Commitment Hour

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.

EIGHT A Call for the Weasel

I awoke male. Male-Me in Male-me.

The cabin was dark and the sheets beneath me damp with sweat: mine and Cappie's, slick for each other. When I licked my lips, they tasted of her.

Oh, boy — I was in deep, deep donkey dung.

I could remember everything my sister self had done… as much as you can ever remember what happens when you make love. It had been a novelty for my female half — she had taken her time. That had been what Cappie wanted too: she whispered that she longed for comfort. Tenderness. No inventive athletics, just melting into each other, touching and being touched.

Ooo, yuck.

My sister self, gurgling lovey-dovey sentiments to another woman… what had I been thinking?

And I couldn't quite reconstruct the exact sequence of events. Had Female-Me been aroused before the touching began? It didn't bother me if my male body had responded physically to physical stimulation; but if my female half had been excited purely by looking at a female Cappie, before the strokes and caresses…

Well, at least our bodies had been male and female. At least we had that. Last summer down-peninsula, when I had been female and the woman doctor had… no, I didn't want to remember. That had been a perversion: two physical women. But this time, Cappie and I had been in male and female bodies, and that was all that mattered.

In sex, souls didn't count. Did they?

Cappie lay sleeping beside me. I couldn't see in the dark, but I imagined she had a smile on her face.

Yikes.