Commitment Hour (6 page)

“That’s
it
?” Rashid asked. “That was the whole ceremony?”

“That’s all it had to be,” Leeta replied. Her voice sounded choked; for some reason, I worried she was angry at me.

“But nothing happened!” Rashid protested loudly.

“Things happened,” Leeta answered, still not looking at anyone. “You can’t put two people together without things happening. Maybe folks on the outside can’t see the change, but it’s real. When you’re quiet and tired enough, you stop posing and you stop worrying. For a few seconds, you aren’t trying to be something other than what you are; for a few seconds, two people are
real,
and balanced. Me and the boy, Mistress Night and Master Day. Then, of course, we go back to posing again, because reality is terrifying; but we made the balance, and we made the difference.”

At that moment, I admired her: her faith. She was clearly embarrassed to defend the ritual in front of Rashid—Leeta probably knew about rotations, revolutions and axial tilts too—yet she’d come out here to dance anyway, because that’s what a priestess did. The only magic in the entire universe might be inside her own head; but that could be enough.

Maybe it
had
to be enough.

Rashid opened his mouth to ask another question, to dissect the moment, to explore our quaintly absurd “superstitions”…but he was interrupted by an arrow speeding out of the darkness and an explosion of violet flame.

FIVE

A Bribe for Bonnakkut

A second arrow followed on the nock of the first and this time I had a better glimpse of what happened. The arrow shot straight for Rashid’s unhelmeted skull; but before it penetrated his temple, the arrowhead struck an invisible barrier and vaporized in a crackling burst of violet light. That arrowhead was made of flint, flint which blazed like straw falling into a blacksmith’s forge…and the flame burned so hot, it incinerated the arrow’s shaft and fletching with the same gout of fire. The flash left an afterimage of purple streaked across my vision, but in the ensuing darkness, I could blearily see a violet outline surrounding Rashid from head to toe.

The outline extended around Steck, still cuddled against Rashid’s knee.

Another arrow brought another eye-watering explosion as the barb struck the violet fringe…and it occurred to me, Leeta and I should hightail it out of the target area before we regretted not having violet fringes of our own. I looked around for Leeta, intending to shield her with my body as we crawled away—it’s a man’s duty to safeguard the women of his village. Leeta, however, had already scurried into the darkness on her own initiative; so instead of making a strategic withdrawal as the heroic protector of a vulnerable woman, I scuttled into the bushes like a raccoon caught stealing garbage.

I found a place to crouch behind a bigger-than-average birch and waited as a flurry of violet flashes speckled the blackness. How many archers were out there? Probably the whole Warriors Society. Cappie must have dragged them out of their beds when she got back to town, and they’d followed Steck’s heavy-booted tracks from the marsh to this clearing. The first few arrows were aimed at Rashid, so Cappie must have told the men about his stink-smoke weapon; now the shots split half and half between knight and Neut, trying to pierce the violet barrier that shielded the two.

“Is this really necessary?” Rashid called over the crack and sizzle of arrows burning. “My force field was designed by some very smart beings in the League of Peoples. Unless you’re carrying laser rifles or gas bombs, you don’t have a chance of touching us.”

As far as I could see, he was right: the barrage was a waste of arrows. Then again, men of the Warriors Society weren’t famous for developing new strategies. If something didn’t fall down when they hit it with a stick, they’d try again with a bigger stick. If they emptied their quivers on Rashid and Steck, the Warriors would probably whack away with spears, and swords, and that big steel ax our First Warrior Bonnakkut always bragged about.

It put me in a quandary, that ax. Did I want to close my eyes when Bonnakkut swung it at Rashid, so I wouldn’t be dazzled when the ax exploded? Or did I want to watch, so I’d see the expression on Bonnakkut’s face when his precious baby turned to smoke in his hands?

Tough choice. A flash that big might permanently blind me, but it could be worth it to see Bonnakkut reduced to steamy tears. Why did I hate him so much? Let’s just say Warrior Bonnakkut was not a music lover. He was five years older than me, and had always been jealous of the attention I got for being talented. Bonnakkut wasn’t talented; he was only big and strong and mean. Apparently that was enough to win his way to the top of the Warriors Society in record time.

You had to worry about the safety of Tober Cove, if this ineffectual volley of arrows was typical of Bonnakkut’s “tactics.”

Rashid did nothing despite the commotion. He continued to sit on the ledge where he’d watched the dance, one arm wrapped around the Neut’s shoulders. With his other hand, he shielded his eyes from the bursts of violet flame that flared a finger’s width away from his face. I had to admire his composure; if I were the target of so many archers I’d be flinching constantly, no matter how protected I was by diabolic fires.

The arrows were still flying when Leeta stuck her head from behind a nearby tree and called, “I’m only a foolish woman, but perhaps you might humor me.” Those words always started a Mocking Priestess homily, and Tober custom dictated that people stop what they were doing to let her speak. I figured it was fifty-fifty whether Bonnakkut would let the other warriors quit shooting; but maybe he thought Leeta would suggest a more effective way of killing the outsiders, and he was ready to listen. The forest fell silent: no thrum of bows, no cracks of flame.

Leeta cleared her throat. “I just wanted to say perhaps you should save your arrows for when they might be useful. It’s exciting to watch them go pop and make pretty lights…but suppose a wildcat or bear shows up in the pastures before Fletcher Wingham has a chance to make more ammunition. We’d lose sheep and cattle, wouldn’t we? People wouldn’t like that.”

“They don’t like Neuts either,” a deep voice shouted back. Bonnakkut, of course.

“That’s true,” Leeta agreed, “but your arrows aren’t solving the Neut problem, are they?”

“There is no Neut problem,” Rashid said, rising to his feet. Steck stood quickly too, wrapping an arm around Rashid’s waist; I could just make out the violet glow surrounding both of them. “Steck and I won’t harm anything,” Rashid went on. “We just want to observe your ceremony tomorrow.”

“You can’t,” Bonnakkut snapped. “Steck was banished twenty years ago, legal and proper. And Cappie said you claim to be a scientist. That’s against the law too.”

“All these laws against
being
something,” Rashid grimaced. “Don’t you have any laws against
doing
things? Like trying to kill visitors who come in peace?”

Steck said, “The Patriarch was not noted for his hospitality.”

“I’m prepared to be lenient,” Bonnakkut said in an unlenient tone of voice. “If you leave immediately, we’ll let you go.”

“Oh, very generous.” Rashid rolled his eyes.

“Otherwise, we’ll kill you here and now.”

If those words had been said by anyone but Bonnakkut, I might have held my tongue; but I’d hated him ever since he was a twelve-year-old girl who shoved my sheet music down an outhouse hole. I couldn’t pass up the chance to rub his nose in his inadequacies, even if it meant siding with outsiders. “Come on, Bonnakkut,” I shouted from the cover of the bushes, “you can’t make a dent in these two. Stop pretending to be effective and escort them back to the cove. Let the mayor and council sort out this mess.”

Bushes rustled on the far side of the clearing and Bonnakkut stepped out. In the darkness, I could only make out his silhouette: massive shoulders, massive chest, massive ax held in one hand. “So,” he said, pointing the ax-head at me, “look who’s become a Neut lover. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“It surprises me,” Steck said, craning Its Neut neck to peer at me. “Where’d you find this sudden streak of common sense?”

“The solstice dance breeds common sense,” Leeta answered, saving me the trouble of an excuse. “The dance puts things in perspective.”

“And while we’re brimming over with perspective,” Rashid said brightly, “shall we go to Tober Cove?”

“Taking you to the cove would start a riot,” Bonnakkut replied, planting himself and his ax squarely in front of us all. “We don’t want riots.”

“Neither do I,” Rashid assured him. “I’m one hundred percent in favor of tranquility. You’re some kind of local town guard?”

“I’m Bonnakkut, First Warrior of the Tober Warriors Society. I protect the peace.”

“Hence, the repetition of ‘warrior’ in your official title,” Rashid murmured. Then in a louder voice, he said, “I happen to be carrying an official peace offering for the leader of the local constabulary. This seems like an excellent time to pass it on.”

Without waiting for a reply, Rashid reached into a pouch on his thigh and pulled out something I couldn’t see in the darkness. “This,” he told Bonnakkut, “is a classic Beretta Model 92F automatic. You know what that is?”

“A firearm,” Bonnakkut said. “A pistol. It shoots bullets.”

“Indeed it does. It holds fifteen 9mm Parabellum cartridges, and Steck has another sixty rounds in her luggage. The powder and primer are guaranteed fresh. You could probably sell each bullet for twenty crowns on the black market in Feliss City. As for the gun itself…what would you say, Steck, five thousand crowns for a mint condition 92F?”

“It depends whether buyers in Feliss know anything about guns,” Steck replied. “A lot of so-called collectors can’t tell the difference between a perfectly maintained pistol like this, and some rust-eaten thing that will blow off your hand when you try to fire it.”

“You’re giving me the gun?” Bonnakkut asked, not quite tuned up to pitch with the conversation yet.

“No, he’s not,” Leeta said fiercely. “The last thing Tober Cove needs is a new way to hurt people. Shame on you, Lord Rashid, for bringing it.”

“A responsible man like the First Warrior will only use the gun for reasonable ends.” Rashid held out the weapon to Bonnakkut, butt first. “Here you go.”

“Is this a bribe?” Bonnakkut asked.

“Yes,” Leeta replied.

“No,” said Rashid, “it’s a peace bond. To show I support the laws of Tober Cove and those who enforce them. Go ahead, take it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Leeta ordered.

But cautiously, Bonnakkut shuffled forward, holding his ax at the ready in case…well, I don’t know what he expected Rashid or Steck to do, but whatever it was, they didn’t do it. They stood placidly while Bonnakkut reached out, took the pistol, and hurried back away.

“This gun actually works?” he asked.

“Just point and click,” Rashid answered. “I left the safety off because I knew you’d want to try it.”

To no one’s surprise, Bonnakkut fired at Rashid.

The bullet made a blindingly bright flash and an exceedingly loud bang at both ends of its trajectory. The flash coming out of the gun was yellowy orange. The flash on Rashid’s end was violet: a huge mauve-tinted blaze that fizzed and crackled after the initial impact, spitting molten drops of the bullet’s lead. Casually, Rashid reached out a booted foot and tamped out the flames where the red-hot spatter had lit the pine needles on the ground.

“Before you try that again,” Rashid told Bonnakkut, “I’ll remind you, each bullet is worth twenty crowns, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. So make up your mind: do you keep stinking up the forest with pricey gunpowder, or do you escort Steck and me to Tober Cove?”

Bonnakkut stood still for a moment, weighing the gun in his hand. I could guess what was going through his mind. Tober Cove’s patron gods hated firearms. It was said (by both the Mocking Priestess and the Patriarch’s Man) that Master Crow and Mistress Gull might boycott Commitment Day completely if any gun lurked within a day’s ride of the cove. On the other hand, Bonnakkut must have wanted that gun the way a beetle wants dung. He wanted to strut with it. He wanted women to show fear and men to pucker with envy. He wanted word to pass down-peninsula all the way to Ohna Sound: First Warrior Bonnakkut of Tober Cove has himself a Beretta.

And he’s not afraid to use it.

“For heaven’s sake,” Leeta said, “put that wicked thing down.”

“It scares you, does it?” Bonnakkut asked.

“Of course it does. And on Commitment Eve too! Give it to your fastest runner and rush it off Tober land before Mistress Gull and Master Crow get angry.”

“It would be faster to put it on a boat,” Bonnakkut replied. “If the mayor decides it’s necessary.”

“Ah,” smiled Rashid, “we’re going to let the mayor decide. I love the chain of command. By all means, let’s see this mayor of yours. I’ve brought something for him too.”

“No good will come of this,” Leeta said darkly.

“Stop muttering,” Bonnakkut told her. “You were the one who chewed us out for wasting arrows; you should be happy we’ve stopped. We’re going back to town so the mayor can sort everything out. Discussion and negotiation . . . aren’t you always saying we should solve problems through discussion and negotiation?”

“I’d prefer less negotiation,” she answered, glaring at the pistol in his hands.

“Why expect consistency from a woman?” Bonnakkut asked no one in particular. Then he turned to face the bushes and called, “Fall in, men. We’re taking them back to the cove.”

As members of the Warriors Society emerged from the darkness, Bonnakkut made a show of shoving the pistol into his belt. Rashid winced. “Steck,” he whispered, “show the First Warrior how to put on the safety before he does himself an injury.”

SIX

A Maiden Speech for Cappie

Leeta led the way home, milkweed pods clacking. Bonnakkut’s three warriors followed her—Kaeomi, Stallor, and Mintz, all of them bullies when I was growing up—then Rashid and Steck.

Rashid kept his arm around Steck’s shoulders as they walked, even in places where the trail was narrow enough for them to be knocking heels. He obviously wanted Steck close enough to be covered by that violet glow that grew out of his armor. Rashid was wise to take precautions—if Steck ever stepped out of the glow’s safety, Bonnakkut would certainly pump bullets into the Neut’s back. Since I was walking behind Steck, and Bonnakkut marched behind me, I was just as happy that Bonnakkut never got an opening to use his bang-bang: I was straight in the line of fire. When the trail widened enough to walk three abreast, I caught up with Rashid and Steck, so I wouldn’t be sandwiched between the Neut and that gun.

“Hello again,” Rashid said cheerfully. “How are you feeling? All recovered from the tear gas?”

“I’m all right.” In a lower voice, I added, “It’s too bad you used that stuff on me instead of Bonnakkut.”

“Back at the creek,” he replied, “you and your lovely companion were close to perforating my Bozzle’s liver— I had to take drastic action. But in the clearing, Steck was safely under my force field, so we could afford to wait things out. Besides, I have my helmet off. If I started playing with gas, I’d gag with the rest of you.”

“It would serve you right,” I said.

“Don’t grouch,” Rashid chided. “You just said you’re feeling fine. Now tell me more about yourself and Tober Cove. How old are you?”

“Twenty,” I answered.

“So you’ll Commit to a permanent sex tomorrow?”

“That’s right.”

“And have you really alternated sex every summer since you were born?”

“They don’t change sex their first summer,” Steck put in. “Mistress Gull is too tenderhearted to separate babies from their families. Infants aren’t taken till after their first birthday.”

“Fair enough,” Rashid shrugged. Turning back to me, he asked, “Were you born a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,” I answered.

“So you became a boy in the summer when you were one year old, a girl when you were two, a boy again when you were three…”

“That’is how it works,” I said, trying to sound bored. This wasn’t the first time I’d had this conversation. In all the world, our little secluded village was the only place where the gods allowed children to switch sex each year…so whenever I went out of town to play, I could expect questions on the subject several times an evening. Yoskar, the carpenter with whom I had that dalliance—he had asked me again and again. Had I really been male the year before? Would I really be male again after the solstice? When I stopped being a woman, did I stop liking men? Or did I like men all the time, or both men and women, or what?

I couldn’t decide if such questions were indecent or just trite. No one asks a woman, “Hey, how does it feel to have breasts?” or a man, “Isn’t it weird having a penis?” The questions don’t make sense—you don’t think about yourself on that level. In Tober Cove, only a person’s current gender mattered. Whatever happened before or after was irrelevant.

On the other hand, Rashid wasn’t the type to stop asking questions just because I showed disinterest. “And,” he continued, “Steck tells me that all residents of Tober Cove bear a child when they’re nineteen or twenty.”

“In one of their last years before Commitment,” I nodded. “Tomorrow at noon, several male teenagers will go off to Birds Home with Master Crow, and when they come back at sunset, they’ll be female and pregnant. The baby is born five or six months later.”

“Of course,” Steck put in, “Master Crow is said to be the baby’s father…even though the child often grows to look strikingly like someone else in the village.”

I glowered at the Neut. As a former Tober, Steck must know that Master Crow made such children resemble other people in the cove so the kids would fit in with their peers. The offspring of Master Crow had enough prestige already, compared to children with human fathers. They didn’t need to
look
special too.

But I didn’t have the patience to bandy words with a Neut. I just told Rashid, “Master Crow fathers the babies to make sure every Tober experiences childbirth, nursing and such, before Committing to one sex or the other. We have to know everything about being a woman, and everything about being a man, so we can make the right choice.”

“You give birth to children…and I assume you’re encouraged to have sexual relationships…”

“Doesn’t take much encouraging,” Steck snickered.

I glared. My stomach clenched to hear a Neut talk smut.

“So every Tober,” Rashid continued, “gets to make love as both a male and a female—”

“Not
every
Tober,” Steck interrupted. “Some find they can only get lucky when they’re women…and then only with men who are really hard up.”

I gave the Neut a curious look.

“Or it might work the other way around,” Steck added hurriedly.

“Either way, I can see it’s important information to have,” Rashid said, “when you’re trying to decide how to spend the rest of your life. You must be thankful if you have a strong reason to choose one gender over the other. Like, uhh…if making love is more enjoyable as a woman or a man?”

Every Tober in the party groaned. Even Kaeomi, Stallor and Mintz, blessed with the collective intelligence of pine sap, smacked their foreheads and grimaced. Behind us, Bonnakkut muttered something that was probably obscene and even Steck mumbled, “Come on, boss, you’re embarrassing me.”

“What’d I say?” Rashid demanded.

No one answered. We’d all been asked that question a thousand times, by peddlers passing through town, by Wiretown merchants buying our fish and grain…even by a half-dead Mishie pirate who once washed up along our coast. Was making love better as a man or a woman? The first time you hear the question, you feel smug; outsiders envy us for knowing both sides of the bed. But after you hear the question over and over, asked with drooling leers or fervent sincerity, you want to hide your head and weep.

It’s better with some men than other men, okay? It’s better with some women than other women. And it’s better with a Tober than with anyone else, because we’ve been both sexes, so we know what is and isn’t fragile.

While the rest of us cringed at Rashid’s question, Leeta took it upon herself to give an answer. “If sex were better as a woman, Tober Cove would be all female, don’t you think? And if it were better as a man, we’d all be men. But the cove population is half and half, give or take a handful, so that should tell you something. Not just about who likes bedding whom, but about men things in general versus women things in general. Cove people are free to choose, and they choose half and half. Think about that.”

“And think about it quietly,” Bonnakkut growled. “No more talk.” Clearly, our esteemed First Warrior didn’t want Rashid asking any of the other foolish questions outsiders always foist upon Tobers…and for once, I agreed with him.

We finished the walk in silence. High clouds had drifted in from the lake over the last hour, but we still had plenty of starlight to travel by. From time to time an owl hooted at us, and once Leeta called a halt while a porcupine waddled across the trail. On a normal night, one of the Warriors would have put an arrow through the beast, just on principle; the damned pores love eating salty wood, which means they’re forever gnawing on our outhouse seats and leaving loose quills behind. Most Tobers get rudely spiked at least once in our lives, and that means most Tobers
hate
porcupines. But the bullies must have spent all their arrows on what Rashid called his “force field,” and Bonnakkut was saving his bullets for more prestigious targets.

In time, we reached the lake shore: Mother Lake we called it, though the maps in Wiretown labeled it Lake Heron. The Tober name was better—herons are marsh birds who never put a toe into the deep waters of Mother Lake. Even at summer solstice, the water was cold enough that your lungs could seize up if you dove straight in. Parents made children wear ropes when they went swimming, and once or twice a season, we used those ropes to land someone who’d stopped being able to take in air. Men working the perch boats had their ropes too, and bright orange OldTech life jackets retrieved from the Cheecheemaun steel-boat that ran aground in Old Tober Harbor four hundred years ago.

Even with all that protection, men died. My mother…I’d been born when she was twenty. The Elders told me she’d Committed male when the time came, had gone to work on the perch boats and run afoul of a fierce flash storm…

Which is another reason I liked to call it Mother Lake.

But the lake was calm that Commitment Eve, lapping the rocky shore with regular rhythmic waves. Water stretched out forever, dotted by flowerpot islands and off to the north, a long low outcrop called the Bear’s Rump…I don’t know why. I’ve never made a detailed study of bears.

In another ten minutes we rounded the eastern headland and sighted Tober Cove itself. At that distance in the dark, I couldn’t see more than the OldTech radio antenna on Patriarch Hill, but I could smell the village with all the fondness of home. Wharf odors predominated—fresh perch, salted perch, and the rotting pile of junk fish waiting to be minced for fertilizer—but the air also carried fragrances from the farms that ringed the edge of town: sheep, cattle, hundreds of chickens, and the sweet perfume of clover.

Above all that ran one more smell, usually tamped down on summer evenings, but thick tonight because it was solstice: woodsmoke, coming from every chimney. Tomorrow was Commitment Day. Cook stoves would burn all night long, roasting meat and baking bread, warming potatoes and simmering white bean/crayfish chowder, all in preparation for the great feast that celebrated…well, that celebrated
me.
And Cappie, of course. We two had reached the age of Commitment. For one day, we were the cove’s official darlings.

The door of the Council Hall opened and someone stepped onto the wide cement area at the top of the steps. Lamplight spilled from inside the hall, silhouetting the figure: a man’s clothes, but not a man’s body.

“That’s Cappie,” Bonnakkut said from behind me.

I nodded.

“Hard to decide,” Bonnakkut went on softly, “whether I’d rather see her Commit as man or woman. If she decides to be a man, she’ll make one hell of a warrior. Strong as a bull, but fast…she could win half the sports trophies at Wiretown Fall Fair.”

I knew that; Cappie’s muscles had got me out of several down-peninsula scrapes, in the years when she was male and people were jealous of my talent. Still, I wondered why Bonnakkut had chosen this moment to rhapsodize about her prowess.

“On the other hand,” Bonnakkut said, “if she decides to be a woman…well, I like her as a woman, just fine.”

I stared at him. He smirked back. “Cappie’s mine,” I said.

“You’re sure of that?”

“What do you mean?”

Bonnakkut kept smirking. “Maybe I just mean that tomorrow is Commitment Day. If you both Commit female…you and Cappie can still be good friends, as the saying goes, but she’ll be looking for a man. Maybe that’s all I mean.”

“And maybe it isn’t?”

“Nearly every weekend, you go down-peninsula to play your little fiddle,” Bonnakkut said. “Maybe Cappie likes company when you’re gone.”

I would have punched him in the mouth if I hadn’t been afraid of hurting my fingers. Bonnakkut’s gun didn’t scare me, and neither did his huge arms and shoulders…but a violinist has to think of his hands first, no matter how badly he’d like to thrash someone. I could only say, “You’ve always been a lying asshole, Bonnakkut. It’s nice when you provide new proof.”

Then, before he got ideas about retaliation, I hopped in front of Rashid to get that violet light between me and Bonnakkut’s anger.

When Cappie caught sight of us coming up the beach, she called into the Council Hall and several more people joined her on the steps. In the darkness, all I could see were silhouettes—silhouettes with the tousled hair and skewed clothing of folks just roused from their beds. The women of Tober Cove might spend much of Commitment Eve cooking, but the men (especially the Elders) slept like slugs, wisely saving their energy for the next day.

Though I could only see the Elders’ silhouettes, I could still recognize Mayor Teggeree: a balloon of a man as wide as a door and as heavy as a prize heifer. Perhaps there’s some secret law of the Spark Lords that all mayors have to be fat; in my travels down-peninsula I’ve never met a mayor who didn’t bulge at the seams, even in perverse towns where women held the office.

Another person came out to the steps, this one holding an oil lantern. Teggeree snatched the lantern and held it above his head…as if it would help him see better, instead of interfering with his night vision. He stood for some time, the lantern glow lighting his squint as he tried to identify who was approaching him.

I could tell the exact moment when the lamplight touched our party—everyone on the steps gasped and started babbling. Well…not everyone. Cappie stayed silent, wearing a grim look on her face. Sometimes she had no sense of humor. Personally I couldn’t help but chuckle at the flabbergasted expressions on the Elders’ faces; it isn’t every day you walk up to the Council Hall with a knight and Neut on your heels.

Mayor Teggeree soon composed himself enough to call in his sonorous voice, “Bonnakkut…what do you think you’re doing?”

“The situation is complicated,” Bonnakkut replied. “Very complicated.” With a false air of casualness, he lowered his hand to stroke the Beretta on his belt. “This is a matter for the full council to decide.”

Teggeree called over his shoulder into the council building. “All in favor of killing the Neut, say, ‘Aye.’ ”

A dutiful chorus within answered, “Aye.”

“Motion passed.” He turned back to the First Warrior. “Carry out the sentence…and try not to break the noise bylaws, there are children sleeping.”

“It’s not that easy, mayor,” Bonnakkut insisted. “The council should discuss this.”