Jennifer Latona had been my boss at the Copper River Library for several years. I’d been working as a cataloger for the Porters, and my job at the library was the ideal cover, letting me requisition and review new titles for potential magic.
Back then, Jennifer hadn’t been my favorite person in the world. To be fair, the feeling was quite mutual, and I’d probably earned her disdain....
Our relationship had changed eight months ago. By then, all of Copper River knew the truth about me. Some immediately stopped by asking for magical favors. Others treated me like a minor celebrity.... But most folks treated me no differently than they had before, something I both needed and appreciated.
For that acceptance, among other reasons, I’d bent the rules from time to time in the beginning, before the police and the FBI started cracking down on illegal magic use.
I hadn’t expected Jennifer Latona to show up at my door. I certainly hadn’t expected her specific request. After talking with her for three and a half hours and seeing how much it meant to her, I couldn’t turn her away. We ordered an old Dungeons and Dragons manual via Interlibrary Loan, which I used to create a magical item known as a “Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity.”
Traditionally, this was a cursed item used by immature dungeon masters to torment their equally immature players...
In this case, however, it had been a gift, one that Jennifer—now Jason—had dreamed about for much of his life. From what I’d seen, Jason seemed far more relaxed and content than Jennifer ever had.
I’m told that when a woman from the FBI Magical Crimes division stopped by a week later, Jason raised enough hell to bury half the U.P. in sulfur and brimstone. He shouted that what was under his clothes was none of the government’s damn business, loud enough to draw the attention of everyone in the library and probably anyone in the neighboring buildings as well. He threatened to sue for everything from harassment to unreasonable search and seizure. He called up the ACLU and the National Center for Transgender Equality right then, using two different phones and putting both organizations on speaker so they could listen in.
He received an official apology from the FBI three days later.
(Revisionary, Magic ex Libris 4, by Jim C Hines)
#PocketsReads #MagicExLibris #QueerBooks #DungeonAndDragons #TransRepresentation #TransRepresentationInFiction
