Strandpiel 19: sneeu en wilde varke
How dual nationality works out for one proud user.
Currently embuggered by loads of ideas and very little time to commit to record because of the demands of a new job. LOTS of ideas for continuing old stories ("Many worlds", et c) and barely enough time to sketch them out for retrieval later. Building skeletons, basically. Still, taking sick leave has some advantages… pain and discomfort, now easing, are a bugger, but at least I can do this.
A series of episodes and glimpses into the later life of a new character. Readers do appear to want to find out more about her. Trying to keep everything in roughly chronological and sequential order with lots of call-backs and flashbacks to related tales in the ongoing saga. Go to my archive and read. You know you want to. Tidied, with minor corrections (the French insults from Python and the Holy Grail were corrected. If I'm going to plagiarise, do it correctly) and typos, where detected, were remedied. Some minor expansion in places and section breaks added where missed. Also - I keep typing "Petulia" as Petunia", for some reason. Got to correct this!
"Well, that was quite smashing!" said Sophie Rawlinson, as she and Bekki rubbed down their horses after a ride. Sophie was an apprentice witch of fourteen, a year or so younger than Bekki, who was the sort of big-boned hearty girl whose life destiny had been mapped out seemingly from birth. Anyone who looked like that, Bekki considered, and who acted like that, had no choice. Sophie was meant to work with horses. She looked like she'd been born in the saddle. Apparently some horsey tribes in the heart of the Central Continent believed their children should literally be born on horseback. It was traditional and expected. Bekki wondered about midwives in those tribes and how they met the professional challenges involved.
And Sophie was hearty. The Anthropomorphic Personification of War would send her shy little love letters. Or a job offer to join the Valkyries, name your salary. Sophie was taller and broader than Bekki, by quite a long way, but none of it appeared to be fat. She looked as if she could wrestle a stallion and win. She had a booming personality. Her family weren't nobility in any way. But she carried herself as if she were. Being a horsey type in Sophie's particular way lent you a patrician edge. If she'd been born male, Bekki suspected, she'd play fifteen-a-side and be able to outdrink the rest of the team in the clubhouse afterwards. Her brothers apparently did.
And like Bekki, she'd been taken out of school, practically, to begin Witch training in Lancre. Miss Tick had discovered her at the Quirm Academy For Young Ladies. Again the argument had been that a witch in the classroom, with still-forming and unguided magical talent, could be disruptive to the life of a school as well as a hazard to teachers she didn't get on with. Girls' schools around the Disc tended to accept this was a big consideration. Sophie herself had rushed to pack her bags and clamoured to go to Lancre, on being assured by Miss Tick that practically unlimited access to horses beckoned.
Sophie Rawlinson was therefore training to be a Horse Witch, one who serviced the equestrian community's specific needs. She was in a Steading that covered the main horse studs and stables, in the nearest thing Lancre had to flat open space where things equine might be bred and trained. She dealt with things ranging in size from Lancre ponies right up to percherons: horses originally bred to be bedecked in curtains and ridden by knights in armour. Now known as Lancre Punch horses, they had been repurposed to draw ploughs, pull heavy duty dray carts, and to look impressively decorative when bedecked in ornamental brasses.
Sophie also spent time in Jason Ogg's forge, learning what she could of smithing. Jason had been impressed by her willingness to help out, port and lift things, and to construct blank horseshoes to be used as needed.
"Useful build on her, that girl." Jason had said. "I tell you, our mum, she's fitter than a lot of the male prentices I've seen!"
Nanny Ogg had smiled benignly.
"There's a witch for everything, our Jason. We're recruiting some good ones. With skills. Makes sense there'll be one with an interest in smithing. And young Sophie wants to know everything about horses. Good attitude. She's even spent time in the tanners and the saddlery, to really get to know leather and everything you have to do to make the tack. She'll do well."
Today, she'd been our riding with Bekki.
"Got a couple of good fillies who need the exercise." Sophie had said. "Want to grab a saddle and some tack?"
Bekki had been riding since she was five. Mum and her side of the family had insisted. Mum had apparently hoped it might divert her away from magic if she got something else to occupy her spare energy. Bekki had liked it. A lot. But it hadn't killed the magic. Holidays in Howondaland, on the family plaas, had offered opportunities for long treks into the bush and the Veldt. Her grandparents had approved. Oupa Barbarossa, in his booming way, had loomed large, taking her and young cousins out into the veldt and showing them how it was done and why the land was The Gods' Own Country. Mum and Auntie Mariella had joined in, showing them the land where they'd been born and brought up, where they'd learned to ride and trek. Bekki had learnt about setting camp, how to navigate, overnight stays in the wild, and the vital necessity of tending to the horse you rode and being attentive to its needs.
Bekki could therefore ride in a way Sophie, even Sophie, approved of. Her world was simple and uncomplicated and divided into People Who Ride and People Who Don't. You took pity on the latter group, and spent as much time as you could with the former.
"Oh, gosh. That sounds like Heaven." Sophie had said, when Bekki described the Howondalandian Veldt. "I want to go there. Wide open spaces where you can ride for days and there's still more open space to ride in. You're so lucky!"
They'd spent an afternoon on horseback, a rare break from the demands made on the young Witch. Sophie had proudly showed off the Steading she was a part of and demonstrated a knowledge of every stud, stable and horse-owner within miles. Horses first, then the humans around them.
In the morning, Bekki had demonstrated The System on Hobley's stud farm. Sophie had been attentively watching and learning.
"The Smith-Rhodes Device For The Selective Breeding of Livestock." Old Hobley had said, taking thoughtful drags on his pipe. "Your mother devised it, you say, miss?"
Bekki grinned. It had taken a while for artificial insemination to get to Lancre. Hobley was one of the first, seeing commercial opportunities.
"At the City Zoo in Ankh-Morpork, Mr Hobley." Bekki had said. "Mum is Director there. She was thinking about animals that are slow breeders and hard to keep going in captivity. Also, she wanted to be sure only the very best get to breed. To ensure the lines. If you can only keep a few representative animals in a Zoo, you want only the very best. You've probably seen it yourself. The ideal mare and the ideal stallion, you want a foal from them, but for whatever reason the stallion and the mare really don't get on, and in natural circumstances they'd fight rather than mate."
Hobley had laughed.
"People is like that, miss. Picky in who they chooses. So this system gets around that?"
"Mum explained it as being like those farmers who run orchards, who go around collecting pollen on feathers and paintbrushes, and then making sure it goes to the right flowers. Who might be at the other end of the orchard or in a different orchard altogether. They're keen to make sure the right trees fertilise each other. Mum did some thinking, and wondered how you could apply this to animals. And she came up with this. And when she saw how it worked for zoo animals, she reasoned it would transfer to farm animals. She taught me about it when I was working with her at the Zoo. I got to do zebras, for instance. They're interesting."
The Smith-Rhodes Device was now making Mum, in a quiet and sure way, very rich indeed. She'd taken care to get the copyrights and patents. Mr Thunderbolt, the lawyer, advised her on this.
"So." Sophie had said, thoughtfully. "You trick the stallion into thinking he's covering the mare he wants. Who isn't the mare you want him to get gravid. And you, er, divert the flow, so to speak. Then having got the juice, you insert it into the mare you really want a foal from. Or you divide it up between several mares. Sneaky. I like that. Show me how it's done?"
Hobley shook his head. He was definitely intrigued.
"Hear that's the sort of thing people go to the Seamstresses' Guild for and pay good money to see." he remarked. "Some people, anyway. Well, I can definitely see applications."
He brightened up.
"Bet it'd work on the special horses." he remarked. "The ones Ankh-Morpork pays really good dollars for."
Bekki had then been invited to see the special horses. Unusually for Lancre, these were kept under guard and in conditions of higher security. The Ankh-Morpork City Watch kept a presence here, representing the City. Watchmen of a particular type were rotated here, on detachment. Men and women with a horsey interest, and who had different sort of Guarding skills. There was an Air Police station here, for one very obvious and pressing reason.
"Have any of them ever tried to fly away?" Bekki asked.
"Not these horses, miss." Hobley said. Breeding Pegasii had made him very prosperous. For the money, he happily accepted Ankh-Morporkian security and a Watch presence on his stud, as well as some exacting terms and conditions.
"The foals stay right close to their dams. At first. And they tends to choose their Witches. Then they stay with their Witch. Bond for life, once the bond's made."
"I'm hoping for one." Sophie said. "I know it means I'm going to have to fly with the Air Police for part of the week. But I really, really, really, want a Pegasus!"
Bekki saw the look in Sophie's eyes, that said "even if I have to kill somebody and scramble over a heap of bloody mangled corpses…"
"They don't come too often." Hobley said. "Most of the time you just gets a normal-seeming foal without wings. But it's not impossible that one of the yennork foals grows to be a mare and then has a Pegasus, because the Pegasus stuff is there. Just hidden. Seen it happen once. Young Sophie here does the stock books. Helps keep the bloodlines straight. So as to keep track."
"Yennork" said Sophie. "Interesting word. Used to just mean somebody born to a were family who isn't a were. Locked into one state. Now we use it for a normal horse without wings, with a bit of Pegasus."
"So this here artificial insemination might help. Speed the process. You select which horses breed. They don't." Hobley remarked. "Tell me what your mum charges for the tools, miss. it's worth investing in."
"Breed true lines." Sophie said.
"Mum calls it a recessive gene." Bekki said. "The sort of thing horses breed out if you leave them alone. She thinks that's probably why the Pegasii died out of the world, and only came back through magic. Normal horse-stuff without any wings overwhelmed it. She said she got to thinking about that because normally, red-haired people aren't that common. Having red hair is a naturally recessive-gene thing. Other hair colours beat it out. But our family tends to select for red hair. Not consciously, but that's how it works out. Because we've concentrated the red-hair gene until it's the dominant one in our family line. I've got a couple of cousins who are blonde and my baby sister is dark, like her father. Me and our middle sister are red. So being a Smith-Rhodes means you're going to be a redhead. Mum worked out that if you concentrate recessive genes together, they get to be dominant."
"And we can do that here, with the Pegasus stuff." Hobley said. "Not that we ain't doing that anyway, but this way we can select better, From the likeliest candidates in the bloodlines."
He grinned a grin that had dollar signs in it. Ankh-Morpork paid a premium for Pegasii.
To/:-
Mrs Johanna Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons
And Professor Ponder Stibbons
18 Spa Lane
Nap Hill
Ankh-Morpork
AM3 1DL
Liewe Ouers / Dear Mum and Dad.
Well, mum, I did the presentation and demonstration of the Equipment at Hobley's, as you asked me. Not too difficult, as I saw you do it at the Zoo and even got to try it out myself once. Not prying, but is the person Aunt Mariella refers to as our kindly old Uncle Havelock taking a keen interest? Anything that speeds up Pegasus breeding and gets more pilots into the air would be of interest to him, I should imagine. At least I am now Known at the Air Station at Hobley's, and it is accepted I have a pass to get in and out of the "secure area" where the flying horses are. I haven't seen Olga or Irena here yet (Pork Scratching is remotely located compared to this more central part of Lancre), but they apparently visit here regularly.
There is a sort of informal "waiting list" for Witches who are keen to get a Pegasus of their own. Even then, it is uncertain, as I am told the new foal will choose its witch, just as the witch seeks to choose her mount. I'd like one, who wouldn't, but to be realistic, I can't see this happening any time soon.
Is it true the Guild sometimes sends people out on practical field exercises here, to test the security at the Air Station and around the Pegasii, to look for weak points and to check how alert the guards are? It must be the case that other governments and nations in the Disc are envious of something only Ankh-Morpork and Lancre possess, and some would steal the horses, if they could. I suspect Sam Vimes tests his people too and has ways of checking they are not slacking, or "going native", as people from Ankh-Morpork put it. The Watchmen on guard here are rotated back to the City every couple of months, to guard against the possibility that Lancre ways of thinking will take them over.
Apart from which, one Watchman I knew slightly from my time training with the Watch witches (he asked me if I could do his feet, please, miss) frankly said he couldn't wait for his posting here to be over as this ain't the City, miss, and getting sent out here gives me cabin fever. It ain't right, all this green. I assured him too much green would not be a problem in a month or so and hoped he had good boots and socks.
Oh, and I now have pets. I was not looking for them. They sort of arrived.
"I see." Petulia Gristle said, looking at the now well-fed cat who was contentedly stretched out by the fire. The cat, as Petulia pointed out, was a typical Lancre Greebo. A yearling kitten who had been learning to live on his wits, and who had enough wit to recognise a soft-hearted human prepared to feed him and provide a dry warm place.
"He followed me home." Bekki said. "I couldn't throw him out."
"Well, every farm gets cats. It's only a matter of time. And I daresay somebody to deal with mice and things is useful to have around the place."
She nodded at the animal.
"Don't get too cosy." she said. "Lots of mice about the place. You earn your keep."
The cat regarded her with a half-open eye, the looked away lazily. Petulia stroked him anyway.
"Got a name for him?" Petulia asked.
Bekki considered this.
"I've got a cousin in Howondaland who's a bit of a laid-back lazy slob." she said. "Reminds me of my cousin Mattewis. Uncle Kurt has to kick him to get him moving in the mornings."
"Mattewis it is, then. Or Matti."
And then the local men assembled to go out for a morning, with very long spears. A neighbour brought dogs. Mattewis the cat made himself scarce.
"Oh." Bekki said. Men going out hunting. With spears and crossbows. And hip-flasks full of distilled liquid. "Shall I roll some bandages and check we're stocked up on catgut and surgical spirit?"
"Leave them to it." Petulia said, with wifely tolerance. "Gouther. Don't forget the trousers."
"Good point, love." her husband said. He disappeared for a few minutes then came back wearing what at first sight was a ridiculously baggy, almost Clown-like, set of pantaloons which were white with broad vertical blue stripes. Bekki tried not to laugh. The other Pork Scratching men were treating this pretty much seriously.
"Learnt about this in Quirm." Petulia said, apropos of nothing. "Let me explain…"
Apparently a farmer in a neighbouring hamlet had a brainwave one day. He'd seen, in a top-end butcher's shop in Ankh-Morpork, what wild boar meat sold for. Eight times the cost of an equivalent weight of normal farmed pork. Dollar signs had lit up in his eyes. Petulia, sensing trouble, had tried to talk him out of it. But a farmer sensing big dollar is not a man to be dissuaded. He had invested in eight wild boars, a boar and seven sows.
At first it had all gone well. Petulia had reluctantly advised on the health of the new piglets and stressed how important it was that the paddock they roamed in be secure. Doubly, triply, secure. And that wild boars are not the same thing as domestic pigs. The farmer had told her not to fuss, he'd get on with it.
And those sweet comical little piglets had grown into a herd of hard-eyed, tusked, bristled and snorting horrors. Petulia had discovered pig-boring did not work as well on them as on their domesticated cousins. Not at all.
"Did you try Quirmian on them?" Bekki asked. "They might not have got it if you were Boring them in Morporkian."
"I can hardly speak it." replied Petulia. "I never really got past that odd thing about my aunt having feathers. Or my mother being a hamster and my father smelling of elderberries. Which he didn't, much. Umm."
The farmer had gone to the difficult paddock one morning to discover the loose bit of fence, the one he'd been meaning to replace when he could spare five minutes, had been battered down. The wild boars had escaped and taken to the forest. Well, all except two of the females. Who'd got into the next field and were terrorising the sows and pigs in there. They'd also practically gang-raped a traumatised prize boar, who had, up until then, won prizes at the Royal Lancre Agricultural Show.
"He was never the same boar after that." Petulia said, reflectively. "Had to humanely Bore him in the end. Pity, that."
The upshot of this was that while old Josh Delamere kept two wild boar sows, they were littered with some interesting hybrid pigs, neither wild boar nor farm pig. The streak ran in his herd since that day. Mr Delamere now had to go into his pens wearing chain-mail with a boar-spear to threaten them. And Lancre now had a population of Quirmian wild boar in the forest, le sanglier sauvage de Quirm.
"It adds to the rich local colour and tapestry of life." Petulia said. "They normally aren't much of a problem. But if their numbers explode and they get to be a threat, you know, destroying crops and things, the call goes out for a boar-hunt. I had to go to Quirm and talk to people there about how they manage them. The answer was very long spears and whatever armour you can scrounge up. And it's traditional in Quirm to wear those trousers when hunting boar. It's folklore, and nobody quite knows why. But there's a long-ago legend of a great hunter of boar who wore those trousers. The boar know it too. Like the red cloak to a bull thing in Toleda, only the boar are hard-wired to panic and run if they see blue and white striped trousers coming at them. It means Gouther stays safe when he's boar-hunting."
"I see." said Bekki.
Later in the morning they each donned blue-and-white striped protective pantaloons for safety, and went out to follow the Hunt. Just in case a witch was needed. Petulia took a long heavy boar-spear with her. Bekki put on her mail-shirt and checked her crossbow was loaded.
They located the huntsmen by the sound of happy men sharing hip-flasks. It wasn't a hard trail to follow. The reason for the happiness was three huge wild boar carcasses gently steaming on the ground and much debate concerning how to butcher them and who got what.
Bekki studied them. Far larger, leaner, and definitely much meaner than the usual pig. Two sows, a third already ripped by the dogs, sex indeterminate. One of the sows, she discovered from a gentle examination, seemed swollen with milk. She tried to put the implications of this out of her mind. Nothing to be done.
And incredibly, nobody had been hurt. Dogs, crossbows, and spears had forced a confrontation the boars could not win, and the menfolk of Lancre were rejoicing as huntsmen have since time immemorial. This necessarily involved carousing. And, as this was Lancre, a degree of bickering.
Josh Delamere(1) was complaining that as they were descended from stock he'd imported from Quirm, the meat and hides and ivory were definitely his.
"But you let the buggers escape, Josh. Went feral. Stopped being yourn when they ran for it. 'Sides, these ain't your originals. Them's forest-born descendents. Free game. So they're everybody's." Bert Weaver pointed out. His point of view was supported.
"I think you'll find they belong to King Verence." Petulia pointed out. She waited till she had everybody's attention. This was the local Witch, voicing an opinion. "Royal forest. His game. Long-established statute."
There was a pause.
"Well, yeah. Technically speakin'. But Verence ain't here, is he?"
There was another pause. The men of Lancre considered the enticing prospect of a few roast boar dinners what they'd won by their own labours. And that they were also more-or less loyal subjects of a King they actually quite liked, when all was said and done. Never burnt any farmhouses and din't tax too heavily. Also that nobody wanted to argue with a witch. Two witches, in fact. That slightly strange one from forn parts with odd forn ways about her, who toted a crossbow, as well as Mistress Petulia.
Bekki let them get on with debating. Her attention was drawn by a flash of white in the treeline. She followed it. It was an animal, yes. A snow hare?
Then her eyes adjusted and she saw a majestic white cat. It sat and looked at her with very intelligent eyes. It seemed slightly impatient. She focused.
"You want me to follow you?" she asked. The cat got up and walked away for a few paces. Then it turned and looked back at her. It did seem to want her to follow. Bekki followed. She wondered where such a well-tended cat lived and who it belonged to. Nothing could be feral and be that cleanly white.
The white cat stopped, definitively, on a bank sheltered by large trees. She looked at Bekki with an expression that read something like "You know what to do."
Bekki stopped and heard faint mewling, high-pitched animal noise. She followed it. A familiar smell rose to meet her. And then she found a nest in among the dead leaves and roots. She heard creatures scrambling in alarm, and then saw them, huddled together for mutual reassurance. They looked sweet and comical. Three little piglets, but with fur, long attractive banded stripes running laterally down their bodies. And very tiny. A few days old. Now she knew the significance of the dead sow with swollen teats.
"You're orphans, I think." she said. She tried to recall what she knew of pigs in the wild. They lived in sounders, small informal family groups. No boars, after the mating season was over. They ranged independently. More than one female would support each other. If one died, other sows would foster the piglets. But there was a second dead sow there… I didn't get to check the third. Does this mean the whole sounder's gone?
Bekki was entranced by the piglets. They were cute. And vulnerable. And needed somebody.
"Thank you…" she said, to the white cat. Who had vanished. Then she decided.
"I'd better take you in."
Bekki took off her tunic, resigned herself to the fact it was probably going to get soiled, and made a makeshift carrier for the three piglets. She wondered if there were other litters out here somewhere. Then reflected the white cat would still be here to guide her to them if there were. She didn't know why she was so sure. but there was more to the white cat than there seemed. It had solidity. Odd. If she remembered, she'd ask Petulia. And besides, only one of the dead sows had been in milk. This was probably the only litter. Wild pigs probably only came into season if the conditions were right and the environment rich enough to allow them to rear young. if the mothers struggled to feed themselves, then wild animals tended not to have too many young. Mum had said Nature was clever that way and self-regulated. She reached down into the nest to collect the piglets...
"Okay." Petulia Gristle said. She watched the banded piglets feeding from a mother sow Bekki had found for them. She had only two piglets of her own and had spare teats. The two witches watched together, silently. Bekki sensed Petulia had also been captivated by the cute.
"Just till they're weaned. To give them a fair chance. Then we'll see. We can, I don't know, release them back into the wild or something."
"What's happening with the boars from the hunt?" Bekki asked.
"They decided to send one, or most of one, to the Castle to Magrat and Verence. Tribute to the King and Queen. They're carting them back here, for now. Sent some lads out with hand-carts. I said they can be butchered here, properly, in a clean shed. Hides go for tanning. The meat gets shared out fairly. We'll decide."
Bekki understood. Witches decided, when there was a dispute. People didn't have to like the decision. But they didn't argue. This was Lancre. Witches arbitrated. Witches decided. People accepted the decision.
And it was beginning to look as if Bekki now had some more pets.
Shame there weren't four, Mum. I could have named them after the Hogfather's boars. You don't want any for the Zoo, do you? I can get them over to you before they grow too big. Petulia's right – wild forest boar aren't a good idea to keep on a farm. But the crazy idea is there, that I can somehow train them. Tell me what you think?
Stuck on names. One's a cheeky little boar. Full of personality. He's a Karel. I don't know why. But Karel seems to fit. Oh, and I found my cat – our cat – Mattewis, taking advantage. He sneaks in when a sow's nursing, and gets a feed of milk. When her attention's occupied. What can pig milk do to a cat? The sow doesn't seem to mind much!
Hoping to be back at Hogswatch. As I write the first winter snow is falling. Petulia said that's it now, until around March. Winter is coming. Apparently not too many nasty things come in with the Snow, nothing supernatural, much, but you do have watch for wolves. They can get a bit dire, by all accounts.
Lots of love, that's about it for the latest Letter From Lancre, see you all soon, love to Ruthie and what looks like her new nanny Shauna.
Distant daughter
Bekki
To be continued….
(1) A note about naming conventions - in keeping with the tribute to Alan Garner's rural Cheshire, out in the top-right-hand-corner where the Cheshire Plain starts becoming the Pennine Mountains (1.1), where Lancre characters appearing as OC's need surnames, I'm using Cheshire towns and villages. Garner's books, I suspect, were an influence on Pratchett's Lancre. Garner recognised this: in his dense and perplexing Boneland, the sequel to Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Moon of Gomrath, he inserts tribute to Terry Pratchett as a reciprocal thing. (the noise of prehistoric flint-knapping is rendered "Tak, tak, tak, tak, Tak" and he makes mention of a legend of life arising from a primal stone egg). Therefore Delamere, a pleasant stop on the railway line between Stockport and Chester. I've used Mobberley elsewhere as an OC name, and there are lots of other quaint Cheshire placenames to mine: Halebarns, Redesmere, Woodsmoor, Nantwich, Mickle Trafford, Helsby, Cuddington, Holmes Chapel, Plumsley...
(1.1) OK. more like high steep hills, and not mountains proper as other countries know them. People from places with proper mountains are polite about this. They do not draw attention to the fact not much in the Pennines gets more than 3,000 feet above sea level, for instance. But it's worth mentioning that when the Tour de France got vectored through Northern England for one of its not-in-France-but-in-a-neighbouring-country stages, professional cyclists used to the Alps found British hills to be real bastards, with knackering long climbs that went on forever. You can feel proud of this.
Notes Dump:
Somewhere in a sea roughly halfway between two continents, the one of the tale being currently written and the semi-glimpsed one of future tales yet to be committed to paper, where isolated ideas are given lifebelts and a signal rocket against being spotted and rescued.
In my ongoing attempt to make sense of the weird and wonderful world of Japanese graphic fiction, which on the surface is so bizarre, alien and generally odd as to give a succession of WTF? Moments, I discovered the biggest WTF moment of all – futunari. I will not make subjective value judgements on this. I'm sure there are things we do that are every bit as weird to Japanese people but which make perfect sense to us. Animé and manga. Takes a different sort of head-space to accommodate it. Especially futunari.
The idea of people who on the surface of it are glamorous, exquisitely attractive, desirable women. But who somehow manage to conceal a very big surprise inside their panties. You blink and think – how does this work? Surely somebody would notice when a drop-dead gorgeous woman goes into the gents and has to stand up to pee? All the "whoa, wait a minute here" objections start queing up for consideration. Then you think… this is the Japanese animé/manga/hentai world. Where nobody ever seems to look ethnically Japanese, there are hundred-foot lizards, enormous mecha, bizarrely empowered superheroes, twelve-inch tall android girlfriends in maids' uniforms, and very strange schools exist that, for instance, teach petite and pretty girls how to fight in tanks - and nobody thinks this is strange. (Girls Und Panzer. Hmm. Assassins' School?) So why raise objections to chicks with dicks…
Did some digging around and discovered this is a theme in Japanese mythology and folklore which has just been given a modern slant. Things like the sexually ambivalent dōsojin which are a sort of nature spirit. And the Buddhist idea of a third gender, both sexually ambivalent and neutral. And the lovely, lovely, idea that there are a sort of werepeople. Who are normally male or female for three weeks of the month – but, when the full moon shines, have the were-power to switch sex and become the opposite human gender. What a were-ability to have, in a world where most people are yennork, locked irreversibly into male or female. I could use this with an Agatean character in fic… the innocent Ankh-Morporkian who has a lovely Agatean girlfriend, but who he only ever sees for one week in four… then he gets curious and finds out. I feel less "uggh" about the futunari concept now!
(半月 hangetsu) – Half-Moon people, the were-gender-shifters.