In The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce once said “Wine, madam, is God’s next best gift to man.” When he wrote it, he meant it as both a positive and negative statement. Positive because it’s a wonderful liquid that can uplift us and liven a splendid meal. Negative, because too much of it… can have adverse affects on even the best of us.

My week had been a solid week of great wine. I was on a trip which departed from Paris , where I was starting a new semester next week. My first semester abroad.

Everyone I knew told me that to really enjoy France , you need to get out of the metropolitan areas and see the countryside. So that’s the first thing I did. I booked a bus tour that went for five days out into France ’s vast backyard.

“Visitez de nombreux domaines viticoles,” the flyer boasted. It meant to see the vineyard’s and wineries of France , at least that’s what I’d been told. I’m absolute rubbish with the language, but that was my reason for this trip, to study French in France . Where better to learn it right? So that’s where I found myself now. Comfortably seated on a tour bus, languidly staring out the window to the bumpy hills covered with grapes like patchwork quilts.

Every day was a little slice of paradise. We’d leave from a small Inn early in the morning and drive on to another Inn in some other quaint little town. Once you were there, you could walk about the old cobblestone streets and eat at splendid little sidewalk cafés, or make your way to the “viticoles.” The vineyards.

I was fortunate that our guide and most of the other tourists spoke French. This far out of the metro areas, nobody spoke any English, so I felt alienated quite quickly (not that I didn’t stand out in my khaki’s with gaudy camera hanging around my neck). I was also lucky that the majority of my tour group was about the same age as me. You see, my name is Andy and I’m 22 and going on my first semester as a senior in college. To save up for this adventure, it took me the better part of a year, but as things have gone so far, it’s been worth every penny.

“Attencion,” the tour guide said in her accented English. “We’re almost to Rouen . If you please, on our right is the Le Febure Viticoles, known for her antique wines. It’s rumored that there are bottles there aged and stored for more then two centuries!”

The mixed tourists ooh’ed and ahh’ed at the small brick house on the hill of which she spoke. I looked at it curiously. Perhaps I could find a few nice bottles to send home and have laid down for a few years at my mom’s? “Certainly worth a look,” I thought pleasantly with a smile.

The bus arrived at a small Inn . It was really just like a bed and breakfast. Nice large house with two dozen rooms, all booked for those of us on the bus. We got off, checked in, put our bags in our rooms and headed out for more sightseeing.

As with most of the things this week, I took my time. I had made friends with a few of the guys and gals on the trip, and I walked with them checking out little shops, sampling the food, and just having a good time. One of the girl’s was fluent in French, so she handled the blunt load of translating for us.

At one end of the town was a nice cathedral. It was really something to look at, been around since the medieval days. Next to it was a small catholic school, classes in session by the look of it.

As the day wound down, and the sun began to hang, I told my friends that I still wanted to go to that Le Febure Viticoles and check out the wines. Most of the group, having been to Viticoles every day for the past four days, weren’t as excited to trek back down the road to get outside town where it was. So, I parted with them, taking my pocket book of helpful phrases and started off to the vineyard.

About two miles down the road, I found myself walking up to the nice little stone house. Green ivy and vines had helped color its bottom half green, where the sun had baked the upper half from red to a brown. It still had its rustic charm though as I went into the open-air barn where a few men were bottling wine.

“Afternoon,” I said politely as I walked up. I felt sure it was pretty obvious I was a tourist. I had on my camera and a hiking backpack; I even had on my boonie hat which as I’d found out two days ago, was like screaming “I’m American! See! Complete lack of style!” But eh… so what. Give me functionality over style any day.

“Bonsoir monsieur,” replied a burly looking worker. He wiped his hands of blue-red juice and offered a handshake. I shook his hand and thumbed through my booklet for some phrases I’d dog eared on the walk here.

“Excusez-moi, je ne parle pas francais... Um… but… J' ai besoin d' aide pour choisir un bon vin.” Which if I played my cards right, should have said “Sorry, don’t speak French, but I’d like some help finding a good wine.” I said it and did my noble best to keep from offending them by my horrible use of their language. Somehow I felt that my stuttering vowels must have been like a rake on the chalkboard.

The man shook my hand again and then barked at another worker who took his spot at bottling. He motioned for me to follow and I did down toward a nice cool cellar. He was speaking a mile a minute, all of it in French of course, so I didn’t understand a word, except when he occasionally said “vin” which is wine. He gestured grandly at pictures hung on the wall. They were all the same picture really, but with a little variety of the person. The first was a man, then a man and his son; then that son a little older standing with a son of his, and so on and so fourth, all the way down the stairs. If I were to judge the generations of this family, by the number of pictures, I’d say this guy had wine in his veins since before America was recognized as a free land.

“Everything down here is wonderful! Best stuff in the country! Some of it is two centuries old! Beats the hell out of that grape juice in your California ! Been making it over ten generations now, every since my great great great blah blah blah” (you get the idea).

The cellar was just long rows of wine. Racks upon racks of wine. As I’d come to understand, you couldn’t drink some yet. The better wines were set after they were bottled and would lay undisturbed for the better part of a few years depending on the wine. The only movement that came to them was when the bottle was turned every now and then to prevent settiment, or something of that sort.

He led me along some of the middle racks, pointing and blabbering about the dust covered bottles as if they were liquid versions of the Mona Lisa. One thing about the men who made wine in France , they took serious pride in their goods. He took out a bottle and handed it to me. It had a small picture of the vineyard on the front, and a label with the year 1967. I smiled as I looked at the bottle.

“Combien? (How much?)” I asked.

“140 euros.”

140 euros was close to $180 on my conversion chart. I looked at the bottle again. It was an awful lot for just one bottle. I decided against it and waved it off. The man shrugged and led me on to another few bottles, each progressively lower in prince, but not by much. Age demands high price as you might guess.

The man was starting to get aggravated by my waving off every bottle he handed me. We were down to 80 euro bottles, which was just above $100. It was still too much for me. I apologized the best I could and decided I’d better leave. The man took it like a slap in the face. He seemed like I might as well ask him for bottles of coca-cola instead.

He stormed off and left me standing in the library of wine. I shrugged and started to pick my way back to the stairs before he found me again. He thrust another bottle at me, not saying a word. I took it and examined the cover. It read 1832.

“Holy jesus…” I sputtered. “How much? er.. Combien?”

“20 euros.”

I looked at him like he was mad. 20 euros? This couldn’t be real wine then. He probably poured antifreeze and ketchup in a bottle to sell off to the dumb American. I raised an eyebrow at him and repeated it. “20 euros?”

The man nodded and pointed to the date. I nodded back. “I see the date, that’s why I’m questioning you. How can you sell a bottle like this for 20 euros? This should be an heirloom for your daughter’s marriage or something,” I said accidentally reverting to English.

The man looked at me confused and just repeated 20 euros. I shrugged. He had shown me around his stock and I’d declined everything thus far, maybe he was doing me a good turn?

“Can I try a sip?” I asked. He stared blankly. I made a little motion with my hand and the bottle like I wanted to try a drop. He shook his head no and extended his hand for money. Since he’d been nice to me, and I wanted to at least have something, I gave him 20 euros, which he accepted with no happiness and led me back upstairs. I figured I could at least show the bottle to my companions and maybe get them to taste it before me should it be poisonous.

I left down the road once again for the Inn . The sun was going down now and I figured it’d be a good idea to meet with everyone before nightfall.

As I was walking, a funny thing happened. The bottle, which I had stored in my backpack, began to make a weird sloshing sound. I stopped for a second and took off my backpack and realized the damn cork had fallen out. There was wine all in my backpack.

“Oh great, wine from the civil war era… and its all over everything. Let’s see, ruined my phrase book, ruined my travel papers, oh my journal too. And look, passport. Least its mostly laminated.” I said a little less then happy. Stupid wine, this was that guy’s payback. I sat and took inventory of the bag. 85% of the things in it were virtually ruined, or at least soggy enough that even after they were aired out, they’d be all purple and crinkly. I took out the offending bottle, it was about half empty. I stuck it on the road while I finished cleaning out my pack.

“I need to f***ing drink now,” I said aloud as I crumpled up some of my journal notes where the ink had bled with the wine. All the days previous to this were now a blue smear on paper. I grabbed the bottle and gave it a good sniff. For being older then Michigan (home state) it sure smelt pretty good. I poured out a drop on my tongue. It tasted like pure grape flavored with heaven. Maybe I really had bought an heirloom? I sniffed again and licked another drop. Whatever it was, it didn’t taste bitter like I suspected poison might, and it still had that alcohol feel, so I knew that if I drank enough of it, it might actually do what wine should.

Needless to say, I upended the bottle and gulped down the last two mouthfuls left in the bottle. It was like letting pure ambrosia pour down your throat. It was so good, that if it was poison, I might as well have let it kill me because I’d never find a sweeter beverage after that.

I threw the bottle in the grass, and piled all my stuff into a stack of books and papers. I left my backpack mostly unzipped and on my back as I started walking back down the road with the papers in my hand. The sun was down now, and the sky had changed from purple to a slowly shadowing blue. In the back roads like these, there weren’t any street lights, so I was going to have a little difficulty of my walk, but luckily it wouldn’t be that far.

I kept walking until the road started to move. I stood still for a minute, but the road was still moving. It was wobbling left and right, the way a fish would swim upstream. “That’s… not right,” I said to myself, running my hand through my hair, knocking off my boonie cap and dropping my books. My hand felt weird too. “Am I drunk?” I said staring at my hand, it was looking a little fuzzy, and when I moved it, twelve copies of it moved a frame too slow.

I took a few steps forward, but if anything, the road wasn’t wobbling any more, it was slithering. I was close to the town so I tried to make it further. Suddenly, I was moving forward without telling myself too. I was falling. I hit the pavement at an angle, shoulder out. I rolled a little till I was in the ditch alongside the road… face in the grass. Darkness took me.

I felt cold… and wet. Wet like a flower covered with dew in the morning. My head felt like it had been donated to a train wreck, then returned to me. I tried to move, but commands from my brain failed my body. Someone was talking in French to me. It was a soft voice, somehow full of compassion. At the same time, it sounded worried. It sounded panicked.

“My god, she’s alive! I must get her inside… who could have left her in a ditch like this?”

Weightlessness… I was being carried. There was an arm around my back, and another under my knees. It felt like every part of me was made of solid lead. I tried to speak but all that got out was little bits of wind past my lips.

“Don’t worry child… I’ll find out whatever has been done to you…” Angélique could see the young girl trying to move her lips and caught a slight odor. “Are… are you drunk?” She kept rushing to her house. No doubt about it, the girl’s breath smelt of vin. Her clothes were also wrong too, making her seem even more slovenly. They looked like an adults’, but this girl couldn’t be past her teens.

I was inside now. I’m not sure where, but the arms that had carried me had brought me out of the cold. I felt my head and torso hit linen, and a few moments later, I felt my legs and arms, but it seemed they were on a time delay.

“Looks like the poor thing has wet herself… What an awful awful state… to be blitheringly drunk and to have fallen in a ditch in a complete state of utter miss-dress.” Angélique started to undress the girl and ran to get a cold cloth.

The darkness crept from the corners of my eyes once again. It was taking over the already blurred shadows of the room. Soon, things faded out.

Angélique tended to the girl well into the night. The poor thing was running a fever now but at least she was in fresh clothes. She’d dressed her in a night shirt, although meant for someone Angélique’s size, it was at least better then the saturated stuff she’d been wearing before. Still this girl was an oddity. As the school teacher, Angélique knew every teen this child’s age in Rouen . Was this girl a young runaway from another town? A little runaway with a drinking problem?

The pounding in my head woke me before the sun did. I groggily brought my hand up to paw at my forehead. At the same moment I attempted to open my eyes, but regretted it when I was met with bright golden light. I groaned and covered my eyes till the throbbing stopped for a moment.

I slowly opened my eyes once more and let them adjust to the room. It was a modest house, with wood floors and hazelnut colored furniture. There were fresh flowers about and a general clean order to the place. I did my best to remember how I’d gotten here.

I started to roll out of bed, but came upon a shock. Looking down at the blanket, I saw a large wet patch. It looked like someone had spilt a large glass of water on my lower half. I lifted up the blanket and found white sheets the same way, only… the patch was a little more yellow… then it hit me. It wasn’t water. My eyes popped open and a gasp escaped my lips. I threw off the sheets next and found a girly nightshirt in the same state.

“What in the name…” I stared down at my lower half… It was… it was wet. Had… Had I wet the bed? My eyes wandered a little farther, and I noticed something else out of place. My legs didn’t seem long enough. Not only that, they weren’t covered with short hair like they were supposed to be.

I brought my hands to my face. My head was throbbing again, and it wasn’t going to get better. I could feel I didn’t have my normal stubble, my face was smooth, more then smooth. I kept feeling on up, till I reach my hair. I didn’t have my spikey short hair, I had long silk hair. My hand kept tracing it all the way out till I could hold a long straw-colored strand of it before my eyes.

I burst from the bed, tripping, hitting a dresser, bumping the door upon, basically flying like a blind bat out of hell. I saw a bathroom at the end of the hall and made for it. Inside I looked up into a mirror, it was a little high on me.

Starring back at me was not a 22-year-old, no, staring back was blonde haired girl. I pulled the hair out of my face and stared at the gaped mouth reflection. It… was a mean trick… I leaned in turning my head, the reflection did the same. I turned the other way, staring as deep into those unfamiliar green eyes as I could. Who are you… I was grasping… hoping…. needing to find me. Because I certainly wasn’t here now.

I let out a scream. The type of scream you’d see in a movie. Tears came to my eyes as I backed away from the mirror.

“What’s happening to me!” I yelled in a foreign, girlish voice. I heard a startled response in another room down the hall. A young woman came out running to me.

“Are you okay?! Oh no, I shouldn’t have left you alone like this in a strange house…”

She was trying to console me in French, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. She had long brown hair, and a pretty face, but it didn’t penetrate my extreme state of shock. She tried to hug me close but I backed away. Her eyes looked at me worriedly.

“You… oh poor thing… looks like you wet yourself again… just how much wine did you drink?”

We stood in a stand off. Tears kept coming, she kept staring. Eventually my well had dried up and I was just standing still with a heavy dry crying shake. The woman put her hand on my shoulder and did her best to look concerned.

“What… what happened to me? What did you do to me?” I choked out. The woman looked at me strangely.

“You’re… you’re American? Maybe that explains the drinking. Do you speak French? I can’t speak English.”

I heard “parlez-vous français?” somewhere in her speech. I knew that phrase. I answered “no parlez-vous français…”

The woman nodded and took my hand. She walked us back to the room I’d been in and let go of my hand. She stripped the bed of sheets and blanket and put them in a basket in the hall. She came back and pulled the nightshirt off me. I shrieked in surprise, although I shouldn’t have been. I was… well equipped as a girl. I couldn’t really tell what age because I didn’t know developmental stages of girls, but I could see I was somewhere in the middle of it.

The lady came back in with another night shirt and fresh pair of panties. She handed them to me and I blushed and ran back off the bathroom. I don’t know why I did… I think it was because… I needed to cry again. Which I did.

There was a knock at the door. I got dressed again and opened it, while drying my eyes with my balled hand.

“Poor thing. Whatever you went through last night, looks like you had a hard time of it. Would you like some breakfastt?”

“I… I don’t understand you.”

The woman looked a little pressed. She realized a little fuller that communication between us would be difficult.

“Venez avec moi (come with me),” the lady said. She grabbed my hand even though I still didn’t get what she wanted. We went downstairs into a nice kitchen. The place was a little small and over crowded with stuff, mostly books. The living room, den, kitchen, library and study seemed to just occupy the main floor of the house as a single room. The lady lead me over to a table and had me sit down, while she went to a fridge.

“I guess it won’t really do much good to ask you what happened last night since you can’t speak French huh?” she looked for an answer.

French gibberish, I stared at her blankly.

“Thought as much… well,” Angélique pointed to herself, “I’m

Angélique.”

The pointing and the phrase “Je suis,” coupled with the name

Angélique was fairly self-explainitory. Her name was

Angélique. I pointed to myself. “Je suis Anthony.”

“Anthony? Anthony is a boy’s name. No, tell me your real name.”

Angélique didn’t look satisfied with my answer, in fact she was shaking her head. I realized my name didn’t really match my new gender. I shrugged and tried to think of something French. The only thing that came to mind was that stupid song.

“Je suis Alouette,” I said.

“Alouette? Oh how cute, named after a bird! That does suit you well you little drinker gone drifter you. You gave me a hell of a scare last night.”

I think Angélique somehow thought that if she talked at me long enough, a light switch for the French language would just flip on and I’d be able to talk to her just like any one else of her countrymen… er… women as the case may be.

Angélique made me some buttered toast and orange juice. She made herself some after she’d set a plate down before me. I was famished so I tore at it like a jackal on the Serengeti.

“Good god, I’d heard American’s were snobbish, but never little animals.”

Her eyes staring at me in mild shock told me that I should probably eat the food a little slower. I did slowed down and she started too eat too. I took a moment to think my situation over. Somehow I wasn’t in my own body anymore, that or my body had been transformed into a young girl. My company led me to believe I was still in France …

“Oh crap! My bus! They leave in the morning!” I looked outside. It was morning now. They’d be looking for me, my friends would be wondering where I was last night.

“What’s wrong?”

I jumped up from the table and made a bee line for the door. I felt a hand grab at my nightshirt.

“You can’t go out like that! You’re just in a nightshirt. It’s not proper! I can’t in good conscience let you run out and get another bottle of wine.”

“Let me go! I have to get to my friends… I have to get to English speakers so I can straighten this nightmare out!!!”