Transition Period

Content Warning (click to expand)

ageing, disability, progressive illness, theft

 

by S. L. Johnson

My aching fingers made counting gold difficult. Every bank worth robbing had both guards and wards, and the big scores were taking their toll on me. Last month, my shield rings had saved yours truly from the worst of that witch’s curse, but I’d been struggling for a while. And now it was getting harder to count my take. Larissa kept offering to help, but I’d seen her handle money, and she didn’t have the head for it. Besides, a man’s gold is his business.

I figured I had been swinging my sword too hard of late, and it got bad enough that I refused the next job that came my way. That sucked, but I figured I was in a transition period. Getting old and such.

I didn’t handle it well.

I sat in my cottage for a few days stewing over my newly-perceived mortality.

“I can’t do this,” Larissa said on the way out. I’d snapped at her again over nothing, I’ll admit to that now. “I’ll be back when you get over this—” She thought for a moment “—this phase, or whatever it is.”

She paused, her eyes narrowing. “You’re finally feeling the same pain I’ve been dealing with for years and you expect me to act as if the world is ending? Maybe yours is, but I still have some life left in me.”

Being alone made me grumpier, and my toes became stiff and achy too.

By the time Plunkett stopped by, two days later, I was itching for an adventure.

“I hear there’s a new branch manager at the bank in Fallscliff,” he started. He plucked at the fraying hem of his jacket — grey and unremarkable.

Camouflage, he always said. Hiding in plain sight was how you got the things you wanted. Just stand there and watch, and let the world go by, until you’re ready to take it.

“I’m not getting any younger,” I said, flexing my tingling fingers. “Could be arthritis.”

“Could be,” Plunkett said, studying me. Last month’s job had gone sideways when that witch caught me with her paralysis spell. We’d laughed it off — what damage could a crone’s outdated spellcraft do in this modern age of devices like shield rings? These days real magic came from slick object-based enchantments. Arthritis seemed far more likely.

Relief washed over me, yes. That was surely it.

“So, tell me more about this bank job,” I said.

He did.

We visited Fallscliff the next night and it was an easy score. The night sentry was the branch manager’s nephew and knew jack-all about swordsmanship. We hadn’t been expecting such a refined magical ward on a country bank, though. Plunkett got caught up in it and it cost a third of our take to get him converted back from a chicken.

I had enough magical talent to avoid the spell that caught Plunkett, but days later the tingling crawled up my arms and legs all the way to my shoulders and hips. I didn’t let my difficulties show, but my limbs were heavy now.

Larissa, bless her heart, started coming back around after the Fallscliff job. When I wasn’t able to please her in the manner to which she had become accustomed, she became resentful. Each visit shorter than the last until one day she stopped coming. My body was betraying me in every way that mattered.

I knew I had to get her back. Once Plunkett had recovered from his jaunt into the avian lifestyle, we began plotting our next heist. He replaced his jacket since he’d transformed back naked. The new one had a faint variegated pattern of the colors of stone and cement that made him even less noticeable. He took up his old duties scoping out a bank in Wartholme, while I grew weaker.

He was gone for days at a time.

The morning of the heist I found I couldn’t get out of bed. Plunkett stayed with me the night before, thank the gods, and he hoisted me up. Once I was upright, my muscles locked up tight as any vault. Each breath weighed more and more inside my chest.

“John, you don’t look so hot,” he said. “You’ve got this gray tinge to your skin.”

I could barely tilt my head down, but when I did a cascade of ice tumbled down my spine. Indeed, the freckles and hairs and natural discolorations of my arms now resembled the swirls of marble on a bank teller’s counter. The witch’s curse — it wasn’t just paralyzing me; it was turning me into what I’d spent my life stealing from.

With great effort, I tried to touch my face, but only one hand rose. With a gentle, crackling noise, my body grew heavy and solid, freezing from the inside out. Not age after all. Just karma wrapped in a woman’s touch.

Plunkett’s eyes widened. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me, but I couldn’t react or cry out. He let go and my body settled with a thud.

After attempting to help me for longer than I would have if I had been in his shoes, Plunkett had the good grace to shed a tear before giving me a farewell kick in my marble knees and abandoning me.

Time became agony. Not even a heartbeat to count the passing. My rent was paid until month-end, but after that? What next? Plunkett knew every enchanter in the area — we’d needed them often enough after jobs gone wrong. I guessed friendship only runs as deep as the last score.

Despair crept in.

Until the day Larissa appeared at my bedroom door.

My heart would have leaped if it weren’t stone. But then she pulled out a mason’s mallet from her burlap sack and I understood. Her absence had just been a transition period — she’d been waiting, patient as stone, waiting as I changed from flesh to fool. Now she stood in the doorway, wearing Plunkett’s grey camouflage jacket, ready to break the rest of me.

About the author and the piece (click to expand) 

This tale was passed over by 12 publications before we got the chance to read it. S. L. Johnson’s speculative fiction and poetry are published/forthcoming in Banksia Journal, The Colored Lens, Analog, Penumbric and Bullet Points. A graduate of the Wayward Wormhole Workshop and former editor at Novel Slices, she is originally from the US and now lives in Sydney, Australia. Her Instagram is @stephaniejohnsonpoetry 

 

©2026 by S. L. Johnson. All rights reserved. May not be used for A.I. training.