him. When Merthe doesn’t stop, Elgir tackles him to the ground.

“Stop. Listen.” Merthe stops struggling, less from the command than from the finality of a man twice his side pinning him to the ground.

“I’ll save those kids, I promise you. I’ll keep them safe from Samo if it’s the last thing I do! But I’d rather do it smart. You know how the elders are, they’ll argue and fret for months before reaching a decision and in the meantime, the kids will be alone with Samo. An angry Samo. A Samo who’s been humiliated in public. I have failed them as a father and as a mother, but I won’t compound one mistake with another.”

Elgir stops pressing down quite so hard, but he doesn’t let go. Both men sit up, hands on each other’s arms. It’s not a fight grip but it would take no effort to turn it into one.

“What are you going to do, then?” Merthe asks.

“I will win. I will win and leave, and I’ll take the children with me.”

Merthe lets go, sits back on the snow. As much as he hates the idea of Tine and Vis spending the next week alone at home with Samo, he realizes Elgir’s way is best. As soon as he takes back his woman body, he’ll be entitled to take the children where he pleases. Merthe tries not to feel sorry for Samo: she birthed them both.

“Do you know where you’re going to go? Do you have family to help you out?” he asks.

“I’ll worry about that later.”

Merthe promises himself that he’ll take food from his own mouth before Elgir’s children go hungry. He’s a strong hunter; he can hunt for two households. Ita will just have to accept it.

It’s only later, back at home, that he realizes that he doesn’t plan on being the hunter for the coming year.

* * * *

Serga comes out to meet him at the door and it takes Merthe a moment to figure out why this surprises him. Serga hasn’t been at the door with the other children for a while. The kid is too old to puppy around heir father.

Serga wants something. Heir eyes are impatient for Merthe to dispose of his hunting gear and head towards the shed to clean the squirrelee. Shei doesn’t even cast a sidelong glance at the half-carcass, even though heir scathing looks are usually as incisive (and effective) as heir mother’s.

Merthe takes off his coat and starts skinning. Serga stares on until Merthe motions towards the belly of the animal. There’s enough work for two.

Serga hesitates and Merthe wonders if he has insulted the child by offering heir man’s work. After all, no woman will touch an animal until it’s clean and adolescents like to pretend they’re women. But Serga takes heir own blade from heir apron and settles down in front of Merthe.

“It’s happened,” Serga whispers. “It’s arrived.”

Merthe hides his surprise and looks Serga up and down discreetly. Yes, there’s an adult’s budding body under the wraps. He hadn’t expected it to happen so soon, but he’d always known his children would have to grow up. Serga isn’t too young for her first bleeding.

“Have you told your mother?” Merthe asks, and regrets it. Serga has come to him, not Ita. He mustn’t push heir away.

Shei shakes heir head.

“The other thing too? Or is it just your period?” Some adolescents don’t have erections until a couple of years after their first bleeding.

Serga winces; Merthe is too blunt. He tries not to smile.

“The other thing ... I think so.”

Merthe grunts his understanding and waits.

“What do I do now?” Serga throws the knife to the ground. It rattles against the floorboards and shei looks up, scared. You don’t treat a good knife like that. But Merthe gets up, wipes the knife on his pants and hands it back to Serga without scolding.

“You don’t have to fight this season, or even the next. You can still be our child for a little longer, if that’s all right with you,” he whispers and places his hand on heir shoulder.

Serga nods and clasps heir apron.

“But why do I have to Fight at all? Why can’t I just stay like this always?”

“Fighting is fun. You’ll come to enjoy it,” he says.

“What if I can’t? What if I’m really bad? What if—”

“It’s okay to lose.”

“Mother says—”

“Your mother is a very gifted woman, but in some things, she acts like an idiot.” Merthe wonders if those words are his, or Elgir’s. “She’s so proud of winning that she pretends that losing is a big deal. You’re going to win some years and lose some years and, either way, you’re going to be happy. You’re going to love your children and your spouse. You’re going to enjoy good food and soft clothes. The differences are there, but the things that matter remain the same.”

It’s a white lie, but the words spring from his mouth with such a force that Merthe wonders if they aren’t true.

* * * *

Elgir and Samo are the first to Fight each season and their combat casts a long shadow on everyone else’s match. Merthe wonders what Fight will be like when Elgir and Samo are no longer the item leading the way.

Their combat is short; Elgir seems too sad to care about putting on a good show. Samo comes at him in a blur and the men in the crowd gasp, always surprised at how fast a woman can move.

Samo has learned from previous failures. She never sits still and blows punctuate her every motion. Elgir stands still and takes them, face flat as granite. Merthe wonders if he plans to win through attrition.

Suddenly, his arm shoots out and he catches Samo across the chest. They crash down, Elgir breaking their fall so that Samo lands almost softly, cocooned inside his arms.

He holds her much longer than necessary, after the bell has rung, after the cheering is over. He holds her after Samo has stopped thrashing in anger and frustration, after the children stop hollering. It is their final embrace and Elgir makes it last. This is how Elgir loves, fervently. Even after the unthinkable, he cannot bear to let go.

When the crowd is no longer interested, Elgir presses his palm against Samo’s and Merthe can feel his own pores opening up in sympathy, the clever little soul-holes through which bodies are exchanged. It only lasts a second but Merthe knows that those two feel their minds entwined into eternity.

And then it’s done, and Samo in his new male body pushes Elgir away so hard that Merthe winces. Elgir stands up, wearing that body with a grace Samo could never muster. She nods her head, a last goodbye, and whistles for the children. By now, even Samo must know they won’t be coming home tonight.

* * * *

That evening, Merthe arrives home with half a nme bird. There’s hardly any meat on it and Ita will have to add some sausage to thicken the stew, but nobody will go hungry, not Ita and the children, not Elgir and hers. Sometimes you’re lucky, sometimes you aren’t. That’s the way hunting goes.

When Ita sees the bird she blanches, and Merthe braces for a harangue on hunting and responsibility. But Ita is too angry to bait or mock. Merthe has never seen her like this. She storms back into the house while Merthe goes to the shed to clean the bird.

Dinner is silent and Ita hustles the children to bed long before their bedtime. One of the younger ones whimpers, but Serga cuts heir short with a pinch which Merthe pretends not to see. He’s too exhausted to fight heir too.

“Who is she?” Ita whispers after the children are in their bunks.

“What?”

“Don’t play games with me, Merthe, who’s the woman you keep bringing meat to. Taking it from your children’s mouths!”

Merthe laughs “It’s not ... I’m not...”

“Don’t go telling me you hunted with Elgir again! She’s a woman now, Samo can hunt for her. I don’t know why I believed you the first time, men hunt alone, but I was so trusting—”

“What is it that really bothers you, Ita? Me with another woman or your stupid pantry? It’s bursting at the edges, for every god’s sake. You give food away else it rot before we can eat it! Is that what I am to you? The oaf who keeps your stomach full?”

Ita opens her mouth, but manages only a gurgle. She grabs her coat. Polar winter sweeps into the house as she opens the door. The cold steals the breath from his mouth; the sharpness from his brain. It takes him a second to react and take off after her, wrapped only in his sleeping blanket.

The snow outside is knee deep and she isn’t wearing shoes. He scoops her up from a drift and drapes her across his shoulders. She doesn’t resist.

“You idiot, don’t you see I do it for you?” she wails in his ear over the wind. “Everyone knows you’re such a good hunter that I have food to spare. My mother, the neighbors ... As long as my pantry is full, nobody can question us or our marriage. Whenever those hags at the market start gossiping about how I should find a stronger Fighter, I give them meat, pelts. That shuts them up. They don’t talk, at least not to my face.”

Merthe pushes the door open and stomps his feet until he feels them. He doesn’t know what to think, much less what to say. He puts Ita down and goes to fetch the liquor. More than half the bottle is missing. He stares pointedly at Ita.

“Don’t look at me. I think Serga has started drinking behind my back.” She sounds annoyed, but not terribly worried. Adolescents will be adolescents. It’s hard to figure out one’s body when one is so new to it, especially when one is neither a man nor a woman, but a compendium of impulses with no way to work them off. Merthe’s lips twitch as he remembers his own childhood.

“There is no woman, Ita.” He sits next to her by the hearth. “Samo and Elgir have broken up. I promised Elgir that her children wouldn’t starve. I’m hunting for them for now, at least until Elgir finds a man. That shouldn’t take long.”

“Can’t Samo hunt for them? He has a responsibility towards those children!”

“Samo isn’t going to be hunting. Elgir can hunt small game by herself, but not with the children tagging along.”

“Really? You must be exaggerating. I can’t think of a man who’ll visit his children and not bring something...”

“Samo isn’t setting foot in Elgir’s house.”

“Well, that’s just wrong! I can understand being angry, but keeping a man from his children—”

“You don’t know the half of it!” Merthe sets the glass down and frowns: he hadn’t intended to shout. “It’s bad, Ita, it’s really bad.”

“Then tell me,” she says. You never tell me anything. After so long, Merthe hears the words even when she doesn’t utter them.

“Samo hits the kids.” That gets her attention. He explains in as few words as he can, glad that she’s finally decided to shut up and listen.

“Those poor kids. Those poor poor kids,” she says.

Merthe tries to explain how angry he is at Elgir for letting it happen.

“You can’t judge. You don’t know what Elgir was going through at the time...”

“And you do?” Surely, this isn’t about him!

“Of course not.” She puts a cool hand on his forehead. Despite how angry he is, she soothes him. Ita and he work best together when they do not speak. He wonders why it can’t always be like that. A life in silence. Sometimes, his reticence to speak is just that, a desire for this quiet companionship. It is only with words that they hate each other.

* * * *

When his time to Fight comes, Merthe tells himself the outcome doesn’t really matter. He tells himself the same lies he told Serga, trying to believe them with a child’s fervor. He fastens his boots and sets out.

A crowd is waiting for him. As he approaches, Elgir joins him, arriving at the square from the left. They walk the last stretch together, Elgir’s children trailing from her skirt.

“How are things going?” Merthe asks.

“I should be the one asking that!” Elgir laughs. “Are you afraid?”

“No.” Surprisingly, it’s the truth. He’s too wound up to be scared. “Do you still believe what you said in the forest the other day? Do you still think it’s such a good idea to swap bodies from time to time? Or has that precious woman’s body changed your mind?”

Elgir laughs. “Oh, yes, I believe it. We are trapped inside these bodies. We’ve learned since childhood that women do this or that and we never dare to break free of that mold. We’re as pitiful as the men and women down South, who only know one way of living, except that we don’t have the excuse of ignorance. But hell, it does feel good to sniff my children with this nose again. I’ll grant you that.” She turns sharply and her children squeal and take off. Obviously, “smelling the children” is a game with them.

They turn into the square where a dozen men cheer when they see Merthe. Merthe turns around but she nods at him to go. She’s got her arms full of toddler.

“Do your best.” her face looks pinched. Merthe realizes that if he wins, she will lose her hunter.

He salutes each of the four metallic pillars that mark the Fighting ground. They are made from the remnants of a ship that brought the People here from the sky. Or so the elders say. It seems impossible that people should sail through air. It is true, however, that bodies may only be exchanged within their embrace and only after Fight. Years ago, Merthe and Ita, like all newlyweds, spent some time trying to game the rules and learned that the only result was temporary impotence and a headache that lasted for hours.

On a whim, he jumps into the Fighting square and seeks out Ita before combat begins. He stares at the judge, dares him to object, and takes Ita to the side.

“Are you nervous?” he asks.

She looks at him suspiciously. He sighs, takes her hand and brings the palm to his lips. Her eyes lighten up.

“It’s just a game, Ita.”

“Maybe it is to you. That’s why you always lose.”

He lets go of her hand, turns to the crowd. People are coming from villages that he hasn’t even been to. He wishes he could confide in Ita, but everything he says will be used against him.

“I’m worried about Elgir,” he blurts. “Who will hunt for her when I’m a woman?”

Ita smiles. She thinks it’s banter. “I think you’ll be able to keep her in meat and gravy for a while yet.”

“Really? You would not object?”

“Are you serious?”

It’s no use. He heads towards his corner and starts preparing.

Roll of drums; the combatants step up to the judge. Merthe wonders whether he should try to imitate Elgir. Maybe he can just take Ita’s hits and try to snatch an advantage when he sees it. Surely, it would be a lot less tiresome that fighting. He is so tired of fighting all the time.

But then he realizes that this is Fight, not just any fight. His verbal skills do not matter and since combatants must remain silent, Ita’s wit cannot hurt him inside the ring. Suddenly, he feels protected by those four pillars. He has a good half hour of silence ahead of him, maybe an hour if he can make the fight last. He yearns for intimacy without the burden of words. And there is nothing more intimate than violence.

The drums are still and the crowd holds their breaths. Ita starts bouncing and jabbing, trying to circle around him and hit him when he blinks. She moves fast—always a good strategy for a woman—and attempts to bring him down with repeated blows.

Her first hit catches him unawares and he staggers back. No, Elgir’s strategy won’t work. There is blood in his mouth. He’s supposed to hold still, he knows. Maybe feint a bit, watch for patterns and fell her with one decisive blow. Those same muscles that lend force to his blows suck up his energy. Unlike Ita, he cannot jump around forever. He is supposed to preserve his strength, not to commit, strike only when he can win.

But he is so tired of doing what he’s supposed to and maybe Elgir is right and we get caught up in patterns, live life within patterns, pushing ourselves beyond our limits because a man should lift that much, throw that far. And maybe, just maybe, Merthe realizes, we do the opposite and fall pitifully short because we’ve been told our bodies have less endurance that our wife’s.

Merthe starts bouncing. His feet know the way. Women fight like they dance, his mother taught him, and he was always such a good dancer.

Ita’s rhythm lets up in surprise and he jabs, but she ducks in time and starts bouncing again. He loves her technique and mirrors her as they spin round and round. Merthe is the ugly sibling, echoing heir elder’s every move, struggling to copy what can only be born of natural grace.

Ita doesn’t know how to hit a moving target. She hasn’t fought with a mobile partner for a long time.

His breath is labored; she hardly breaks a sweat. She starts sweating; the pain in his chest won’t let up. She pants and swerves; his vision clouds but he sees the gap in her defense and punches through.

She crashes down and he falls right after. For a second, he wonders if she’s all right. He put himself in that blow, his loves, his wants, his strengths and weaknesses. He wonders if it was too much for her. But she groans and sits up, spits blood and, of all things, laughs.

“Well, you got me there.”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Oh no, you’re not. You won.”

He lies back, head spinning. Yes, he won. His chest still hurts and he wonders how bad it is.

The bell rings. She crawls up against him, sets her palm against his and they’re off into the limbo of joy. Her mind rises up to him. For a second, both of them are in his body and hers hangs, limp, behind. He creeps in, wondering if the beams still hold in this castle which he’s left so long ago. Merthe draws a breath which is oh, so sweet. She smells the male sweat of Ita next to her.

But no. Two women need a hunter and a young androgen needs to learn that being a man isn’t so bad. She pushes back into the old body. He regains control and shoves Ita into hers. She was so fond of her female form that it seems a pity to tear her from it. Plus, she made a terrible husband.

Ita tumbles away from him and he sees disbelief in her eyes.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re leaving me! You’re leaving with her!”

It takes a moment for him to understand what she’s saying. But, of course, she cannot fathom why anyone would want to be a man. The only explanation that she will consider is that Merthe plans to start a new life with Elgir and that he needs a man’s body for that.

“I’m not going with her.” He doesn’t say he’s not leaving, though, because he’s not quite sure what he’ll do. He can support both women, but he doesn’t have the strength for either. He needs time, alone, in silence. He knows just the place for that.

The judge walks up and hesitates before signaling the end of the transition. The elders squirm, then shrug their shoulders. Merthe has won: he may do as he likes.

That night, there’s scratching at the door of the shed.

“Does your mother know you’re here?” he asks a trembling Serga standing by the doorway.

“No. I think. I don’t think so, she was asleep.”

Merthe lets heir in, moves his quilts to a corner and places a stack of blankets next to the fire for heir to sleep in. Shei stomps heir feet all the way to bed, and Merthe stays awake until the shivering melts into regular breathing and only soft childish hairs peek out from beneath the covers. He’ll wake heir before sunrise and make heir go back to bed inside the house. Ita mustn’t know that shei’s fled to him for comfort after their separation. Merthe may be too confused to know what he wants just yet, but he doesn’t want to hurt Ita. Whether he can live with her or not is a different matter.