Commitment Hour

SEVEN An Oath for the Patriarch's Man

Leeta's news set me back a pace. As far as I knew, we'd never had a Spark Lord within a hundred klicks of Tober Cove. Spark law only allows fourteen Lords at most, and an average generation has just five or six — way too few to visit every little village on Earth. On top of that, the Lords are too busy to worry about peaceful places like our cove, because they spend their lives stopping wars and fighting demons in more complicated parts of the planet. Between battles, they have their hands full with other important work, making medicines, organizing food shipments in time of famine, and leaning on provincial Governors who get too uppity for the good of their people.

Tober Cove had never had the sort of trouble that warrants a Spark Lord's attention. It made me wonder what kind of mess we were in, to get the Knowledge-Lord now. But at least I knew why the Elders had welcomed Rashid with open arms. All the stories about the Sparks drive one message home: they get their way in the end, so you might as well give in right off.

I wasn't the only one unsettled by a Spark in our midst. Cappie's stern expression wilted and she whipped away to face out into the dark. Anyone would feel crestfallen to deliver her first homily as Mocking Priestess, then have it swept aside by the intervention of a Lord; still, I fussed that Cappie had just put me into that toss-up situation all men hate. Was I supposed to go over and say comforting there-there's? Or should I leave her alone till she'd recovered from the disappointment?

Leaving her alone finally won out. If I tried to comfort her and she pushed me away, I'd be embarrassed in front of important people.

"All right," I said, pretending to ignore Cappie's sulk, "we'll swear not to tell anybody about tonight… at least till Lord Rashid leaves the cove."

"Then let's finish this," yawned one of the Elders — Vaygon the Seedster. "We're losing sleep here."

People chuckled. Vaygon had a reputation for sleeping twenty-two hours a day. Any time you ventured into the seed storehouse, you'd find him sprawled across burlap bags of wheat and corn, snoring as loud as a sow. Someone (maybe his wife Veen) had spread the rumor it was good luck to have Vaygon sleep on your seed. People would bring all kinds of unlikely things for him to use as pillows — sacks of potatoes, vines of hops, even bundles of cuttings from apple trees — all in the hope that a night under Vaygon's head would make the plants flourish. A normal man might find it a challenge to sleep on apple branches, but Vaygon was a master at his trade. If we didn't let him get back to bed, some poor farmer's strawberry crop might come up sour next year.

Elders at the back of the crowd murmured, then parted to let someone shuffle through: old Hakoore, the Patriarch's Man. He was three-quarters blind and sickly with arthritis, but still a rattlesnake, spitting venom at the slightest deviation from the Patriarch's Law. I wondered what Hakoore thought about giving permission for a Neut to return to the cove… but the Patriarch's authority had come straight from the High Lord of Spark, so the Patriarch's successors could hardly oppose Spark now.

Hakoore had his arms wrapped around a golden box the size of a newborn baby: a tawdry sort of box, scratched and tarnished and dented. Even in its prime, the box couldn't have been much to look at. Its surface was only imitation gold, maybe imitation brass, and the four sides were embossed with indistinct reliefs of stiff men and women in pleated robes. Down-peninsula, I'd seen better looking window planters; but the box still held the greatest treasure in all Tober Cove. As Hakoore opened the lid, even Rashid leaned over to get a better look of what lay inside.

The box held a human hand — said to be the Patriarch's hand, doused with salt and herbs to keep it from crumbling to dust a hundred and fifty years after its owner's death. As children, Cappie and I made up stories about the hand: that it crawled out of its box at night and strangled you if you said bad things about the Patriarch; or that the original hand had rotted years ago, and a succession of Patriarch's Men kept replacing it with hands chopped off thieves or Neuts. I could list a dozen such tales… but you know the stories children whisper to each other on blustery afternoons when there's thunder in the distance.

The hand was a central part of Tober life. Couples getting married had to kiss it to seal their vows; newborn babies got it laid across their chests as a blessing, and it was laid there again at their funerals. The hand would even play a sideways role in the Commitment festivities; when Mistress Gull came to take Cappie and me away to Birds Home, we each had to carry a chicken foot, symbolizing the hand, symbolizing the Patriarch.

Hakoore thrust the box toward me. I reached inside to touch the hand with my fingertips; the skin felt like paper. My foster father always said he cringed to see Tobers touch "that dirty old thing." He worried about us contracting an illness… although I doubted anyone could get sick from contact with the Patriarch, the pure antithesis of Master Disease.

"Swear," Hakoore hissed. Hakoore always hissed, and seldom more than a few words at a time. Some folks claimed he had a festering growth in his throat; others said he just spoke that way to make your skin crawl.

I shrugged to show I wasn't intimidated, then said, "I swear I'll conceal the true identities of Lord Rashid and Steck until they've left the cove. Okay?"

"Fine by me," Rashid answered.

"The girl must swear too." Hakoore got a lot of hissing into that sentence — even the words without S's.

"Do you really want a Mocking Priestess to touch your precious relic?" Cappie asked. "Aren't you afraid I might contaminate the hand… say, with common sense?"

"Oh, boy," I muttered under my breath. A few Elders groaned stronger oaths; some glared at me, as if I were responsible for what she said. I tried to look innocent, the picture of a reasonable man, and said, "Cappie, aren't you taking this priestess thing too far?"

Okay — I should have known Cappie wasn't prepared to listen to reason. In fact, she suddenly looked prepared to claw my eyes out; and she might have done so, if Steck of all people hadn't stepped protectively in front of me. I wanted to tell the Neut I could look after myself… but I decided to save that for a less public moment.

Leeta hurried into the middle of everything, dithering vaguely to Hakoore, the mayor and Cappie. "Now, now," she said. "Now, now. It's true a priestess doesn't swear on the hand. If necessary, she swears on a stone or a tree, you know, something real. Which is not to say the hand isn't real. Anyway, it's not an illusion. But the point is, Cappie, you aren't priestess yet, are you? To be priestess, you have to be a woman, and you aren't fully a woman until you've Committed. People change their minds at the last moment, you know they do. They promise they'll Commit as a woman, and then at the last moment…" Leeta cast a glance at Steck. "At the last moment, they get other ideas," she finished. "So I'm not rejecting you, Cappie, I still want you to be my successor, but claiming the rights of office tonight… that's premature, don't you think?"

Whenever Leeta went into her wooly-headed old woman act, it became impossible to stay angry. Annoyed, yes — especially if you had pressing business. But even Cappie in full temper couldn't blaze hot enough to burn through Leeta's dampening babble. Cappie sputtered and guttered and shrank down to sullen coals of resentment. Lowering her eyes, she mumbled, "All right. Let's get this over with."

"Swear!" Hakoore hissed, and thrust the mummified hand toward her.

Cappie reached out to touch it; but as she did, Steck bent, picked up a small stone, and dropped it into her other hand. "Nothing says you can't hold a stone the same time you touch the hand," Steck told her. "Who knows which you're really swearing by?"

Hakoore's face twisted with hatred. Rashid, however, clapped Steck on the back. "Excellent compromise!" Cappie smiled a fierce smile. Touching both stone and hand, she quickly recited the same oath I had.

"That's fine," Mayor Teggeree said, taking a step back from the furious Hakoore. "Now, shall we wend our separate ways to bed? We don't want to fall asleep in the middle of tomorrow's feast." He favored us with a mayoral chuckle.

"Do Fullin and I have to go back to the marsh?" Cappie asked. I was glad she'd spoken up; otherwise I'd be obliged to, and I didn't want to draw Hakoore's wrath.

Hakoore didn't answer immediately. When his rage really caught fire, he didn't snap; he took his time, thought things over, then attacked you in cold blood. "So," he hissed at Cappie, "you think you're exempt from vigil? That it's beneath you?"

"I think it's pointless," she replied, with no apparent fear. "We aren't going to catch any ducks — Steck sabotaged our nets. And I'm sure you don't want us to set out new ones, considering how you insisted we use specially consecrated netting, purified and attuned to our individual essences over three months. Without nets, there's nothing useful we can do in the marsh; if we stay in town, at least we can help cook pies."

Again, Hakoore paused before replying; not the pause of a man thinking about the question, but a pause intended to make you fear the answer. "Vigils," he hissed, "are not for catching ducks. They're for reflection. Reflecting how you can best serve the Patriarch: as a man or as a woman. But if you've set your feet on the downward road…" He jerked his hand dismissively. "What you do with your life doesn't interest me."

"Good," Cappie answered, just as dismissively. She threw a glance in my direction, and said, "I'm going back to our cabin." She meant the cabin where the two of us and our children had been living for the past year; but I didn't know if she wanted me to go with her or was warning me to stay away. She didn't stick around to clarify the point — she just plucked up the spear at her feet (my spear) and strode off into the night.

Leeta smiled weakly at the Elders around her, curtsied to the Spark Lord, and hurried off behind Cappie. I guessed Cappie was due for some tutoring on the niceties of being our cove's priestess.

The crowd on the steps dispersed. Elders slumped toward their homes; Hakoore shuffled off, trying to look fierce while clinging to Vaygon's elbow. Mayor Teggeree wrapped an arm around Lord Rashid and propelled him toward Mayoralty House, with Steck trotting behind. Bonnakkut and the other Warriors went off in the other direction, arguing whether Kaeomi, Stallor and Mintz would get a chance to fire the Beretta.

I stood on the steps, watching them go. Then, with a deep sigh, I started back to the marsh to continue vigil. Cappie might defy the Patriarch's traditions, but I was above cow-headed contrariness. Besides, my violin was still stashed inside that hollow log. I wouldn't relax till I knew it was safe.

Just one problem: now that I wasn't tied up in thoughts of Cappie and the Neut, I couldn't help taking a deeper sniff of the woodsmoke in the air. Was it my imagination, or could I smell baking bread too? Roast pork. Raspberry mash. All the things women would spend the night cooking in preparation for tomorrow.

My stomach wasn't growling, but it would start any second. If I went straight to the marsh without getting food first, how could I possibly concentrate on fostering a spirit of proper sanctity?

I couldn't go to my own home — Cappie was there, and probably Leeta too. They might spend the whole night talking priestess talk: Leeta with her milkweed pods, and Cappie in her man's shirt, perhaps with the top few buttons undone because the night was hot and because with Leeta she didn't have to worry about exposing the occasional flash of bare breasts if she leaned over…

Food. I needed food.

So I headed to my foster father's house.

In OldTech times, the house must have been amazing: two stories tall plus basement, with enough space to squeeze half the population of our village inside. It had been rebuilt many times over the last four hundred years, losing much of its upper floor, having walls reinforced or reassembled, getting its living room replaced with a woodshed. A lot of the original construction materials were still at the back of the property, where they'd been dragged after they were pulled off the house. Dirt had accumulated over the mound of junk, but you could still see the occasional roof shingle or metal eaves trough sticking out. I'd dug up plenty myself, no matter how much my foster father had shouted, "Leave those dirty things alone!"

Unlike the other houses in town, this one showed no lamplight in the kitchen. No one was cooking for tomorrow's feast; no one was embroidering the final stitches on Blessing outfits for children. My foster father, Zephram O'Ron, left that to other people… partly because he wasn't native to the cove, and partly because he could afford to pay others to do whatever had to be done.

Those two facts went hand-in-hand to tell everything about Zephram's life in our town: he was an outsider, but he was rich. He'd made his money as a merchant in Feliss, selling everything from soap to cinnamon. Sometimes he claimed to be one of the wealthiest men in the province; then he'd turn coy and dismiss himself as "middle of the pack." No one in Tober Cove knew enough about the Southlands to tell one way or the other. All they could say for sure was that he had barrels more gold than anyone local.

Not that he lorded it over people. A lot of Zephram's success in business came from his ability to be likable. He charmed folks without being charming — you know what I mean. Zephram didn't ooze or enthuse; when he talked, there wasn't a flea's whisker of putting on an act. I'd often watched him striking deals with people in town, to buy fish or to hire someone to help with repairs on the house. He had the friendly reasonable air of someone who'd never take advantage of you: the other person always walked away with a smile. I'd tried to imitate him many times, especially when working to make Cappie see things my way… but I guess Cappie was more pig-blind and willful than the people Zephram dealt with, because I could never dent her stubbornness when she got into one of her states.

Zephram came to the cove almost twenty years ago, not long after his wife Anne died in the South. "She got sick," was all he would say; and no one ever found out more. Whatever the circumstances of Anne's death, Zephram turned half corpse himself. He sold his business, left Feliss City, and wandered in mumbles until he ended up in Tober Cove. "Come to see the leaves," he muttered… and it's true, our region is famous for its autumn colors, enough to draw a dozen sightseeing boats up the coast each fall. Zephram stayed late, maybe because the falling leaves suited his mood or maybe because he didn't have the energy to think of somewhere else to go. Then winter broke with a surprise blizzard, he got snowed in, and by the time spring budded back, he was alive enough again to invent excuses why he didn't want to leave.

I was his best excuse. He adopted me in the middle of that summer, and then he couldn't leave. I figured he might have known my mother and felt he owed her something. Then again, maybe taking on a toddler was his way to make a new connection with life; maybe he wanted to stay in Tober Cove and used the adoption to cement himself into the community. I didn't know why Zephram wanted me… and the thought of asking made me balk, because I couldn't imagine any answer it wouldn't embarrass me to hear.

The kitchen door was unlocked. I counted myself lucky; even after all these years, Zephram sometimes reverted to city ways and turned the key before going to bed. He claimed it was just old habit, but I knew there was more to it. When I was young, I'd tell him, "This is Tober Cove. You don't have to worry about burglars." Many nights, he locked the door anyway.

At age fifteen, it occurred to me maybe his wife hadn't really died of sickness. Down south, rich men are targets.

I walked into the larder, found bread and cheese, and cut off hunks of each. Now that I'd moved out, Zephram stocked the sharpest, oldest cheese he could find — he loved giving his teeth a workout, chewing up cheddar that was halfway to becoming landscape. The bread was hard too, with handfuls of cracked barley heaped into the normal flour. I swallowed enough to take the edge off my hunger, then tucked the rest into my pocket until my jaw regained its strength.

Feeling better, I was heading for the door when my ears caught a gurgly sound from the next room. It made me smile. On tiptoe, I walked through the dark kitchen into the side parlor, its air filled with the leather-dust smell of books. The room also had a creeping aroma of something less dignified and more dear: my son Waggett, one and a half years old, with a habit of making that chucklelike gurgle as he loosed himself into his diaper.

Waggett's crib stood close to the far doorway, where Zephram slept in the bedroom beyond. That made me smile too. Since Cappie and I were required to spend the night in the marsh, Zephram had volunteered to babysit his "grandson"… and even though my foster father adopted me when I was younger than Waggett, Zephram behaved as if he'd never had charge of an infant before. Where to put the crib? If it went right in the bedroom, maybe Zephram's snoring would keep the poor lamb awake; but if the crib sat too far away, maybe Waggett would cry and cry without his grandfather hearing. I could imagine Zephram moving the crib a hair, running into the bedroom to see how sound carried, then hurrying back to move the crib a freckle in the other direction. He fussed over things like that.

When I'd left Zephram, I wondered if he'd sleep at all during the night. His worry and exhaustion must have worn him out, because I could now hear him snoring peaceably in the next room. There was no point in disturbing him. Since I happened to be here, I'd deal with my son on my own.

Carefully, I lifted Waggett, picked a clean diaper from the stack beside the crib, and moved quietly to the kitchen. After so many months of baby-tending, I didn't need a lamp to work; the movements came automatically as I laid my son on the kitchen table and changed him in the dark. All the while I whispered soft, "Shh, shhs," and, "Be quiet for Mummy." It was only when I hugged him to my chest afterward that I realized I didn't have breasts… that like Cappie, I was now a woman dressed up in a man's clothes.

Physically, I was still male: the same body I'd been wearing since the previous summer. But internally… my male soul was gone, and my female one was snugly in control.

If you're not a Tober, it's complicated to understand.

The Patriarch taught that all souls have a gender: males have male souls and females female. The exception is a newborn child, possessed of two souls: baby girl and baby boy in one body, often swapping dominance back and forth every few minutes… not that it makes much difference at that age.

The first time a child travels to Birds Home, Master Crow and Mistress Gull gently remove one of the child's souls, leaving only the male soul in a boy's body or the female soul in a girl's body. From that time forward, the gods take one soul out and put the other one in, each summer when they change the body's sex. Boy bodies get boy souls; girl's bodies get girl souls. This is how the gods ensure that mortals think and act according to the ordained inclinations of their gender…

…or so the Patriarch preached in his fatuously uninformed way a hundred and fifty years ago. Since then, a series of Patriarch's Men had quietly admitted it wasn't as simple as that.

In times of great need (so the current wisdom went), the gods might permit your opposite-sex soul to fly from Birds Home to take temporary possession of your body. I've already described how this happened when that woman knifed me: my male soul arrived to help my female soul win the fight. A pity my male soul then stuck around and got in a tizzy about my harmless tumble-fumble with the doctor woman: it was no big deal, certainly not the "perversion" he was forever moaning about. But then, whenever I became a woman, I always felt mystified by the things my brother self thought were important.

Don't get me wrong — it wasn't common for my female soul to take over my male body, or vice versa. This was only the third cross-gender twist in my life. And everyone agreed these flip-overs never happened after Commitment… only to younger people who hadn't yet chosen a permanent sex. Still, almost every Tober had experienced a gender swap at least once, no matter what the Patriarch said; and now that I was my woman self, I had no trouble accepting that once again, the Patriarch hadn't had a clue what he was talking about.

(Men and women tend to disagree whether the Patriarch was a sacred prophet ordained by the gods, or a vicious old windbag who should have died from the clap.)

Hakoore had lectured us that temporary gender flips sent by the gods shouldn't be confused with possession by devils. Devils could make a woman think she was a man (and occasionally vice versa); but there was a crucial difference between opening up to your own brother or sister self, versus the troublemaking invasion of a fiend. Our Patriarch's Man summed up the situation this way: the gods are quiet, devils are noisy. If someone acts like the wrong sex to the point of disturbing other people, you know hell must be involved.

Like Cappie dressing up as a man. That was deeply disturbing — I could remember being deeply disturbed.

And yet, as I cuddled my son in the darkness of Zephram's house, I couldn't understand why Cappie's clothes had affected me at all. They were only clothes… and it was only Cappie, my oldest and dearest friend, who hadn't been possessed at all — just helping Leeta with the solstice dance.

Generous, dependable Cappie.

I smiled fondly. As a woman, I still loved Cappie — no resentment of her neediness, no suffocation if she wanted to talk about Us. In fact, words like "neediness" and "suffocation" felt alien in my mind: cast-off sentiments left behind by someone else. The gritty tension that had grown between Cappie and my male half, the silences, the avoidance, the evasions and lies… I could still remember all that, but the memories were like stories I'd heard secondhand, or thoughts I'd read in an OldTech book.

The past year had left its mark on my brain, but not my soul. As a woman, I wasn't mad at Cappie, or afraid of a future together. I loved him.

Her.

No, him. I loved him. In a way, I barely knew her.

That's the odd thing about having two souls. It's fuzzier than being two separate people, with no sharp division between boy and girl. My consciousness was one long, uninterrupted line: I was always me, Fullin, a continuous thread stretching back to my earliest days. It was just that some parts of the thread were dyed red, and others dyed blue.

When I was Female-Me, I felt differently; I thought differently; I seldom felt the emotional impact of events that had happened to Male-Me… his obsession with snapping turtles, for example. When I was boy of six, I had been dangling my feet off the docks with several other children, when the girl beside me got bitten by a snapper. The turtle took off two of her toes, and the girl screamed, and the blood spilled…

Both Male-Me and Female-Me remembered that moment. But when I was male, the memory crackled with immediacy, very vivid, very real. Now that I was female, the memory was like something I'd seen in a dream — still meaningful enough for me to be wary of turtles, but not the overwhelming concern my brother self felt.

I had said all this a year before, to my pretty carpenter Yoskar… who wanted to be sure that whatever he was doing, he was doing it with a woman. The best way I found to explain it was this. Suppose twin children are born, a boy and a girl; and suppose that every day, one twin goes out into the world while the other stays home in bed. The first day the girl goes out, the second day the boy goes, and so on, back and forth. At the end of each day, the twin who's been outside tells the twin in bed everything that happened — every new thing learned, every emotion felt, every daydream that happened to sift down under the afternoon sun. In this way, the twins know the same things and have the same experiences to remember… but the experiences have different weight. Half your life is real, and half just comes from stories at the end of the day.

Is it any wonder the two children grow up with different outlooks? And of course, there are other differences. In time, the girl will take a shine to boys, just as the boy puffs himself in front of girls. (At least, that's how it works with most girls and boys.) And your boy self has only heard about the principles of hem-stitching while your girl hands have actually done it… just as your girl self observes spear practice, but your boy self is the one who wakes with tired muscles.

A single line of memories, but two different experiences.

So, when one of my souls took over from the other, the world quietly shifted. Different things became important. Different things caught my eye. Different interpretations occurred to me for the same set of facts.

Even though I happened to be in my male body — even though I could feel a penis pushing against my pants, still wet from Cypress Creek — I knew with unquestioning acceptance that I was a woman.

I could feel my absent breasts like weightless phantoms.

I could squeeze crotch muscles this body didn't possess.

I even had a sense of humor. Male-Me didn't possess one of those, either.

And it all felt completely natural… just as it must have felt natural for Cappie to dress like a man in the swamp, and fight like one too. Now that I was a woman, the Patriarch's words about separate male and female souls struck me as the kind of dogmatic oversimplification you always expect from men.

The priestess had explained it better, in one of those "girls only" sessions that Male-Me never made an effort to remember. "Yes," Leeta had said, "you have two souls, male and female. And they've gone through different upbringings, haven't they? You girls live fully in your female years, but experience your male years at arm's length. Of course your two halves will see things differently — you've had different lives. But what the Patriarch lied about is that a female soul can be anything, just as a male soul can. It's not like only one half is capable of cooking, and the other can shoot a bow. You girls can be whole universes, just as your brother selves can be whole universes. You can't help but be different people… but you can both be whole. You know you can."

"You're going to be whole, Waggett," I whispered to my son. "If Daddy Fullin says the Patriarch will only let you be half a person, you tell him Mommy says that's a load of horse-flop."

My boy didn't answer — if he wasn't completely asleep, he'd drifted three-quarters of the way. Carefully, I carried him back to the crib and tucked him in. As his little fists relaxed open, I kissed him lightly on the cheek, then silently left the house.

The night was quiet as I walked through the hundred paces of forest that separated Zephram's house from the rest of the village. Twice, I caught myself staring at my feet because they weren't the proper distance away. My male body was three fingers shorter than my female, and it took some getting used to.

Still, it was a minor adjustment compared to some of the changes I'd gone through. On Commitment Day when I was thirteen, I went from a prepubescent boy to a fully-blossomed girl, almost a head taller, rounded above and below, and just starting my first period. I stared at more than my feet, let me tell you… at least when I wasn't tripping over doorsteps, bumping into furniture, and wondering what the hell the gods had been thinking when they invented menstruation.

The one saving grace was Cappie, who'd gone through his first period a few months before. He sat me down so earnestly and tried to explain… but he'd gone all male and shy and mortified, with a stricken expression that made me laugh myself wet and forget about my cramps….

Never mind. You had to be there. And you had to be thirteen.

When I reached the village square, I paused for a moment. Turning right would take me to the path leading into Cypress Marsh… and I could remember how Male-Me thought it crucial to resume our vigil for the rest of the night. He'd always had inexplicable priorities. Surely it was more important to patch things up with Cappie, to make sure he — no, she — wasn't ratcheting herself into a resentment that would poison our Commitment and the rest of our lives. Cappie had a tendency to brood if you didn't chivvy him out of it fast. The last thing we needed was either of us fuming and sullen when we finally reached Commitment Hour.

Our house lay close to the water, one of four identical cabins set aside for pre-Commitment couples. By the time you reached age nineteen, you were expected to be living with someone, getting a taste of how your later life might go. That gave you one year as master of the house and one year as mistress, so that you'd see both sides before Committing. When you chose your final gender, the gods wanted you well-informed.

Not that a short time playing house could really prepare people for the long haul… but the little cabin we were allotted by the Council of Elders had a pressure-cooker quality that helped simulate the intensity of decades living in each other's laps. The cabin was cramped; it was damp; it reeked constantly of fish; and when spring thaw raised the lake level, water sometimes oozed up through the floorboards, puddling in the north corner where the carpenters had skimped on support joists. If a couple could laugh together, and solve problems together, the hardship drew them closer to each other. If not… well, that was useful information to have before Committing, wasn't it?

As I approached the cabin, I could see dim light shining through the window's mosquito net: light from our only oil lamp, burning on our only table. Of course, Leeta would still be talking with Cappie — explaining the full duties of priestess while there was still time to back away. As if Cappie really had the temperament for such a job! I loved the man, I truly did, but he was hopeless when it came to interacting with people. Whenever I tried to talk about feelings, his or mine, he'd think I was asking for advice! He'd completely miss the point, or squirm uncomfortably, or…

I kicked myself for thinking of the male Cappie again. The female version was almost an unknown quantity; I'd only seen her through my male half's eyes, and I knew better than to trust his judgment.

Still… Cappie as priestess? I'd make a better priestess than she would. Wouldn't I?

Would I?

Hmmm.

It would be a good position for me: prestigious, but not onerous. I'd still have ample free time to practice violin and jaunt down-peninsula to earn gold at festivals. I wouldn't be allowed to marry Cappie, but I could still keep him as a lover… a live-in lover, and not cooped up in a tiny fish-smelling cabin: the priestess's house was quite spacious. And because I wasn't married, I'd still be free for any sweet-smelling Yoskar I might meet when I went south to play.

You didn't expect me to be more of a saint than my male self, did you?

Since I was in my male body, I had to pretend to be Male-Me… and as I reached the cabin porch, I stopped to ponder if he would knock on the door or just barge in unannounced. He prided himself on being a gentleman, but only on those rare occasions when it occurred to him there was more than one way to behave. I decided to knock, then tromp inside without waiting to be invited — it seemed like an appropriate combination of surface courtesy and self-centered entitlement. Being such an obvious lout made me queasy, but I didn't want Cappie to think I was anyone more than my unsubtle male self.

I knocked. I tromped. I said, "Hi."

Leeta was rocking in the chair by our fireplace; Cappie sat on the floor a short distance away, knees hugged up to her chest. They had the air of people talking about such important things that they hadn't spoken for several minutes. When they turned to look at me, their expressions were more surprised than annoyed at the interruption.

"Weren't you going back to the marsh?" Cappie asked. Her voice almost whispered; I suppose she was reluctant to speak any louder.

"No point to vigil anymore," I replied. "Like you told Hakoore, we aren't going to catch ducks, not the way Steck ruined our nets. And when I thought of sitting out there doing nothing, versus coming back to talk with you…"

Leeta shifted in the rocker. "If you two want to talk…"

"No." Cappie put a hand on Leeta's knee so the priestess stayed in the chair. "I doubt if Fullin has talking in mind." With her gaze fixed on me, she closed up the top few buttons of her shirt.

"Oh, please," I told her with wounded dignity, "when I say 'talk,' I mean 'talk.' If Steck hadn't interrupted us in the marsh, I would have done it there."

"Do you expect me to believe that? You've avoided things for months—"

"And I don't want to keep avoiding them until it's too late. Look, Cappie, I've been telling myself for weeks that tonight's the night to settle everything. I thought we'd be alone on vigil and we wouldn't have any distractions…"

"We're alone every night, Fullin. We have this cabin all to ourselves."

"No we don't — the kids are always here. But tonight Waggett's with my father and Pona's with your family… this is our chance."

"Don't worry about me," Leeta said, placing her plump little hand on Cappie's shoulder. "We can talk about being priestess another time."

"But…"

"I'm not going to die before you get back," she told Cappie with a reproving smile. "And it's important for you and Fullin to clear the air before tomorrow. You know it is."

"Definitely," I agreed. "We shouldn't be mad at each other tomorrow."

Cappie stared at me, obviously wondering if I was up to some trick. I met her gaze with all the sincerity I could muster, warning myself to be careful — she might wear men's clothes, but this Cappie wasn't the male version I knew so well. I couldn't take anything for granted.

"All right," she sighed. "I'll let you talk."

"Don't just talk," Leeta said, getting to her feet. "You have to listen too — both of you." She took a step toward the door, then turned back to Cappie. "And if you decide in the end that you want to Commit male, do what's right for your life. There are other women in the village who could become priestess."

"Sure," I nodded. "For all we know, I might end up Committing female. Then I could be priestess."

I laughed lightly, in the hope they wouldn't think about that too seriously; but both of them gave me a look, as if they were far from sure I was joking.

"Okay," Cappie said. "Talk."

I took a deep breath. She was standing beside the door, having just closed it behind Leeta. I leaned against the cold stone fireplace, directly across the room from her — I had the impression that Male-Me did a lot of leaning against things. Men do.

"Well?" Cappie asked.

"Okay," I told her, "it's just… it's been a bit of a bad year for us, hasn't it?"

"That's like saying a tornado is a bit of a bad wind."

"It hasn't been that horrible," I protested. "We've stumbled along. Still… this is hard on my pride, but when I'm a guy I'm colossally stupid. Self-centered. Obnoxious even. I have no idea why any woman would… never mind. Things were better last year, weren't they? When you were the boy and I was the girl?"

"We just hadn't had as much time to get on each other's nerves," Cappie replied. Her voice was sharp with bitterness. "Last year we were still fresh, that's all."

"No it isn't. We felt right together. We loved each other."

"And you don't love me now?"

"Cappie…" I wanted to plant my hands on her shoulders and burn my gaze into hers, but we were still far apart, on opposite sides of the cabin. "Listen, because I mean this: I want to throw away this year and go back to the way things used to be. You a man and me a woman. As a woman, I love you deeply. As a man… I'm all screwed up."

"Amen to that last." She took a step toward me. "You aren't just saying this to keep me quiet, are you Fullin? Or because you're horny?"

"I'm not horny." I had a feeling Male-Me would have been — aroused by her clothes, and the quiet solitude of the night. But I felt no sexual passion for the Cappie before me… at least nothing beyond a certain curiosity of how it would feel to make love inside a male body.

"And I'm not up to any tricks," I went on quickly. "I'm being honest. I love you, Cappie, I really do; but so much crap gets in the way when our sexes are wrong."

"Fullin… such strong language!" She gave the ghost of a smile. "I suppose it means you're sincere."

"Don't laugh at me." I pushed myself off the wall and moved toward her. "I'm telling the truth."

"And not just what I want to hear." She slipped behind one of the wooden chairs arranged around our table, so that the chair came between her and me. "You haven't asked yet how I feel."

"Don't you feel the same way?"

"About us? Yes and no. Yes, it was better last year; but considering how bad it's got this year, that's not saying much. I just don't know if our sexes had much to do with it, ever. We started out happy; now we aren't. Maybe the novelty of being together just wore off."

"Cappie," I said, "we've been together longer than two years. We've been together all our lives. After my mother died, we nursed together — so your mother constantly reminds me. And we played in the same henyards, hung our coats side by side in school, froze our toes together that night when you were trying to work up the nerve to kiss me…"

She rolled her eyes and gave a rueful chuckle. "That was my male half. I've never understood what was going through my head."

"But I like your male half," I said. "I like you this way too," I added hurriedly, "but we work better the other way around."

"And what about me being priestess?" she asked. "I can't just drop that — not after making such a fuss in front of the council."

"Leeta said she could get someone else."

"But suppose I want to be priestess. If Leeta can't pick me, she'll have to pick one of the older women — someone who's already Committed female. And when I think of the older women, they're all so conventional… or else completely crazy."

"If you're worried about it," I told her, "I'll volunteer to be priestess. Okay? And I'll consult you on everything — we'll make decisions together. If you have changes you want to make, I'll make them. You can be the power behind the throne."

She looked at me suspiciously. "Is that what this is about, Fullin? You've decided you want to be priestess?"

"I've decided I can't live without you," I answered. "It kills me when we can't look each other in the eye, and I want to fix that. If you don't want me to fill in as priestess for you, fine — let one of the older women do it. They aren't all so bad. And at least we won't be as closed off to each other as we've both been the past year."

Cappie's eyes glistened in the lamplight as she searched my face. "Usually I can tell when you're lying," she whispered. "It has been rough, hasn't it?"

Slowly I walked around the chair she'd been holding between us. Her hands gripped the wooden back tightly; I laid my own hands gently on hers, then lifted them to kiss her fingertips. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if shutting off everything but the touch of my lips. Then she let out a sigh and pulled reluctantly away.

"You've lied to me a lot, Fullin," she said. "You've hurt me and ignored me. I've almost drowned in loneliness."

"That was this year," I told her. "When I'm a woman, I—"

She put her fingers against my mouth to silence me. "Don't make me mad with excuses. I don't want to be mad. I just… you wouldn't lie about something as important as this, would you? No, forget I said that — you've never been deliberately cruel. You can be so damned thoughtless, but you've never hurt me intentionally."

"I love you, Cappie," I said. It wasn't a lie — when I thought of the male Cappie, my heart shone. "Do you love me?"

Silence. Then she answered, "I'm so lonely, I can't tell."

Her arms came around my neck and she pulled herself tight to me, as desperate as all the devils in the world.