Commitment Hour

by James Alan Gardner

  Would that be my life if I became Hakoore’s disciple? And was Dorr now holding my hand because the idea baited some hook in her mind? Maybe Hakoore didn’t need to pressure her more than a nudge…not if she’d been waiting all her life for an excuse to approach me.

  Or maybe I was reading too much into simple hand-holding. This might just have been her unschooled attempt at being a good hostess…or perhaps sympathy for how her grandfather had bruised my knuckles at dawn.

  Sometimes I wish the gods had given us the ability to read each other’s minds. Alternating genitalia each year is nice, but there are questions it doesn’t begin to answer.

  The interior of Hakoore’s house smelled of Dorr’s dyes: dampish plants from onions to bloodwort, some fresh, some crinkling their way into the late stages of decomposition. I knew she kept her mixings in the basement—during my female years, I sometimes bought dyes here rather than make my own—but the odors barged their way out of the cellar with the determination of a drunkard, settling thickly into the cloth oversheets that covered all the furniture.

  Those oversheets were densely embroidered: a few with Dorr’s work (slanted horses stretched like taffy, winged spirits burying their faces in leaves), but mostly with the work of her mother. Dorr’s mother had been a meticulous needleworker; or more accurately, an obsessed one. From dawn to dusk, she filled her days with French knots, lazy daisies, and countless cross-stitches…literally filled the day, with no time spent on cooking, cleaning, or even getting dressed.

  No one ever told me what caused the mother’s compulsion—whether a friend had betrayed her, a lover died, or the gods spoke to her in voices that drowned out the rest of the world. Perhaps Hakoore had traumatized her with the Patriarch’s Hand, crushing her under its grip whenever she misbehaved. Whatever the reason, Dorr’s mother simply stitched with all her strength until the day Dorr turned twelve; then the mother went to the basement, drank a jugful of her most poisonous dyes, and choked her life away with smeary rainbow vomit. (“She must have dreamed of that death for years,” Zephram told me. “She must have dragged it along like a weight tied to her ankle, until it started dragging her.”)

  All of this may explain why Dorr seldom spoke, why she made the quilts she did, and why she passively submitted to her grandfather’s will…but I’m suspicious of glib hindsight analysis. It was too easy to say Dorr had slipped helplessly into her mad mother’s shoes. Dorr was not buffeted by irresistible winds in her mind; she just liked the role of someone shadowed by insanity. It shielded her. It excused her from small talk, and from her Great-Aunt Veen dropping hints that she wasn’t getting any younger. When Dorr’s baby by Master Crow died in a four-month miscarriage, Tober Cove accepted the death as the sort of bad luck that happened to Dorr.

  (Cappie actually slapped me when I whispered Dorr might have tried a sip of the plant dyes too. Tobers aren’t supposed to know there are vegetable extracts which can spill a fetus out of the womb before its time.)

  With all these thoughts running through my head, I found myself staring at Dorr more intently than I intended…and suddenly she turned, meeting my gaze with hers. She studied me for a moment, as if debating whether to break her silence and ask that most female of questions, “What are you thinking?” I saw no madness under that mad hair—simply a woman of deep and silent privacy, in the world, but not of it. Her lips parted and she took a breath to speak; but at that moment, a cough sounded across the room and Hakoore shuffled in through the doorway.

  “What now?” he snapped.

  I had broken eye contact with Dorr the moment I heard Hakoore coming, but I still felt as if I’d been caught in some guilty act. “Bonnakkut’s dead,” I blurted. “Murdered.”

  The fingers of Dorr’s free hand brushed lightly across my wrist. It seemed more like a caress than a gesture of shock at the news. “Will you take possession of the body?” I asked Hakoore.

  “Bonnakkut?” the old man said, with a tone so sharp he obviously thought I was lying. “Bonnakkut’s been murdered?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Rashid answered. “On a trail through the woods out…” He waved his hand in the direction of Zephram’s house.

  “Who murdered him?” Hakoore asked.

  “We don’t know,” Rashid said.

  Hakoore looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Where was that Bozzle of yours?”

  “With my father,” I said immediately. I don’t know if I was defending Steck because she was my mother or because I was her son.

  “With your father,” Hakoore repeated. “With her old…” He hissed in disgust. “Are there any devils left in hell, or have they all come to Tober Cove today?

  Rashid looked to me as if he expected an explanation of what the old snake meant. I ignored him. “You should take possession of the body now,” I told Hakoore. “It’s already attracting insects.”

  “Hmph.” Hakoore was obligated to collect the body as soon as possible, and he didn’t like it. Our Patriarch’s Man preferred to make other people dance to his tune; he had a reputation for hating deaths and births, because they came at odd hours and forced him into someone else’s schedule. “Has the doctor looked at the body?” he asked.

  “She says the man is dead,” Rashid answered dryly. “Her interest doesn’t extend further.”

  “Hmph,” Hakoore said again. He must have hoped to gain a few minutes by sending for Gorallin. “All right. If it has to be done. Woman!” he growled at Dorr. “Let go of that fool boy and get the stretcher. Wait, wait, where’s my bag?”

  Dorr pointed. The Patriarch’s Satchel, containing unguents and totems used in last rites, hung on the back of the front door. I’d seen it hanging there every time I visited the house—Hakoore must have known exactly where it was and just wanted to shout at someone who wasn’t a Spark Lord.

  While the old snake busied himself taking the bag off its hook, Dorr went for the stretcher…but she didn’t let go of my hand. Rather than make a scene trying to detach myself in front of the Knowledge-Lord, I went along with her: down the cellar steps and into the basement, where the smell of dyes increased to vinegar proportions.

  Since there were small glass windows high up one wall, we didn’t need a candle for light. Still, the large cellar workroom had an earthy dimness to it, with piles of shadow heaped up in clots wherever the sun didn’t reach through the windows. It struck me that maybe this faint darkness wasn’t the best place to have a witchy older woman clinging deliberately to my arm.

  “Fullin,” she whispered.

  Uh-oh.

  “The stretcher is over here,” she finished.

  She guided me to the gloomiest corner of the room, where the stretcher was propped against the wall. It was nothing fancy, just ordinary sail canvas slung between two carrying poles. Dorr gestured toward it and released my hand so I could carry it; she didn’t offer to help. I bundled up the load and hefted it off the floor, wishing the poles weren’t quite so heavy. Of course they had to be good stout wood, to bear the weight of the cove’s plumpest citizens without breaking. Still, the whole package made an awkward armload that took several readjustments before I finally had it under control.

  That’s when Dorr kissed me. Soft hands clutching my shoulders, then lips pressed against mine and her tongue slipping briefly inside before she stepped back a pace.

  “Dorr, don’t,” I said in a low voice.

  “Wasn’t that what you were expecting?” she whispered. “What you thought I was going to do?”

  “Well…yes.”

  “You thought I’d kiss you, so I did,” she said. “Heaven forbid you could ever be mistaken in reading a person.”

  “I was that obvious?”

  “You’re always obvious,” Dorr answered. “That’s why you’re interesting.”

  Not the kind of interest I ever wanted to provoke. “We should take the stretcher upstairs,” I said.

  She slipped back to give me room and motioned toward the steps. “Go ahead.”

  I adj
usted my load again and moved forward. As I passed her, she darted forward again: hands, lips, tongue. It was over in the blink of an eye, and Dorr eased away with a triumphant look on her face. “The first kiss was yours,” she said. “The second was mine.”

  THIRTEEN

  A Wife for the Dead Man

  The parents playing Catch in the street knew what it meant when the Patriarch’s Man walked through town with his stretcher. They fell silent and still, even as their children called, “Throw the ball! Throw the ball!” People looked at me or Dorr, their eyes asking, “Who?” No one had the nerve to speak the question out loud: no one until we passed the house of Vaygon the Seedster, and his wife Veen planted herself in front of us with the air of a woman who won’t budge until she gets an answer.

  Veen was Hakoore’s older sister; or rather she had been his older sister when Hakoore was a runny-nosed boy, and his older brother when Hakoore was an idolizing little girl. If anyone in the village was unimpressed with Hakoore’s hissing snake act, it was Veen.

  “Last rites?” she asked loudly. She had a surprisingly deep voice for a woman, even though old age had shrunk her body like moss drying on a rock. “Who’s dead, Hakoore?”

  With any other woman, the Patriarch’s Man might have snapped, “No concern of yours!” A pity for him that wouldn’t work with his sister; she’d be completely comfortable raising a scene, a harangue that would be recounted and inflated by gossip for weeks to come. “Bonnakkut,” Hakoore told her in a low voice, though he must have known that whispering wouldn’t keep the secret.

  “Bonnakkut!” Veen repeated, as naturally loud as thunder. At least four other people were standing close enough to hear, all of them wearing “I’d never eavesdrop” expressions that didn’t fool anybody. Within fifteen minutes, the whole town would know the news.

  “What did the fool boy do?” Veen asked. “Shoot himself with that gun?”

  Even though she was his sister, Hakoore hissed. No one was supposed to know about the gun, or about whatever other bribes Rashid doled out to the Council of Elders. Still, what did Hakoore expect? Veen’s husband was Vaygon, and Vaygon was an Elder; it went without saying Veen knew everything that happened behind the Council Hall’s closed door.

  If I’d been Hakoore, I’d have let Veen think whatever she wanted; but I suppose the Patriarch’s Man didn’t want the town to go wild with rumors about firearms. “Bonnakkut didn’t die from any gun!” Hakoore growled.

  “Then what happened?” Veen asked.

  Hakoore should have known the question was coming, but he had no ready answer. Veen always had that effect on him—he just couldn’t think fast enough in her presence.

  Sometimes I’m glad I’m an only child.

  Smoothly, Rashid spoke up for the tongue-tied Hakoore. “This isn’t the place to discuss details,” the Spark Lord said. “No doubt there’ll be a public announcement in due course.” Putting an armored hand on Hakoore’s shoulder, he gave the gentlest of nudges and the old snake quickly spurred himself forward.

  Veen didn’t move from the middle of the street. Hakoore was forced to skirt around her, giving her a wide berth like you’d keep your distance from a porcupine. Dorr, on the other hand, murmured, “Auntie,” as she passed Veen, and planted a vigorous kiss on the old woman’s cheek. It seemed to surprise Veen as much as the rest of us.

  When we reached the murder scene, Steck was sitting on a low limestone outcrop, carefully stripping the greenery out of an oak leaf to get down to the bare leaf skeleton. As far as I could tell, Bonnakkut’s body was exactly how we’d left it. (For a moment, I contemplated what would happen if Steck touched the corpse. Could Bonnakkut suck in a Neut soul to serve as his death-wife? Just imagine the dead Bonnakkut’s reaction when he saw what he’d done!)

  Rashid asked, “Everything all right, Maria?”

  Steck nodded. With the possible exception of Dorr, we all knew the Neut’s real name…but I suppose Rashid liked addressing his Bozzle as a woman. “Okay—” the Spark turned to Hakoore “—do what you have to.”

  The Patriarch’s Man lowered himself stiffly beside the body and blinked at it. Then he touched his hand to Bonnakkut’s throat and stroked the bloodied flesh, running his fingers along the length of the death cut. I couldn’t tell if this was part of the last rites or mere curiosity—I’d never seen the last rites ritual before. Funerals, yes: I’d attended many funerals up on Beacon Point, swatting mosquitos in summer and blowing on my hands in winter. But last rites were held in private, seldom attended by more than the priest and the corpse.

  Hakoore lifted his fingers to his nose. I suppose the old snake enjoyed smelling the blood on them. Then he turned to me and hissed, “Get over here, boy. Watch and learn.”

  Rashid and Steck turned to me with curious expressions on their faces. Dorr smiled to herself. I didn’t want to explain and I didn’t want to take part in the rites, but I also didn’t want to stir up a hornets’ nest by refusing Hakoore. Reluctantly, I set down the stretcher and went to kneel by the corpse.

  “Can you explain what you’re going to do?” Rashid asked. He had the sound of a man who wanted to jot notes, but was restraining himself in deference to the solemn occasion. Hakoore didn’t answer so I had to hold my tongue too. Surprisingly, it was the usually silent Dorr who finally spoke up.

  “Bonnakkut’s soul is a child in the womb,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper. “It doesn’t want to leave the comfortable enclosure of his body. But the body can no longer see, hear, or feel. That makes the soul isolated and lonely. It seeks a death-wife.”

  “A death-wife,” Rashid repeated. “Oh, I like that name. What is it?”

  “A completion—the dead man’s missing half. When we are born, we are each male and female, both in one. At Commitment, the male or female half of our soul is absorbed back into the body of the gods. Except those who keep both halves.” Her eyes were on Steck…which meant she knew Steck was Neut, and Hakoore was no better at keeping secrets from his family than Vaygon the Seedster. I doubted that he actually shared confidences with his granddaughter, but I could easily picture him throwing a tantrum about the presence of a Neut in the cove. He’d do that in front of Dorr with no more thought about her than a piece of the furniture.

  “So,” Dorr continued in her half-whisper, “a dead man longs for a death-wife, just as a dead woman longs for a death-husband. The half-soul wants to become whole again. If I were to touch Bonnakkut now, he would seize my spirit like a lover and lock me to him in the deep forever blackness. We would lie together in that decaying flesh, feverishly coupling till the end of time…all in a futile attempt to crush ourselves into one complete being.”

  She looked at me. Her eyes gleamed. It could have been a kind of desire…but I told myself she was just baiting me.

  “So,” said Rashid, “males should avoid touching female corpses and vice versa. Fascinating.” His fingers played with the pouch on his belt where he kept his notebook; clearly, he wanted to whip the book out. “And you’re about to perform a ritual that makes the body safe?”

  “My grandfather will entice Bonnakkut from his body by offering him a proper death-wife: one of the gods.”

  “A god. Really.”

  I could tell Rashid had to make an effort to sound impressed rather than amused.

  “The gods are great,” Dorr replied. “They may take any number of husbands or wives. Think of Mistress Leaf, for example.” Dorr gestured to the woods around us. “Mistress Leaf fills the trees here, and in the forest beyond, and in all the forests of the Earth, and all the forests of all the planets from here to the edge of the Glass. If she chooses Bonnakkut, she has ample abundance to be his wife forever, and wife to every other she may take for her own. Do you think a mere man would ever be disappointed with her? She’s beautiful and sweet…maybe not clever, but Bonnakkut will do well if she accepts him.”

  “And what other gods are available if, ah, Mistress Leaf decides Bonnakkut isn’t Mr. Right?”


  “Mistress Water, Mistress Night, Mistress Deer…”

  “Mistress Want,” Steck suggested from her seat on the rock.

  “Who’s Mistress Want?” Rashid asked.

  “Not all the Tober gods are happy and woodsy,” Steck replied. “Mistress Want is a symbol of poverty. Starvation. Despair. She’s usually depicted as a skeleton, creeping invisibly past your hut at night.”

  “And she can be a death-wife too?”

  “If no one else will take you,” Steck said. “Most other gods have standards—I don’t imagine Mistress Leaf wants anything to do with a bear-fart like Bonnakkut. But Mistress Want will wrestle almost anyone into her bed. As will Master Disease.”

  Steck smiled at me, teasing. I glared back at her.

  “This is quite an elegant system,” Rashid said with too much patronization in his voice. “Bad people obviously suffer a hellish afterlife with Mistress Want or Master Disease, while good people are taken into bliss with one of the other gods. And since you have a lot of benevolent gods, people with different tastes can all have something to look forward to. A woodsman might be happy with Mistress Leaf, a sailor with Mistress Water…”

  “Don’t get it backwards!” Hakoore hissed. “The gods do the choosing, not the mortals. Right now, there may be a dozen gods standing among us, talking over which will take Bonnakkut for a husband.”

  Dorr gave me a look. Obviously, we both doubted that Bonnakkut would have so many takers.

  “How do we know which gods are nearby?” Rashid asked.

  “We don’t,” Hakoore snapped. “It’s none of our business, who’s here and who isn’t. We just have to persuade Bonnakkut to come out of his body. If he takes even the tiniest peek into the world at large, he’ll see the goddess who’s chosen him and it will be love at first sight.”

  “Even if it’s Mistress Want?”

  “She’s still a goddess,” Dorr answered. “With a great and terrible beauty that will pull Bonnakkut like a rope. If she’s his best wife out of all the other gods, he’ll spill himself with lust when he sees the snow-pure whiteness of her bones.”