Commitment Hour

by James Alan Gardner

  Steck’s house.

  He knew Steck vaguely, just as he knew almost everyone in the village by now. Zephram had nodded to Steck that afternoon when he visited Leeta; Steck had been puttering with herbs on Leeta’s kitchen table, making mint-scented packets for unknown priestess purposes. To Zephram, Steck was just Leeta’s apprentice, a keen-eyed girl of twenty who carried herself like a spear, even if she was seven months pregnant with Master Crow’s child.

  Zephram approached the door with a flush of bashfulness, embarrassed by the boldness of walking unannounced into someone else’s house…a young woman’s house at that. It seemed indecent, a middle-aged man becoming this girl’s “protector”; and now that he thought about her, she grew imposing in his mind—not just a girl, but a beautiful one, alarmingly so. Wasn’t it disloyal to his late wife to “claim” a girl like Steck so soon after Anne’s death? But he knew what Anne would say about that. You’re being an ass. Do what’s right and don’t invent complications.

  Even so, he found himself hoping Steck was still out on her own Visit, so he could scurry in, toss a stick on her fire, then rush away into the night.

  She was home: seated on a rocking chair in front of the fireplace, tucked under a down coverlet that came up to her throat. Her jaw was clenched as if she was fighting the shivers. Zephram didn’t think the cabin felt cool, but Steck was pregnant and might suffer chills more easily. Without thinking, Zephram closed the door behind him to shut out the cold. When he turned back, it struck him, I’m alone with her now; then he mentally kicked himself and set about fulfilling his new commitment to take care of her.

  He made tea.

  She watched him with firelight reflecting in her eyes, the expression on her face unreadable. Several times Zephram was on the verge of speaking, to ask if she was all right, and whether the jar of apple-scented flakes was really tea or just potpourri; but he remembered Mistress Snow’s Silence and held his tongue. The only sound was the soft crackle of the hearth, with Zephram’s split of wood atop the flames. He took his time hanging the kettle on its hook above the fire—he knew that once it was put in place, he’d have nothing else to do but avoid Steck’s gaze until the water boiled.

  And yet he had to look at her eventually: her fire-flickered eyes, her mouth set as if she were trying not to let her teeth chatter. When he summoned what he hoped was a comforting smile, she didn’t smile back; she only nodded toward a chair on the other side of the hearth. Zephram took the hint and sat.

  The chair was angled to look directly at the girl rather than the fire. This would be Leeta’s seat, he realized, when the priestess came over to bestow wisdom on her apprentice—Leeta was the sort to aim herself face-on to anyone she was talking with. Zephram had no choice but to aim face-on too…and Steck stared back in the midnight hush, with snow drifting down outside.

  He found himself prickling with the hope she would make love to him…that she would throw off the coverlet to reveal she was naked underneath, and that she would rise from the chair with unashamed deliberateness, she would walk slowly to him, and in the thick silence of the night…

  (“Hey!” I said from the other side of the breakfast table, “do I need to hear this?”

  “What’s wrong?” Zephram asked. “One reason I like Tober Cove is how open you are about sexual feelings.”

  “Yeah, but…” It was one thing for me to talk about my fantasies, and quite another for my father to blather away.

  “I’m not trying to upset you,” Zephram said. “I only wanted…it was the first time since Anne died that I had thoughts about another woman—”

  “Just tell what happened,” I interrupted, “and skip the daydreams. Unless Steck actually took off the coverlet and things got…”

  “No,” my father answered. “She was shivering cold and seven months pregnant.”)

  Zephram might have allowed himself to imagine the touch of Steck’s soft skin, but that was only a tiny chink in his armor of mourning—Anne was still too much with him. After a time, he found he could superimpose his lost wife over the reality of Steck’s eyes and the fantasy of her body…so that when he pictured making love with this girl, he was actually remembering Anne at the same age, and the sweet honeymoon caresses of long ago.

  Soon enough, Steck’s kettle boiled. Zephram stirred himself to find mugs—good clay mugs fired in the local kiln—then set one filled with steeping tea on a small table beside the girl. Steck took the mug immediately and pulled it under the coverlet…cradling it in her hands, Zephram supposed, although the cup was burning hot. Perhaps Steck rested it on the roundness of her stomach, where the heat would flow to the child within; perhaps that felt soothing to her. Zephram didn’t know what pregnant women found comforting: he and Anne had never managed to have children.

  While his own tea steeped, Zephram poked up the fire and slid in another piece of wood. Now that the cabin door was closed, the room was warming up: warm enough that he would soon have to decide whether to take off his coat or just go home. He didn’t want to leave while Steck still looked close to freezing, but he also didn’t want to outstay his welcome. The houses outside lay dark now; all the other Visits were clearly finished, and the visitors gone back to bed. He wondered if the cove’s etiquette required Visits to be as short as possible…especially since talk was forbidden till dawn. Zephram was preparing himself for a conversation with Steck, spoken entirely with silent gestures—Shall I go? Will you be all right?—when the girl slipped off the coverlet and stood up.

  She wore pure white: a white pleated dress so long it touched the floor, and a white wool sweater knit as line as a spider web. The clothes were impractical for life in the cove—sure to get dirty, hard to clean—and the bottom hem of the dress was already soggy from traipsing through snow outdoors. Steck must have worn this outfit when she went on her own Visit…as if she were pretending to be Mistress Snow Herself, come to bring cold serenity to the world.

  The girl still held the mug of tea in her hands. She lifted it and sipped, her eyes on Zephram. With anyone else, the gesture might have been coy or seductively blatant—when I was female, I used that move myself—but Zephram assured me Steck was simply using it as a “thank you”: wordlessly showing she was grateful for his efforts. He took this as a cue to leave and gave her a good-bye nod; but she held up her hand and motioned him back to his chair.

  Zephram sat—the wary way you sit on the edge of your seat when you don’t know what’s happening and some part of your mind wants the option of retreat. Steck walked back to her bed and knelt beside it, giving Zephram a twinge of sexual panic…or perhaps hope. But she was only crouching down to pull out something stored under the bed: a violin case.

  (When Zephram said that, it jolted me. Yes, Steck had played violin in the marsh; I’d thought, however, that the Neut had taken up music during Its time down south. If Steck had already been a violinist twenty years ago in Tober Cove…)

  Zephram watched as Steck carefully took out the instrument and tuned it—not sounding the notes with the bow or even pizzicato plucks, but with delicate rubs of her finger that barely set the strings vibrating. The sound would never carry outside the house, which was obviously the girl’s intention; Zephram didn’t know if Mistress Snow’s Silence applied to violins as well as voices, but Steck clearly didn’t want to be heard rippling the quiet.

  When she was happy with the tuning, Steck came back, pulled the rocking chair close to my father—close enough that their knees touched—then she settled down to play. She didn’t tuck the instrument under her chin; instead, she held it like a guitar, resting it on the gentle roundness of her stomach. Steck let her eyes lock with Zephram’s for a moment…then she bent her head and softly stroked the strings.

  The tune was “Lonely Hung the Clouds,” a song I knew well myself. Wherever I played, you could count on the song being requested at least once a night…partly because the melody was dreamy and beautiful, partly because the sentiment struck a responsive chord in many liste
ners. The first half of each verse describes how the singer has “lived with empty hands” and held “many a conversation with cold bare walls”; the rest of each verse is a surprised and grateful confession that everything has changed—presumably because she has found someone to love, although that’s never said explicitly.

  Lonely hung the clouds

  But now the light has come.

  Cappie sometimes sang the piece to me when she was a man…not that she was ever directly lonesome, but in her male years she brooded about the future possibility. I could imagine Zephram listening to the same tune in the stillness of Steck’s cabin: each note brushed out of the strings so softly it barely had the strength to cross the small gap between Steck’s body and his. Notes whispered in the still and magic dark. The entire world shrank to a man and woman, their knees touching in the firelight.

  I didn’t need to hear any more of the story; I could guess how the rest unfolded. Nothing would happen that night—Steck was too pregnant, and Zephram too burdened by the memory of Anne to abandon himself immediately. In a few months, the child in Steck’s belly would be born. In a few months, the wound in Zephram’s heart would heal to the point where his pulse could race again. They would be lovers before spring…and remain together until summer solstice.

  When Steck Committed Neut.

  When she was exiled from the cove.

  When Zephram had no choice but to adopt Steck’s newborn child.

  “I was the baby,” I said. “Steck’s baby, right? That’s why you’re telling me this?”

  “Of course,” Zephram answered. “Of course.”

  TEN

  An Assembly for Father Ash and Mother Dust

  “My mother is a Neut?” The words choked out of me.

  “Your mother was a woman,” Zephram answered. “A troubled woman with a desperately caring heart. Not that anyone realized how vulnerable she was, except me and Leeta. Steck was too independent for Tober Cove to understand her. There was a reason she was living alone in one of those log cabins that are supposed to be for couples. I’ve always hoped she had an easier time down south.”

  Zephram hadn’t heard Steck spilling out resentment beside Leeta’s campfire: “Driven down-peninsula to cities we don’t understand, where we’re despised as freaks. Shunned by friends, separated from my lover and child…” No, Steck hadn’t had an easier time. Being a Neut and being so chip-on-the-shoulder “independent” had killed all chance of a welcome from strangers.

  “And when Steck left,” I said, “she didn’t take me with her?”

  “She tried,” Zephram answered, “but there was a mob on her heels. They ripped you out of her arms, then drove her off. The Warriors Society harried her through the forest and mounted a guard to make sure she didn’t come back. She tried once anyway and got speared in the stomach; the Warriors wouldn’t say whether she was dead or not, which means she got away. If they’d actually killed her, they would have paraded her head through town. But that was the last anyone saw of Steck.”

  “You never tried to find her?”

  Zephram shook his head. “I had to take care of you. It was Hakoore’s ruling—yes, I’d be allowed to stay and yes, I could adopt you, but only if I swore never to remove you from the cove. You’re a Tober, Fullin, and a child of Master Crow; Hakoore refused to expose your god-given blood to the ‘materialistic contamination’ of the South. The vicious old bastard made me choose between you and Steck…and I knew what Steck would want. Her own parents were dead. If I didn’t take you, you’d go straight into the hands of the people who exiled her.”

  “And no one ever told me the truth.”

  “People thought it would be kinder not to. They were eager to be nice to you after the hysteria died down— after the evil Neut was gone and they began to think about what shits they had been. They twisted themselves double pampering you, so I’d tell them that what they’d done wasn’t so bad.” Zephram sighed. “I’m not a man who can hold a grudge, Fullin. Heaven knows I tried, for Steck’s sake; but I couldn’t stay angry with them, not as long as I should have. I let myself go along with the lie.”

  He closed his eyes tight, fighting with something inside him. Guilt? Anger? In a moment he pushed the feeling down and spoke rapidly. “So. Steck was gone and the whole town decided to tell you your mother was a paragon of virtue—accidentally drowned and nothing more.”

  A question popped into my head: “Does Cappie know about this?” It surprised me that I could care what she thought, but I did.

  “She shouldn’t know,” Zephram answered. “All the children were supposed to be told the same story—otherwise, they might spill the truth to you. It’s possible her parents told her when she was old enough to keep a secret…but why would they? The town just wanted to forget.”

  He pushed his chair away from the table, though he’d hardly touched his breakfast. Taking his plate, he began to stash the uneaten food in the ice chest. “I suppose,” he said without looking at me, “Leeta decided to mention Steck to you because it’s Commitment Day. She’s always regretted that she couldn’t protect her apprentice. Leeta brought up Steck’s name, but didn’t tell you the truth?”

  “No.”

  “She must have lost her nerve—wanted to tell you the whole story before you Committed, then couldn’t do it. That was always Leeta’s problem: she thinks a Mocking Priestess should be defiance personified, but it just isn’t in her.” His voice was less accusing than his words; Zephram wanted to be outrage personified, but that wasn’t in him.

  “Maybe after you’ve Committed,” he said, “we’ll go south together to see if we can find her. Steck was a good woman, Fullin, she really was. The rest of the town were intimidated by her—even before she Committed—but Steck was a good gentle woman.”

  A good gentle woman who had tried to kill Cappie and me with a machete. Of course, before she attacked, she’d asked if either of us was named Fullin…and what would have happened if I’d answered truthfully? Would she have fallen on my neck with slobbery Neut kisses? Oh my baby, I’ve come back to see your Commitment!

  That had to be her reason for coming to the cove on Commitment Eve. She’d kept track of the years; she knew this was my time. I could imagine she had spent every second of her exile plotting how to return for this day. Attaching herself to a Spark Lord for protection. Persuading him to come to the cove to observe the Commitment ceremonies. Did Rashid even know why Steck had brought him here? Or had she manipulated him to the point that Rashid thought this was his own idea?

  Suddenly, I felt an irresistible need to pick up Waggett and hold him close. My son. When I took him in my arms, he snuggled against my chest out of reflex, not needing me, just making himself comfortable because comfort was his due. Only a few minutes before I had resolved not to get carried away with cuddling, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to protect him. I don’t know if I wanted to protect him from Steck, returned to the cove like the corpse of a murder victim seeking revenge…or if I wanted to save him from what happened twenty years ago, when a child was ripped from its mother and both became lost.

  Trying not to hug him too fiercely, I nuzzled Waggett’s sweet-smelling hair. He ignored me, as if his life would always be so full of kisses, there was no need to acknowledge every one.

  The Council Hall bells rang. Both Zephram and I looked toward the clock hanging above the fireplace: a silver-embossed treasure with black metal hands shaped into crow feathers. Zephram had commissioned the piece from a clockmaker down south, in honor of Master Crow. Hakoore pouted for a while when the clock arrived, saying it verged on blasphemy…but even Hakoore realized he was being childish.

  The hour was only seven o’clock, far too early for the usual Commitment Day festivities. Still, the bells kept ringing—calmly, not the fast clang-clang-clang used to warn of danger—so we had to conclude that the mayor was calling an impromptu town meeting.

  “What’s going on?” Zephram asked. He didn’t expect an answer, so I didn’t
invent one. The mayor’s summons could only be something to do with Steck and Lord Rashid; why else would Teggeree disrupt the usual Commitment Day schedule?

  “You’d better go down to the hall and see what’s happening,” I said to Zephram. “I’ll finish up here.”

  He looked at me in surprise. “What needs finishing up?”

  “Cleaning…you know.” I waved my hand vaguely.

  “You’ve never volunteered to clean anything in your life,” he said. “Not unless you were trying to get out of something worse. Do you know something about this meeting?”

  “No.”

  “And you aren’t curious?”

  “Sure I am.” I tried to think of anything I could say that wouldn’t sound suspect. Truth is, Dad, my Neut mother is in town and I don’t want to meet her. “It’s just that…”

  My voice trailed off.

  Zephram rolled his eyes. “It’s just that you want the house to yourself so you can search for the Commitment Day presents I bought you. Isn’t that right?”

  I immediately put on a sheepish look, as if Zephram had hit the nail on the head. He laughed and gave me a playful swat. “You don’t find out till noon, boy. Now let’s go see what’s up.”

  Acknowledging defeat, I moved toward the door while hefting Waggett into a better carrying position…then I stopped. If I walked into the town square carrying the boy, Steck would see him. Steck had to know I had a child—all Tobers do by the time they reach Commitment Day. Did I want a Neut touching my boy? Could Steck have some demented plan to kidnap “her grandson”? Who knew what crazy ideas went through a Neut’s head?

  “Here,” I told Zephram, “why don’t you carry Waggett for a while?”

  “That sounds more like you,” he said. With a smile, Zephram took Waggett from me. The boy gave him a small hug—more recognition than I’d gotten. With a twitch of jealousy, I almost asked Zephram to give my child back…but it was better for Waggett if Steck didn’t know he was mine.