Commitment Hour lop-2

by James Alan Gardner

  Or maybe, I thought to myself, her female body has a male soul inside and he's hiding under a feminine masquerade.

  The thought made me sick — not that it might be true, but that I had a mind which found it so easy to imagine Cappie was trying to deceive people. What was wrong with me?

  She took a step into the room, then stopped and suddenly looked around: at the paintings, the dusty mementos, the jars of cremated heretics. "Someone should burn this place," she muttered.

  "It's a memorial to the Patriarch!" I said, shocked. "Even if you don't like some of the things he did, you have to respect the history."

  "Do I?" She lifted one of the jars of ashes and shook it. The feathery gray flakes inside flew around like snow. "Rashid's going to be disappointed when he talks to Embrun."

  I was glad for the change of topic — partly because I had no urge to argue about the Patriarch, partly because it meant Cappie was afraid of coming to the point, just like I was.

  "Rashid is only investigating the murder out of duty," I told her. "The mystery he really wants to solve is Tober Cove. Master Crow and Mistress Gull. How it all works. You know what I mean?"

  She nodded. "Maybe the Patriarch had a point when he started burning scientists." She shook the jar again. "Since Rashid arrived, I've been seeing the cove through outsider eyes, and it all looks so… clumsy. Like we've made everything up and are just pretending to believe what we say. About the gods and Birds Home, about everything. I'm afraid he'll see through it somehow, have a mundane explanation for the things that make us special."

  "Rashid won't explain away anything," I said to Cappie. "Before the Patriarch, other scientists came to the cove. They blustered about, got in everyone's way, and still went home mumbling."

  "None of the other scientists were Spark Lords," Cappie replied. She turned the jar upside down and watched for a moment as the ashes filtered down like sand in an hourglass. "You know the Sparks have dealings with people or things off-planet. Rashid has more resources than any normal scientist."

  "Still, what can he find? The way we change sex really is the work of the gods. Right?"

  She didn't answer.

  "Right, Cappie?" I repeated.

  After a pause, she sighed. "Fullin, you are the one who should become priestess. And Patriarch's Man, for that matter. You have more faith than I do. Or you ask fewer questions."

  "You think Rashid might find something?"

  "I think you were raised by a Southerner, Fullin. A kind-hearted Southerner who didn't want to step on Tober toes, and bent over backward never to cast doubt on our gods."

  "And you were raised by your father," I replied, "who has all kinds of strange notions that he calls philosophy."

  "True." Abruptly, she set the jar of ashes back on its shelf. "This isn't what I want to talk about."

  "Oh." I felt my scalp prickle with dread at what might happen in the next few minutes. "Okay," I told her. "Talk."

  She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she lowered her eyes and suddenly reached out to finger the sleeve of the Patriarch's coat of many colors. The dyes had faded over the years, and the cloth seemed as thin as a spiderweb.

  "I just want the truth," Cappie said softly. "Soon I have to make the most important decision of my life, and I need to know the truth. No holding back. If you don't love me… I don't know, maybe it'll be a relief to hear you say it. Probably not, but still. Being hurt and angry will go away little by little. But if you let me Commit without telling me the truth… that's wrong, Fullin, you know it's wrong. I don't deserve that from you."

  I let out my breath slowly. She was right — a gentleman can't leave a lady hanging forever. "Okay," I said. "The truth. The absolute truth. As I understand it."

  Her hand tightened into a fist, crushing the fabric of the coat's sleeve.

  "The truth," I said hurriedly, "is that my female half loves you. Loves your male half anyway. Loves you for real. Last night when we… that was her. Me. You know what I mean. Steck says that in the time leading up to Commitment Hour, the gods send our other selves to take over for… well, haven't you been possessed by your male half in the past twenty-four hours?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "When?"

  "You're the one who's talking, Fullin."

  "Okay. I guess we'll get to that. Later." I couldn't meet her gaze; but when I looked away, there was nothing to see but that painting of the Patriarch, poised with his burning torch. "So my female half… me… even if I became Mocking Priestess and couldn't marry you, my female half would like to stay with you forever."

  "There's a way that can be arranged," Cappie said.

  "How?"

  She shook her head. "Later. Tell me what your male half thinks. What you think. Of me."

  "I think…" Feeling suffocated, I had to take a deep breath. "It hasn't been a good year for us. And men are ambitious, they want to make something of themselves…"

  "They want to play violin down-peninsula and fuck any woman who makes herself available."

  I couldn't answer that. By the strict definition of sexual intercourse, I had never actually cheated on her… but rationales like that sound good in your own head, then wilt like old spinach when exposed to air.

  "If you want me to tell the truth," I said, "don't make it hard for me to speak it. I'm just saying that as male… as a man, I'm not sure what I want. For one thing, I don't know about becoming priestess: I look at Leeta and ask if she's what I want to be for the rest of my life. To be perfectly honest, she's a little ridiculous with the milkweeds and the bear claws… and her whole point of view — as if dancing in the forest could affect the rotation of the Earth. I believe in the gods, you know I do, but those priestess rituals… what can I say? Not that I want to be Hakoore's disciple either."

  "Forget that, Fullin." Cappie suddenly leaned in close. "All I need to know is whether you want to belong to me. Can you let yourself be mine? Male or female, that's the thing I never feel from you. I know when you want to bed me. I know when you're glad for my company. I know how you're happy to live with someone who'll do most of the chores, because you've convinced me it's important you have time to play your music. But are you ready to be mine? Whether or not we can be married. You say you love me… or at least your female half does. But can you give yourself to me? Can you let yourself go without hiding behind anything?"

  I didn't answer.

  After a while, Cappie said, "I'm going to Commit female, Fullin. My male half needs you too much."

  She opened her hand to let go of the Patriarch's coat. The sleeve fell — limp cloth, worn and faded.

  "Just so you know," she added, "in case I end up as the next priestess… Leeta says there's an unwritten law that the priestess and Patriarch's Man must secretly get married. The Patriarch saw it as a sneaky way to 'subjugate' women under male command. That's the Patriarch for you. But Hakoore and Leeta have been happy with each other over the years. I hope the next Patriarch's Man, whoever he is, won't be someone who makes me feel so cryingly lonesome."

  Without looking back Cappie strode away, disappearing out of the hall and out of Mayoralty House.

  SIXTEEN

  A Dish for the Traitors

  I intended to wait five minutes — give Cappie plenty of time to leave, even if she ran into the mayor, or Rashid and Steck. But the atmosphere of the Patriarch's Hall oppressed me: the cloying smell of dust, the pointless faded finery, the picture of the couple swearing their love on the Patriarch's Hand. When I was young, this room seemed full of treasures; now I realized it was a place that adult Tobers sent their children but never went themselves. After only sixty seconds, I fairly ran away from the ominous mementos, as if ghosts were chasing me — down the corridor and out to the wide front steps where Rashid and Steck sat with Embrun in the sunshine.

  Steck looked at me quizzically when I arrived, as if she could claim some right to ask what had happened between Cappie and me. She couldn't; by my age, boys didn't confide in their real mo
thers, let alone Neut strangers. If we had been alone, Steck might have pressed me… but Rashid was interrogating Embrun, and showed no sign of acknowledging my return, let alone allowing the conversation to be diverted to my personal life.

  From the sound of it, Embrun's information about Bonnakkut hadn't taken much time to tell. Rashid's questions had already shifted to his real interest, learning more about Birds Home and the Tober sex change process. For that, Embrun could actually be helpful — he had Committed the previous summer, so the memory was still fresh in his head.

  "And it's a disembodied voice?" Rashid was saying. "Asking, 'Male, female, or both?' "

  "Right you are, master," Embrun replied. He had sprawled himself on the house's cracked concrete steps in an effort to look casual, as if he talked to Spark Lords all the time. I noticed though that he seldom looked in Rashid's direction. It wasn't humility; he was just devoting his attention to Steck, ogling her in that deepcut neckline.

  I could have punched him in the nose.

  "So," Rashid said, "if it's not too personal, could you tell me why you chose male?"

  Embrun glanced at me with the look of someone trying to decide if he can get away with lying. Finally he decided to tell the truth. "I didn't have much choice, did I?" he answered. "My female half got kicked stupid. I couldn't live like that."

  He proceeded to tell about the accident and its consequences, embellishing details here and there, because he seldom got a chance to share his story with newcomers. The way I originally heard it, Girl-Embrun had been teasing the horse when it kicked her — poking it with a stick. In the tale Embrun told Rashid, however, his female half's motives were far more noble: trying to pull out a thorn that had speared the horse's rump, making it bleed.

  Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of any local vegetation with thorns growing as high as a horse's flank. In fact the stupid animal had nowhere to pick up a thorn at all, unless it decided to sit on the mayor's rose bushes. Still, I couldn't see the harm in letting Embrun glamorize himself, provided he didn't go too far.

  Besides, it was interesting to hear him describe what it was like to be… well, brain-damaged. Not that he could remember much from his female years: just moments of emotion, pain at touching a hot stove, or fear and confusion one time when she got lost in the woods. Mostly, those years had just disappeared from his memory, like muddy dreams that are gone when you wake.

  As Embrun continued, Rashid took on the expression of a man mulling over a profound revelation. When it was over, he murmured, "You received the injury as a five-year-old girl. You switched to a boy at six and poof, you were fine — except that you couldn't remember much of the past year. Then when you returned to being a girl at seven, you were… disadvantaged again?"

  "That's right, master," Embrun nodded enthusiastically. "I'm not lying, am I, Fullin?"

  "Not on that," I agreed. "His girl half truly had her brains jarred loose by that kick. Her body kept growing after, but her mind stayed stuck where it was."

  "So your female body was damaged, but your male body wasn't," Rashid said. He turned to me. "Is it the same for everyone else in Tober Cove? I mean, injuries to your female body don't affect your male, and vice versa?"

  "Of course," I said. Holding out my arm, I pointed to a pale pink scar just above my wrist. "That's a gash I got as a kid, exploring a half-collapsed house on the other side of town — I didn't see a nail sticking out of a board. My male body has the wound, but my female one doesn't."

  "This is amazing!" Rashid said.

  "Oh, that's nothing, master," Embrun told him. "What about Yailey the Hunter? She's got my head-kick beat."

  "Who's Yailey the Hunter?"

  "Eight years ago now," Embrun answered, "Yailey drowned. He was sixteen — out diving ropeless with a bunch of other boys off some rocks up the coast. Tried some fancy dive he'd read about in an OldTech book, and fucked the… I mean, he made an awful mistake. Hit his head on the way down. And the thing was, he'd gone off a ways from his friends so's he could practice the dive without them laughing at him. By the time they came to check on him, Yailey was face down and floating.

  "The other boys were in tears as they carried him into town," Embrun went on. "I remember that much, even if it was one of my dull years. Scared me, all that wailing. Anyhow, the drowning happened in late spring. Then solstice came, the children headed off to Birds Home, and when we came back, guess who was tagging along with us? Girl Yailey."

  "You mean," said Rashid, "her male body died, but a female version of her came back at solstice?"

  "That's what happened," I assured him. "Yailey herself lit the funeral pyre for her male body. Hakoore delayed the cremation until he found out whether Yailey came back from Birds Home — apparently this has happened before."

  "Where is this Yailey?" Rashid asked, ablaze with enthusiasm. "I must talk to her."

  "Sorry, master," Embrun said, "she's hard to find. Dying like that upset her — not that she remembered it. Everything went black the moment she hit her head. But it still nettled under her skin."

  "And knowing Tober Cove," Steck muttered, "people treated her like a monstrosity."

  "I don't remember anyone ragging on her," Embrun said — untruthfully, because he himself called her names in the schoolyard: Hey, Corpse-girl! Mistress Want! "But Yailey turned more and more edgy as time went on. Especially close to the next solstice."

  "Hakoore decided to get dogmatic," I put in, "and declared she'd have to go to Birds Home when the time came."

  "It wasn't just Hakoore," said Embrun. "Yailey was only seventeen; she hadn't even had her child by Master Crow. A lot of people thought she should go back to Birds Home and do everything right. But Yailey was afraid she'd get there and come back dead… or Neut or something else. On Commitment Eve, she ran off into the forest and she's been out there since. That's why they call her Yailey the Hunter. Now and then she sneaks back to her parents' house to trade meat and furs for things she needs. Officially though, Hakoore has declared her unwelcome in town."

  Steck snorted. "Because she refused to follow his nasty little orders."

  Embrun looked surprised at Steck's anger. "Hakoore just doesn't want kids thinking they can avoid the proper switchover. Hell, there were sure times I didn't want to go to Birds Home. When I was boy, thinking how the gods would make me back into a girl with my brain all clotted — some days, I felt like hiding so I'd miss the trip. And the year I knew I'd come back pregnant… that terrified me. Not for myself, you understand, but for the baby. My female half couldn't be a proper mother, could she, master?"

  I doubted that Embrun really worried about the baby more than himself, but he still had a point: switching sexes could be a scary thing. In the weeks before my pregnancy solstice, I considered haring off down-peninsula — becoming a traveling minstrel rather than a mother. The thought of my body harboring some alien little being, like a parasite inside me… and suffering all the pains of pregnancy, the dangers of labor… yes, I contemplated taking the easy way out. The idea must have crossed a lot of people's minds.

  Maybe Hakoore had a point when he took an inflexible stand against Yailey. The cove's way of life depended on a tough Patriarch's Man who ensured that teenagers didn't dodge their commitments.

  It made me wince. I was making excuses for Hakoore. I was arguing for the necessity of the Patriarch's Man.

  Who was secretly forced to marry the Mocking Priestess. To become hers.

  Why was everything so complicated all of a sudden?

  Rashid declared he had run out of questions for Embrun. "Stay here," he told Steck and me. "I'll just walk our friend a little way back to town."

  He and Embrun started across the parking lot, Rashid's boots making more sticky sounds on the hot pavement. As soon as they were out of earshot, I asked Steck, "What's Rashid up to?"

  "He plans to give Embrun some money," Steck replied, "and he doesn't want to do it where the mayor or I can see. He's afraid we'll think he's a sucker for
paying off such an obvious little worm… and he's right."

  "So Embrun didn't have any real evidence about Bonnakkut's murder?"

  Steck shook her head. "Just that his dog had some kind of barking fit about the time Bonnakkut was killed."

  "Embrun's dog has barking fits five times a day," I told her. "The poor animal liked female Embrun a lot more than the male version; it's missed her dreadfully since Embrun Committed."

  "Speaking of Commitment," Steck said, "how did it go with Cappie?"

  I should have expected the question — Steck trying to play the attentive mother. "Cappie and I have our troubles," I muttered.

  "Would it help if you talked to Zephram?" Steck asked. "I know we agreed you'd stay with me, but if you wanted to talk to… your father… if you wanted to talk to him alone…"

  "It wouldn't help," I said, mostly out of stubborn pride. "Thanks for the offer though."

  "If you need to talk to anyone…" Steck didn't finish the sentence. "When you face Commitment Hour, it's best not to have conflicts weighing on your mind."

  "Is that what happened to you?"

  "I made a choice," Steck said. "That's all. A choice to be new."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  She glanced at me but looked away again quickly. "Zephram said he told you how we got together: in the Silence of Mistress Snow. Did he tell you that no one else in town chose to visit me?"

  I nodded.

  Steck shrugged. "There were reasons for that — reasons I was living alone in my final year before Commitment. I hadn't gone out of my way to make myself popular. Things were better when I was with Zephram, but I couldn't imagine he'd stay with me long. I convinced myself his feelings were… oh, just his way of mourning, I guess. He was vulnerable because he missed his wife. Once he got past the worst of his grief, he wouldn't need me anymore — that's what I thought. That he'd wake one day and wonder why he was spending time with a girl who couldn't give…"