“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 Ne
ut, 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.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Oh.” She stopped for a moment and gave me an appraising look. Suddenly, a smile seeped across her face. “What sex are you, Fullin?”
The question caught me off guard. I answered, “Male, of course,” but I knew I didn’t sound convincing. Even Rashid could tell something was amiss.
“Male, of course?” he asked.
“Of course.” I still didn’t sound convincing.
Steck patted me on the cheek, her face preening with an “I’ve got you” smile. “Don’t lie to your mother,” she said.
“So you think he’s female?” Rashid asked. “What’s going on?”
“Are we going to the mayor’s or not?” I snapped. Without waiting for an answer, I headed out the door and down the doctor’s front steps. Rashid followed quickly, still looking back and forth from Steck to me for an explanation.
“It’s something no one talks about,” Steck said, tracking along on my heels, “although as far as I can tell, it happens to everybody. I certainly switched several times on my Commitment Day. Leeta once told me she’d had plenty of women confide that it happened to them too. But most people do their best to keep it a secret. Why, Fullin? Do you think it’s indecent? Or just too private to bring out into the open?”
“Too tricky,” I replied. It surprised me that I spoke the words out loud; but then, I had been thrown off balance by what Steck said. This happened to everybody?
“What’s going on?” Rashid demanded.
“In the day leading up to Commitment,” Steck told him, “Tobers go through short bouts when they feel as if they’re the other sex. Their other sexual selves. Right now, I have the feeling Fullin’s male body is occupied by the personality that usually takes charge in his female years. Isn’t that right, Fullin? Isn’t that why you’re watching your feet a little too much while you’re walking?”
That was precisely what was going on…but I immediately lifted my eyes from my feet and focused them straight ahead. I didn’t fool anyone—I could feel myself blushing, which surely showed on my face. “Can we change the subject?” I mumbled.
“No,” Rashid answered, and turned back to Steck. “You say this happens to every Tober?”
“That’s my guess.”
“In the day leading up to Commitment?”
“It would make sense,” Steck said.
“How so?” Rashid asked.
“As a reminder!” I suddenly blurted out.
Steck and Rashid looked at me.
“You’re right, it does make sense!” I said, thinking it through for myself. “It’s been a year since I was female…distant enough to forget what it’s like. The different priorities I have. The different weight of memories. So the gods are giving me a chance to recall who I was. Who I am. To make sure I have a clear idea of both my male and female selves before I choose between them.”
“Good thinking by the gods,” Rashid agreed. “You don’t usually expect that much foresight from a deity.”
“So there’s nothing to be ashamed of, is there?” Steck said to me. “It’s ridiculous how Tobers all think they’re abnormal and bottle it up.”
I didn’t answer; I was too busy thinking about Cappie. She must have been switching back and forth between male and female too. Was that why she had worn male clothes this morning, even though they were no longer needed for the solstice dance? Which soul was she wearing when she sang to me in the marsh? During the fight with Steck…when she punched me and stole my spear…as we made love…
Who the hell had I been with when?
“What surprises me,” Rashid said, “is that Tobers don’t discuss this openly. If it happens to everybody, why treat it as a shameful secret?”
I thought of Tobers back through the years, most of them living in relationships by the time they reached Commitment Day, and most of them intimidated by the permanent repercussions of the choice they were about to make. They had enough complications already without having to confess they were occasionally not who they appeared to be.
“It might not be shameful,” I said, “but it is secret. That’s not such a bad thing; that’s not such a bad thing at all.”
The path from the doctor’s office to Mayoralty House led around the mill pond, where a single mallard floated peacefully in the center of the water. The bird was lucky; our miller, Palph, was a good archer, and any other day, a duck on the pond had a good chance of becoming Palph’s dinner. No Tober, however, would dare kill a bird on the morning of Commitment Day—that was an insult to Master Crow and Mistress Gull.
I said as much to Rashid. He nodded, but didn’t answer; his mind was obviously elsewhere. After a moment, he spoke without looking at me. “What’s going to happen today at Birds Home?”
“Rashid,” Steck began, “I’ve told you everything…”
“You didn’t tell me the doctor took tissue samples,” he interrupted. “So I’d like to hear what Fullin has to say.”
I looked back and forth between the two of them. Of course, Rashid would have quizzed Steck long before coming to the cove—about our way of life, how switching sexes affected us, what the gods did in Birds Home. And because he was infatuated with her, he had believed what he heard: he thought he knew everything she did. Now, however, something had stirred a freckle of doubt; now, he wanted to check her version of the facts.
Steck’s face flushed with emotion. Anger? Hurt? I couldn’t tell—it disappeared in an instant, replaced by a hard-edged stoniness, as if she didn’t care whether he believed her or not. “Go ahead,” she said grimly to me. “Tell him whatever he wants to know.”
“There’s not much to tell,” I mumbled, embarrassed for her. Embarrassed for my mother. “At noon, Master Crow and Mistress Gull arrive from Birds Home and land on the lake. The children go with Master Crow; the people ready for Commitment go with Mistress Gull.”
“Go with,” Rashid repeated. “That means you get inside.”
“Yes, we boat out and get inside Mistress Gull and Master Crow,” I said, wondering why he had decided to be obtuse. “There are chairs inside. We sit in the chairs and t
he gods fly us north to Birds Home.”
“What happens there?”
“The children are taken into Master Crow’s nest. They climb out of Master Crow and wait in a special area until they are touched by the gods. Then everyone falls asleep.”
“Gas,” Steck murmured. “Knock-out gas.”
I shrugged, not wanting to argue about how the gods did what they did. It felt awkward, being questioned by Rashid to see if my mother had lied to him; I just wanted to get it over with. “After a while, the children wake up and find they’re the opposite sex. They get back inside Master Crow and fly home.”
“That’s the children,” Rashid said. “What about the candidates for Commitment? You and Cappie.”
“Mistress Gull takes us into a different nest, her own. I don’t know what happens there because it’s a holy secret—no one who’s gone through it is ever supposed to reveal the details. But the gods will come to us in the Commitment Hour and ask, ‘Male, female, or both?’ We tell them our choice, and that’s our Commitment.” I looked at him sharply. “Good enough?”
Rashid hesitated, as if considering whether to grill me further: to keep pushing to see if my story matched whatever my mother had told him. He glanced at Steck, but she wasn’t looking at either of us. She had picked up a stone and was staring at the duck in the mill pond. Her fingers rolled the stone back and forth across her palm.
“All right then,” Rashid muttered. “I was just checking. It’s always possible that something changed in the twenty years since you Committed, Steck.”
She made a scoffing sound, but her face lost some of its grimness. When she threw her stone, she aimed well clear of the duck. The rock landed in the water with a light plop, scarcely rippling the pond at all.
Commitment Hour Page 20
