Persona, a Spells-R-Us story
by Blot

Chuck Baird hated those big enclosed shopping malls. Strip malls, he would 
tell anyone who bothered to listen, at least leave each store with its own doors 
to the real world, not to a climate-controlled cattle barn with outsized 
houseplants and rent-a-cop guards and Muzak. Strip malls sometimes have a 
lot of local, Mom-and-Pop stores instead of franchises of the same national or 
regional chains found in a hundred other malls. When Chuck was nine years 
old, he vowed to his parents never to enter a mall again. He broke the vow 
within four weeks, but even now, in college, he hated the places. But by 
some perverse fate the only half-decent comics shop in town, Odd Worlds, 
was in the local monster-mall, and every few weeks he found himself under 
the high ceilings, walking past nameless low-maintenance tropical trees.

One Friday afternoon early in the fall of his senior year, Chuck went to Odd 
Worlds. As always it annoyed him that the shop was near the center of the 
mall: none of the entrances was much closer to it than any other, he had 
found. At the first mall stop he went from the bus to the nearest entrance, 
wove his way through the smelly Food Court, and headed straight for Odd 
Worlds -- and some disappointments, for none of the new issues he wanted 
were in yet, and an older one was sold out. He berated himself for not having 
phoned first, and checked his watch. The bus had a long stop at the far end of 
the mall before it went back to campus, and even a leisurely walk would get 
him there in plenty of time.

Chuck scanned the mall shops as he walked past: health food franchise, 
gadget franchise, clothing franchise, the same ones as in a thousand other 
malls. Halfway down the arm of the mall he saw an unfamiliar shop. It didn't 
have a wide entrance of the sort that shut during closing hours with a vertical 
metal gate, or with the ceiling-high display windows and wide doors of some 
of the clothing stores. It looked like the old jewelry shops downtown, with 
one small display window in a wall of cut gray stone and a narrow wooden 
door, scuffed and slightly ajar. A painted sign hanging from a ornate 
wrought-iron bracket above the door read "Spells R Us" in golden old-
English letters on a sky-blue field sprinkled with golden alchemical symbols 
an inch or so high.

Chuck went over to the window, which was really more of a display case, 
the dusty glass at its back obscuring the view of the shop's interior. The 
crystal ball was no bigger than a cue ball, and not quite clear, but it had the 
flaws of a solid crystal of quartz, not those of glass. There were inch-high 
figures, twisted and ill-proportioned, of humans and animals, carved 
apparently of lapis lazuli, malachite, cinnabar, and other colorful stones he 
didn't recognize. One little shelf held a few dozen tiny phials; most were 
metal or porcelain, and the glass ones contained liquids or powders of intense 
color. He went to the door and entered.

The shop smelled of old books, musty herbs, fresh flowers. Shelves covered 
its walls and a clutter of objects the shelves. A long wooden counter ran 
perpendicular to the shopfront; what was visible of its top had long since lost 
its finish. Behind it, on a high stool, sat a tall, thin old man, white hair and 
beard rather long, in a flowing robe of the same blue as the shop's sign, with 
the same golden symbols. To Chuck, the interior of the shop seemed 
markedly wider than the shopfront and far deeper than that of the other shops 
in the mall.

"A fascinating shop to find in a mall, isn't it?" asked the old man in a clear, 
ageless voice.

"Yes," said Chuck, walking towards the old man. "More so when you 
consider how much I hate malls." He stopped at the counter and took a closer 
look at the old man: fewer wrinkles than he had expected, pale blue eyes of 
remarkable gentleness, a benevolent expression with a hint of mischief.

"Yet you've been in one, let's see, two hundred forty-seven times since you 
vowed never to set foot in another, young Mr. Baird."

"That many--" Chuck began, and went on, "How do you know? How did 
you know about-- How do you even know my name?"

"I'm a wizard, Charles-- may I call you Charles?"

"Charles, Chuck, whatever," said Chuck. "You do realize I'm having trouble 
believing this, okay?"

"No surprise, Chuck," said the old man. "Or should I call you Lottie?"

Chuck turned very pale and broke out in a sweat. He had felt this feeling in 
the pit of his stomach before, but only when terrified; it was all that made him 
feel connected to his own body. He gulped and said, barely audibly, "How 
the-- I've never told anyone-- it's impossible..." He was about to weep.

"It's all right, Chuck," said the old man with remarkable gentleness, and 
Chuck found himself calm almost at once. "Your secret is safe with me, and 
blackmail is against the Wizard's Oath anyhow."

"I guess you really are a wizard," said Chuck. "Besides, there's this shop -- 
it definitely is bigger on the inside than on the outside."

"Interesting how telling a point that is with you," said the wizard. "Telepathy, 
my knowing things I couldn't possibly know under conventional 
assumptions -- trivial to you! Yet a trick of real estate is deeply convincing. 
Yes, if I had that storefront to work with and the usual depth of a mall shop, 
this interior would be smaller. But of course we're not actually in the mall 
now -- I don't want to pay the rent -- and if you hadn't been in the frame of 
mind to see my shop's front, you would have seen the lingerie store that's 
actually there in the mall."

"What did everyone else see when I went into your shop?" asked Chuck, 
growing more comfortable. "Me vanishing?"

The wizard smiled. "They were too busy ignoring you. As you aproached to 
look in the window, everyone was compelled subconsciously to look another 
way, and when the magic let them look back, you were gone and they 
assumed you'd walked on. It's elementary but effective. But that's 
unimportant. I can help you with Lottie."

Chuck was calmer now. "It's hard for me to talk about."

The wizard was all benevolence. "I'll talk, then," he said. "Don't worry, we 
won't be bothered by anyone. Do have a seat."

"Where?" asked Chuck.

"Just sit," said the wizard, and Chuck turned around to find a simple, 
delicate-looking wooden chair, placed precisely so that he could have sat 
when told. He faced the wizard again and sat.

"Let's see," the wizard began. "As far back as you can remember you've 
been fascinated with the idea of being female: not Charles, but Charlotte or 
Lottie. Mostly you've expressed this in fantasies, but exactly thirty-seven 
times you indulged in some degree of transvestism with your mother's 
clothes or clothes collected by your parents to give to charity. This wasn't 
really very often, but after all you were terrified of being caught and dressed 
only when you felt safe. Your sister Elaine is younger and has always been 
small, and her clothes were always too tight a fit. You tried five times over 
the years and always gave up." His tone was matter-of-fact but gentle; Chuck 
merely nodded in reply.

"You've read about the so-called sex change operation, but you don't think 
you'd like to be Lottie permanently, and even with hormones and plastic 
surgery you doubt that you'd make an attractive woman. You don't find men 
attractive sexually, and you like the idea of a temporary change, becoming 
Lottie, and then yourself again, at will." The wizard stopped and looked at 
Chuck.

Presently Chuck said, "Yeah, I do like that idea. Okay, so you're a wizard. 
Could you, like, make me able to turn into Lottie when I want to, and then 
turn back into me when, well, I guess, she wants or has to?"

The wizard stroked his beard, as if in thought. "I had some magical love dolls 
that I used to alter sometimes into woman costumes. Put one on and you look 
and feel exactly like a woman, at least physically."

"That's exactly--"

"There were some drawbacks," said the wizard, and Chuck noticed a touch 
of wistfulness in his tone and expression. "Not precisely, ah, reliable, 
especially if the, uh, man masquerading wished to experience sexual 
gratification as a woman."

"Then what can you do?" asked Chuck. "I mean, it's kind of cruel to bring all 
this up and then--"

"Not to worry, Chuck," said the wizard. "I've thought of something that will 
work. Surely it's in the back rooms somewhere." He got up and went 
through a doorway behind the counter, with a great show of befuddlement 
and mutters about being unable to find things since he'd turned seven 
hundred, but in less than a minute he was back, carrying in each hand a white 
oval about the size of a face.

"Masks?" asked Chuck, seeing them.

"Sort of," said the wizard. He sat on his high stool and raised his hands to 
his chest, holding the ovals so that they looked like very pale disembodied 
faces. "Animus," he said, nodding at the one in his right hand (with vaguely 
masculine features), "and anima" (with vaguely feminine ones).

"Like in what's-his-name's psychology?" asked Chuck. "C. G. Jung's?"

"Sort of," said the wizard, putting the masks on the counter in front of 
Chuck. They were a good quarter of an inch thick and slightly floppy. Chuck 
thought that they might be made out of white silicone caulking. "The magic 
doesn't work exactly along his lines, but the basic idea is that in every man 
there is an inner woman, or anima, and in every woman an inner man, or 
animus -- sort of another side of the self."

"Sure," said Chuck. "So where do these masks come in?"

"Well, you press one against your face, an anima one if you're a man, an 
animus if you're a woman, and it changes you into a sort of complementary 
person of the other gender. Just press it on until it holds, and it sort of 
becomes part of you, and then comes off when you've finished changing. 
Actually, if you put on an anima, what comes off is an animus mask, and 
vice versa. To change back, your other self puts on the changed mask, and 
the process goes the other way."

"So I'd turn into my anima, and the original me becomes her animus?" asked 
Chuck, picking up the anima mask and looking at it closely. It certainly did 
feel like white silicone rubber, smooth and slightly glossy inside and out. Its 
features were nondescript but certainly feminine, with a slit between the lips, 
two nostril holes, and two eyeslits that gave it the look of a sleeping face.

"Not exactly," said the wizard. "You see, your anima is part of your self. The 
mask brings out your feminine side, and other parts of your personality that 
you normally suppress, and puts into the background the parts of your 
personality you normally use. It alters your body into one appropriate for that 
female self."

"I see," said Chuck. "So I won't necessarily have the body of my fantasy 
woman, or turn into a sort of feminized twin." He set the mask down on the 
counter again.

"Quite right," said the wizard. "Oh, and don't worry that any wicked 
impulses you have now -- we all have them, Chuck, don't look indignant -- 
will come out. Morally she'll be about as good or bad a person as you."

After a few moments Chuck said, "So do you sell these or rent them or 
what?"

"A rental should do it," said the wizard. "The animus- anima masks are, 
ahem, tools of self-discovery, not, well, transvestite accessories. Take this 
anima home, put it on to change yourself and it, have your female self put on 
the resulting animus to change back. Come back Monday." He took a brown 
paper bag from under the counter, opened it, picked up the anima mask and 
put it in, closed the bag and handed it to Chuck.

"How much is the rental?" asked Chuck.

"Oh, we'll worry about that on Monday," said the wizard.

"What if I can't afford it?"

"I guarantee that you'll be able to afford it easily, Chuck," said the wizard. 
"I'll cap it at fifty dollars, just to reassure you. Good afternoon."

"Wait!" said Chuck. "What about clothes? What do I wear as a woman?"

"Don't worry," said the wizard, and Chuck found himself obeying: he didn't 
worry about it any longer. "Clothes will take care of themselves. It's all part 
of the magic! Good afternoon."

"Thanks," said Chuck, and headed for the door. He pushed it open, went 
through the doorway, and stepped into the mall. Nobody was looking his 
way. He turned around to see a franchise of a lingerie chain-store. Again, 
nobody looked towards him, and Spells R Us was gone. Then a young 
saleswoman in the lingerie shop looked up from the rack of dresses she was 
marking down, and a bored young man a few feet from her turned and faced 
more or less in Chuck's direction. Chuck looked down at his watch and 
found that although its second hand was going, it showed that he still had 
plenty of time to catch the bus -- just as if time had stood still while he was in 
the shop. He opened the paper bag. The white mask was still there. He 
shrugged and headed for the bus stop.

Chuck lived in a tiny efficiency apartment -- bed-sitting room, bathroom with 
shower and toilet, kitchenette -- to the south of campus. He'd never liked 
living in the dorms and felt uncomfortable with roommates. The pay from last 
summer's job had been paying for the place since June.

As soon as he got home, Chuck took the mask out of the bag, stood at the 
mirror mounted on the inside of his apartment door, and pressed the mask to 
his face with both hands. It stuck at once, a fraction of an inch too high and a 
fraction of an inch too far to his right. Pressing his hands against it, he forced 
it into place -- and it promptly melted into his skin and vanished! He gasped 
and put hands to cheeks. Hands felt only cheeks and cheeks hands, but each 
felt unfamiliar to the other, somehow.

Chuck stared at himself in the mirror. His five-o'clock shadow was gone, his 
cheekbones had grown higher and more delicate, his fingers more slender. 
"It's working!" he said aloud, his voice now boyish, and his erection rose 
swiftly. He pulled his t-shirt over his head and saw on his chest the tiny buds 
growing under his nipples. He pulled his jeans and briefs down to his ankles 
and looked at his crotch. His erect penis was half its usual length, and his 
scrotum had shrunk. He prodded it carefully with a forefinger: it was empty, 
and his excitement over his metamorphosis brought him to orgasm, his 
shrinking penis spurting a tiny load of semen. As it grew flaccid its upper 
side fused with the skin of his crotch, and a slit opened in its underside.

Another look in the mirror. His face was a girl's, if slightly mannish, his hair 
longer than he had ever worn it and more auburn than brown, his waist 
delicate, his arms and legs almost frail compared with the way they had been. 
His skin was pale now, almost milky. The breast buds were already almost 
too big for a training bra, and to a casual glance the crotch was entirely a 
woman's.

The ceiling seemed higher to Chuck, and he knew he was short now. 
Another look at his hands: delicate and very pale, with manicured small 
fingernails coated with clear gloss and longer than men usually have. His face 
again: droll rather than beautiful, cheekbones almost too high, nose thin and 
well-shaped but a little too long for classic beauty, stubborn little chin, 
complexion pale enough to make veins show as azure tracks. The long hair 
that framed it was now a dull red.

In a few more minutes the physical changes seemed to be over, and Chuck 
looked out of the outsized ice-blue eyes of a short woman about his own age, 
a woman with fiery orange-red hair almost to her waist, and a pale droll face 
all cheekbones and nose and chin yet remarkably pretty. Face and neck and 
torso had blue veins like marble or cheese, as did the small plump breasts. 
The waist was tiny and the buttocks were slightly generous; the crotch had 
the same shade of hair as the head. The arms and legs no longer seemed frail, 
were perhaps a little stocky, but he later noticed how they tapered elegantly to 
delicate hands and feet.

To test his new voice, Chuck spoke his thoughts out loud. "Wow," he said, 
"It's really worked, and I'm beautiful! It's hard to tell from inside one's own 
body, but this sounds like a cute voice, too. But that wizard said the mask 
would come off, or out of me, I guess. And the female side of my personality 
would take over. It hasn't happened."

Chuck looked at the underwear and jeans at his female body's ankles. They 
had become a pair of white lace-trimmed panties and, he found when he 
pulled them up, a pair of snug- fitting but comfortable woman's jeans. Little 
pink jogging shoes were on his new feet. The T-shirt he had thrown aside 
had shrunken, and when he picked it up he found a white lace bra under it. 
After half a minute of thought he put the bra on and fastened it with little 
difficulty, then put on the shirt. "I'm an engineer," he said in his woman 
voice, "so I can solve anything!"

Chuck smiled at the female image in the mirror, and found himself, man's 
mind and woman's body alike, growing aroused. Not a fashion model's 
looks, he thought, but nice. Quirky but cute. Cuddlesome. Not a body I'd 
kick out of my bed. What with the tight jeans and the thin panties he could 
see the contours of his transformed crotch, and soon he was massaging his 
new clitoris through the clothes, giggling delightedly and delightfully with 
pleasure. Chuck felt an intense sensation of pleasure begin to build, and then-
-

Charlotte, or Lottie as she usually called herself and thought of herself, found 
herself standing at the mirror inside her apartment's front door, her left hand 
to her crotch. Why have I been masturbating? thought Lottie. She realized 
that she wore something on her head. It felt like a cap that had shifted 
backwards and was about to fall off, and as she reached for it with her left 
hand it fell to the floor. She picked it up -- left hand again; she was left-
handed, unlike Chuck -- and looked at it. It was a rubbery white face mask, 
its features pushed in so that the side one would wear next to the face was 
convex. As she poked at it to set it right, she realized what had happened: 
until minutes ago she had been Chuck, and this mask had made her into 
herself. She noted that its features were now masculine, and remembered 
clearly -- she had all of Chuck's memories, in the back of her mind with other 
mental rubbish -- that by putting it on she could become Chuck again. She 
tossed the mask across the room, onto her bed, and laughed at the thought.

Lottie looked around her apartment. The Chuck memories her mind still 
retained gave her just a hint of unease at the feminine touches, the frilly 
bedspread, the decorative ceramic masks. In response to that, Lottie slid back 
the door of her closet and was reassured by the sight of her clothes, and 
whether the suppressed Chuck found the feminine attire a transvestite's 
dream or a man's nightmare no longer mattered.

Lottie was the only woman in a group of around half a dozen -- it varied from 
week to week -- engineering students who went out together to dinner on 
Fridays; her Chuck memories had it that Chuck was just another guy in that 
group, but her reality seemed to be prevailing. She replaced her T-shirt with a 
low-cut black blouse with white lace at its collar, piled her fiery hair into a 
loose, invitingly-shaggy bun atop her head and secured it with chunky 
barettes of green ceramic, and hung a pair of matching ceramic oblongs from 
her pierced earlobes. She darkened her pale eyelashes with deep-brown 
mascara, put clear gloss on her lips, slipped her pink leather wallet into the 
left front pocket of her jeans, and left.

Dinner and drinks at Brennan's on a Friday evening. Chuck was usually the 
first there, but Lottie rarely was: she was the last this week. Van Carson, the 
tallest and best-looking of the nerdy lot, a sort of unoffical leader and the one 
both Chuck and Lottie liked most, rose from his chair and shouted, "Hey, 
Lottie, over here!" and remained standing until Lottie reached the table and sat 
next to him. Lottie noticed that, very uncharacteristically, he wore a stainless-
steel chain around his neck, thick enough to hold a pair of military-style dog 
tags. Indeed there was a little bulge on his chest, right between the 
respectable ones of his pectoral muscles, under his software-company T-
shirt.

"Hey, Van," said Lottie, "you taken up jewelry?" She gestured at his chest.

Van made a face -- so cute that way, Lottie thought. "It's a sort of lucky 
charm," he said.

"Come on, show me," she said, and with a look of mock exasperation he put 
both hands to his neck and tugged on the chain until the object popped out 
from under his collar. He bent closer to Lottie and let her examine it.

She held it in her left hand and looked closely. It was perhaps half an inch 
long, the deep blue, flecked with the gold of pyrite but no white, of good 
lapis lazuli. The design was stylized and a little clumsy, but clearly it 
represented a man and a woman in a close embrace. Lottie thought of the 
colorful little stone figures that the Chuck-part of her had seen in the window. 
"You got this at Spells R Us," she said to Van, and everyone at the table but 
Lottie and Van laughed, thinking it a joke. "It's a magic amulet to help you 
get girls!" she added, and the laughter resumed.

"How did you know about Spells R Us?" Van asked her, utterly serious. He 
reclaimed the charm and sat back, slipping it back under his shirt.

"You don't want to know, Van," said Lottie. "Oh, God," she went on, it's 
working on me!" Actually Lottie felt nothing but her usual firm attraction for 
Van, whom she wanted for her boyfriend, but she gazed at Van with 
exaggerated lust, and the rest of the table started to laugh again. "It must be, 
uh," she temporized, "the direct contact of that thing with my skin! I HAVE 
to have you NOW, Van!" she cried, knocking her chair over as she got up 
and pounced on him, taking the back of his neck in both hands and crushing 
her mouth against his.

Everyone else laughed uncontrollably, but Van returned her kiss with genuine 
passion and wrapped his arms around her. Lottie felt her crazed-with-lust act 
transmuting into the real thing, and she reciprocated, and the laughter frayed 
and fell apart, the laughers looking on in amazement as Lottie and Van stayed 
locked together for several minutes. When at last they separated, Lottie and 
Van said, "Excuse us," in chorus, and laughed. Then Van got up and they 
walked out, Van's right arm draped over Lottie as she snuggled against him.

Lottie got up early on Saturday, wishing that she'd had sex with Van the 
night before. Maybe it's too early for that, she thought, and I'm not on the 
Pill anyway, but he's wonderful. This is going to last. It's obvious why we 
didn't fall in love until now: despite all my memories going back to girlhood, 
and everybody thinking I'm a part of their lives, I didn't exist as a woman 
until yesterday. I was just Chuck's anima.

She noticed the animus mask on her desk. Back you go, she thought, and 
right now. If time didn't pass on Chuck's watch in that shop, maybe the shop 
is outside time and I can drop in whenever the mall's open for mall walkers, 
and that's eight every morning.

She tied her hair back into a ponytail and put on a baggy gray sweatsuit and 
her running shoes. She looked with approval at her image in the mirror: a bit 
droll, yes, but cute, and apparently very much what Van liked, and worlds 
better than Chuck's could ever have been. She went downstairs with the 
mask in her backpack, unlocked her bicycle, and rode off to the mall. The 
buses hardly ran at all on Saturdays.

Lottie didn't have Chuck's deep revulsion for malls: she thought the stores 
overpriced and was annoyed at how each mall tends to have the same ones, 
but no worse than that. She locked her bike at a rack near one entrance, and 
went in. It was just past eight and a rent-a-cop was still unlocking one of the 
other doors; she gave him a smile and his face lit up with happiness, or 
perhaps lust.

The Spells R Us store was exactly where it had been for Chuck. Lottie 
headed straight for its door and noticed how a half-dozen mall joggers 
compulsively averted their gazes so that they wouldn't, presumably, see her 
stepping into nothingness. "Hello, wizard!" she called out, and gave an 
attractive little gasp as she looked towards the counter. Seated on the stool 
was a remarkably beautiful old woman, tall and slender and unbent, her 
ivory-colored face barely wrinkled, her long white hair put up in a loose bun 
like the one Lottie had worn the previous night, a long blue-and-gold dress 
tight on a figure that was excellent for an old woman.

"These animus-anima masks are wonderful, aren't they, Lottie?" said the old 
woman in a contralto voice even lovelier than her looks. "I hadn't been my 
female self in years, and I must say I wish I'd done it more often."

"I can't disagree, wizard," said Lottie. "You do look magnificent."

"Thank you," said the wizard. "You're a remarkably appealing young 
woman, Lottie. "Many of these shy, socially inept engineers have splendid 
females inside them."

Lottie grinned at her. "So how many have you changed in this way?"

"Five," said the wizard, "but of course I can tell without actually giving out 
masks. You're a very pert, forward sort of young woman. In fact, as 
Chuck's anima, you were so very aggressive that you overwhelmed the rest 
of his self. No wonder he fantasized about being a girl."

"Not as if I could help it," said Lottie.

"Nonsense," said the wizard. "You simply didn't give a damn. You'll note 
that you have so many of the qualities that Chuck suppressed. Charm, wit, a 
spot of mischief, and creativity. Oh, and Van needs the sort of bossing 
around that you can give him but Chuck couldn't have given anybody. Yes, 
it'll last, and you'll be very happy together."

"Did you give him that amulet?" asked Lottie.

"Certainly not," said the wizard. "I rented it to him, and for quite a lot of 
money."

"So it made us fall in love?"

The wizard smiled, and she looked almost angelic. "No comment. But you 
know each other very well, and a very deep affection has been growing. Do 
you think a magical amulet was at all necessary?"

"Maybe not," said Lottie. She wriggled her arms out of the straps of her 
backpack, let the pack drop to the floor, and then picked it up and unzipped 
its main compartment. "Anyway, here's the mask back," she said as she took 
it out and put it on the counter. "How much do I owe you?"

"Well, you needn't pay me anything, Lottie," said the wizard. "I really 
soaked Van for that amulet."

"I insist," said Lottie, and took her pink wallet from her backpack and pulled 
from it a new fifty-dollar bill.

"Oh, very well," said the wizard, taking the bill in one delicate hand and 
handing Lottie a ten-dollar bill, rather worn and with a blotch of red ink near 
the portrait, with the other. "Here's your change."

Lottie shrugged, took the money, put it in her wallet and the wallet back into 
her backpack. "My change," she said, and giggled.

"Have a nice life, Lottie," said the wizard, as Lottie wriggled her arms back 
through the straps of her pack.

"Thanks for everything, wizard," said Lottie, and stooped forward and 
kissed the wizard's old-lady cheek. Lottie turned around and left, and as she 
went through the doorway the wizard picked up the animus mask from the 
counter and pressed it to her own face.

Lottie was in front of the lingerie store, and a saleswoman was just raising 
the steel gate across its entrance. She looked at the Swatch watch on her 
wrist: it was just before ten o'clock. Maybe the wizard wanted me to buy 
something here, she thought, and she took off her backpack and looked in 
her wallet for cash. The ten-dollar bill that the wizard had given her in change 
had changed into a hundred, with the same blotch of red ink and the same 
bedraggled look. Lottie laughed out loud and went into the shop to buy 
something to entice Van further.

Van didn't return to Spells R Us until late pn Monday afternoon. "Hello, 
Van," said the wizard from his high stool behind the counter, as soon as Van 
was inside the shop.

"Of all the devious tricks...really, wizard," said Van, but there was no real 
anger in his voice. "Making Lottie and me into lovers!"

"It worked, Van, didn't it?" said the wizard. "You wouldn't exchange Lottie 
for the prettiest supermodel in the world."

"I'd change her body into a supermodel's body and keep the rest of her the 
same," said Van. He paused. "Oh, hell, wizard, I wouldn't. That face, that 
body...I mean, they're just so right for her self, for her soul, even though..."

"No need to feel ashamed of delighting in unconventional beauty, Van," said 
the wizard. "You're not with your Friday evening crowd now, you know."

"All that money just to make the scales fall from my eyes," said Van. "Oh, 
hell, it's worth it. I've got no business complaining. I really am sorry I did, 
wizard."

The wizard stroked his beard. "The problem with spells that change the 
structure of reality so much," he said, "is that none of the people who profit 
by them think that there's been a change. You certainly don't."

"What's changed?"

The wizard sighed. "Van, you're an intelligent man, though not as intelligent 
as, say, your lady-love."

"Really?" asked Van. "Smart women have always attracted me. It's no 
surprise about Lottie, but thanks for letting me know."

"Consider Lottie," said the wizard, refusing to be sidetracked. "You have 
known her for over two years -- or so you believe. You have a set of 
memories that would tend to support that belief."

"So?"

"Do you honestly think," the wizard went on, "that you could know such an 
attractive, clever, personable, intelligent young woman for two years and still 
consider her, ahem, just one of the guys who go out together Friday nights?"

"Well..."

The wizard looked annoyed. "Lottie is almost the woman of your dreams, 
though you may not realize it yet, and even your memories have it that she's 
always liked you. If you think that you could have ignored her for two years 
or more, Van, you are a nincompoop!" He made an odd little gesture towards 
Van's head.

It was as if a window into a different set of memories had opened in Van's 
mind. In those memories, the ones he had had before Friday afternoon, there 
was no Lottie, and the wizard made sure that Chuck was not prominent. Then 
the window shut.

"My God!" said Van. "She didn't exist!" He trembled.

"Calm yourself, Van," said the wizard. "Don't be solipsistic. Just because 
you never met Lottie in your original past doesn't mean that she's a soulless 
creature conjured up for you by the magic of the amulet. There are infinitely 
many ways that, had the world been just a little different, she could have 
escaped your notice. Come on, tell me a few."

Van let his heart stop pounding. "She might have gone to a different school, 
or a different college at this school," he said.

"Exactly, and perhaps worn less-attractive flesh as well," said the wizard. 
"Perhaps the magic has saved her from a lonesome life as an ugly, 
excessively shy woman. Perhaps she was in another country, or another 
time. What does it matter? She remembers being your Lottie, and you 
remember only, apart from that glimpse I gave you, being her Van. You have 
my word that you will be very happy together."

Van pulled on the chain of the amulet and made the tiny statue pop out from 
under his collar. He stretched the chain over his head and gave chain and 
amulet back to the wizard. "Here you are," he said. "Again, I can't express 
my thanks, not really."

"You're quite welcome, Van," said the wizard. "Have a nice life. I don't 
think we'll meet again."

"Good bye" said Van, and left.

The wizard took the chain in one hand, the amulet in the other, and pulled. 
The loop of blue material at the top of the amulet snapped at once. A fragment 
of flexible, transparent coating extended past the broken edge of the amulet, 
and the wizard took hold of it between thumbnail and forefinger and peeled 
the waterproof coating off. He popped the amulet into his mouth and began to 
chew it. Presently he blew a pale blue bubble of bubble gum, several inches 
across. "Never use two spells when one will do," he said aloud. 

(fin)