Commitment Hour

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 mosquitoes 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."

Steck made a soft choking sound. Even Hakoore chose not to look at his granddaughter for several minutes thereafter.

Last rites aren't intended to be showy. People are generally sent away while the Patriarch's Man plays matchmaker for the corpse's soul… but Hakoore wanted me there as his "disciple" and it soon became apparent Rashid had no intention of leaving while we practiced our "indigenous cultural ways." Hakoore made a halfhearted attempt at getting rid of Steck, but she just laughed. Dorr was the only one he had a chance of ordering around, and he didn't say a word to her.

Therefore, we were all standing close as he opened his embroidered satchel and began to pull out the elements for the ritual: a gold pin, an OldTech shaving mirror, a small wineskin…

"What are these things for?" Rashid asked.

Hakoore plunged the pin into Bonnakkut's arm. "First things first." he answered. "Test that the man's really dead."

Rashid pointed to the throat wound. "Isn't that obvious?"

"I don't cut corners," Hakoore hissed. Placing the nozzle of the wineskin into Bonnakkut's ear, he gave a good healthy squeeze. Clear fluid squirted out, bounced against Bonnakkut's eardrum, and splashed onto the ground. "It's only water," Hakoore said before Rashid could ask. "But if a person doesn't react to a spritz in the ear, odds are the person is past reacting."

Rashid turned to Steck. "Don't you just love folk wisdom?"

"You can find the same in any OldTech medical text," Steck replied.

"But when it happens in the middle of a forest, it's quaint. I must say…"

He stopped and looked toward the village. I had already heard the sound of feet running toward us, and the slash of leaves as someone swiped at a branch that lay too close to the path. A moment later, the remnants of the Warriors Society stormed into sight, all three of them breathing heavily.

It's an odd thing about bullies: they seem so ridiculous in the abstract. From a distance, I thought of Kaeomi, Stallor and Mintz as bumbling oafs — Bonnakkut's pack of yappy little terriers. I always managed to forget how imposing they were face to face. How quick and muscular Kaeomi was. How Stallor's barrel chest loomed at the level of my head. How Mintz had the just plain mean expression of someone who wouldn't stop hitting you merely because you'd fallen unconscious. Our three warriors weren't quite as bad as the Southern murderers and rapists they had to track down, but they were all men who'd sneer and call you weakling for playing the violin.

"Get out of here," Hakoore snapped at the three of them. "I'm performing last rites."

"So?" Mintz kept advancing and the other two followed with barely a pause. "People are saying that Bonnakkut…"

He stopped, looking down at the First Warrior's corpse. Stallor and Kaeomi stepped up beside him, making a wall of muscle. Since I was kneeling beside the deceased, the warriors towered above me as tall as firs.

"Who did it?" Kaeomi asked. I had the feeling he was talking to me, though he wasn't looking in my direction.

"We don't have any suspects yet," Rashid answered. "I've barely started my investigation."

"It's our investigation," Mintz snapped. "We're the Warriors Society."

Dorr let out a derisive snort. Mintz wheeled on her. "What was that?"

She met his gaze silently, her expression just short of outright mockery.

"Investigations are up to the First Warrior," Hakoore hissed irritably. "Not you three."

"One of us will be First Warrior soon enough," Kaeomi said.

"And how does that work?" Rashid asked pleasantly. "Do you hold an election? Tests of skill?"

"Traditionally," Steck answered, "each warrior spends the next few weeks being an officious pain-in-the-ass and alienating the entire village. When Father Ash and Mother Dust get fed up with all that posturing, they appoint one of the candidates more or less at random… unless they secretly go behind closed doors and compare penis size, which is what it's really about anyway."

All three warriors turned angrily toward the Neut, their hands bunching into fists. I was glad their attention was focused on my mother, so they couldn't see me trying not to laugh.

"You!" Kaeomi's face reddened as he pointed his spear toward Steck. "You're the prime suspect here!"

"Why?"

"Because you're a—"

"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.