Jamie looks into the fogged mirror for a moment as she steps out of the shower. She is a beautiful woman she thinks once more. This does not bother her, although she still thinks it should. This act of magic that has changed her is accepted, as solid an identity as she ever had as James. She considers for a moment seeking a way to undo the change but instead she towels off and puts on the bathrobe she almost never used as James. Now it is one of the few articles of clothing in her apartment that fits her.
She makes her way back to the overstuffed chair where she read the first chapters of the book that changed her. The book is there, on the floor, open to the page she had finished on. It should have fallen over, closed maybe, but by chance or providence it remains open to the third chapter, "Maternal Magics". Jamie lifts the book into her lap and reads:
"Motherhood, already being a kind of magical genesis, lends itself to further magic. Herein I have recorded several incantations and rituals purported to provide power and utility to those who lie with monsters. While the witches congress with the devil is well known, these forgotten rituals have a still greater effect. Research of the Lāta people of the distant jungle has uncovered a set of tablets contain a set of five rituals. The diagrams and charts on the following pages show how these may be performed. The first ritual provides the practitioner, called a yāmā, a knowledge of where a nearby "mate lives". The second provides protection against any male being, although this protection does not appear to prevent pain. The third ritual is used to accelerate a pregnancy, although the Lāta yāmā consider this wasteful. The fourth ritual allows the yāmā to fashion human skins for their mates and children to wear and pass unnoticed in society.
But of these rituals, it is the fifth one the Lāta was the most protective and frightened of. Called māhambi, or memory, in the Lāta tongue, I do not know exactly what it does. The tablets describe dozens of terrific effects wielded by yāmā who had "made memories" of their children. I do know the ritual may only be performed after the birth of a monstrous child, an āme."
Jamie sits with the book in her lap. Her heart is thundering in her chest and although she cannot tell if it is "natural" or further working of the book she feels the desire to master these skills and work them on the world. She thinks back on Avery from the library briefly and she wonders if they knew what this book would do. But that thought she pushes to the back of her mind as she hears again Avery's parting words, "Make sure you've gotten all you want from it by then."
She sets, with an energy and focus, unlike her old self, to memorizing the incantations and ritual actions of the five rituals in the book. They settle naturally in her mind and she resolves that she must test the limits of the book's promises. She sets out to perform...