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with someone who'll do most of the chores, because you've convinced me it's
important you have time to play your music. But are you ready to be mine?
Whether or not we can be married. You say you love me... or at least your
female half does. But can you give yourself to me? Can you let yourself go
without hiding behind anything?"
I didn't answer.
After a while, Cappie said, "I'm going to Commit female, Fullin. My male half
needs you too much."
She opened her hand to let go of the Patriarch's coat. The sleeve fell limp
cloth, worn and faded.
"Just so you know," she added, "in case I end up as the next priestess...
Leeta says there's an unwritten law that the priestess and Patriarch's Man
must secretly get married. The Patriarch saw it as a sneaky way to 'subjugate'
women under male command. That's the Patriarch for you. But Hakoore and Leeta
have been happy with each other over the years. I hope the next Patriarch's
Man, whoever he is, won't be someone who makes me feel so cryingly lonesome."
Without looking back Cappie strode away, disappearing out of the hall and out
of Mayoralty House.
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SIXTEEN
A Dish for the Traitors
I intended to wait five minutes give Cappie plenty of time to leave, even if
she ran into the mayor, or Rashid and Steck. But the atmosphere of the
Patriarch's Hall oppressed me: the cloying smell of dust, the pointless faded
finery, the picture of the couple swearing their love on the Patriarch's Hand.
When I was young, this room seemed full of treasures; now I realized it was a
place that adult Tobers sent their children but never went themselves. After
only sixty seconds, I fairly ran away from the ominous mementos, as if ghosts
were chasing me down the corridor and out to the wide front steps where Rashid
and Steck sat with Embrun in the sunshine.
Steck looked at me quizzically when I arrived, as if she could claim some
right to ask what had happened between Cappie and me. She couldn't; by my age,
boys didn't confide in theirreal mothers, let alone Neut strangers. If we had
been alone, Steck might have pressed me... but Rashid was interrogating
Embrun, and showed no sign of acknowledging my return, let alone allowing the
conversation to be diverted to my personal life.
From the sound of it, Embrun's information about Bonnakkut hadn't taken much
time to tell. Rashid's questions had already shifted to his real interest,
learning more about Birds Home and the Tober sex change process. For that,
Embrun could actually be helpful he had Committed the previous summer, so the
memory was still fresh in his head.
"And it's a disembodied voice?" Rashid was saying. "Asking, 'Male, female, or
both?' "
"Right you are, master," Embrun replied. He had sprawled himself on the
house's cracked concrete steps in an effort to look casual, as if he talked to
Spark Lords all the time. I noticed though that he seldom looked in Rashid's
direction. It wasn't humility; he was just devoting his attention to Steck,
ogling her in that deepcut neckline.
I could have punched him in the nose.
"So," Rashid said, "if it's not too personal, could you tell me why you chose
male?"
Embrun glanced at me with the look of someone trying to decide if he can get
away with lying. Finally he decided to tell the truth. "I didn't have much
choice, did I?" he answered. "My female half got kicked stupid. I couldn't
live like that."
He proceeded to tell about the accident and its consequences, embellishing
details here and there, because he seldom got a chance to share his story with
newcomers. The way I originally heard it, Girl-Embrun had been teasing the
horse when it kicked her poking it with a stick. In the tale Embrun told
Rashid, however, his female half's motives were far more noble: trying to pull
out a thorn that had speared the horse's rump, making it bleed.
Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of any local vegetation with thorns
growing as high as a horse's flank. In fact the stupid animal had nowhere to
pick up a thorn at all, unless it decided to sit on the mayor's rose bushes.
Still, I couldn't see the harm in letting Embrun glamorize himself, provided
he didn't go too far.
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Besides, it was interesting to hear him describe what it was like to be...
well, brain-damaged. Not that he could remember much from his female years:
just moments of emotion, pain at touching a hot stove, or fear and confusion
one time when she got lost in the woods. Mostly, those years had just
disappeared from his memory, like muddy dreams that are gone when you wake.
As Embrun continued, Rashid took on the expression of a man mulling over a
profound revelation. When it was over, he murmured, "You received the injury
as a five-year-old girl. You switched to a boy at six and poof, you were
fine except that you couldn't remember much of the past year. Then when you
returned to being a girl at seven, you were... disadvantaged again?"
"That's right, master," Embrun nodded enthusiastically. "I'm not lying, am I,
Fullin?"
"Not on that," I agreed. "His girl half truly had her brains jarred loose by
that kick. Her body kept growing after, but her mind stayed stuck where it
was."
"So your female body was damaged, but your male body wasn't," Rashid said. He
turned to me. "Is it the same for everyone else in Tober Cove? I mean,
injuries to your female body don't affect your male, and vice versa?"
"Of course," I said. Holding out my arm, I pointed to a pale pink scar just
above my wrist. "That's a gash I got as a kid, exploring a half-collapsed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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