Read A Life Less Ordinary for Free Online

falling into the frog’s mind and dying. All that would be left would be a frog that couldn’t remember being a woman.
    I hopped across the room back towards Circe, who laughed at me as I came closer. If there was one consolation to being a frog, it was that the frog was far more athletic than I had ever been in my entire life. One jump took me halfway across the room. Circe’s laughter grew darker and she held up a hand, somehow effortlessly deflecting me and sending me spinning across the room. Somehow, the shock helped me to focus my mind, rather than pushing my mind to collapse into the frog and vanish. It dawned on me that I could still hear cheers from the stage and that Master Revels was still working the crowd. I could go ask him for help, yet...would he recognise me as a frog? Circe had vanished somehow, leaving me alone. Would he realise that I was his apprentice or would he think I was just a pest who had somehow gotten into the building. Edinburgh was infested with wild creatures that somehow eked out an existence in the shadow of man. Only three weeks ago, I’d seen a fox sniffing through a litter bin...
    My thoughts were treacherous. Every time I accepted – or came close to accepting – that I was a frog, I took one more step towards becoming a frog permanently. I tried to concentrate on being human, yet it was hard. There was no sense that I was crippled, or even in the wrong body. I imagined that men and women who wanted to change sex felt crippled in their original bodies, but the frog’s body felt natural and right. I hopped again, hoping to catch sight of Circe, but she had vanished. I wondered if I should follow her out onto the streets – if she had gone out onto the streets – before realising that no one in the mundane world would know that I was human. I’d probably end up getting eaten by a cat or squashed by a bus.
    An overwhelming feeling of despair washed over me. I couldn’t escape; I might as well seek out a pond and spend the rest of my days croaking on a lily pad. Sheer anger blew the despair away – how could someone do that to me – yet it seemed impossible to focus on returning to human form. I had no idea how to cast a counter-spell or even how to attract Master Revels backstage so he could help me. I wished that Fiona was there, someone who could bridge the gap between animal and human, or...
    I stopped, thinking hard. I hadn’t paid close attention to the book on animal transformations, but it had talked about mirrors reflecting the true state of the soul. I hopped across the room – the body still felt natural, damn it – and towards the mirrors Master Revels had left there from one of his earlier acts. Or maybe they weren’t his. I didn’t know and didn’t care. All I cared about was looking in them and seeing whatever I saw. I saw a small green frog, staring nervously into the mirror, and felt the despair washing up again. I was trapped.
    Or was I? The magical world is never in plain sight. Master Revels had been clear on that point. A person without any magical talent – a mundane, in other words – would never be able to see magic properly, even if it was right in front of him. His mind would explain it away as a trick, just as George had done back on stage, or his eyes would simply miss it completely. I looked back into the mirror and saw the frog looking back at me...and something snapped inside my mind. I closed my eyes, feeling anger washing over me, and concentrated on my human form. I was human, I told myself, time and time again; I was human.
    I opened my eyes. I was staring into a misty image of a naked human female. The image grew sharper and clearer until I saw my own face looking back at me. I recoiled in astonishment and fell over backwards, landing on my bare bottom. I was naked, but I was human again. Cool rationality asserted itself and I realised that when I’d been transformed for the first time, my clothes, designed for a human, would have