Courtship Rite

66

WEDDINGS HAD SERIOUS moments but mostly they were times for fun. Six tumblers, three men and three women, slipped into the great plaza of the Temple of Sorrow in mock wedding finery, one malevolently tripping another to be caught by a third to be tripped himself and caught in a cycle of marital quarrel and assistance that accelerated into a dazzling display of body-throwing.

A rustle of attention fell over the audience as the members of the real procession found their seats. Behind the maran and the new brides, the Chanters were grouped on the stairway with the wall behind them to reflect their voices into the crowd. They wore the resonant facemasks that changed the trained human voice into a vibrant instrument able to handle the deepest rumbles or highest trills. Now they sang for the tumbler-contortionists.

These buffoons never stopped their torrent of jokes. Three-husband would flirt with two-wife, and becoming lecherous, would back up to run at her for an embrace, only to crash into two-husband while two-wife stepped aside into the embrace of one-husband while two-husband had to throw three-husband at one-wife to save his robe from the intended fate of the robe of two-wife. Everything they tried ended as a miscalculation but miraculously every disaster landed them on their feet or in some astonished rescuing arms. Their lovemaking was a breathtaking vortex of contortion. Sweet flirtations ended in mayhem. A sly husband ran off with Teenae, followed by three irate wives who tumbled over each other in pursuit, not quite catching him before he managed to kiss her… and so it went, to the audience’s delight.

With the tumblers gone, men with casks moved among the crowd pouring a free sweet punch touched by the flavor of whisky while the Chanters began a light melody that pranced through the party almost unheard above the laughter. The sun was setting.

A Liethe woman slipped out of the Temple unnoticed, shifting in happy steps, dressed in a luminous sun orange and white with a bridal crown. Hers was the hesitant motion of a blithe woman unused to such happiness. She ran and stopped. She skipped. She leaped — and had the full attention of the audience who wondered where she had come from.

Her suppleness was the merry frolic of a girl recalling moments with the husbands she loved, a blush, a touch, a tryst. She bounced in a way that made her audience gasp, as if she were free of gravity. Gradually, she moved out among the people, dancing for an awed child, or she would take an old man for a partner and prance with him until he was young again, or climb mischievously to the shoulders of an Ivieth. All the while, as the twilight deepened, she spread her magical cheer over the wedding guests. Then, at the very moment God appeared in the purple sky at the horizon, she vanished.

This was the first ascension of God in the week of the Reaper in the year of the Spider. Weddings were always timed to begin with God on high so that He might witness the ceremony. The crowd began to hush as God rose into His Darkening Sky. The Chanters became silent. A few stars peeked through the cobalt-blue vault of the heavens. A woman pointed out Stgi and Toe to her young son. The insects clicked and rustled even here in the middle of the town. A baby cried and was hushed. An old woman coughed. God moved, His Tiny Beacon brighter than any star. All eyes were on the Streak. Suddenly, at the very moment of high-node, the Wedding Chant resonated from fifty masks.

Fifty right hands which had been raised beside the masks came down and drew the sign of loyalty between the Chanters and God.

The seven Kaiel who were making Union were now in the center of the plaza and dropped their eyes from God to themselves. They were silent, motionless.

Each of the maran, and the maran to be, raised their right hands, fashioning the gesture of loyalty that bound them to each other. Teenae’s eyes flicked to Oelita and Oelita looked from Kathein to every maran in turn. Noe thought about loyalty and thought she was beginning to understand it. Joesai was thirsty and his coat was uncomfortable. Gaet admired the beauty of his women. Hoemei was at one with God, at peace with himself, and in love with his family. Kathein wondered if she would make a good wife this time. The masks resonated again.

The crowd, as one, raised their right hands and made the sign of loyalty in the air before their scarred faces. The chanting took on a new timbre, a moaning ecstasy.

The moral message on the virtues of a large marriage done, the chanting changed again to the Call of the Bonds. Each of the brides and grooms were given a colored twine and they began their stately weaving dance that let each of them touch and smile and bow at each other and twist and turn and jump and duck in such a way that they braided the Cord of Seven Strands that was the legal evidence of their marriage. They smiled and teased each other as they went through the elaborate maneuvers. No one was quite sure that they knew how to weave a Seven Cord. “It better not unravel!” whispered Kathein to Oelita.

It had become dark enough for the newly installed electron torches to be switched on. The people of Sorrow, who were not used to such marvels, gasped when the yellowish light turned the plaza into a cloudy day and left all else in shadow.

Next came the giving of the Five Gifts. The already married maran each had a token gift for their newly wed wives. Oelita was given a platinum ring, an ebony spoon, a tiny carved spice box, a golden pen, and a comb. Kathein received a tiny mirror so curved that it showed her a miniature of her whole face, an anklet chain, a polished fossil, a bone of her grandmother carved into an ikon by one of Sorrow’s best artists, and sapphire earrings.

The brides returned these favors with food, grail for the men, a kind of hard pastry built up in alternate sacred and profane layers and cooked the night before the wedding, and honeycake for the wives.

Joesai was grinning as he eyed Oelita’s grail offering skeptically. “I remember you threatening to poison my grail if we ever married!”

Oelita blushed. “You would remember that! How can you remember things like that at a time like this!”

The Temple was opened up for the wedding feast. In concession to Oelita, there was no meat. At Noe’s wedding the three brothers had served roast leg of criminal and for Teenae’s wedding a whole roast baby. Meat wasn’t really practical for such a large crowd. There were tables of salads and baked beans, cakes and breads, honeycomb and pastes, and some very strange but aromatic stews concocted by Nonoep almost totally from a profane base.

The central floor of Sorrow’s Temple was cleared for dancing as a string quartet arrived to play for the dancers. There were formal reels for ten, squares for eight, tricates for six, intricate weaves for four, and fast-paced yabas for two.

Humility stood by herself thinking that she might be bold enough to take Hoemei for the next yaba, but a bright young Kaiel woman took him instead, so she asked Joesai to dance, but he only laughed at the idea of them whirling together, and picked her up by the waist and set her on a ledge where she was tall enough to talk to him. She had never really become used to his size. She remembered riding into Soebo on his shoulders.

Oelita took Joesai away. She wanted to go into the tower and see the room from which she had escaped the Stgal. “Come with us,” she urged, but Humility declined.

She watched Kathein from across the dance floor.

Then Gaet started to invite her to dance but three pretty women from Sorrow stole him away for the complicated weave. He was enjoying himself gluttonously.

She moved over to eavesdrop on Teenae who was with a group of her o’Tghalie clan, laughing. Teenae puzzled Humility, for she had no convenient place to put two-wife in the Liethe spectrum of women — perhaps because Teenae wasn’t really Kaiel and she wasn’t really o’Tghalie. She was having fun insulting her male relatives. No matter what they said, she topped them with a grin. They couldn’t even make a crack with a hidden mathematical meaning without her catching it. They seemed to like her — though this was the family that had sold her to Gaet.

Humility wondered why she was so melancholy on this gay night. She decided to forget the maran and just enjoy herself. She found a young Kaiel who did a superb yaba, and then joined him later in the Red Canyon Reel. People noticed her dancing and called for her to do a solo and she obliged, but only because Hoemei was watching. Then she found her way back to the food and ate ravenously and disappeared into an unused game room where she stared at the boards. For a while she moved a Black Queen on an empty chess board, talking to it. Then she went to sleep. But even sleep did not please her, could not quiet her, and she wandered out of the Temple to find a place alone where she could watch the dawn come over the mountains. Noe found her there.

“I’ve been looking for you!”

Noe did not like her, she knew. What did a rescued temple courtesan have to complain about anyway? “I’m having a chat with Getasun.”

Noe sat beside her on the stairs. “I’ve decided I like you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“It is with apologies that I remember my rudeness to you.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I was watching my marriage disintegrate and I was upset,” explained Noe.

“Sometimes we are too close to something to see what is really happening,” said Humility. “Who would let the maran break apart? We’d skin you alive and boil you in oil if you dared!”

“My marriage is precious to me,” continued Noe simply. “It wasn’t always. There was a time when I wanted out, and hated Joesai for bringing me back, knowing that he, of the three, liked me least. That was long ago. I was immature.”

“You have no fears from me.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I really think you are loyal to us. That’s why I like you. Loyalty is the most important thing a person can ever find.”

“It is one of the importances.”

“Honey, I’m going to intrude on your privacy. Another of your names is Comfort, isn’t it?”

Humility went into White Mind and smiled, pausing long enough to think out the consequences of any answer. “Comfort is my sister. I have a hard enough time telling the difference between my sisters myself; how could you?”

“There are chemical ways. I am an accomplished biochemist.”

Humility did not believe such ways existed. How could se-Tufi clones be differentiated by chemistry?

Noe took Humility’s arm and showed her a small scratch. “I brushed against you when you were taking care of the children. Remember? Without your permission I infected you with the anti-toxin of Fosal’s Disease out of curiosity. The Kaiel did not trust the Liethe anti-toxin and we brought the disease home from Soebo and made our own. I brought it home. Ours has fewer side-effects than the Liethe variety, but still you should have had some swelling and a rash. Nothing. You are immune. Why would a Liethe from Kaiel-hontokae be immune to a disease that never left Soebo?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m not a biochemist.”

“I was with you a week in Soebo.”

“You were with my se-Tufi sister.”

“All right. I won’t insist. But you won’t change my mind. Comfort, whoever she was, saved Joesai’s life in her own strange way and I love that man. She was somehow in harmony with Hoemei for she did much to promote his predictions. Such manipulation weakened Aesoe considerably and made Hoemei ascendant. I think you helped us at the Palace. Did Aesoe ever suspect?”

“I am fond of your family,” said Humility, moved.

“Where are you staying?”

“My room at the inn.”

“Come with me.”

“No,” said the Liethe.

“I’m looking for Hoemei,” Noe tempted.

“All right.”

The wedding revelry was dispersing. Noe found her family in a tub in one of the tower rooms, scrubbing off their make-up. There was water all over the floor and they were splashing each other and shrieking. They were slightly drunk. “There she is!” shouted Gaet. “Get in the tub!”

“Not on your life!” said a grinning Noe.

“Get her in the tub!” Gaet ordered his family. A great naked Joesai and a little naked Teenae began to chase her.

She retreated down the hall, pulling her Liethe se-Tufi with her, and bolted the door of an apartment she had taken for herself. She was laughing. “I’m sitting this one out! I know what comes next! I’ve been to maran weddings before! I married those maniacs when there was only one of me!”

“Shall I give you your bath?”

“I’m a woman,” said Noe, surprised that a Liethe would offer to bathe a woman.

“You’re a priest, too.”

Noe lit the fire for the hot water and sank down on the pillows.

Humility began to undo her priest friend’s elaborate hairdo. Noe stared at her in the mirror. “What a wife you’d make!”

“Would you like another wife?” Humility asked mischievously.

“God forbid!”

“What is it like to be married?”

“Well now,” mused Noe, “if you are a single wife with three husbands…” She went into reverie. “They were always bringing home a new woman for the pillows on the excuse that they were looking to fill the empty wife slots. I think they had a great time. It made me sulk. How can you bring a new man home when you already have three of them? Now that the numbers are reversed with four of us and only three men, I think the situation will be interesting. How do you suppose the brothers will react when I bring home a nubile youth without a brain in his head and tell them so casually that he is a candidate for four-husband and don’t bother me tonight while I try him out.” She laughed. “I can’t wait!”

“You’re naughty!”

“I always was a spoiled brat.”

Noe tried to draw out the real woman in her Liethe but found Honey opaque. She could talk music and art and dance, speak of philosophy, writings, politics, even science — but she was never personal. What kind of a childhood had she lived? She never said. She was as evasive verbally as she was quick on her feet. Noe decided to try a new tack against the same soft breeze. When the tub water was warm and Honey was bathing her with massaging hands she got her chance.

“Do you like my touch?” Humility was asking, while she gentled Noe’s neck to relax it.

“I’d give anything to be able to do what you are doing right now,” said Noe. “Then my husbands would never leave me.”

“It’s a secret. I can’t tell you. Then they’d never need to come see me.”

“Let me offer you a Kaiel bargain. Teach me how to be a Liethe and I’ll make you an honorary maran wife.”

Honey hugged her briefly. “If you are a spoiled brat, you’d hate it. You have to be able to sleep on a hard floor. One night in my cell at the hive and you’d quit.”

“And if I didn’t?”

“Then I’d teach you more — like how to sit all day without moving a muscle either in tension or relaxation.”

“That sounds like a fair exchange for giving you Hoemei when he comes home from a hard day at the Palace!” Noe laughed. She splashed out of the tub and wouldn’t let Honey towel her. “Now it’s your turn. Get in the tub and I’ll scrub you!”

“No. I’ll do it myself. You’re a priest and I’m a priest’s servant.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! I scrub Teenae all the time. Here; right now we’ll do the ritual of making you an honorary wife and get it over with. Quick. Desert style.” Abruptly Noe made the sign of loyalty.

Humility timidly returned the sign.

Noe took one of her small silver combs. “Here.”

“I haven’t any honeycake for you,” said Humility, bewildered.

“I smuggled up some honeycomb. That will have to do.” She rummaged around in a bag and brought out a sticky piece and gave it to her honorary wife. She opened her mouth. Humility put the fragment of honeycomb on Noe’s tongue.

Noe then took a few strands of her hair and a few strands of Liethe hair. “You have to help me braid them.” When they were finished she fixed the ends with bee’s wax from her mouth. “Now get in the tub!”

Humility obeyed. “Do you tease your husbands, too?”

“All the time.” She soaped Honey. “I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain. We’re married. What do I have to do to become Liethe?”

“First you have to have a secret name.”

Noe thought while she was busy with her friend’s breasts. Wanderer popped into her head. “I’ve got one. Shall I tell you?”

“No. Then it wouldn’t be a secret.”

“You sound like Teenae! What fun are secrets if you can’t share them!”

“Your secret name tells everything there is to know about you. It would give me too much power if I knew.”

“And you have a secret name?”

“Yes.”

“And you won’t tell me?”

“Even my sisters don’t know it. Even my favorite crones don’t know it. To be Liethe you have to have a secret name.”

“You’re all secret. I don’t know anything about you. Why were you so sad during the wedding?”

“Nothing. I was thinking about growing old.”

“What happens to a Liethe when she grows old?”

“She gets to raise the young ones.” Humility laughed and looked sidewise at Noe with her seducing glance. “Young children — like me.” Then she added soberly, “The crones aren’t any different from old men. They play politics and get the young ones to do their dirty work.”

Ah, thought Noe, she really said something. That was somehow so important that she dared not speak again. Noe waited, mutely, until Honey was dry before pulling down the iron-reed blinds so that they might have some darkness to sleep by. Wordlessly she lay herself on the pillows, anticipating something, not knowing what she was expecting. Honey dropped close beside her, but did not let their bodies touch.

“Are you happy?” asked Noe.

“Why shouldn’t I be happy? It’s my very first wedding night,” replied Humility whimsically.

“Night? It’s dawn.”

“What are they doing in the other room?”

Noe punched her. “You know what they’re doing! And we’d better get some sleep in case they decide to visit us!”

“They really wouldn’t do that, would they?”

“You hope. I’ll be generous and give you Hoemei,” she teased.

They fell silent. Noe slept. Humility did not want Noe to sleep and touched her shoulder and woke her. “I was reading one of Oelita’s books. I felt very close to her. I like her. I don’t like to see people die either.”

Noe took her strange Liethe in a comforting embrace. “Some of us make our Contribution to the Race through Death, and others of us make our Contribution to the Race through Life. That’s the way it has always been. Now go to sleep, little one.”