Covenant Ficlets: How Ezra Got His Name

More or less a continuation of the previous piece.

Tags & warnings: Trans character, trans character using their birth name and pronouns, trans character coming out to a parent, hints of the eldritch horror in the setting

***

Myrtle had read that article in the newspaper almost a year back now, about the woman who declared her name was Harry and she was a he, and had dressed up and ran off to live as a man.

It’d been like having the secret voice of her—his—soul stand up and shout in his face.

But…but Myrtle didn’t want to run away. Was that what it would take? He had a life here. His family, and friends. He was learning a trade. If he had to leave all that behind, it felt just as much like cutting pieces of him off. What was the good of only being able to decide which pieces?

He thought, again and again, about going to Covenant. About wishing to be a man for true. And again and again he wondered if he would even know himself or his family when he got up the next morning, or if any of them would know him.

He dreamed about that, sometimes. Among those sweet, soul-healing dreams of being a man, now and again he woke up in a cold sweat from one where he was everything he wanted to be, but his parents blocked him from his own house like a stranger at the door and his brother and sister looked at him with puzzled, clueless eyes when he tried desperately to explain to them that he was Myrtle.

Maybe that was why he didn’t go to Covenant. Or maybe it was just a good excuse for the simpler reason that Covenant was fucking terrifying.

“You’ll know what it is you want most in the world,” his Gran had told him. “Because it’ll be the thing you want so bad that even Covenant won’t be enough to keep you away.”

Did he not want this enough? That idea made him feel something like guilty. It kept him silent for another few months.

It was closing in on Myrtle’s 17th birthday when he realized he couldn’t keep living like this. It’d kill him, really and truly kill him, if he kept trying to fit into this box that made him cut bits off himself in order to be what other people wanted him to be.

The bravest thing he ever did in his life, he thought, was sit down in the kitchen to ask his mama about it.

“Do you think…” he started out, feeling like he was feeling his way over a crumbling bridge. “Do you think people can ever be born in the wrong body?”

She was wiping down dishes and he was putting them away. He watched her back go stiff as a board. Carefully she put down the plate and turned to face him.

The way she looked at him was just as careful. “Like…what do you mean, sweetheart?”

Myrtle kicked at the table leg. It was something to pay attention to that wasn’t his ma. “Like…do you think a boy could turn up with a girl’s body?”

His ma didn’t say anything for long enough that he looked back at her. She was biting her lips together, watching him like a puzzle she was trying to put together.

The longer she stared, the braver he felt, till he was staring right back at her, daring her to do her worst. Then, she sighed. More like deflated. It carried her all the way down till she pulled a chair out and poured herself into it.

“Did you ever meet your uncle?” she began. “No, you would have been too young. Your uncle Matthias. Well, he started out as Eileen Myrtle. I don’t think any of us ever told you that. My…sister.”

Oh.

It went through him like grabbing an electric fence. She left it hanging there, waiting, till he pulled out a chair and sat across from her. Then she nodded. Then, she shook her head and pulled the ashtray over to light up a cigarette. 

She didn’t smoke very often, not in front of Da. It wasn’t ladylike, she’d always muttered around the butt as she lit up, like she was telling Myrtle not to do as she did.

Myrtle didn’t want to be a lady.

She blew out the first cloud of smoke and got going again. “Well. He even went and changed his name. He… He went off to college, you know? And he picked up all these strange ideas there. I don’t know who he met or what they told him, but the city’s full of all sorts. So about two years in, he came back for summer break, and one day he asked us all to sit down. Then explained to us, real careful-like, what it was about, and why he needed to be Matthias.”

Myrtle couldn’t say anything. He felt frozen. His uncle? His very own uncle? Maybe it could be inherited? Something about having a relation who was like him…god. It made it all feel possible. Like he could be both parts of himself without having to cut himself to pieces.

His mama went on, almost like she was talking to herself. “You could see it, how much he meant that. I don’t think our parents ever really understood it, but they could see how bad he needed it.  So, Mathias he was.” 

“Uncle Matthias… He lives out in California, doesn’t he?” They got Christmas cards from him every year, and sometimes he’d write their mom letters, but he’d never come home since Myrtle was born.

“It’s a long way,” his ma said wistfully. “I haven’t seen him since he moved out there. But he seems happy. Happier than he ever could be here, anyway.”

Myrtle leaned over the table. “Do you…think I could write to him? About…?”

She drew in a deep, deep breath and then blew it out again, in a cloud of blue-gray smoke. “I can add a little note of my own. To let him know it’s okay.” Whatever trance of memory she’d gone into, she blinked her way out of it and gave Myrtle a hard look. “I think there’s a lot he never told us about his life and what it took for him to get along. Our Da in particular, he was always real worried about how it would be for Matthias out there in the world. And I think…” She tapped her ashes off. “He was probably right about that.”

“Did he…” It still haunted him, the thought that maybe he didn’t <em>really</em> want this.  “Did he ever go to Covenant?” Nobody could ever bring themselves to say the name too loud. Myrtle was no different.

Her long moment of stillness was shocking, somehow. As if it should be impossible that she had to think about it. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “He never said. If he did…  Well, hell, I hope it helped him.”

At that she pushed up out of her chair. Its feet complained their way across the floor. Myrtle watched her, wary, because she suddenly seemed restless. Anxious, almost vibrating with it, like she couldn’t sit still, and he couldn’t quite believe…didn’t know which way it might go.

She rounded the table to him, and stared down at him again, a little wild around her eyes. “Could you just do something for me? You were…I named you after our grandparents. If you weren’t Myrtle Ezra, then you would’ve been Ezra Myrtle.”

Tears prickled in Ezra’s eyes. He had to clear his throat to get the words out. “Yeah, Mom. I can be Ezra Myrtle.”

Could he…! God, it was everything he could possibly want.

She sobbed a little, fighting tears. And then she gave up and grabbed him to hug him till his ribs creaked. “Ezra Myrtle. Oh baby, I need you to be careful.” He could feel her shaking in her arms. “I could wish you hadn’t picked the hard path.”

He hugged her back, just as fierce. “It’s not the hardest path for me, Mama. I’ll be careful, I promise.”