Cody Sooy

I Have to Be the Hottest Oracle at the Shrine of Dodona for Some Reason

I 

There are lots of ways to fuck up your perfectly good body with exogenous hormones. There’s pills, implants, patches, gels. You’d known a guy once, before Gemma saved you, who swore his thick beard was entirely the result of a special tea shipped in from Vanuatu. 

But the best way, they’d always told you, is good old injections. Probably because then you’d pay for the needles and syringes, too. Another buck for Big Pharma, Gemma would say, and she’d roll her sparkling blue eyes.

You pulled the kit from your nightstand and drew up the thick yellowish liquid. Zero point four milliliters at two hundred milligrams per milliliter, eighty milligrams total of testosterone cypionate. Inject once per week for the rest of your life and Allison becomes Tony. Easy-peasy. 

Maybe too fucking easy. 

You knew you shouldn’t want this. You definitely shouldn’t do this. But every time you imagined flushing the vial, your chest went tight and your rabbit heart pounded. You’d told yourself you could stop if you wanted, if the changes were too much. Now here you were, going back for another hit.

Your injection sites had shifted in a year and a half. You ran your hand along the migrated fat, nearly gone from your thighs and settled behind your navel. The veins in your arms bulged with life. You’d always liked men’s forearms, decisive and present. It’s one of the things you’d most looked forward to. It’s one of the things I’d noticed about you, that first time.

Your mom was in the kitchen. You could hear the floorboards creaking safely away downstairs. She’d have flipped if she found your stash, would have called the pastor again for another round of meeting-praying-begging the thing inside you to come out. You didn’t know how to tell her that it was already here. 

When you walked into the grocery store now, people noticed. The guy behind the counter giving you the Nod. When you talked, they listened. When they listened, you felt alive. It wasn’t just the hormones, you thought. Masculinity was its own drug, intoxicating and addictive. Maybe that’s why you still couldn’t kick the habit. Couldn’t, or didn’t want to. 

The needle didn’t hurt. You pressed the plunger down and relief flooded your abdomen, warm and powerful and restless, as though looking for something, as though reaching out for more.

You told yourself you’d stop next week. 

II

“I have something for you.”

One hand on the wheel, Gemma leaned to reach for the glove compartment. You held your breath—scared she’d be able to smell it on you, a wolf tracking a bloodied hare—but she just opened the compartment and dropped something into your lap: a circlet of woven stems, smooth and dry. 

“Call it a detransition gift.” Gemma took another long pull on her tea. She was the kind of person who could make a travel thermos look glamorous. “How long’s it been now? Two weeks?” 

“Three,” you lied. Your fingers found this morning’s injection site. You pressed on the lump under your skin until it hurt. “Are you sure I’m allowed to come?” 

“Yes, dummy!” She watched you pull the bracelet over your too-hairy wrist. “Everyone’s excited to meet you! You’re, like, prodigal. Has your cycle restarted yet?” 

You hadn’t had a period since you started hormones. Just the thought of it made your stomach flip. “Not yet.” 

Gemma waved you off with one hand and switched lanes with the other. I-95 roared under her Subaru. “That’s exactly why I wanted to bring you to camp. Your body’s healing. You deserve a vacation.” 

Camp. A weekend in the woods with Gemma and her closest girlfriends. Low tents and bonfires and woods lit by flashlight. It had never been Like That with you two, but …

“We deserve love, Allie,” she said softly, like she was reading your mind. “We used to be worshipped. We were oracles, priestesses. Now look at the state of things. No wonder you don’t feel like a woman.” 

“We used to be worshipped. We were oracles, priestesses. Now look at the state of things. No wonder you don’t feel like a woman.”

You forced a smile in her direction. Gemma usually knew exactly what to say. But now, with your fingers still on the bruise, all you could think was that you didn’t know what the hell a woman was supposed to feel like. Then again, you didn’t know what a man was supposed to feel like, either. 

“But womanhood isn’t a piece of clothing.” Gemma went on, as though reciting a poem. “It’s blood and sweat. It’s primal. You know that better than anyone. What you’re doing, reclaiming your power? That takes bravery.” Bravery was one of Gemma’s favorite words, along with sisterhood and discernment and autogynephile. 

“I don’t feel all that brave,” you admitted.

You watched your own reflection in the side view mirror. It was easy to flip the switch in your brain, to see yourself the way Gemma saw you: chunky jaw and acne scars and stubble prickling your upper lip. A ruin of a person, a failed experiment. Objects may be closer than they appear. 

“Don’t worry,” Gemma cooed, “that’s not really you.”

A shiver ran down your spine. Maybe it was a trick of the morning light but you watched your reflection change: thin brows, undefined arms. You swore, you fucking swore you could smell yourself the way you’d been before, soft and unintrusive, fine china stacked in a cupboard, never used. 

Your hands were shaking. What had the therapist said? Grounding. Something to touch, something to taste. You reached for the travel thermos. 

“Allie, wait—” 

A rancid metallic taste flooded your mouth, like copper pipe pulled from a sewer. You lifted the lid: 

A tampon sat soaking in red water. 

III

Two statues guarded the camp’s main gate. You craned your head back to see them: women, of course, twenty feet tall with identical button noses and heavy-lidded eyes. The younger one swooned in a tight-fitting dress; the older one carried a sword and shield. 

As you walked up from the parking lot, you felt Gemma’s sharp inhale. That’s when you saw me: sitting by the path, sweating into my camp chair. Wildflowers brushed against my ankles, blue and white and yellow. Dandelions. Weeds.

I saluted you with my can of High Life. “Mornin’, TERFs!” 

Your friend’s eyes went hard as she clocked me. “I think you’re in the wrong place,” she said evenly. “This retreat is for biological women.” 

I snapped my fingers, faux-shocked. “Oh, shit,” I started. After a couple of years of heckling these campouts, I’d racked up a decent repertoire.

Then I got a good look at you, and my train of thought derailed. “… Tony?” 

Gemma looked from me to you and back again. “You know this—this person?” 

“No,” you said, too quickly, as something reared up to choke you: hormones or death wish or plain old lust. You wanted to punch me, to feel my skin under yours, to … “You don’t know me,” you spat at me, feeling petulant and hating yourself for it. 

Gemma turned back to me. “This is private land. You can’t be here.” She was wrong, of course. The property line was about ten yards behind me, and we both knew it. 

“You’re shacking up with wannabe Jo Rowling? Was I that bad?” I shifted just enough to give her a glimpse of the handgun holstered to my shorts. I may have been alone, but I wasn’t stupid.

“You’re shacking up with wannabe Jo Rowling? Was I that bad?” I shifted just enough to give her a glimpse of the handgun holstered to my shorts. I may have been alone, but I wasn’t stupid.

You stepped closer to me, guilt thrumming in your taut-wire limbs. “I’m not like you,” you said, soft and unsure. “I’m normal.” 

The sun sent the statues’ gigantic shadows creeping our way. “Yeah,” I deadpanned, “this is all completely normal.” 

Gemma looked nervous now. “Allie. Let’s just go.” 

“I’m a woman with a baritone.” You took another step. You couldn’t help it. Your limbs were still thrumming, but you weren’t sure anymore if it was guilt or something else. “The looks I get from people? You don’t know what it’s like.” 

I struggled to hold back a laugh. “Have you never done anything hard before?” 

“It’s not right,” you pleaded, cringing as your voice cracked. 

“Who cares about right? Why can’t it just feel good?” 

A bee hummed up from the wildflowers, buzzing lazy circles between us. You were close enough now for me to take your hand. I inhaled your boy-scent, sunscreen and freedom. 

“It does feel good, doesn’t it?” I was buzzing too, tendrils of power reaching out for you. “When you took your first shot, it was like coming alive. Like touching grass. Like feeling the earth sing under your feet.”

Your fingers trembled. “How do you know that?” 

I wasn’t heckling anymore. “She’s not the only one who knows you.” 

“Allie!” Gemma’s hand on your other elbow, tugging you away, breaking our contact. Gemma, touching you. “Look at me.” 

That’s when I saw the bracelet on your wrist. Those crackling stems. “Where did you get that?” 

“Ignore them,” Gemma intoned. Her blood-taste still coated your tongue, copper and cinnamon. 

“That’s knotgrass.” Your arrival here had been a surprise; I’d let down my guard. Now the pieces clicked together, too late.  I watched you flip the switch and look at me again: raspy falsetto and bare forehead, nipples poking through a cotton tank top. 

“Tony.” I strained toward my upper range; maybe if I sounded right, you’d hear me. “This isn’t you.” 

You drew yourself up to your full height, angling back toward Gemma. “Then what is?” 

You marched toward the front gates, feeling like this was all some kind of test.

It was. 

IV

Hormones change everything about your body, and I mean everything. The way you smell, how much you sweat, the texture of your skin. Some changes are subtle, blossoming over the course of years. Others … not so much. 

“Can I suck your cock?” 

Three weeks before camp, a sticky bathroom stall, breath steaming your hair. I—Cassandra, that was my name, you remembered it now—I didn’t wait for an answer, tugging at your belt buckle, admiring what I found underneath. 

“Is it okay?” Your nervousness was cute; you guys were always so self-conscious. “Does it look weird?” 

“It’s perfect.” I pulled back the overgrown hood between your legs to reveal the bright pink shaft. You hissed at the pleasure of your cock in my mouth; your hand slammed into the stall wall.

“It’s perfect.” I pulled back the overgrown hood between your legs to reveal the bright pink shaft. You hissed at the pleasure of your cock in my mouth; your hand slammed into the stall wall.

It’s so fucking hetero, getting sucked off in a bathroom, but with us it felt like reinventing something, like discovering and being discovered all at once, God and Adam touching fingertips. It didn’t matter that you’d never see me again. 

Until you did. 

V

“She fucked it.” 

Gemma’s voice was loud enough to embarrass you in front of what seemed like the whole camp. A dozen or so women had greeted you: sisters, Gemma had called them. Looking around, you wondered if they really were all related somehow: the same piercing blue eyes and yoga-toned bodies, the same pointedly polite expressions.

“The abject?” Gasped one of the women. A moment ago, she’d draped a wreath over your head: thin white blossoms that matched her wrinkled skin. “I knew this was a mistake. I’m ninety-three. I can’t wait another year.” 

“Allie is still Allie.” Of course, Gemma understood. Your elbow still tingled where she’d touched you. “Just go get ready.” 

As the crowd dispersed, someone pushed bread into your hand: allspice and herbs. You hadn’t eaten all day. You ripped into it, grounding, something to chew. “I’m sorry,” you offered automatically. 

Gemma held your face in her small, soft hands. “Don’t ever apologize. We’ve all made mistakes. You’re special, remember?” 

Special, but not perfect. A wrong feeling bubbled up in your stomach. You didn’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve any of this. 

“I’m still on T.” 

Gemma blinked. “What?” 

Her eyes were like pools of water. You could fall into them, you were falling into them. No time to think—you grabbed at her hair, searching for her lips with yours, Gemma, Gemma, for whom you’d given all of yourself, for whom you would give the world if you could, everything except the only thing that mattered— 

SMACK. A shadow passed over the sun. Your head rang. 

Gemma’s eyes had frozen solid. “What the hell are you doing?”

She’d hit you. Gemma had hit you. 

You gaped like a fish, both of you stunned, and as you shivered in the cold air you looked up at the statues by the gate, judging you, and you realized, of course, of course, Gemma could never be with someone like you, not with the addiction coursing through you, of course she was ashamed. 

“I’m sorry. I need help. I need,” you started, and tried again. It was hard to focus; the taste of the bread was in your mouth. “You make me feel so good. Why can’t it just feel good?” 

The look on Gemma’s face hollowed you out. “You really don’t get it, do you?” 

PAIN. 

Bone-deep and heavy like you’d swallowed rocks, rolling down through your abdomen, swallowing you whole. Pain like you hadn’t felt in a year and a half. 

“We are not a fucking costume.” Every syllable sent another skewer through your belly. You fell to your knees, Gemma standing over you, exorcizing. “We are blood and sweat and sacrifice. We are birth and birthright. We’re not supposed to feel good.” 

You realized this was what it was all about, the transactivists, the second-guessing, me, all to teach you why you were here, what it was all for, and all there was left to do was sob, and nod, and sob again, yes, you understood now, and please could she just stop hurting you.

Then: her hand under your chin. Through your tears you couldn’t tell if the face in front of you was Gemma or the old woman or the statues at the gate. 

“It’s all right,” said the mothergoddess. “You may still be revealed.” 

She left you there, doubled over, as shame crushed your lungs and drowned your heart. 

And that’s when you felt the wetness seeping through your clothes. 

You tore your jeans down around your ankles and there it was, blood on your fingers, blood between your legs as cramps rolled through you, and you vomited into the hard-packed dirt, and you knew Gemma had blessed you, or maybe it was the camp, or maybe it was your own divinity shining through, your place in the world restored, and you looked around for something to wipe off the blood and vomit, leaves, something, and that’s when you realized there was no grass, no flowers, no life anywhere around you, 

And you looked up at the woods beyond the cabins, barren branches like arms outstretched, we are dying, they cried, we are dead, and that feeling bubbled up again, something’s not right, but that was impossible because you were home with your sisters, you were receiving the vital power, you were known by the sign encircling your wrist, you were anointed, you were loved,

And a solitary bee looped past your face before circling back, and you watched it go, back beyond the statues’ great gaze, and you heard a gunshot ring out there, in the safety of the wildflowers, and in the back of your mind you wondered what was happening, and you wondered if I was okay, 

And then the sleeping pills in the bread kicked in. 

VI

First came the headache, like the world’s worst hangover. I groaned, lifted my hand to my head. What kind of party—? 

Okay, scratch that. I tried to lift my hand to my head, except my hand wouldn’t budge. 

“It’s awake,” said someone nearby. I opened my eyes and saw my own naked body. My chin lolled on my chest. Whatever they’d used to knock me out, it was good stuff. Not a lot of people could sleep through being tied upright to a post. 

Light flickered across my body; I looked up to see a bonfire’s flames licking twenty feet into the sky, threatening the dead trees that circled the clearing. 

You stood a few feet away, watching me, your face expressionless. There was a weird little crown jammed on your head, seashells and wave-worn rocks.

“Hey, man,” I muttered. “Funny seeing you here.” 

“You have no right,” said another voice, “to address the vessel.” 

My eyes adjusted enough to make out the women ringing the fire. I guess I expected robes or hoods or something but no, they were all naked too. That made me feel a little better. 

Gemma stepped close to the flames. A swirling sigil was traced in ash on her forehead. “You shouldn’t have come alone, abject.” 

“At least I have a spine about it, little miss ambush.” I scanned the bodies in the circle until I found her: one of them had a bandaged thigh where I’d gotten a shot off. “How’s that leg feeling?” 

The woman didn’t answer. All eyes were on Gemma, who pulled something off a cord on her neck and threw it onto the logs. Glass shattered, and then the scent of it rolled through: sulfur and singed hair. 

Gemma leaned into the smoke and breathed deep. For a moment, nobody moved, as she rolled her neck and swayed. Then she opened her eyes and prophesied: 

“In the old days, we were worshipped as holy. We communed with the sun at Delphi; we sang with the trees of Dodona.”

“WE ALONE REMEMBER THE GODDESS,” echoed the women around the circle. 

Gemma fixed me in a hateful stare. “Now the men have ruined our temples. They have covered up our holy sites. But our blood remembers the moon. Our feet know the path before us, and we have walked it.” 

“WE ALONE WALK THE PATH,” the women chanted as one. 

There was a knife in your hand, tied there with knotgrass, stems crisscrossing wrist to palm to blade. You stepped toward me. Had your eyes always been that blue? 

“Tony, come on. I understand regretting a hookup, but this is ridiculous.” I searched you for recognition, for signs of life, and found nothing. 

“The men sought our power, by theft and imitation they sought it, by rape and pillage they sought it.” A cold breeze sent embers fluttering into Gemma. I could hear them burning against her flesh. “So we hid it away, until a prodigal daughter would reveal it again.” 

“WE ALONE KEEP THE KEYS.” 

I was getting nervous as you reached for me. “You guys do know trans women have been religious figures for, like, ever, right? I mean we really oughta be teaming up.”

I was getting nervous as you reached for me. “You guys do know trans women have been religious figures for, like, ever, right? I mean we really oughta be teaming up.”

“We,” crowed Gemma, “are the daughters of the witches who would not burn.” 

I rolled my eyes—but then you grabbed my cock, soft and small and exposed, and panic flooded me as you raised the knife. 

“Tony, it’s me. The knotgrass has you. Snap out of it.” 

“Divinity requires sacrifice,” sneered Gemma. “The rot shall be culled.” 

“BLOOD SHALL MEET WITH BLOOD.” 

I thrashed against the post. “Tony, PLEASE,” and finally I saw a flicker of something, your too-blue eyes focusing in on mine, that far-away look dissipating for just a moment.

“My name is Allison,” you prayed, and then you cut— 

And I screamed and screamed and I felt the power we shared flowing out of me, dripping to the ground red and warm, seeding the barren earth, life crying out to life, begging,

Until you turned back to the fire, and threw in your prize, and gray-black smoke carried the scent of my burning flesh back to us, colors dancing at the edge of our vision, and the women were chanting, and we chanted with them: 

Ποικιλόθρον᾽ ὰθάνατ᾽ ᾽Αφροδιτα, 
παῖ Δίοσ, δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε 
μή μ᾽ ἄσαισι μήτ᾽ ὀνίαισι δάμνα, 
πότνια, θῦμον. 

We didn’t understand the words, but that was okay. They were not for us to understand. We see that now. We were not worthy of understanding. 

Not yet. 

ἀλλά τυίδ᾽ ἔλθ᾽, αἴποτα κἀτέρωτα 
τᾶσ ἔμασ αύδωσ αἴοισα πήλγι 
ἔκλυεσ πάτροσ δὲ δόμον λίποισα 
χρύσιον ἦλθεσ 

The knife was still rooted to your hand. The thing that had been growing inside you, the same thing that lived in Gemma and in the fire and in the dead land, it drew your attention downward, where the vile thing lay between your legs, thick and hooded like nature’s mistake.

The seashell crown pressed on your brow like a signet ring on wax. You grabbed at your mark and the goddess kept your movements swift and sure and you cut— 

ἄρμ᾽ ὐποζεύξαια, κάλοι δέ σ᾽ ἆγον 
ὤκεεσ στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶσ μελαίνασ 
πύκνα δινεῦντεσ πτέῤ ἀπ᾽ ὠράνω 
αἴθεροσ διὰ μέσσω. 

Blood flowed down your thighs, your calves, branching around your ankles, rivulets surging through the stone circle, copper on the air making your head throb, and then the twisted ragged nub of flesh landed, crackling and spitting, beside the remnants of my cock, two unnatural things given up, putting the world right, and whatever mistakes you’d made in your past, that morning, six hours ago, now it was all washed away, and now you are reclaimed. 

αῖψα δ᾽ ἐχίκοντο, σὺ δ᾽, ὦ μάσαιρα 
μειδιάσαισ᾽ ἀθάνατῳ προσώπῳ, 
ἤρἐ ὄττι δηὖτε πέπονθα κὤττι 
δἦγτε κάλημι 

Somewhere in the back of your mind there was a voice, screaming. Somewhere in the back of your mind there was pain. 

Too late.

You were chanting and the fire was rising, burning hotter, blue embers floating out around your feet, and somewhere someone sang the words as you chanted but you didn’t look, you couldn’t look, you were not worthy to look, and 

ἔλθε μοι καὶ νῦν, χαλεπᾶν δὲ λῦσον
ἐκ μερίμναν ὄσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι 
θῦμοσ ἰμμέρρει τέλεσον, σὐ δ᾽ αὔτα 
σύμμαχοσ ἔσσο. 

You felt like your brain was being split in half, like the chanting was pulling out some essential part of you, burning it away—no, the small far-back part of you shrieked, no, no— 

YES. 

A dozen voices became a hundred became a thousand, nothing soft or living on the ground or in the trees to catch the echoes, all of us together chanting YES, YES, YES, and then the thing in the fire rose from the embers and stepped to the edge of the stone circle, her skin cracked like old earth, her eyes filled with my blood: 

COME HOME, DAUGHTER.

You saw Gemma, or what was left of her, caught in the expanding fire, burning away her perfect clothes, her perfect hair, her skin, until only her teeth remained, chanting, her wide-hipped skeleton bright and flayed, and you knew, you didn’t look down but you just knew the same was true of you, 

COME BACK TO ME. 

And we sailed upward on the air, lifted on the sacrificial smoke, and now we are not ourselves, and now we are not alone, and we shall writhe for ever and ever in the devouring womb of the mothergoddess, 

Amen.