James Alan Gardner [League Of Peoples 02] Commitment Hour

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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 Rashidliked 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, Ilike that name. What is it?"
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"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
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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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