"Don't you have to take it to Birds Home?"
"No one checks," I said, "and the gods will understand."
"So, a Commitment Day present," he repeated. "You want me to have a symbol of the Patriarch?"
"It's the only thing I have to give," I told him. "Everything else, you bought me."
He smiled. "I bought you the chicken foot too." But he took it and patted my hand.
NINETEEN
A Pair of Fleas for Mistress Gull
No one in the town square knew how to behave.
There were two black barrels under Little Oak now, and two bodies on the bier — Dorr and Bonnakkut, side by side but arranged head to toe (partly for the sake of decency, and partly because they fit together better that way on the bier's narrow surface). Hakoore and Veen stood mutely beside one barrel while Kenna and Ivis stood beside the other. Almost no one had thought to bring two cups with them from home; people had to decide which corpse to toast now, promising to come back for a second toast when they got another cup.
On the other hand, it was Commitment Day — folks had looked forward to this for months. Every kitchen swam with the smells of food for the afternoon feast: pork roasts, crayfish chowder, and wild blueberry pie. Little boys and girls all sported new Blessing outfits made specially for the day… or at least new decorations on old clothes, embroidered or smocked by lamplight over the past few weeks. The day before, a dozen people had asked me, "Fullin, you'll play a few tunes before you go, won't you? Good dance tunes?" And I had said yes, because I never imagined Bonnakkut would get killed and Dorr take her own life.
Tober Cove wanted to sing and dance. As I made my way through the square (my fiddle case under one arm and Chicken Box under the other), I felt longing eyes stare at the violin. A child's voice in the crowd piped up, "Oooo, is he going to play?" That brought a chorus of adult shushes; there'd be no jigs or reels in front of the mourners.
And yet…
It was hard for people to contain themselves. The youngest were puddly with excitement that soon they'd be flying over Mother Lake… and soon too they'd wear another body, start fresh again, find out what had happened to their brother or sister selves over the year. As I passed two teenaged boys, I heard one whisper to another, "I just know I'm going to have breasts. They were starting to come last year. I'm going to have great breasts now, perfect ones, and I swear I'll go into the woods and rub my nipples for hours!"
Typical Tober thinking. I remember embarrassing Zephram terribly when I was a fifteen-year-old girl about to become a boy. "One thing I'm going to do," I announced at the breakfast table Commitment Day morning, "I am definitely going to learn not to come after only, like, two seconds. Don't you think boys ought to learn that? It can't be difficult; I'm sure it just can't be that difficult."
And parents were excited too… wistful, yes, because the quiet times of baking bread together were going to change into spear practice with the Junior Warriors, but as the old saying goes, "You aren't losing a daughter, you're gaining a son."
I'm told that means something different down-peninsula.
Everywhere I went, people would catch sight of me, smile and open their mouths as if to shout, "Happy Commitment!"… then they'd remember the corpses a stone's throw away and speak the words softly enough not to disturb the bereaved: "Uh, Happy Commitment, Fullin." A few would nod at my violin and say, "I hope you don't intend to leave that as a gift to the gods in Birds Home. Whether you Commit male or female, we'll always be glad to hear you play."
"No," I told them all, "I'm just taking it to get blessed." And they nodded, still worried. As I mentioned earlier, a person Committing female might leave her spear with the gods to show she would no longer be male; but a spear's too big to hide in a Chicken Box. When someone headed for Birds Home with spear in hand, it was traditional to say you were taking it to be blessed. Sometimes the words were even true — the person would come home male, with spear still in hand. But most people in the square seemed to think I intended to leave my violin with the gods.
The opposite was true. I was carrying my instrument because I didn't want to abandon it. After my night in the marsh, I'd left the violin at Zephram's for the morning. If I didn't bring it with me now, I'd have to go back for it when I returned from Birds Home… and I didn't want to do that. I doubted that I'd ever enter that old house again.
When people asked me where my father was, I always waved vaguely at another part of the crowd and said, "Talking to someone over there."
In time, I made my way to the waterfront. The atmosphere was more bubbly there — out of sight of Little Oak and its two black barrels. Kids sat on the docks and dabbled their feet in the chilly water, snapping turtles be damned. Mothers stood nearby chatting with each other, occasionally shouting an unnecessary, "Don't fall in!" to their children. Fathers pretended to talk about the repairs they needed to make on their perch boats, but were actually watching the children too… probably trying to memorize the look of a smile or the sound of a giggle, because it would never be quite the same again.
Cappie sat on the beach with her sister Olimbarg, my son Waggett safely between them and playing in the sand. They all looked up as I approached.
"How's Zephram?" Cappie asked.
The old reflex to lie twitched in my brain; but I crouched in front of her and said in a low voice, "He's leaving the cove. Probably on the road already. Please don't tell anyone."
"He's leaving?"
That came from Olimbarg, who seemed to find the idea incomprehensible. Cappie only nodded, as if she'd expected something like this. Maybe she knew about Zephram and Dorr; Leeta might have told her, priestess to apprentice. But all Cappie said was, "I'll miss him."
"Yeah." I gave Waggett a small pat on the knee. He was too young to understand the conversation, but there'd soon come a time when he wanted to see his grandfather. Then what would I tell him? "Olimbarg," I said, "are you going to look after Waggett on the trip up to Birds Home?"
"Not my job," she answered in her snotty kid sister way. "I'm only fourteen." Traditionally, the chore of tending first-time infants went to nineteen-year-olds when they rode with Master Crow. We twenty-year-olds, Cappie and I, flew separately with Mistress Gull.
"Just keep an eye on him," I said. "He knows you. And if he asks about me or his grandfather…"
I found I didn't know how to finish my sentence. She put on a bratty "I'm waiting" expression.
Then someone yelled, "Master Crow!" and pointed to the sky.
The gods came from the north — Master Crow visible long before Mistress Gull, because he was so much bigger. Master Crow had room for almost three hundred children, far more than any generation Tober Cove had produced. Mistress Gull, small and white and delicate, could only carry a maximum of twenty. This year, she would just transport Cappie and me… plus the Gifts of Blood and Bone taken from the babies of our village. Doctor Gorallin had already left the Gifts in a metal carrying-chest at the end of the main dock.
All the bells in the Council Hall steeple began to peal in jangly clatter — no matter how many bodies lay under Little Oak, the arrival of the gods meant clanging and prattle and excited shouts as people moved from the square to the waterfront. Children old enough to outrun their parents crowded onto the beach and the docks; younger kids were turned over to the care of older siblings, or other designated babysitters. As I was still trying to persuade Olimbarg to take Waggett, a cheerful nineteen-year-old farmboy named Urgho came up to volunteer. "Let me, Fullin," Urgho said. "Good practice for when I have one of my own."