Commitment Hour (20 page)

“Cherished guest, officially granted hospitality?” Steck suggested.

“We know what you are,” Mintz glowered. “And hospitality or not…”

Dorr made a soft gasp and gave Mintz a sudden shove. For a second I couldn’t believe it; then I heard a thunk and saw a knife hilt sticking out of a tree beside my mother’s head. Mintz must have drawn the blade stealthily and only Dorr’s quick eyes had noticed. Her shove had knocked off Mintz’s throw.

“Bitch!” Mintz growled at Dorr. He lashed out, a straightarm swing that slammed across her chest and propelled her backward. By Mintz’s standards, it was almost a love-tap: just pushing her out of the way, with no intention to do real damage. Even so, it knocked the wind out of Dorr’s lungs and she stumbled back, sucking air as she struggled to keep her balance on the uneven ground. Back she came toward me…and that meant toward Bonnakkut’s corpse, still hungry for a death-wife. Kneeling there, I had no choice—I threw myself across the dead man, trying to cover his body to protect Dorr from touching it.

A second later, Dorr tripped and fell on top of me.

I was facing the ground so I didn’t see exactly how she came down. She must have twisted around somehow, because she fell front first rather than on her back. Her hand thrust out to catch herself; I heard the dull
chud
of bone snapping as something broke in her wrist. Then her weight crushed down onto me.

Breath huffed out of my lungs. Somewhere close by, Hakoore growled with outrage, but neither Dorr nor I had enough air for sound. We lay there, me pressed hard against Bonnakkut’s corpse, my nose actually digging into his cooling cheek; and Dorr above me, flat against my back. I could feel her breasts squashed into me…and I could also feel…

I could feel…

Pressing into me, the unmistakable feel of…pressing into my rump…

I’ve been a woman. I know what it’s like when a man comes up fondly behind you and snuggles his crotch against your butt.

Thank the gods, at least Dorr wasn’t erect.

There was a fight…or maybe it only deserves to be called a scuffle. Steck drew her machete, its blade glinting at the edge of my peripheral vision. Then Rashid shouted something I couldn’t hear because of Dorr’s pained panting in my ear.

Whatever Rashid said, it had to be a threat—Spark Lords had a strict scorched-earth policy when it came to protecting their own. I don’t know if Rashid even drew a weapon…but that armor of his might have concealed an arsenal of guns, death beams, any of the thousand and one lethal gadgets you hear about in campfire tales. Even Mintz was smart enough to realize he’d gone too far. In a moment, I could hear feet pounding away into the distance, our brave warriors running off through the trees.

And I scarcely paid them any attention.

Dorr was a Neut. I could feel a woman’s breasts and a man’s groin, tight against me,
touching
me except for our clothes.

Feverishly, I tried to crawl my way out, away from being sandwiched between a corpse and a Neut. I didn’t know which appalled me more.

“Hold still!” Hakoore hissed, and he slapped my shoulder. “Dorr’s hurt.”

Hakoore. The Patriarch’s Man. He had to know about Dorr. How could he not know? He lived in the same house, for heaven’s sake. Wouldn’t she have to shave several times a day to keep her face looking female? Maybe not—I’d heard that some Neuts were naturally smooth-faced like women. But even so…

He’d have to know. The Patriarch’s Man. And he protected her.

Oh, I could imagine how it all happened. If anyone in the village had the self-destructive defiance to Commit Neut, it was Dorr. She might have done it simply to rebel against Hakoore, or to make an artistic statement in the same vein as her taffy-stretched horses. Then again, Dorr might have chosen it as the only escape from her grandfather’s tyranny: guaranteed banishment to a new life in the South.

Except that she must have looked too much like herself.

When people come back after Commitment, no one asks them to drop their pants to prove they aren’t Neut. It’s assumed everyone will just know—if you return from Birds Home and you don’t look like your male or female self, you have to be Neut. But suppose Dorr was like Cappie’s sister Olimbarg: suppose the Neut version of Dorr wasn’t so different from the female. Dorr’s last year before Commitment had been spent male…so when she came back from Birds Home, no one had seen her female body since the summer before. If her Neut body looked enough like her female self that no one immediately cried foul…

Back Dorr went to Hakoore’s house. Probably delighted with herself. She’d never openly confronted the old snake, and wouldn’t do so now—no stripping naked to exhibit what she’d become. But in her passive defiant way, she’d soon make sure Hakoore found out: leaving the door to the commode ajar as she urinated standing up, something like that.

Only Hakoore never kicked her out in disgrace. He didn’t set her free.

Our Patriarch’s Man hadn’t denounced her. Maybe he didn’t want to lose face in front of the community; maybe he refused to let Dorr slip from his grasp; maybe he had some actual affection for her, hard as that was to believe. He kept her home and kept her under his thumb.

I tried to remember how many times I’d seen Dorr out of the house without Hakoore keeping a milky eye on her. Not often. And it suddenly occurred to me why Dorr seldom spoke, and then only in whispers: her Neut face might be close to her old one, but her voice had changed. Her voice must have deepened and Hakoore bullied her into keeping that a secret.

For a moment, I almost felt sorry for her…for It. Then I remembered those two kisses in the basement, and I almost retched. My lips had touched a Neut. Been touched by a Neut. Had that
thing
been pining for me all these years?
No,
I told myself,
no.
This was all Steck’s fault. Dorr had only grown brash at the sight of another Neut, an unashamed Neut with no sexual scruples…

“Let me help you up,” Steck said from close by. She was talking to Dorr, and there was a soppy tenderness in her voice. Another person might have taken this as simple gratitude—Dorr
had
saved Steck by throwing off Mintz’s aim—but I thought I heard more in my mother’s tone.

Recognition? Approval? It wouldn’t surprise me that Neuts could identify each other in some creepy way we normal people wouldn’t understand.

Dorr’s weight eased off me. “Did you touch the corpse?” Hakoore hissed. “Do you know who you are? What’s my name?”

“Bonnakkut didn’t take me for his death-wife.” Dorr spoke in her usual half-whisper, but I could hear the strain in it. “Fullin saved me.”

“Don’t mention it,” I mumbled as I rolled off Bonnakkut’s corpse. Partly to avoid meeting anyone’s eye, I carefully started brushing ants off my clothes.

“I’m sure,” Dorr said, “you would have done the same thing, Grandfather, if Fullin hadn’t reacted first.”

Hakoore inhaled sharply. Dorr watched him, her eyes glittering as they silently accused him of cowardice.

“Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” Rashid asked.

Dorr didn’t speak. I was the one who finally answered, “She broke her wrist.”

“Nonsense,” Hakoore hissed. “It was just a little fall.”

But Steck lifted Dorr’s arm and examined it closely. “It’s swelling,” she said. “We’d better take you to the doctor.”

Dorr shrugged. “I can go myself.”

“We’re taking you.” There was a finality in Steck’s voice. “You too, Fullin.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“She fell on you pretty hard,” Steck insisted. “You should be checked out.”

“No thank you.”

“Fullin…” Steck began.

“Traditionally,” Rashid nudged me, “this is where a headstrong young man would say, ‘You aren’t my mother!’ ”

Steck’s mouth closed abruptly. The Spark Lord looked at her, his face the picture of innocence.

“Get out, the lot of you,” Hakoore growled. “Bonnakkut’s mortal soul is in an empty hell, suffering torment every second until he’s released. Leave me alone to my job.”

“Come on,” Steck said to Dorr, putting an arm around her shoulders as Dorr supported her own injured wrist.

“Yes, let’s go to the doctor,” Rashid told me, “just to humor my dear Bozzle. Maria can be such a handful when she doesn’t get her way.”

I glanced at Hakoore. Gruffly, he waved me off. So why had he decided he didn’t want his “disciple” here after all? Guilt that I had saved Dorr from eternal damnation while he did nothing? Or was it something else? Cappie claimed my face was perennially obvious; maybe something about my expression had betrayed what I learned about Dorr as she lay on top of me.

Well, Hakoore needn’t worry about me blurting the truth to the world—not when I could hold it over his head until he reconsidered this “disciple” business. I would never stoop to blackmail; but what was wrong with two gentlemen agreeing to exchange favors?

For the first time since dawn, I could smile.

FOURTEEN

A Gift of Blood for Master Crow

Doctor Gorallin’s home had been on the verge of collapsing for most of my lifetime. She had the idea she would be a great renovator, handier with tools than anyone in the village because she had surgical training…so whenever someone offered to re-shingle the roof or shore up that corner where the foundation was sinking, Gorallin would growl in her suffer-no-fools way and swear she intended to do it herself.

She never did. When I was ten, Zephram persuaded me to fake a desperate stomach ache to drag Gorallin out on a prolonged house call. That gave a squad of barnstorming carpenters enough time to dash into her place and repair the parts closest to total disintegration. They said they’d done a perfect job of concealing the work they did, but it wasn’t good enough to fool Gorallin’s steely gaze. The moment she saw her home, her eyes narrowed; then she turned around and came directly back to Zephram’s house saying, “I’ve reconsidered. When a boy is as sick as poor dear Fullin, he deserves a thorough enema.”

Sigh.

In Gorallin’s waiting room, we found Cappie pacing, her face pale. “Weren’t you supposed to be finding the priestess?” Rashid asked.

“I did,” Cappie answered. “Leeta decided she’d rather visit Bonnakkut’s family alone. And she told me I’d better bring Pona…my daughter…” Her voice broke off.

“Pona’s giving the Gift?” I asked. Cappie nodded.

Tentatively I held my arms open. After a moment’s pause, she slid in against me. I even made an effort not to look down the loose front of her shirt—Cappie had helped me through the previous year when I brought my son to give the Gift, and I believed in repaying my debts.

“What’s happening?” Rashid asked, his voice too chipper and intrusive. “What’s does it mean, giving the Gift?”

“At this moment,” Cappie replied, “the doctor is cutting a hole in the back of my daughter’s neck.”

“She’s…” Rashid stopped himself. “Cutting a hole. Well, well. How extraordinary.” He turned to Steck, who was helping Dorr settle into a chair to wait. “When you told me about Tober Cove, Maria, you didn’t mention anything about giving a Gift.”

“It’s stupid superstition,” Steck replied airily. “Beneath a scientist’s notice.”

Cappie pushed herself out of my arms to confront Steck. “You think I’d let the doctor cut my daughter just for superstition?”

Steck shrugged.

“You know this is crucial,” Cappie snapped. “Without the Gift, the gods won’t accept Pona when she goes to Birds Home. She’ll be Locked her whole life.”

“Really?” Rashid’s voice had just shifted from idle curiosity to something more intense. “Tell me about this Gift.”

Neither Steck nor Cappie answered—they were too busy glaring at each other. Finally, Dorr spoke in her half whisper. “The first year of a child’s life, die gods don’t take the baby to Birds Home; traveling is hard for infants, and their mothers can’t come along to nurse them. Instead, the gods accept a symbolic substitute for the child: a Gift of blood and bone that’s carried to Birds Home in place of the actual baby.”

“And the doctor’s taking such a Gift right now?” Rashid asked. “I really must see this.”

“That isn’t a good idea,” I piped up, but Rashid was already pushing his way through the door that separated the waiting room from the much larger surgery beyond. Cappie rushed after him and I hurried behind…which meant I was just in time to have Gorallin shout at all three of us.

“What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Ahh…” said Cappie. She had stiffened at the sight of blood on the doctor’s hands.

Gorallin had many granite-hard rules about practicing medicine, and one of them was, “Never let parents see the taking of the Gift.” When I’d brought in my son the year before, I waited outside, shuddering in Cappie’s arms until it was all over. It only took ten minutes, and if Waggett had cried or wailed, I hadn’t heard a peep. When Gorallin brought the boy out of surgery, the incision at the back of his neck was no more than a nick, neatly closed with a single stitch. Within months, the scar was scarcely visible…and in a few months more, I had calmed down enough to stop looking at it every night.

However, when we barged in on Pona’s Gift-giving, there was no closed incision, no neat stitch, no baby skin carefully cleaned to hide all trace of what happened. Pona, six months old and naked, lay belly down on Gorallin’s operating table. A generous wash of blood had spilled down the sides of her throat, dribbling onto the table’s iron surface; and in the middle of the bloody cut at the back of her neck, the red-smeared white of bone peeked out.

“Fascinating,” Rashid said.

“I don’t need an audience,” Gorallin roared. She held a scalpel in one blood-specked hand.

“Sorry,” Rashid told her, with no apology in his voice, “but I’m a Knowledge-Lord. I live to learn new things. How does this work exactly?”

Gorallin glared at him. Like many people that day, she must have been debating whether she could tell a Spark to go to hell…perhaps trying to judge how much luck she’d have throwing him bodily from the room. Then she grimaced with acceptance of the inevitable—no one has ever stopped the Sparks from doing what they want, and it’s a waste of time to try. “Just watch,” she muttered, “and if you have stupid questions, save them till after.”

She turned back to Pona and began to deposit tiny scraps of baby flesh into a test tube.

Cappie closed her eyes when Gorallin started scraping out picks of Pona’s bone. I didn’t, but I wished I could close my ears.

Scrape-pick.

Scrape-pick.

Scrape-pick.

“The Gift is taken from the spinous process of the sixth cervical vertebra,” the doctor suddenly announced. I suppose even Gorallin had the sensitivity to know what the sound was doing to Cappie’s nerves. “That’s the prominent nub of bone at the back of your neck.”

“Why there?” Rashid asked.

“Because that’s what the gods want,” Gorallin snapped. “There are alternate sites if there’s a medical reason why the Gift can’t be taken from the standard spot, but I never have to use them.”

“And what exactly do you take?” Rashid clearly wanted to lean his face right down over the doctor’s work but was holding himself back.

“Blood and bone,” Dorr murmured. When she’d seen that Gorallin wasn’t going to kick us out of the surgery, Dorr had silently entered too. “The gods require us to give blood and bone as a token of our obedience. It is the only price they accept.”

“Actually,” the doctor said, “I take bone and a bit of muscle tissue. Skin too. The blood comes for free, but I don’t go out of my way to get any.”

“And who taught you what was needed?” Rashid asked.

“My predecessor…who learned from her predecessor, and so on back to the first doctor in Tober Cove. She was taught by the gods themselves.”

Steck made a disdainful sniff. She had come in with the rest of us, but was making a show of dismissive boredom. No one paid her any attention.

“And you seal all the tissues in a test tube,” Rashid said, “which you send off to Birds Home?”

“That’s right.” Gorallin laid down her scalpel and picked up a fine needle for stitching the wound closed. Baby Pona didn’t move; she lay breathing quietly, pacified by an anaesthetic the doctor had given before we arrived.

“The gods must think this Gift is very important,” Rashid mused, “if you have to slice into every baby. Don’t you worry about doing permanent damage?”

“I know what I’m doing,” Gorallin bristled. “Babies heal quickly.”

“But suppose a child is sick,” Rashid said. “That must happen occasionally. If a baby is so sick that this surgery would risk its life…”

“Then I tell the parents it’s too dangerous to take the Gift,” Gorallin answered. “I’m a
doctor,
you…” She stopped herself in time. “I don’t harm my patients,” she finished grimly.

“You just carve up their necks,” Steck said.

“A tiny cut!” Gorallin growled. “And given the alternative…”

“What’s the alternative?” Rashid asked quickly.

“Becoming Locked,” Dorr told him. “Spurned by the gods. Cursed to remain the same sex forever.”

“So if you don’t send a test tube for a child this year, the child can’t change sex next year?”

“That’s why the Gift is important,” Gorallin said. “You think I bleed babies for fun?”

Cappie took a deep breath. “I wouldn’t let her do this to Pona if it weren’t necessary. What kind of savages do you think we are?”

“All over the world,” Steck sneered, “people mutilate their children and say it’s necessary. The greater the maiming, the more they claim it’s a sign of civilization.”

“Excuse me,” Rashid said, “while I have a private word with my Bozzle.” He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed Steck by the arm, and almost shoved her into the waiting room. As the door closed, I heard his harsh whisper. “So you want to take the moral high ground, do you? When you forgot to mention they take tissue samples from the children and…”

Gorallin looked at the rest of us and rolled her eyes. Cappie, Dorr and I all nodded. Outsiders were inherently crazy: unbalanced at best, and often insane. If spilling a few drops of Pona’s blood saved her from that blinkered confusion, the price was worth it.

Cappie helped Gorallin swab blood off Pona’s body. It mopped up easily; in less than a minute, the baby’s skin was back to its clean soft pink, and the black-stitched incision just an inoffensive line no longer than my fingernail. As Cappie slipped Pona into a new diaper and her summer smock, the doctor ran through a set of instructions that she must have given dozens of times over the years: how to care for the cut as it healed, how to check for signs of infection. Cappie nodded carefully as Gorallin spoke…and I noticed that Dorr, standing silently in the corner, nodded too.

I wondered how Dorr felt: to be childless in a village where almost everyone else had borne a life. Suddenly, I felt guilty for thinking she might have guzzled some herbal concoction to abort her baby. Suppose Dorr’s miscarriage had been perfectly natural; suppose it was the pain of that loss which unhinged her enough to Commit Neut.

Quietly, I left Cappie listening to the doctor and went to Dorr. “Are you okay?” I asked softly. “How’s your wrist?”

“It hurts.” Her glittering eyes turned toward me. “You know Bonnakkut wouldn’t have taken me as his death-wife.”

“Dorr…”

“I know you know. You had to be able to feel what I have…and I just lay there. Because my wrist hurt and because I suddenly found myself tired and angry about hiding. Do you know what I did while I was lying there?”

“No.”

“I touched him,” she whispered. “Bonnakkut You weren’t covering his whole body. I reached under you and laid my hand on Bonnakkut’s bare arm…and nothing happened. Even a dead man doesn’t want me.”

“Hakoore had started the last rites—”

“Don’t be stupid,” she interrupted. “I carry the stretcher whenever my grandfather attends to a corpse. I know how the rites go; I know when the body is and isn’t safe. But it seems I don’t have to worry.”

Hesitantly I suggested, “Maybe with the corpse of a woman…”

Dorr gave me an exasperated look. “It’s not that I
want
to marry a corpse, Fullin. Do you think I’m just looking for a boyfriend? I’ve got—”

She stopped. Cappie and Gorallin were looking at us.

“My wrist hurts,” Dorr said; and like a stone sinking in muddy water, the emotion vanished from her face. She must have had years of practice making her feelings go away.

“All right,” Gorallin said, “let’s have a look.” She glanced at Cappie and me. “In private.”

Cappie picked up the still-sleeping Pona and I opened the door for her. With a glance back at Dorr, I wondered why she’d confided in me. Merely because I knew her secret? Because she’d once had a crush on me? Because she recognized me as a woman who would sympathize with…

Recognized me as a
woman?

Oh. It seemed I’d become female again.

Rashid and Steck fell silent as Cappie and I entered the waiting room. For the first time it struck me how handsome Rashid actually was. His long black hair made him look dashing, even rakish, but his eyes had a poetic sensitivity to them, like a man who has always been too intelligent to feel at home among the people he meets. I could understand how he’d fallen for Steck—both of them fish out of water, a Spark and a Neut, distanced from the common crowd.

“So the operation’s over?” Rashid asked Cappie. He was trying to sound casual, as if he and Steck hadn’t been fighting. “How’s the little girl?”

“She’ll be fine.” Cappie turned to me. “I’d better take her back to my mother now. Do you know where you’re going to be?”

“I promised ‘Maria’ I’d stay with her until the gods come at noon.”

“Why don’t you and Steck walk me around town?” Rashid suggested. “We’ll talk to people. Investigate Bonnakkut’s death.” He sighed, as if the murder had been committed purely to spoil his day. “We can always hope a witness saw someone sneaking behind Bonnakkut with a knife.” The Spark Lord turned to Cappie. “If Tobers noticed something suspicious like that, whom would they tell?”

“The neighbors,” she answered drily. “But eventually they’d go to the mayor.”

“Then we’ll go to the mayor ourselves,” Rashid said. “Ask if he’s heard anything.”

Cappie nodded, then leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on the corner of my mouth. “After I drop off Pona,” she murmured, “I’ll meet you at Mayoralty House. We’ll find a place to talk.”

Then she was gone.

Dorr told us not to wait—Gorallin agreed that the wrist was broken, and now had to go through the chore of mixing plaster to make a cast. Rashid was keen to get moving and Steck wisely didn’t try to cross him. I didn’t understand why Rashid was annoyed at her for not telling him about the Gift, but he clearly thought she should have mentioned it to him earlier. Steck had forced herself to couch down into meek acquiescence with Rashid’s mood…although as we walked to the door together, she did stop to look at me.

“You’re sure you don’t want the doctor to examine you?”

“I’m fine,” I told her.

“You’re walking oddly.”