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Comphrey MacLeod kept perfectly still, tucked under the mess of branches and leaves. She was entirely concealed, the only sign of life her smoky breath meeting the frigid winter air. Cold seeped into her muscles, numbing the tips of her fingers and toes. Her mind though, was sharp as ever. Comphrey's eyes darted across the landscape, alert as always, ready to catch a glimpse—
“Olleander? Where are ya?”
—ready to catch a glimpse of that ever elusive creature. It was said to roam the mountain tops, quiet as a leaf on the wind, waiting—
“Olleander?”
—waiting for it's opportunity to finally—
BANG BANG BANG “You in here?”
Olleander groaned, letting the book fall onto his chest with a dull thump. It was his dad, his deep voice permeating even the walls of his grandmother’s mech. That was another thing that annoyed him about living on a farm, miles and miles away from any other people or structures or places. There was nowhere to hide.
Ollie tried to prop himself up on his elbows, only succeeding in sinking even further into the nest of blankets he had cocooned himself in. He had to crane his neck to catch the top of his father's sauce pan helmet beyond the dome of the MechLeod.
“Yeah?” he called back, already regretting it.
“There ya are, dang it!” His father stepped back until Ollie could see his sunburnt nose and the beginning of his bushy brown beard. He didn’t look happy. “ I told you to feed the guinea fowl! They started pecking at each other again!”
Ollie rolled out of his blanket pile, all the way over to the windows of the mech, until he was face to face with his father’s stern glare. He stuck his tongue out against the glass.
“Olleander,” his dad began, clearly tired, “You gotta feed them animals. Marsha an’ Rudy nearly took each other's eye”s out!”
“I DON’T gotta feed them. That’s not on my list for today.”
Ollie always had a list. Every week, he and his parents worked together to figure out the chores for each day. They would sit at the kitchen table and decide who would water the plants and cook the drugs and do the laundry. Once it was done, they all signed to agree to complete the tasks under penalty of perjury. It was a pretty solid system, except this week, they had forgotten Sunday.
All week, Ollie had been waiting for Sunday. He had been slowly transferring his blankets, books, pillows, and even his special snacks that he had stolen from Pillby in the MechLeod. He had planned to spend all day up there, reading and dreaming, and legally, no one could stop him. His dad seemed upset about it, but he didn't have the power to undermine the law, not without mom shooting at him. Ollie figured he was too stubborn to go back on his words besides. So in their staring contest, he won out.
His father sighed, uncrossing his arms and pushing the pan back on his head. “Fair ‘nough. S'pose you just won't have any drugs for dinner then.”
“What?” Ollie asked, but his dad had already turned away, walking back towards the barn.
“Hey! HEY!” Ollie scrambled to his feet and slammed on the button that opened the cockpit. The hydraulic mechanisms began whirring and puffing, cracking open the floor underneath him. Ollie fell, passing through slick metal, and tumbled out onto the grass with a whoosh of air. He immediately pushed himself up on his hands, calling out to his dad’s back. “What do you mean there's not gonna be drugs for dinner?”
Hutch stopped walking, turning back to his son with a shrug. “Oh, no, there will be. For me and your mom. ‘Cuz we're doing our daily share.”
Olleander flopped back onto the ground, hiding the way his face morphed into a scowl. Right. Article something, section whatever. If you don't do your daily share, you don't take part in the daily shares (of drugs).
“UGHH.” He screamed into the dirt, not caring who heard him. I
t was stupid.
Ollie knew his family was different. The MacLeod’s didn’t leave the farm often, but every once in a while they needed to head into town to buy things, like bomb materials and art supplies. He had met other kids. Though they were mostly weird and boring--they didn’t know anything about being a sovereign citizen, or even the right to want--they also didn’t have to do their chores based on the stupid law.
It just made him angry. A lot of things were making him angry recently.
His father lumbered back over and offered Ollie his hand, not appearing to be in any rush. Ollie huffed, pushed himself onto his own feet and walked away without a second glance.
In truth, he didn’t know why he was so upset. Hanging out in the MechLeod was far from his favorite thing to do, and he really didn’t mind feeding the birds. But recently, everything had been making him angry. He didn't know why. He walked around always feeling like he wanted to hit something, or cry, or both. And no matter how many times he wrestled with his mom or did shooting practice with his dad or got sandwiched in between them in a hug, the anger would always come back.
Pappy buries another bullet between the eyes of a sky pirate, but when he looks forward at the deck, there seem to still be a hundred more. He reloads his pistol, hands steady, heart sinking. Shooting is the one thing he’s half-good at, and right now, it isn’t enough. He doesn’t have a hundred bullets. He knows eventually, something will have to give.
His dad caught up to him easily, Ollie’s short, chubby legs no match for his dad’s strides. They moved together across the field, mostly in silence.
“Got a bee in yer britches?” his father joked.
Ollie said nothing. He wished it was that simple. There was no rhyme or reason to what set him off. If he knew what was bothering him, then he would just make it go away. But everything set him off, especially--
“What’s wrong there, Olleander? Bein’ awfully quiet.”
“Don't call me that!” He exploded. Ollie stopped full in his tracks, hackles raised, glare trained on his dad like a hunter. Hutch’s hands went up in the air, a gesture of full surrender. He looked confused, and a little hurt, but it did nothing to ease Ollie’s anger.
“Call you what? Your name?”
“Yes.”
He couldn’t stand it. More than anything else, he couldn’t stand being called Olleander. No matter how many times he had stayed quiet or grit his teeth he couldn’t get over the way it made him feel. He hated the way it sounded, the way it was spelled, the way people associated him with it at all.
“I don’t know why you guys gave it to me in the first place!” He cried, weeks—months? years?—of repression spilling out of him. “It’s the worst name ever! It looks dumb and it sounds dumb and it sucks! You guys suck at naming things!”
Hutch MacLeod scratched the back of his head with one hand, keeping the other raised overhead. “Oh gosh, well . . . bein creative and all that was more your grandmother’s cuppa tea . . . ”
“Well then maybe grandma should’ve named me,” he said, the anger still bubbling under his skin. It just sucked. It sucked that this was his name and this was his life and his dad didn’t even seem to get it. With nothing else to say, he started pulling at the grasses around him, ripping their leaves and unearthing their roots. It felt good, so he kept doing it, grabbing and wrenching and yanking until he had cleared a few good square feet. His dad just watched until he was done with his destruction, standing around piles of broken plants, breathing heavy.
“S’pose we never did give you much choice about yer name.” His dad muttered, even his quietest voice still loud enough to carry across the wind. “D’you wanna change it?”
Ollie turned to his dad, looking for any sign of joke or hesitation. “Yes. Can I do that?” It wasn’t something they had ever talked about as a family. And even though he hadn’t read all the laws his parents had written, he was pretty sure name changes weren’t anywhere in there.
“‘Course you can do that,” his father said, genuine and gentle as anything. “We’re MacLeods! We do whatever we want to do.”
“Oh” was all he could think to say. This whole time, it had been that easy.
With a grunt, his father lowered himself onto the grass, patting the ground beside him. “Whatddya wanna be called then?” He plopped down next to his father.
He hadn’t thought about that. Ollie was a nickname he'd had for a while, but he didn't really like it. Anything was better than Olleander, which held the number one spot for worst name in the world ever, but Ollie was probably still at like, 2 or 3. It sounded like olive. He hated olives.
What else would they call him then? Comphrey wasn’t a bad one, but it was already his grandmothers, and he definitely didn’t want to be a junior. Van was too short, and Vanellope wasn’t his style. Marya? Ha, if only. Annie? No. Definitely not.
His father added no pressure, sitting in silence and letting him puzzle it through. But the more he thought about it, the less confident he felt. Maybe his parents hadn’t gotten enough credit. Choosing a name was hard.
“I don’t know,” he finally mumbled, picking at the dirt. “Jus' something else.”
His dad thought for a second, his bushy eyebrows bunching together. Sometimes, he thought, they looked like caterpillars dancing across his face.
“Is calling you Ollie okay?” He shrugged.
The critter tugged at Montgomery’s pant leg, clearly in distress. What could it want? Food? Assistance? He had no way of knowing. It pained him to watch the animal chatter and shriek. He could see the desperation in its eyes, feel the urgency in its voice. It was trying every way it knew how to communicate, but the gap in between the two of them was so vast. There was a whole world inside this creature, and Monty couldn’t understand any of it.
Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. He didn’t even know why the name bothered him so much. He didn’t know why it mattered.
He felt the weight of a steady arm on his shoulders, and the next thing he knew, he was hugging his dad. He tried to duck his head down into his dad’s shirt, but his tears soon soaked through the fabric, and he was sure his dad knew he was crying.
“How about this,” Hutch said, low and steady. “We gotta call you something. So, fer now, we’ll call ya just Ollie. But in the meantime, you go ahead and start thinking up a name fer yourself that you like better. And then, soon as you know what you want it to be, you just run on over to me and your mom and set us straight, ya hear?”
Ollie pulled away, scrubbing at his face. That … sounded like a good plan. It sounded like a great plan, actually. The gears in his brain slowly began turning, cranking to life. He had however much time he needed. He could make up a new name for himself. He could become a whole new person. He could invent something that people would call him for the rest of forever and it would be such a good name that no one would even remember that Olleander MacLeod ever existed.
“I hear.” he said. His dad relaxed as he said it, some unseen tension melting out of his broad shoulders.
“Good. Good.” He looked off into the distance, squinting at the late afternoon sun, as if he was preparing to share some great wisdom.
“Welp.” he said instead, “Those guinea fowl won’t feed themselves.”
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
Late nights and early mornings were spent alone in the near darkness, as Marya Junkova tinkered away. She inspected every inch of that metal trinket, working until her hands shook and her vision went blurry. The crew was worried, imploring her to rest. But she had never felt so alive. This thing, it was new. It was unknown. It was truly like nothing she'd ever seen.
She turned the contraption over and over in her hands, staring at it with hungry eyes. “I know you are important,” she muttered to herself, “and I will solve you yet.”
“I figured it out!” he cried, practically tripping into the kitchen, notebook tucked under one arm, grin lopsided on his face. Only his mother was in there, adorned with thick cloth gloves and bug-eye goggles, pouring molten lead into musket-ball molds. The kitchen was thick with heat, the fire of the sun and the stovetop both wrapping themselves around him.
He wished he had caught his mom at a better time. Making ammunition was one of the more dangerous things she did, and he wouldn't be able to pull her away with puppy eyes.
He watched as his mom closed the mold over, tapping it to shake out the excess lead. She didn’t wait long for them to cool, and he only caught a glint of the metal balls before they were dumped into a barrel of water by her side. It hissed and bubbled up aggressively. Without wasting a second, she grabbed a cup and started tossing the newly scalding liquid into the stove fire. Steam rose into the air above them. The sounds of boiling water crescendoed, and then began, slowly, to fade. When the kitchen was silent, all threats neutralized, his mother finally turned to him. She smiled.
“Hey there sweetheart! What did you figure out?”
He jumped into one of the chairs and slammed his notebook onto the table. “My name! I know what I want it to be.”
Artemisia gasped, running over, not bothering to shed her equipment. She smushed herself right up next to him, goggles knocking against the side of his face.
“It’s in here?” She asked, and he could tell she was fighting the urge to touch his journal.
“Yeah, yeah, hold on.” He lifted the book up to his face, trying to find the proper page without spoiling the surprise. His hands practically shook as he thumbed through it, his whole body feeling giddy with the excitement of it all.
“A New MacLeod name …” his mother muttered. She banged a gloved hand down on the table, the wood creaking with the force of it. “About time! We haven't had a new MacLeod name in 10 years!”
“Okay, okay, here it is!” With a flourish, he presented the pages of his journal, revealing a single, pencil scratched word surrounded by squiggles and swirls.
O L E T H R A
“Olethra,” his mother repeated, tasting the words on her tongue. “Olethra. O-leth-ra.” She laughed, giving her son a hearty slap on the back. “I like it! Olethra MacLeod.”
Olethra beamed at his mother, sure that she could see every one of his teeth. “That's me!”
Suddenly, Artemesia snapped her head towards the doorway, as if something had caught her eye. Olethra tried to follow her gaze, but he noticed only the plain wooden walls of their house.
“Olethra?” she called “Olethra?”
“What?” he asked, suddenly alert. Was there something he couldn't see?
“Olethra MacLeod!” She cried again, ignoring him. She moved around the table, scratching her head in an exaggerated motion. “Olethra MacLeod, where are you?”
He couldn’t help the giggles that spilled out of him. This was one of his mom’s games.
“I'm here!” he cried back, waving his arms wildly to get her attention. “Mom, I'm right here!”
She pretended not to notice, leaning over the kitchen sink to shout out the window. “OOOOLETHRRRAAAA! OHLETHRA MACLEOD, ANSWER ME!”
“I am! I’m right here!” When she still didn’t turn around, he hopped out of his seat, running up and tugging on the cuff of her flannel shirt. “It’s me! I’m Olethra MacLeod.”
Artemisia whirled on him, her mouth forming a perfect ‘o’. “You? You're my son, Olethra MacLeod?”
Olethra tamped down the ugly thing that rose inside of him. It kept trying to come back, that simmering anger, ruining absolutely everything. Except, no. Not today. Today he was not angry. Today he was Olethra.
“YES!” He yelled, and it felt excellent to yell. “It's me! That's me! I'm OLETHRA MACLEOD!”
“Well then Mr. MacLeod!” Artemisia dropped down to his level, hands propped up on her knees. Her goggles were mere inches from Olethra's face, and beyond them, he could just make out her orange-tinted eyes. “What are we waiting for? Because I think we still got a father that needs alertin’ to this new name.”
“OOH yeah! Let's go tell dad!” Olethra went over to snatch his notebook off of the table. When he turned back around though, his mother was already at the door, looking at him with a wicked grin. “Last one to your father smells like cat piss!” And then she took off running.
“Hey!” Olethra cried, bolting after her, “ That’s no fair! You got a head start!”
He exploded out into the fresh afternoon air, chasing after her. The breeze wove through his hair and the reeds brushed at his knees as he pushed himself, faster and faster, running into the setting sun
﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌﹌
It was after dinner downers tonight, on a warm fall evening where the wind blew through. Olethra sat sandwiched between his parents on the living room couch, caught up in a smoky haze, watching the sunset through the window. His mind was stuck on a particular topic. It wasn’t anything new, but despite the downers, or maybe because of them, the thought kept returning, nagging at him.
His parents were stoned right now too. Maybe they would get it.
“Mom, you’re a girl, right?” He said, without fanfare. It wasn't the best place to start, but it was the only entry point his mind had offered.
Downers always made his mom sleepy, and tonight, Olethra could especially tell. Her head lolled back against the cushions, all the creases in her face smoothed out. She didn’t even open her eyes as she replied, “Mmmhmm, that’s right sweetie.”
He considered nudging her to get her to look at him, but suddenly, the idea of eye contact was much more intimidating. He settled for staring at her ear, watching the lines where her scar met skin. “So, how do you know you’re a girl? Like, what makes you so sure?”
His mom pursed her lips, thinking it over. “I s’pose I’m not sure.” she said finally, voice thick with vocal fry. “But I’ve never much wanted to be anything else.“
“You're perfect jus’ the way y'are.” His father offered from the left, voice even more slow and garbled than normal. He reached over Olethra to give his wife loving pat on the arm, bumping up against the back of Olethra’s head.
Artemesia grinned, eyes still shut. “Damn right I am.”
“What about you Dad?” Olethra turned to his other side, “How do you know you're a guy?”
“Cuz I've been one my whole damn life.” Hutch answered, speaking even slower than usual. “’N I like it. Hell if I'm changing now.”
“You’d make a terrible woman.” Artemisia said fondly, lolling her head to one side. She reached over to blindly pat her husband on the cheek, her elbow bumping Olethra's forehead. He batted her arm out of his face.
“Why’d you ask anyways?” his father said, turning towards him.
Olethra opened his mouth to answer, to get to the root of the problem, but found all the words suddenly shriveled up in his throat.
Van Chapman was not scared. Van Chapman was never scared. But, in this instance, one might call her apprehensive. As far as she knew,none of her crew mates had ever wanted for anything except what they could find in the open sky. Her dream, so small and quiet as it was, might make her an oddity, or worse, a laughingstock.
She didn’t want to imagine her crew would react so badly. But how would she know? To settle down, to own a shop, to marry someone gentle … They had never spoken of anything like it before. It would change things, that much was certain.
“I’m gonna tell you something.” Olethra said carefully, staring pointedly down at the floor. “And you have to promise not to think of me differently.”
The lethargy in the room dissapated. Both of Olethra's parents shifted in their seats, sitting up straighter. Artemesia even opened her eyes. They seemed concerned, now, but at least they were serious.
“’Course not kiddo.” Hutch said, voice impossibly gentle, “You know we'll always love ya.”
Artemesia nodded, mouth set in a hard line. “Unless you're a fascist.” She tacked on.
“Artie.”
“What? I'm not going to lie to our kid. I can’t love a fascist.”
Olethra looked up at Artemesia as she talked, and watched her face soften when she was met with nervous eyes. “But our boy's not a fascist,” she amended, reaching up to place a steady hand on Olethra's shoulder. “And that's all I need to know to support you.”
Olethra put a hand over hers, taking a deep breath. It was reassuring, in an odd way, to have that caveat. It meant that she was being as sincere as possible. It meant that Olethra could trust things were going to be okay.
“I don't wanna be your boy,” Olethra finally said. “I wanna be a girl.”
“Oh,” Hutch said, an almost involuntary noise as he processed the information. “That's. Huh. Uhhhh.” A hush fell over the living room.
“Okay.”
Olethra looked over at Artemesia. She nodded, as if that explained everything.
“Okay?” Olethra echoed.
“Yeah.” Hutch nodded to himself, more surely now. “We can switch to doing that, if you'd like.”
“So, you wanna go by she and miss and whatnot instead, right?” Artemesia asked.
Olethra looked back and forth between parents, but they both remained unflinchingly genuine.
Olethra nodded. “Yeah, like … I mean yeah.”
Artemisia shrugged. “Alright then. Seems easy enough.”
So, it was settled, after all this time. She was Olethra MacLeod now. She could be a girl.
It felt very anticlimactic.
“I thought that was gonna be harder.”
Her father furrowed his eyebrows. “Why's that?”
“I just … I've never seen anyone else do it before, so. It seemed like a big deal.”
“Do you want it to be a big deal?” Artmesia asked. She leaned forward, eyes sharp, hands perched up on her knees. Ready to leap into action.
“No,” Olethra answered quickly. “No, I like it this way. This is good.”
Disappointment flashed across her mother's face, but she shook it away just as fast. “Good.”
“Olethra,” her dad said, suddenly serious, “how long you been keeping this from us?”
Olethra looked over at her dad, confused. He seemed worried, and honestly, a little hurt. Had he changed his mind about the girl thing already? “What do you mean?”
“You're 11 now. You changed your name about a year ago. It's—I mean it is kind of feminine-like but at the time I didn’t want to assume nothing. D'you … Have you been feeling this way a long time?”
Olethra thought of all the times she had shadowed the girls in Pillby, watching them run and laugh and whisper secrets, always desperate to join them. She thought of gazing longingly at her mother’s flowing skirts and long blonde hair, wracked with jealousy for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint. She thought of late nights spent in front of a mirror, trying to mimic her grandmother’s voice in the long months she was gone, wanting to be like her in more ways than one.
As Daisuke watched the crew laugh and argue and snatch Monty's journal from one another, he realized he had always wanted something like this. The desire was nothing new. But he’d never had a family before them, so he was never quite sure what he was looking for.
“Kind of? But also, kind of not.” The creases in her father's face deepened, his concern growing, and something occurred to her. “Oh, I wasn't scared to tell you, if that's what you're wondering. It's—there was just a long time where I was thinking about it but I didn’t know and like I wasn’t really ready, I guess? I just had to figure things out.”
Hutch nodded, but he still seemed doubtful. “So y’ haven't been secretly hurtin’ without telling anybody?”
Well, hurting, yes. There were all the outbursts and frustrations and failed attempts at dress up that had left Olethra wanting to rip the hair out of her head. If she had to guess, this was the cause of it all. But throughout everything, there had been lasso practice, and wrestling and talks just like this one, always safe between two sets of bodies.
Olethra shook her head. “No secrets. I'm okay.”
She watched Hutch’s eyes welled up with tears. She expected some heartfelt reassurances, one of his dad speeches, maybe, but instead he just opened up his arms. Without hesitation, she threw herself onto him. He smelled kind of bad, like too much sweat, but then her mom moved to her other side, and they held Olethra between them, and so maybe the smell was bearable for now.
The three of them stayed cuddled together on the couch. The wind continued blowing and the sun continued setting, and her chest continued to rise and fall with her breathing in and out.
Olethra MacLeod was a girl, and she fell asleep in her father's lap.