A faint, barely-there hint of smoke and dried herbs brushed against her nostrils when consciousness, frozen for several long seconds in those bottomless, slightly worried, utterly unfamiliar eyes in the little mirror, finally returned in full.
Ayana, whose body was currently occupied by the soul of Canadian Brian Hanson, took a heavy breath, blinked again and slightly tilted her head. The reflection copied the motion perfectly.
‘This… this can’t be…’ whispered a soft, distinctly feminine voice. It was gentle, a little husky from the recent fainting spell, with a tremor at the end of each word, and because of that it felt even more painfully real.
Brian tried to cough, to clear his throat, to bring back his usual low, rough tone, but nothing happened. Only a thin ribbon of air slipped out of his lungs, the voice coming out almost sing-song again:
“Shit… what the… how am I…”
He jerked the mirror away as if it burned him and immediately felt heavy earrings swing sharply, pulling at his earlobes with a painful sting.
Brian hissed, though it came out far too thin and girlish, and his hands instantly flew to the earrings. The metal beneath his fingers was real and surprisingly weighty. He felt the tug on each lobe, the way the woven cloth ornaments in his braids scraped lightly against his neck with every sudden movement.
“Take this off me…” he breathed, but the yurt was empty except for him.
Slowly, his gaze dropped.
Slender wrists. Small, narrow hands. Bony knees under thick layers of traditional clothing. And most of all his chest. Small, but decidedly perky. It rose under his breath and pressed softly into the coarse, warm fabric of the shirt beneath. His nipples, suddenly far too sensitive, tingled the moment the cloth shifted. Instinctively, he lifted a hand to fix it, and his fingers brushed over the curve, feeling the soft, living warmth beneath his palm.
Brian yanked his hand away as if shocked, tried to stand, but immediately wavered, feeling at once how the center of gravity had changed, tightening around his hips and across his chest.
“No. No-no-no…” he whispered rapidly, looking around. “This is trauma. Hallucination. Hypoxia.”
The hide covering the entrance rustled softly, and an elderly man with a narrow face and ash-grey eyes stepped inside. He moved slowly, as if everything happening was something he had expected all along.
“Oh,” he said calmly. “You’ve awakened.”
Brian snapped his head up.
“What? Me? Who are you? What did you do to me?!”
The old man stopped at the threshold, as though giving Brian space to realize he wasn’t a threat. He waited a moment, then raised a hand and bowed it slightly:
“I am Tugur, shaman of the Aran kin. And you - are Ayana. Now.”
A cold shiver raced down Brian’s spine: the dress, the tight cloth across his chest, the warm weight of those small but unmistakably alive breasts, the feeling of hair woven into two tight braids…
No. This can’t be real!
He shook his head sharply, and instantly regretted it because the braids whipped against his back, the earrings tugged harshly again, forcing him to flinch with pain.
“No-no-no! My name is Brian Hanson. I’m Canadian. I work on the drilling site here. And I demand that you…” the words stuck in his throat from the sheer impossibility of it all, but he forced them out anyway, “that you return me to my body. Now.”
Tugur did not hurry with an answer. He simply lowered himself onto a short wooden stool by the fire, pulled a small leather pouch from beneath his robe and poured a pinch of dry bluish berries into his palm. He placed one in his mouth, chewed it slowly and only then looked at the girl with an unusual warmth, almost fatherly.
“You died, Brian Hanson,” he said quietly and far too calmly. “At night. In the snow. Your soul is saved.” Tugur rose slightly, stepped closer and placed his heavy hand on Brian’s fragile shoulder, adding with something like pride, “You will be my daughter now. And the chief’s wife soon. A great honor has fallen upon you.”
Brian flinched from the weight of the shaman’s hand, but Ayana’s fragile body didn’t obey the way his tall, broad-shouldered, almost two-meter male body once did. She was much shorter, and her shoulders were narrow, soft under a stranger’s hand, as if this girl had carried the burden of obedience her whole life. A burden completely foreign to the man who led a group of mining experts and definitely wasn’t afraid of some shaman, otherwise he never would have taken a contract in Siberia during all this political mess.
He lifted his chin, but again it didn’t come out the way he wanted, stretching unfamiliar thin muscles, the braids swinging again and snapping against his back.
“I… am… not… anyone’s daughter,” he forced out, trying to sound confident but still stuttering and cursing his new voice. “And. And. And I’m definitely not going to be any m-m-man’s w-wife, d-do you hear me, father?!”
When that trembling burst of defiance finally left him, Brian only then realized he had called the old man father as if it was as natural as sunrise or sunset. Then the realization struck him, and he instinctively covered his mouth with his hand, feeling the soft, plush lips under his fingertips.
Tugur only smiled at that with a hint of gentle, fatherly amusement. He looked at his “daughter” from under his brows, tilting his head slightly, and that warm, almost soft expression felt uncannily like the gaze of a real father watching a stubborn child with affection, patience and the unspoken knowledge of the world that all children understand without words and never argue with until they grow older.
“Your words are sharp, Ayana…” he said quietly. “But women here do not speak so.”
A flicker of firelight passed across the shaman’s face, softening the harsh lines. His voice remained firm, when for some reason he repeated:
“Women here do not speak so, Ayana… and that includes you.”
Brian felt his head spin from that sentence in a way it never had, on neither the worst meetings nor the roughest shifts where he always managed to twist the situation to his advantage even when everything fell apart.
“I’m not a woman!” he shouted, but the voice, high and trembling with hurt, completely mismatched the fury boiling inside, only making it worse and forcing the girl’s face to crumple.
Tugur tilted his head to one side, studying him like a tantrum-prone child, but in his eyes flickered something Brian had seen in people when he himself was in charge: patience. Strong. Solid. And very quick to run out.
“You were dead.” He spoke slowly, marking each word. “Ayana walked beyond the Eternal Forest, and her body was empty. You came into it to live. The spirits allowed it. Then now you are her.”
“I didn’t allow anything,” Brian forced out, clenching the small feminine fists. “I’m not… Ayana,” he continued, feeling panic rising to his throat. “I… yesterday I was on site. I was installing the valve. I remember the snow. The cold. Someone yelling… then a blow… and… no. No-no-no. Don’t tell me…”
Brian swallowed.
“Don’t tell me… I really died?..” he whispered, no longer trying to control the voice that jumped to a high note even in a whisper.
Tugur simply nodded slowly. He didn’t speak this time.
The yurt fell into a silence thick enough to hear the heavy feminine breathing, the wind howling outside and the steady crackle of the fire warming the space.
Brian stood as if nailed to the ground, feeling the tiny feminine fingers tremble slightly as they curled into fists that looked absurdly small compared to the ones that just yesterday had tightened bolts three meters above frozen steel.
“This…” He tried to inhale, and his voice broke high again. “This can’t be. You… you’re lying. I didn’t die. This is insane. I…” His breath faltered. “I don’t believe it.”
Tugur slowly lifted his gaze.
“Sit,” he said, patting the fur beside him.
But Brian remained standing, staring at the old man and that fatherly gesture like it was some grotesque misunderstanding. He stood tense, slender, too light in this new body, desperately clinging to the illusion that he would wake up any second.
“Sit, Ayana,” Tugur repeated, softly yet with unmistakable insistence.
Brian instinctively stepped toward the “father,” then froze, remembering who he was.
“I… I’m not…” He stepped back, losing his balance, and the small feminine feet slipped clumsily on the fur, forcing him to flail his arms to steady himself. The braids swung heavily, cold beads striking his shoulders. “I am not your daughter. I’m not Ayana. And I will not sit!”
“Very well…” Tugur sighed as if defeated. “You will be my daughter when you choose to be. But to everyone around you, you are Ayana. Otherwise the spirits will take you as well, into the distant forest.”
Brian froze, still holding his arms slightly out to the sides, brows drawn tight.
“What? What do you mean spirits. To everyone?”
He didn’t notice that he had stepped closer. The firelight flickered against the yurt walls as if listening. Tugur did not take his eyes off his “daughter,” as though he had been waiting for that question.
Slowly he lowered the pouch of berries, clasped his fingers over his knees and spoke now not like a patient old man, but like a shaman. The words made the small feminine heart in Brian’s chest beat faster.
“For the clan. For the elders. For the Chief and your future husband Bayan,” he said calmly, lifting one brow slightly, stopping the questions before they formed. “For everyone. No one must know that a stranger’s spirit lives inside my daughter’s body. Otherwise…”
Brian shuddered as if icy fingers had traced down his spine.
“I…” he began, feeling his lips tremble. “I am not going to pretend… that I’m this… this…”
“Girl?” Tugur offered gently.
Brian clenched his teeth, the earrings swinging painfully again.
“I’m a man.”
The shaman smiled faintly.
“Not anymore.”
At that moment the hide at the entrance fluttered from a gust of wind. The air inside turned colder, and Brian instinctively pressed his hands to his chest as if shielding himself from the draft. Immediately he felt beneath his palms that soft, living firmness that clashed violently with his memories of his own body. His fingers sank slightly deeper than expected, brushing the rough fabric of the shirt, beneath which the skin felt unbelievably tender, hot, responsive. His nipples tightened at once from the contact, sending a short, almost electric wave through his entire body that stole his breath.
He jerked his hands away as if burned, his cheeks flushing with heat. Blood rushed so hard that even his ears burned beneath the weight of the earrings.
Tugur watched in silence, as if he had seen this a thousand times. Perhaps he hadn’t. Age and the patience of a shaman simply gave him that composure.
“Girl,” he said quietly. “Without doubt.”
Brian lowered his gaze to those curves, which he was seeing from this angle for the first time in his life, not only seeing but feeling them, carrying them, breathing with them… and fell silent.
Arguing with the old man was pointless.
And how could he argue with his own eyes, his own sensations, his own logic and this strange, undeniable reality.