Important Note: This section is only an excerpt from chapter 1 of a serialized fiction novel. To begin at the beginning, please click here.

A Note for the Reader:

The novel uses a rotating third-person perspective. Each chapter is divided into sections that follow different characters whose stories unfold in parallel. Their individual arcs run alongside the central plot, gradually revealing the political, emotional, and supernatural forces shaping the world around Soren, my primary protagonist.

This opening scene introduces my protagonist, Soren Solentien, and the bargain that reshapes his life. This excerpt contains body horror, coercive power dynamics, and themes of gender dysphoria.

A Bargain to Become

Chapter 1 | Section 1

The Price of Mercy

“You can cut me, bruise me and skin me alive - but you will not take her from me.”

His voice was weak, but he’d challenge his captor nonetheless. A shock of his platinum blonde hair badgered his right eye as he struggled against the manacles that bound his wrists.

A chilling numbness spread over his spirit and he tried in vain to bite back the moisture that ponded in his eyes.

A sound scraped out of her throat. It might have once been laughter.

“Why is it,” she murmured, the outline of her head tilted slightly, accompanied by a sickening crack, “that your kind thinks Grandma wants your children?”

A shadow rolled away from the corner of her face and he saw the parted folds of lips that spread too widely. The creature smiled – not at him, but at the space just behind him, as if measuring something only it could see.

When she spoke, the voice did not sit right in her mouth. It wore the tremor of an elderly woman, but the pauses came in the wrong places. The warmth never followed the words. Certain syllables she pressed thinned to smoke before reaching the air.

It was not easy to describe what she looked like.

She looked like a shade given form. Wispy tendrils of shadow oscillated around her - moving this way and that - obscuring much of her flesh but he could just barely catch images of something substantial underneath the shifting roil of the shadows.

What brief glances he caught terrified him.

He saw a flash of two elongated, sickly green limbs that bent with an unsettling ease; joints folding a fraction too far, as though bone were only a suggestion beneath her skin. She muttered an incantation in a language that Soren did not recognize.

The manacled human’s breath hitched as he inhaled sharply – whatever putrid concoction that bubbled over within the hag’s cauldron stank of decay – it reminded him of the scent of the Stinkhorn mushroom.

Instead of what should have been heat, Soren could feel a strange coldness emanating from the fire beneath the cauldron – it burned with a wyrd, green flame and a crusted frost gathered at its base where its pyre flickered. The hag brought a limb forward and he caught a glimpse of an inhumanly long, black nail – as sharp as a claw – and with it, she stirred the putrid brew.

The caustic concoction reacted to the hag’s fingernail and began to foam upwards, spilling out of the pot. Her form oscillated again. And coiled around him like a trail of smoke. She disappeared from view. He felt a presence beside him, but heard a voice in the wrong ear.

“Truth be told, little girl…” It rasped and Soren turned his head towards it and caught a glimpse of solid, blood-red eyes that narrowed as she leaned in beside him; another flash and he saw what he thought was a mouth beneath a veil of shadows spread too widely, and razor sharp teeth clicked with the contortion of her face.

“...I have no interest in her.”

A pause.

And Soren heard the growl of something beastlike, though her mouth did not move.

“She was only bait.”

The creature leaned in closely. Soren suddenly felt cold; like frost gathered on his ear, and its voice came again from the wrong side.

“She served her purpose.” A hiss.

“My name is Soren.” The platinum blonde human bit back. “And I’m a boy. Not a girl.”

A pause.

The shifting roil of shadows stood still. It was studying him. Another crack and he caught a glimpse of inhumanly long, emaciated arms. Their joints bent in places they shouldn’t.

“No.” It breathed. “Not yet.”

He saw “her” mouth again. It stretched impossibly wide and he watched a long, green tongue flick over razor-sharp teeth.

“Not without Grandma Edith.”

Soren caught a glimpse of yellow-green bat-like ears with reptilian grooves and serrated ridges. They twitched, as though sensing something was off.

Soren was inconspicuously trying to use a lockpick that he had smuggled in under his glove and was attempting to pick the lock.

The creature did not turn.

“I can feel it, you know” the shade said, standing perfectly still, “the small metal between your fingers. I can taste the iron on them.”

This creature, this “Grandma Edith,” snapped out a bony, gnarled finger sharply and Soren yelped in sudden pain, his smooth, contralto voice cracked. He felt a jolt of something like an electricity streak though his body and the manacles somehow tightened more around his wrists.

“You have been searching,” The hag spoke softly and as though her shadow had sentience, it stretched across her lair,

“For a way to live inside the skin that calls to you.”

Soren’s eyes went wide and his heart stopped. The shade’s words were almost empathetic. It unsettled him.

“Grandma Edith can help.” The shade disappeared. He felt frost again - on one ear. Then in the other, he heard:

“You need me.”

The familiar shrill and rasp of the voice dropped into something like a purr.

“We can make a deal,” he heard the voice say, then watched the shade appear again in front of him as though its shadows crawled from the floor,

“Little clover.”

Her voice cooed and the shade moved with a slow, deliberate intention toward Soren. It felt as though she were tasting the nickname.

In the dim light of her lair, it almost looked as though her entire figure swelled, looming impossibly large over Soren.

In the corner of his eyes, he saw a long, spindly finger reach up and over, almost as though it were mining at the air around him. Razor sharp nails clicked together.

“What say you, child? Grandma Edith can let you step into him,” she whispered, “Whenever you wish.” Her breath felt like a cold chill on Soren’s neck.

“No one will see the seam.”

Soren grimaced, still feeling the residual pain from the shock, and the oppressive tightness of the manacles around his wrist.

He had not come here to bargain with a hag, but to save his daughter – his beloved babe, born only three months prior, who disappeared mysteriously from her cradle at night.

And more than this, the hag knew exactly what to exploit: his identity.

He suddenly felt a sickening sweep of dysphoria, dread and anger; resentment for the sex that he had been given at birth.

What he hated most was that the hag’s words were true.

This is the one thing that he’d wanted more in life; to know what it feels like to walk in the skin of a man.

Could the hag really help him?

His thoughts snapped back to his reality – thinking of his babe, sleeping gently in the cradle just across the room. The hag had not touched her, it was true.

“And what of my girl? What of Niamh?” Soren asked warily, hardly believing he was considering the offer that this hag had so obviously twisted in her favor.

“She will live.” The shade breathed, “I’ve no need of her.”

He felt a slow panic rising in his chest. He did not trust the hag’s words.

“Promise me she’ll be returned home; that she will be unharmed.”

“Grandma Edith does not break her word.”

Soren thought long and hard before drawing the breath to utter the next question.

Yet, it seemed he was hardly in any position to decline – certain that were he to refuse the hag’s offer in this state, his precious babe – his beautiful daughter, Niamh – would likely end up in Grandma Edith’s stew.

“You said ‘this and so much more.’ What could you possibly offer me and why?” Soren asked.

A scraping noise resonated from the shade’s throat, which bounced from stone to stone across the hollow chamber.

“That’s Grandma’s girl.” It was as though she was intentional in stepping on Soren’s insecurities.

“I offer you power.” The creature’s voice hissed slowly.

“To use how you will.” It moved closer to him.

“Whenever you choose.”

At this point, Grandma Edith’s presence filled the entire room. Even the shadows of the dancing flames along the wall were cast with the sickness of her own sentience. Soren could not retreat from the magnanimousness of the hag’s being in this place where her power seemed concentrated most.

An edge of distrust cloaked Soren’s voice,

“And what do you want from me in return?”

“Oh dear little clover –” Something that might have been a chuckle scraped its way out of the creature’s throat.

“Grandma requires something small,” she said. “Your right eye.”

An unnerving silence crashed between the two as the proposal hung.

“My right eye?” Soren said, more than asked, incredulously.

“Aye – your right eye.” The smoky shadows of the hag whisked around again and he felt it standing at his right.

“A jab. And a kiss. And I’ll put it back.” It breathed into his ear. Then he saw it appear again, looming over him.

“But will I be able to see?” Soren asked, even more confused. What would this hag possibly want with his right eye? The request seemed far too simple.

He tried to look around the room, but everything felt like a dreamlike stupor to him right now. He found he could do nothing but concentrate on Grandma Edith’s ugly, twisted face.

Trying to look at anything else overwhelmed him with a wave of nausea.

“Have ye not two?” There was a tremble in its shrill voice.

“I-I do.” Soren said hesitantly.

“Then use your other.” It was something like a growl and he heard the gnashing of teeth. “What has sight proffered you,” she asked quietly, “other than proof of what you are not?”

The words crippled Soren and dug into a nerve somewhere deep where he flashed back to all the times that he had wistfully walked by a mirror, thinking nothing of it, only to catch a glimpse of himself and be reminded of what he truly could never outwardly become.

He felt a coldness in his chest – not uncommon to the waves of melancholy that he would feel from time to time. Then it was replaced by more anger, more resentment.

All the while, he had been biting on his bottom lip, not even realizing how hard. It was only when he felt a trickle of blood flow down his throat that he snapped back to the present.

“And what will you do with my eye?” Soren asked, trying his hardest to focus on anything other than the terrifying reality that stood in front of him, from which he could not escape.

“Grandma Edith will see through you.”

A pause.

And Soren watched her shadows flicker. He caught a glimpse of two blood-red eyes peering out of the veil of the shade.

“Grandma Edith will watch the world with your right eye. She will taste the air you breathe. She will watch the mirrors that you don’t. She will hear what is said in rooms she cannot enter.” The shade’s shaky voice trembled again - oscillating between the voice of an elderly lady and whatever darkness lay beneath.

“And if Grandma Edith requires violence…” the raspy voice rumbled into a low hiss. It was glossing over something.

“...You will provide.”

She turned abruptly and dropped a ponce of what appeared to be bear fat into the brew. It bubbled and hissed aggressively.

Soren’s insight cut through the hag’s words. He felt slightly sobered in contrast.

He had sensed a desperation in the hag’s glossiness and, in that moment, felt as though perhaps he might assume some measure of leverage.

“Violence?” He extrapolated. “You want me to defend you from your enemies?”

It was a bold question that carried across the room as a statement.

Too bold.

The shadows that roiled around the hag erupted in a sudden flare, her voice rasping; she was upon him in a heated flash.

“Don’t think yourself so special that Grandma needs you, pisspot. Grandma is an eternal fey and if ye won’t take her offer, then she’ll throttle you and throw your little bastard in her stew.”

It was an uncalloused rage that had been hitherto unfamiliar to the creature’s character. It twisted its fingers into a threatening knot and Soren just barely caught a flash of those blood-red eyes once again beneath the shade’s veil. They were angry. And something deeper simmered wrongly behind them.

“Grandma grows tired of your questions, little mortal. Do we have a deal or not!? I won’t ask again.” Grandma Edith snapped slowly and sternly, lowering her horrid face down to Soren’s level.

For the first time, he caught the clearest glimpse of her – she had a long and misshapen nose…no…not a nose - but something more like a snout that almost bumped with Soren’s own - blood-red eyes, and the exposed flesh that he could see beneath the shadows looked as though it had been stitched together.

The maul of its mouth housed feral, canine-like teeth, and was stretched too widely and looked wrong. And he saw something more; two prongs of something that looked like antlers, but made of hardened bone extended from the temples of the monstrosity. Her claws seemingly closed in around him.

Her breath smelled as though she had feasted on carrion. And when she spoke, a cold frost emanated from it, spreading over Soren’s face.

He felt himself shrinking in the presence of hag. He was terrified. And a near paralytical and primal fear seized his joints. What matter of creature was she? And what choice did he have, really?

Accepting the hag’s bargain went against everything that he knew was right. But the fact remained, that if he didn’t accept her bargain, both he and his daughter would not make it out of here alive.

The stakes were all too high – and the hag had, in fact, promised Niamh’s safe return if he agreed to whatever twisted bargain she was brewing.

He found himself out of options. And at the mercy of Grandma Edith.

“Fine.” His voice trembled as he spoke.

“Take my eye. Do what you will. But know this – backslide, and I swear before the Seals that I will run you through.”

His voice fell as a voided threat and was laced with far too much fear to be meaningful. He turned his face to the side in terror and drooped his shoulders.

He would play along with her game – for now.

“Good.” The frost crept back into her voice. Her tone shifted. The shadows that wreathed around her shrank inwardly and she backed off slowly; the clear glimpse of her visage that Soren had caught disappeared once more.

“Now hold still.” Her voice crawled back. “Grandma Edith has work to do.”

So what do you think? Would you make this bargain? Are you worried for Soren and his child? In what ways can you relate to him? Tell me what you think Soren should have done.

If you’d like to read the rest, let me know! Next Sunday, I will introduce another POV that comprises this story; in the meantime, if you enjoyed the writing - or the audio - please like and share! Small notions like that really help an aspiring author circulate their creativity, and I’m appreciative of the sentiment!

I hope you’ll join me next Sunday for another excerpt from “A Bargain to Become.”

Click Here to Continue to Chapter 1: Section 2