Once Upon a Rainbow, Volume One

by Mickie B. Ashling

  The guests oohed and ahhed over dinner, even requesting the chef come so they could offer her their applause. Well, all but one was pleased. The godmother in red, I mentioned? She felt her meat was too rare; she disliked truffle butter; she wanted gluten-free; and she felt crème brûlée was so passé. The little woman told everyone who would listen how disappointed she was at such a lacking royal feast. She even mentioned to some that the family would pay for such a disgraceful meal. Why us and not the chef? Only that crazy little woman would ever know for sure.

  If my memory serves me, it was during the dance party for the children that the scarlet-colored godmother approached Bastian and me as we stood resting near the treat table. She whispered some sort of gibberish in my ear. The only part I recall was that I would be cursed to death for the wrongs my family had committed against her. I was completely weirded out, grabbed Bastian’s hand, and pulled him away, leaving the tubby little godmother’s crimson-colored getup in our wake.

  I rushed to my parents about the strange encounter, and although my father disregarded it, my mother was a firm believer in curses and such. She swiftly ordered the red-colored godmother to appear before them in the throne room, without the typical onlookers because the godmothers were all aware of my secret.

  The guards brought her in, and my mother demanded she kneel. I remember cowering behind my mother’s throne, watching the encounter, with Sebastian peering out the other side. I was shaking in my patent leather flats, fearful the woman would kill me on the spot.

  “Explain yourself, woman,” my mother said with all the authority her crown could project.

  “I don’t think I know what it is you speak of, Your Majesty.”

  “What did you say to the princess, old woman? I demand you tell me now. What say you, you hideous old hag?”

  As I watched on, I noticed that the godmother had changed in appearance. Where once had stood an average old woman, now stood a hunchbacked gruesome-looking hag whose face alone made my stomach churn. I wanted to gag. I remembered hiding my eyes from her visage, hopeful that this wouldn’t take much longer.

  “Your Majesty, I simply cursed her to die is all,” she quipped. “No more, no less. You will lose your daughter for the wrongs you have done unto me—”

  Before she could say anything else, my mother lost it, snapping at the guards to remove the godmother and cast her out of our district. “Let her be someone else’s problem,” she huffed, then stood from her throne and began to storm off, but not before shooing us out of the throne room. We giggled and tore off down the hall, my mother calling after us, “That woman is as crazy as her curse.”

  Although I knew my mother wanted me to believe that she was sure what she was saying, I knew she didn’t. She was just as convinced of the curse as the hag was. It wasn’t long until she was taking up with the palace priestess more often than with her own husband.

  But life went on for Bastian and me. I rarely thought of the curse over the next few years, and even when I did, it was only because Bastian teased me about it. I would punch him in the arm, and he would squeal, and then it rolled around in my head for a few days. Mostly, though, it haunted my dreams.

  I THINK I was about ten years old when I really knew that I wanted to be all girl. I was standing in front of the wall-length mirror in my room, and I just fell in love with the way I looked. I loved my waist-length coal-colored hair (I think my mom had refused to cut it just to prove I was a girl). My breasts were starting to develop, and I was infatuated with the way they looked in the training bras my mother was ecstatic to have bought for me. So, I knew that when I turned eighteen, I would be going in for vaginoplasty.

  Although I had always known that Sebastian was not your average boy, we were probably twelve years old when I knew there was something different about my dearest friend. And it wasn’t just that we fought over my clothes and shoes when we were playing dress-up all those years. But, one day as we sat out by the pool sunbathing, me in my admiral-blue bikini and him in his swim trunks and T-shirt, that he told me his biggest secret.

  “Tally, there’s something I want to talk to you about, and you have to pinky swear not to tell anyone. Do you?” He turned on his lounger and extended his pinky finger to me.

  “Of course, Bastian. You have my word.” I wrapped my pinky finger around his, and we shook on it. I meant it too. Whatever it was, I would keep it a secret until my dying day.

  I turned to sit on the side of the lounger, facing him, anxiously awaiting something that was so important we had to partake in a sacred pinky swear over.

  “Tally, you may already know this about me, but I just need to say it out loud.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said expectantly, nodding but having no idea what he was talking about.

  “Well, I’ve finally figured out why I am so uncomfortable in this body.” His whole body trembled like something had grossed him out. “I realized that I’m in the wrong body, Tally.”

  I must have looked confused because he put his hand on my knee and patted it reassuringly. “I’m getting there, and I think it’ll make perfect sense to you.”

  I remember laughing nervously before he continued. “What I’m trying to tell you is that I want to be a woman. I feel like I’m trapped in this body, with this filthy old thing between my legs.” He politely grabbed his crotch. “I want a pair of those,” he said playfully as he reached to grab at my perky developing chest.

  “Cut it out, punk!” I remember laughing so hard I almost thought I was going to fall off the lounger.

  Once I regained my composure, I stared out at the pool and thought about whether I had known before now as he suspected. Suddenly, I was brought out of my reverie by a snap in front of my face.

  “Tally? Hello? Anyone in there?” He waved his hand back and forth as he sung, “Yoohoo! Earth to Tally!”

  “Stop it, stupid.” I snickered and slapped his hand away.

  “You know, Bastian, to be honest…” I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine. “I never really thought about it because it didn’t matter one way or the other. You’re you. Just plain old you.”

  He gasped, play acting as though he was offended by my insinuation that he was plain or old.

  “You know what I mean, dickhead.” I released his hand and lay back on the lounger. “I just mean, we’ve always been so close that it wouldn’t have mattered what you were on the outside. I just know you’re you on the inside and I love that about you.” I grumbled. “I’m not making any damn sense. I hope you know what I’m trying to say.”

  I glanced over at him, lifting a hand to shade my eyes from the sun. He nodded. It was probably the same, that my penis wasn’t the first thing he thought of when he was around me. We loved each other despite all the other crap, unlike most people who put physical appearances as conditions on their relationships with others.

  “So, what’re you gonna do, Bastian?” I pulled my legs up to sit crisscross-applesauce on the lounger as he pulled his legs up and lay back again.

  “Whatcha mean, what am I going to do?” He paused for a moment, but only to emphasize his next statement, I was certain of it. “I’m gonna cut this bitch off.” He laughed maniacally. “All is not lost. Chop it off,” he said in a singsong voice.

  At that, I laughed so hard I almost wet my suit. “If you can do it, why shouldn’t I?” He reached over with his left hand and squeezed my boob again. “And some of these too, but definitely bigger.”

  “Ha!” I said loudly. “Mine’ll get bigger. Just you wait and see.” Sure, I was well-endowed for someone as young as I was, but based on the women in my family, there was plenty of room to grow.

  The two lay down opposite one another on the lounger. “What’ll you call yourself?” I asked him.

  He sat up, legs still extended before him. “Savannah,” he said dramatically, pretending to flip hair off his shoulder.

  We both laughed and made a pact that we would wait until our eighteenth birthdays to get our
respective surgeries. My birthday came first, with Savannah about a month after. Six years was a long time to wait, but we knew they had one another for support. Only time would tell how my story would turn out.

  MY TEENAGE YEARS, I must say, went smoother than they would, had I not been a royal and been given every advantage in life. It broke my heart to think about teens like me, or Savannah for that matter, who didn’t have palace walls to protect them as they traveled through the most traumatic years of their lives. And we both had supportive parents who were, albeit a little further removed than most, aware of what we were going through and would have done anything to help us.

  Around my early teens, the pressure was on for me to start entertaining the idea of dating. My mother, unlike most, was excited that I would hopefully begin dating soon. Royals and other upper-class young men from all over the country, she told me, were interested in courting me. I recall thinking, Heh. Does she not realize I’m already in love? But I didn’t say that, only because I knew that my parents both knew that Savannah was different like I was.

  I don’t know necessarily that my parents would have had a problem with the fact that I was in love with Savannah, but I knew that they would have been concerned. It would be easier, they thought, for me to make the necessary changes to be my true self; whereas, Savannah’s transition would draw a ton of public scrutiny because the country had known her as a prince for eighteen years, and then one day she’d no longer be. The very thought at that time excited me, already able to picture him as a gorgeous woman; however, I could understand that a country primarily under the rule of the bigoted emperor could find issue with it, despite more openminded royals running their own districts. If the emperor was in charge, hatred would always be alive and well in the United Districts of North America.

  But how anyone outside the Talia/Savannah bubble felt was of no concern to either of us at that time. I remember on one of our movie nights when we were watching “oldies but goodies,” there was this movie from like 2004 called The Notebook that made us cry and cry. Crying, of course, led to us embracing and to comfort one another, but something was different this time. When we hugged, I didn’t want to let her go, nor she me. When finally she pulled away, I placed a soft peck to her lips, and then her eyes blinked several times, her mouth agape.

  “I’m sorry!” I cringed, covering my face with my hands. I surely had missed the mark. Was it possible she didn’t feel the same?

  I remember her hands on mine, gently pulling my fingers away from my face. Although I wasn’t in tears, I had turned whiney, my face probably looking quite ugly. Her beautiful ash-colored eyes stared at me with nothing but love and affection. The embarrassment I felt slowly melted away, a sweet smile appearing on her lips as she noticed.

  “Tally, I love you. Don’t you know that?” She didn’t pause for an answer. “You just surprised me is all.” She leaned forward, her face inches from mine, and whispered, “If we’re going to practice this shit, let’s both know it’s going to happen, okay?”

  I swallowed hard, the warmth of her breath on my lips causing chills to rise all over my skin. It was mere moments later that her soft, moist lips pressed against mine. I’m not sure how long the kiss lasted, but I remember my head spun like mad when we both pulled our lips apart.

  “Wow,” she said, and then we both began to giggle like crazy. We grabbed hold of one another, still giggling as we fell back on the bed. We lay there, talking late into the night and leaving the kissing for perhaps another time.

  AS OUR TEENAGE years progressed, things became a bit strange for us both. Because I have a slight variation of Klinefelter syndrome, puberty was different for me. Although I had a penis, when puberty reared its ugly head, my penis did not develop like typical teens, in part because of my syndrome, but also because I had been taking female hormones for as long as I could remember; therefore, I never had any…umm…sensation in what lay between my legs. My breasts developed quite fully, larger than I would have expected. I didn’t grow facial hair, and my body began filling out like that of a teenage girl. Because I didn’t have the appropriate tissue in my uterus or ovaries to have children nor the external equipment to remove such from my body, I, thankfully, avoided having a menstrual cycle. Suffice it to say, I certainly was prepared for my surgery to make my body whole.

  Savannah, on the other hand, had a harder time with things. Her puberty began quite early. Her penis was large and she often wrapped it so that it wouldn’t become erect or be noticed. She was ashamed of it—even though I told her there was no reason to be.

  She asked, “How would you feel to have some huge, throbbing beast between your legs when you knew you weren’t a boy?”

  I reminded her, after I gagged a bit, that even though mine wasn’t a “huge, throbbing beast,” I still had a penis of my very own. Eventually, she, too, began taking female hormones—which made her as happy as a little lamb. Although her breasts began to develop, I had her beat by three cup sizes. She swore she’d have top surgery too. I just laughed at her competitiveness. She began growing out her auburn hair, swearing that she was going to get extensions after her surgery.

  Yes, Savannah’s parents knew she was going to have surgery, but they were not as supportive as my parents were. Pine Meadows was more of a conservative district, and then, of course, there was her parent’s fear that the emperor wouldn’t accept her as the rightful heir to the district once her parents chose to retire. But Savannah was adamant. There was no question that she would proceed just like she said she would. And if, she told me, she lost her district, she could always come live in mine.

  “Of course,” I told her and I meant it. I just worried what that meant for the people of her district and the surrounding districts if the emperor replaced the Hills with someone of his choosing.

  UNLIKE MOST PRINCESSES who spent their eighteenth birthday celebrating with some huge gala, I opted to have my surgery. Finally, the day had come! My parents and I checked in to the district’s best hospital under the names of visiting diplomats and, on the night prior to my operation, took our rightful place in the VIP suite, which took up most of the top floor of the hospital. It came equipped with its own nurses, operating suites, private chef, and sleeping accommodations for the entire family—including Savannah, of course.

  My parents kissed me good night right after dinner and retired to their sleeping quarters, leaving Savannah and me to our own devices. We opted to have a slumber party of sorts, eating junk and watching movies until midnight when they cut off all food and liquids. I’d asked for them to give me an injection that would ensure a restful sleep. After our bellies were full and we had laughed enough to practically pee our pants, Savannah and I lay down on my queen-size bed and snuggled. It was almost time, and I was getting nervous. As she did in every other stressful or nerve-racking situation, she comforted me. She ran her hands through my freshly brushed hair and rubbed lotion on my hands and feet. I felt drowsy and pampered when she was done.

  “Savannah, you’ll make someone a fine wife and princess one day.” I winked at her and watched a bashful smile take over her gorgeous lips.

  “What about you?” Savannah asked as she ran her fingertip down the bridge of my nose.

  I sighed softly at her touch and closed my eyes. “What about me?” I asked, picking my head off the pillow a bit, leaning on my elbow to get a better look at her in the dimly lit suite.

  “Could I make you a good wife and princess?”

  I searched her face for some indication that perhaps she was joking, but I found nothing but sincerity. I didn’t want to rush my answer for fear I might say something I could never take back. I took the back of my hand and rubbed it gently across her cheek, the feel of her baby soft skin warm against it.

  “Honestly, Savannah, there was never any doubt that it was you.” Yep, that got a huge grin. And then she pulled me closer to her, my head nuzzled the crook of her neck. I closed my eyes feeling beyond content.

  Reluctantly
, I leaned back to just stare at her. I offered her a soft smile before I softly told her that I loved her. I wasn’t completely sure if I was feeling this way simply because it was the eve of my life changing forever, or if I meant it. But, it didn’t matter because, in the moment, it felt as real as it possibly could. I loved her despite the fact that she was physically male, being that I preferred the body of a woman. It was the princess she was becoming on the outside and the princess she’d always been on the inside that I was in love with.

  “What is it, Tally?” She brushed her thumb across my bottom lip.

  I shook my head, then leaned forward and kissed her softly. When I pulled away, her lips seemed frozen in the kiss, her eyes closed. I couldn’t help myself. I just giggled.

  She opened her eyes with a blank look on her face. “What?”

  I hurriedly kissed her again. “Nothing, I swear.”

  There was a knock at the door, and the sweet voice of my night nurse announcing her presence. We sat up quickly, greeting her.

  “It’s time,” she said. Time for me to receive my injection and hit the sack. I nodded, hugged Savannah, and waved as she headed out of the room for her own sleeping quarters.

  My injection took less than a minute to take effect. I was extremely relaxed at first, then woozy. Finally, my body felt light as a feather, almost melting into the bed, becoming one. I let my eyes fall shut and off to a dreamless sleep I went.

  I AWOKE VERY early the next morning to a lab technician standing next to my bedside, preparing to draw my blood. “Ah, the vampire is here to take my precious blood,” I said to her in a sleep-filled voice.