Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic

by g. haron davis

Genres: YA Wizards & Witches; YA LGBT & Pride; Short Stories

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of All Out and Cemetery Boys, this anthology claims a seat at the table of fantasy literature for trans and gender nonconforming stories.

Transness is as varied and colorful as magic can be. In Transmogrify!, you’ll embark on fourteen different adventures alongside unforgettable characters who embody many different genders and expressions and experiences—because magic is for everyone, and that is cause for celebration.

Featuring stories from:

AR Capetta and Cory McCarthy

g. haron davis

Mason Deaver

Jonathan Lenore Kastin

Emery Lee

Saundra Mitchell

Cam Montgomery

Ash Nouveau

Sonora Reyes

Renee Reynolds

Dove Salvatierra

Ayida Shonibar

Francesca Tacchi

Nik Traxler

Release date: May 16, 2023

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 416

Sample

Origin StorySaundra Mitchell

When Tilluster College expels you, they do it up right.

Because, speaking from experience, they tied a bow on it real good. They didn’t strip my powers, because it turns out they can’t. But they made sure that this dumpster rat went back into the regular world, the world without magic, with an underline that was hard to forget.

We will kill everyone you love one by one if you expose us.

All righty, then.

Gotta make sure that nobody knows about their careful, civilized, controlled school of magic. Because sure, they’ll give a white trash queer kid like me a taste of three meals a day, AC all the time, and a bed in a frame. But they’ll also snatch it back if that white trash queer kid can’t get their wild magic to behave.

I can’t help that my fire wants to leap into the sky. That when I draw a wind, it wants to scream through the trees. And that when I step onto the rickety porch of my trailer, the ground rumbles. I call the trash cans back to their home, a little rectangle made out of white plastic fence, to hide them. Mom built it, just like she plants the roses around the trailer’s skirt. Our plot of land is barely big enough to hold our old single-wide, but Mom does her best to make it beautiful.

With a nod, I nudge the lids closed and smirk. Tilluster would not approve. What a low way to use magic, they’d say. What a way to debase such a rare gift.

Yeah, well, they can suck it.

Cool, slightly humid darkness swallows me when I step inside. I could flip on a light with a glance. Instead, I pat the air in search of the wall, confident of my steps in the dark.

Mom’s been on third shift lately, and that means we make the trailer into a forever night. The daytime blackouts turn my house into a dome beneath the sea. Only the train disturbs the quiet, loud with its whistle, sending little earthquakes to shake the floor and rattle the silverware in the sink.

The rubbled wallpaper on the hallway walls leads me to my room. I let magic open the door for me again, defiant. Bring on that debasing, baby. Drag it down in the dirt, roll with it, get it filthy. I use magic to wash dishes and flush toilets too, and right now, I use it to make my bed and call my earbuds into my hands.

If I wanted, I could make everything in this room rattle. I could raise it in the air, spin it around like a whirlwind. If I wanted, I could set it on fire, or blast it to pieces with lightning called to my hands. If I wanted, if I wanted—

If I wanted to prove Tilluster College right: That I was dangerous. Out of control. Unteachable.

I put in my earbuds and call my phone to my hand. It’s an old Samsung I inherited from one of my cousins, and the Wi-Fi is courtesy of our next-door neighbor. His router name is She-Ra. Password? Catra.

There’s a flash when I turn it on. Static, or a glitch. For a second, I think I see a face, but nah. The screen flickers; it’s just my brain making sense out of it. A weird sizzling sound bursts out. Then, everything’s normal again. App icons, an autumn-tree background; that’s it. I hope this thing’s not dying, because I can’t afford a new one and I doubt anyone has a spare to lend me.

YouTube has my playlist already cued up; I hit shuffle before opening my group chats. Head flooded with music, I flop onto my back on my bed. With a lazy wave of fingers, I float the phone above me. I don’t have to touch the screen at all. Could this be the most mundane use of magic ever? Possibly.

In WhatsApp, there’s the usual scroll from AP study group, and the family chat is

lit up about my cousin Cassy bringing home a one-eyed kitten. My best friend, Lexie, dominates friend chat, throwing a fit about the difference between a multiverse and time travel. That finally sparks a little warm glow in my chest.

I mean, Kevin Feige should just hire me. I could fix this mess in two seconds, she says.

Our friend Trinity replies, He absolutely should, motion passed.

So mote it be, I think at the phone, and the words appear on the screen.

Lexie sends a giant Bitmoji of herself jumping out of a cake. S U R P R I S E ! the caption reads, and she adds, I’m gonna show up on set one day, you watch.

In my mind, I see Lexie’s peachy-white face and ginger hair and her shoulders thrown forward, so there! I smile, just a little. She cheers me up just by existing. We’ve been best friends since fifth grade, survived everything together. She’s so glad I’m back from my “exchange” program, allegedly in Scotland.

I’ve never seen Scotland. I probably never will. It’s imaginary to me, out of reach like Narnia. But Tilluster is real. It’s as real as my cell phone orbiting me. And orbit it does, until my mother appears at the door.

Her mouth is open, probably to ask if I’ve taken out the trash yet. But she says nothing, instead furrowing her brow into a V-shaped glower. That’s a magic all mothers have, and it never needs hiding.

“Sorry,” I say, and pluck my phone from the air.

Ignoring that, she says, “I picked up an extra shift. There’s a twenty in the kitchen if you want to walk down to the Sandwich Machine.”

She doesn’t wait for me to say thank you. She never does. I can’t tell if it’s the magic she hates, or if it’s me. When I was little, I was her best friend. Then I got big, and I got lightning coming out of my fingers, and she was glad to give me up to Tilluster.

She probably never expected to see me again. Or if she did, it wouldn’t be for ages. My coming back after a year threw her.

She’d had twelve months without my mouth to feed and body to clothe and feet to shoe. Twelve months of plenty, twelve months of date nights out and coming home whenever. All that went away when I returned, and it reminded her how much easier it is when I’m gone.

Once I hear the front door close, I creep out to claim the money. The bill is old and worn; somebody drew a tiara on Harriet Tubman and blacked out Andrew Jackson’s eyes on the back. I take a picture of it before I stash it in a decorative treasure chest I got thrifting.

In the money goes, with the rest of the tens and twenties Mom’s doled out since I’ve been home. She’s been working a lot of doubles. It seems like the less she sees of me, the better. And I get it. So I can’t

stay here. I can’t.

But I’m sixteen and broke and I live half in the boonies, half in the city, off a busy state road. I can’t drive, and I never learned to gracewalk—making portals from place to place. Only a tacky-ass kid like me would call it teleporting, but that’s what it is. And I can’t do it, so I have to figure out where the hell I can go and how the hell I can get there.

And then somebody knocks on the door. I open it . . . with my hands.

Trinity hangs over Lexie’s shoulder, her eyes glittering like amber in the sun.

“Surprise!” she says, and Lexie waves jazz hands.

“We were texting you on the way here!”

Opening the door wider to let them in, I laugh in spite of my mood. “You shouldn’t text and drive.”

“I drove,” Lexie said, slipping from under Trinity’s hands and flopping down in my mother’s big recliner. She’s long and tall, limbs stretching out to forever, blessed with height and cute. She keeps rearranging the Viking twist in her hair so she can lay her head back flat. “Trinity did the texting.”

Trinity circles me and wraps her arms around my waist. She rests her chin on my shoulder, her brown skin radiating warmth. Trinity’s unafraid of touch and smothers all her friends in it. I remind myself that she’s just my friend, even though her body molds to mine, no space left between us. I have to tighten myself on the inside to keep the lights from flickering in response.

“We’re getting some beverages and going to the drive-in, so get dressed,” Trinity says, her glossed lips so close to my ear. Her voice buzzes through me; the big lamp in the living room dims.

Control, control, control, that’s what I’m doing. Squeezing every muscle in my body, twisting every synapse in my brain, to stop the flow of magic into the room around us. Children can do this, a voice from my past reminds me. Effortlessly. So what is your excuse?

Somehow, that makes it even harder. Covering Trinity’s arms with mine, I stare at the lamp, visualizing the black stem that turns it on and off. This shouldn’t be hard. I do it all the damn time. Let the breath drain out, let the magic out just a little. See that knob turning. Turn it, tur—

Lexie and Trinity both startle when the lightbulb blows. Not just out. The glass shatters and everything. Because of course.

Face hot, I disentangle myself. I tell myself the magic only seems obvious to me because I know it’s magic. It’s fine. They don’t know. They can’t ever know.

I grab the broom on the other side of the bar. It’s waist high and separates the living room from the kitchen, even though there are no walls to speak of. “We keep having power surges,” I explain pointlessly, trying to sweep the shards off the carpet.

Trinity laughs, hal

f honey, half cackle. It’s one of the best things about her. “That’s the most exciting thing that’s happened all week!”

“It better not stay that way,” Lexie says, lazily melting out of the chair to hold the dustpan for me.

“What’s on?” I ask, desperate to turn the focus anywhere but here. “At the Tibbs?”

“Who cares? You guys wanna sneak in a pizza?” Lexie asks, but Trinity holds up a hand.

“Uh-uh. They’re checking trunks again.”

Lexie makes a face. “Then where are we putting the buvos?”

“Already under the seat.”

“You brought it to my mom’s house?” Lexie exclaims.

“I brought it to her driveway.”

Throwing her head back, Lexie laughs. “You’re gonna get me killed.”

“Not tonight, I’m not.” Trinity pops the lever on the side of the seat and leans wayyyyy back into my lap. Instantly, I put my hands on her shoulders like I always do, like I always used to. She would notice if I stopped. So I just rub the smooth curve of her shoulders as her knot of braids spills into my lap. “Maybe some other time.”

Dusk is all around us, late-August musk rising with the mosquitos. Warm oil out of the asphalt and cool crispness out of the reclaimed wild space next to the road. That means they planted native wildflowers and told people not to cut them. It’s a meadow between a gravel pit and a semi-dingy drive-in, trying hard to be something more in the middle of less.

Fireflies blink between the brush of tall grass, and I sort of lose myself watching them. It’s like a trance, the rumble of the engine, the silk of Trinity’s skin, the heat of late summer trying to turn down to fall. The fireflies are looking for love, looking for a signal hidden close to the ground. Beneath all the concrete and curbs and foundries, the earth is alive with magic—we’re not even really out of the city, but it’s stronger here.

An odd, greasy streetlight blinks as we drive past it, probably reacting to me. I’m only close for a second, though. And if Trinity and Lexie saw it, it would mean nothing to them. Just another thing the city needs to fix but probably won’t.

We’re not Butler-Tarkingtons or Broad Ripples or Fishers, uh-uh. They get new streets, and we get patches. We get snow, they get plowed out first. There’s been a pit on the corner of Troy and Harding for a while now. They just add new gravel to it so we don’t fall in too deep when we turn right.

Another streetlight flickers out, and I don’t care. Not until I glance out the window for another taste of the fireflies. I get a face instead. The field parts to reveal it. Shock white, black eyes. A mouth that says nothing. Long clawed fingers that say it all. One raised to its lips.

Shhhhhhhhh.

 

We will kill everyo

ne you love one by one if you expose us.

Fact is, I could kill someone on accident. A handshake full of lightning, a sudden blast of force made of nothing, a fire of unknown origin. No one would ever know. So I believe them when they say they’d do it on purpose. They were pretty clear with that goodbye.

A tangy, springing taste jumps on the back of my tongue. My stomach heaves; I threaten it. Don’t you dare. Don’t you even dare.

The face in the field is probably a sending. An illusion, cast at a distance, to deliver a message. Well, aye, aye, Captain, message received. I haven’t told and I’m still not telling—not my best friends, not no one. My mother only knows because Tilluster told her, so that’s on them.

My head is full of bees, and I want it to all go away. I ask Lexie to turn the radio all the way up, but she has to turn it right back down again to pay to get us in. A horn blares behind us. Trinity and I both twist to see who it is.

Trinity figures it out before I do. Her face lights up and she flops back in her seat. “That idiot,” she says, her smile warm with affection.

Said idiot is Jamie Buchanan, who used to make boogers out of rubber cement and flick them at Trinity in English class. He’s filled out since then, and now he flicks looks at her in Conversational Spanish instead.

He’s gonna park next to us. Throw popcorn at us. Probably buy us all drinks to impress Trinity, and I’m not about to say no to a free drink. It will be cold, and it’ll calm down the fire in my belly. Sometimes jealousy comes in green, acid roiling inside me. But sometimes it’s fire, and it burns and burns until I’m stuffed with ashes.

It’ll remind me that, yeah, I could glamour myself, look like anything—anyone—Trinity ever wanted. But I’d still be me underneath it. I can’t play the part of secret wizard, and I can’t be Jamie, either. I’m only ever gonna be Daisy Rae Collins: real smart, real poor, real plain.

We pay and park, and just like I thought, Jamie parks next to us, leaving a space between. That’s where the lawn chairs are gonna go and get tipped over later, when boys show off wrestling, my friends laughing and tipping away from them, and I have another forbidden White Claw disguised in a Mountain Dew bottle.

Except, last out of the car is someone new. A stranger. I squint at him as he looks around, catching hints of uncertainty in him. He’s shorter than Jamie, but most people are. His shoulders are narrow and smooth, and his face a kaleidoscope of contradictions. Strong black brows, but soft brown eyes; sharp, high cheekbones, but a gentle rounded chin. His fawn skin looks kissed by the sun, and he catches me staring, which is just embarrassing.

He steps to me and offers a hand. “Sang Kim.”

My eyes drop to the pin on his lanyard. HE/THEY, it reads in black enamel, a comic book pow around it to make it stand out. A thin thread, almost imperceptible, unwinds inside me. I don’t normally offer up pronouns (it’s a good way to get your ass beat around here), but he started it.

Taking his hand, I say, “Rae Collins, pronouns whatever/whatever.”

“Oh hey, it’s nice to meet another in-between,” he says, letting his hand sli

p back into his pocket. His face warms, his blush almost copper. It goes with his smile, broad and rich. “Thought I’d be the only enby.”

It wasn’t a bad guess. Pretty much everybody I know and hang out with is queer: Trinity’s bi and Lexie’s aro-ace. There’s some other people at school up and down the rainbow. But slipping out of the binary is still a little much in Indiana.

Around here, a lot of people think trans women have beards and army boots and loom in public bathrooms; trans men are weird but more acceptable, because who wouldn’t want to be a man? They just wanna know if they have a dick. Dick, yes? Seal of approval, stamped.

Everything else is either “imaginary,” “attack helicopter,” “looking for attention,” or a collection of exciting slurs we’ve all heard, along with some brand-new ones for flavor.

My friends even slip from time to time. To them, I default to girl, and I don’t argue. Even if it’s not completely true, it’s not untrue.

I like the body I was born in. It just doesn’t reflect who I am, all of the time. It’s got nothing to do with my clothes, or my hair, or whether I wear makeup (mostly jeans and T-shirts; kinda short; only for special occasions).

That’s the problem with a binary for me: too easy to hang qualities under category one or category two. It works for other people, and I’m glad it’s there for them. But I’m category all of ’em or none of ’em, or sometimes some of ’em. I’m attracted to all kinds, and I feel like I’m all kinds.

So, what’s my gender? Whatever. What’s my orientation? Whatever. But try to explain that in Indiana, home of the latest bathroom bill. Nobody’s gonna say, Oh, interesting, thanks for sharing that with me. I repeat: it’s a good way to get your ass beat.

So I don’t say anything. There’s too much other shit I have to fight.

“Did you just move here?” I ask, because now I want to know every single thing there is to know about Sang Kim. Lexie shoots me A Look that says she thinks love is in the air for me, and yells that she’s going to go get some snacks. I salute her, ignore the implication, and wish her good luck inside the humid concrete box the Tibbs calls a concession stand.

Sang unfolds a chair and offers it to me with a gesture. Sweet.

“Chicago,” he says. “My mom’s job moved here. She said it would still be the city.”

I snort. “Yeah, well . . . Indianapolis sure is a city. How do you know Jamie and his crew?”

Settling next to me, Sang crosses his legs at the ankles and settles back. Warm wind fingers through his hair; it’s just long enough to be shaggy.

“My mom married his uncle, and I came with the package. We’ve been hanging out since I got here. Couple weeks ago, maybe? That whole ‘shove a couple guys the same age together and they’ll be best frie

ends’ thing.”

“Are you best friends?” I ask, amused.

“I already have one. But Jamie’s all right.” Sang rolls his head to look at me. “I heard you went to school in Scotland last year. That’s fucking cool.”

Everything in me tightens again. Frankly, I didn’t know Jamie was aware of my existence, except as adjunct to Trinity—let alone knew anything about me. How I became a topic of conversation, I have no idea. But hey, I love lying to strangers about a huge chunk of my life!

“It wasn’t all that great. And yes, I ate haggis. It was fine.” That part, at least, is true. “You come from a big school?”

“Nah,” he says. “Dad was homeschooling us; started during the pando and just never quit.”

“Sucks you had to move away.”

He points at me, as if to say, Exactly. Then his gaze strays toward the playground. It’s a grungy little setup beneath the big wood screen, but it’s a happy place. Kids swing, scream—teeter and totter, and a couple little ones chase the fireflies coming out in full force now. The pale flashes against the dark fence feel like a message.

That’s what magic is like sometimes. Looking out into the world and recognizing something that isn’t just there. It’s there, unspeakable and inexplicable—it knows you, and you know it. Like the blood in your veins suddenly turns gold and bubbles like champagne. The buzz of that connection is like a first crush. A first glimpse of the real world, something secret, just for you.

Sang’s voice teases my attention away. “I didn’t know drive-ins were even a real thing.”

“Bask in the glory,” I say.

“I brought food,” Lexie says, tromping over gravel and broken asphalt to get to us. It’s a random box of popcorn and sweaty hot dogs, candy and slices of pizza. Lexie has too much money to spend on dumb shit, but it means that we get a sampler every time we go somewhere, so who’s complaining?

Slinging an arm around me, Lexie asks with a purr, “Who’s your new frieeeeend?”

Sang leans past me to offer his hand. “Sang Kim.”

I point out his pin. “He/they.”

“Oooh,” Lexie says, her voice a kindergarten singsong. “Hiiiii, Sang Kim, he/they. I’m Lexie Cash, she/her, and isn’t Rae the cutest human you’ve ever seen?”

Between Sang’s arm brushing against mine, sending a shock across my skin, and Lexie being a total idiot (albeit an idiot I love), I can’t say “Will you shut up?” fast enough.

It’s with fondness, it really is. I’m not the cutest thing anybody’s ever seen, and I’ve known Sang for all of ten minutes. It kills me that Lexie’s not interested in romance for herself, but boy howdy, does she love it for everybody else.

Then, because my brain likes to hurt me, it wonders, Where’s Trinity? and cuts away all of the jittery newness of meeting somebody like me.

Trinity leans against the trunk of Jamie’s car. Her crisp coral sundress flutters

in the heat, setting off the warmth in her russet skin. The Aphrodite of the Drive-In, her arms elegant, her wrists bright with gold.

She’s a statue of perfect angles, her hand just so, her hips like that. It’s like a taste of sweet lemon to look at her. Everything clears away except for her. But somehow, my brain points out she’s looking like that at somebody else. It’s not for me, and it never will be.

“Where did you go?” Lexie asks, plastering both of her hands across my face. Her skin is sweaty and it tastes like the griminess of the summer. I know, because I lick her palm to make her let go. Pretty obvious we met in elementary school, huh? She recoils and flaps her hands, but demands, “Where were you, Rae-Rae?”

“Nowhere,” I say. I reach for a hot dog and change the subject. “This is free-for-all, Sang, so you better get some while the getting is good.”

He opens his mouth to say something. Then, his jaw clamps closed, and he leans forward in his chair. Turning to follow his gaze, at first I don’t see anything except the kids on the playground, turning into shadows against the fence.

Then I notice: the fireflies have coalesced. They shouldn’t be doing that. Moving that intentionally, gathering together. An itch, a tightening, climbs my arms.

Up under the screen, between the slats of the fence, a strange light bleeds between the fireflies. It twists, blending like ember into ash and ash into dust, and suddenly I’m on my feet.

The rush of magic is unmistakable now. It crackles; it burns. The face from the cornfield appears. Damn it, I was right: there was something there!

All at once, there’s a lot of something. Not once; four times—figures step from the nothing into the here. The now.

The first scream startles me. Little kids scream all the time at the playground, but this is different. Full of fear. It quavers, and it’s so alone.

Anxiety pierces me like arrows, because it’s magic at the freaking Tibbs Drive-In. I should be the only one who sees a sending. If other people can, this is bad.

This is what Tilluster tried to hammer into me. The last time people saw magic in the world, they beat it out. Burned it. Slit its throat and pressed it to death. Hung it from trees and gallows at crossroads. It’s up to us to protect its return, even with our lives.

And that part, I believe. I know what people do when they’re afraid or they don’t understand. Those feelings turn into hate, and—

Them. White-faced, black-eyed shapes that move like they’re on a rail, gliding over gravel like it’s glass. The air fills with a shhhhhh, not a warning. A hiss. This is more than a sending. What the hell are these things?

Kids scatter. One jumps off a swing, way too high, and hits the ground hard. Littl

e hands scrabble down the jungle gym, and clumsy feet stagger and trip as they flee. The chain-link fence in front of the playground becomes a trap. There are only two gates. Only a couple of kids think to climb. Some are too little to do anything but cry.

And I have, in my hands, a universe of impossible power. In my head, a threat that suddenly means nothing.

“Get in the car,” I order Lexie, shoving her off me. I have to leave Trinity in Jamie’s stupid basketball hands. “Everybody get in the cars!”

I start to run. My hands reach out without a thought. Scars of lightning open in the air. They’re purple-black; it’s like looking at the sun. My eardrums pound like bad speakers; my hair stands on end. But a bolt throws one of the figures back, away from the kids. Yes!

All around me, horns start to honk. One at a time, then a cacophony of flat notes in unnamed keys.

Everyone can see me. But so what? So what?

I bounce off trucks and SUVs, hitting the fence with the full force of my body. I throw more lightning. It’s safer than fire. More direct. I blast back another figure as the gravel rolls beneath my feet. Almost to the playground.

People yell behind me. Anger. Fear. Can’t think about that now. Hitting the fence, I’m surrounded by terrified faces. Dusty, sobbing kids who were just playing before a movie and found out in the worst way that monsters are real.

Grabbing the fence rail, I wish it gone, and it melts into mist.

Without a barrier, a whole wave of kids collapses on each other. I dig into them, dragging some to their feet. Above their heads, I throw more lightning and wince when it hits the metal poles holding up the screen.

Sparks pour from  the metal. ...