Lady Ann's Holiday: Chapter Thirty Three - Part Seven

7 

Lady Ann Neville stood in the window of her bedroom watching the exchange between Richard and Burt outside, hanging far enough back that she wouldn’t be spotted easily if one of them looked up.

It was a most perplexing feeling watching the interaction between the lord and the servant made up of so many different facets: amusement at the former tyrannical lady getting her poetic comeuppance; pride in the power and strength of her fiancé; pity for the poor man who, she knew, only had simple desires and thoughts and didn’t truly deserve such hostility; slight distaste of viewing the almost vindictive attack of Richard’s; the tremulous desire to be wrapped back in that servant’s flesh; fear of the same; self-questioning and doubt.

Truly, Ann wavered in a breeze atop a razor-edged decision. Every hour that went by threw fresh reasons at her to push her down on either side of that choice but still she very much remained undecided.

Burt shambled away as Richard turned to come back inside and she watched the servant withdraw, head hung low. As Burt before her, Ann found it hard now to really believe the reverse transformation was even possible. She was so used to being a lady and so tightly wound up in her Ann memories, it was difficult to conceive of being magically changed into that man out there, becoming him in every way. She knew it was true but could hardly imagine what it would be like to lose all decorum and breeding; to speak again with such a thick Yorkshire accent.

She turned away from the window and walked across to her dresser, sliding open the top drawer. She could see the damage done by Burt in his attempt to take the pendant back and she mused on what might have come to pass if he’d got to keep it – if he’d managed to slip out of the house undetected. He might have ambushed her with it, forcing the decision and the change, or he could have swapped with a third party and either stayed like that or come at her from an entirely unexpected direction, trapping her in the body of someone completely new.

What would that have been like?

She got a faint shiver of delight to imagine it, despite herself.

The pendant was wrapped in the same cloth as Burt and Powell had left it in. She hadn’t seen it since the day of the exchange and she was curious. She flipped back the corners of the cloth covering and saw it there, the grey stone ever-so-slightly mystical-looking. The black sigil grooves on its surface glistened darkly, catching the light as she moved.

She reached to touch it but wavered before doing so, afraid to. She was well aware of how little she understood it. For all she knew it had more power than she’d witnessed. She didn’t think it worked unless two people shared contact but perhaps a second touch would cancel the magic.

She hesitated a little longer then shook her head, cross at herself, and took it in her hand. Then as it had already done to Burt, the potency of the pendant ripped out, clawing round her brain and robbing her of all sensation.

Ann staggered, losing all sense of balance, falling on the bed, and writhed as Burt had, the mystical vigour shuffling through the matter in her mind, reordering and sorting, setting in stone the changes that had been wrought already.

Ann rolled onto the floor, completely unaware, and then slammed over onto her chest. She let out a long low moan then suddenly jerked up onto her hands, gaping in surprise and wonder.

As with Burt, she knew exactly what had happened, understood the effect of locking her transformation now as it was so that she wouldn’t continue to change further. She wouldn’t reach the point where she was an exact duplicate of the original Ann, memories and all.

She twisted onto her posterior, rubbing her head and looking down at the little bauble in her open palm, astounded by the effect it had had on her, stripping her of her destiny and leaving her with someone else’s.

She got slowly to her feet, some of the aches from her abduction still playing tricks with her balance.

She glared at the pendant, almost horrified by it, then rooted through the other drawers of the dresser until she found what her Ann memories told her would be there.

In the bottom drawer was a box as big as the palm of her hand with a tiny lock. She opened it, removed the jewellery secreted inside and put the pendant in instead.

She locked it and attached the tiny key to a chain, then she hung the key about her neck and hid the box back in the bottom drawer. She didn’t want anyone else to find it or take it. She wanted to keep her options open.

To just imagine the havoc that would occur if the pendant started getting passed around willy-nilly! Ann shuddered to imagine the chaos that would ensue.