To my joy, they both said they would travel some way with us at least, to see how the work went. The road was a big and important thing and they was curious how it would come out. Also, Ursala said, my plan and hers might work very well together. The road would take us past many villages, and wherever we went she could bring the dagnostic along right after it. She would use it to test the women and men that was of marrying age and fix the seeds inside them so their babies would come out okay.
That had been her aiming since before we left Calder Valley, and the thing that was nearest to her heart. She had one other thing in mind though, and she didn’t want to waste no time in getting to it.
The next day, when we was finishing off that stretch of fence, Cup told me Ursala wanted to use the dagnostic on her before we went any further.
“You mean to give you a girl’s body?”
“You knowed it then? Yeah, that’s what I mean. She’s got that surgical module all heated up and ready. She says she can make the changes that’s needed right here, before we leave Edge. It’s three days’ work and ten days’ rest, she says.”
“That’s quick. That’s very quick. I thought the hormone medicines needed a lot of time to work.”
“They do, and they’ll keep on working after. In fact, they’ll work better when my body isn’t making its own hormones to fight them. That’s one of the things the surgery does. It don’t just turn my pizzle into a jill, it takes away the parts of me that make boy hormones. And the quicker it’s done, the less boy stuff I’ll bring with me.”
This all sounded good to me, but Cup didn’t look happy when she said it. “I thought that was what you wanted,” I said. “When you was with Senlas—”
“Don’t talk about that lying piece of shit!”
“He told you he was going to give you an angel body that was man and woman both and better than either one could be by itself.”
She leaned on her shovel and looked round at me, giving me one of them stares that’s asking if anyone is at home. “And that was dogshit. He couldn’t make that promise good.”
“But Ursala can.”
“She says she can.”
“You don’t believe her though?”
“No, I do. I guess I do. But… you remember Afraid of His Shadow?”
“The boy whose arm got crushed? Yeah, of course I do.”
“And how Ursala used the dagnostic to save him?”
A shudder went through me. It had been Ursala and Monono both, Ursala holding the knife and Monono – who had synced with the dagnostic– riding inside it. They had to cut away all the bad flesh in the boy’s arm that was rotting while he was yet alive. While they was doing this, I was hugging the boy tight to keep him still and Cup was holding up a light so they could see. It was a great thing they done, but it was long hours’ labour. The stink and the blood had got on me and in me and it had took a good long time to wash it all away.
“I remember,” I said.
“Yeah, and so do I.” Cup shaked her head. There wasn’t no anger in her face now, only pain and maybe some kind of shame. “Koli, I ain’t ready to lie down on a table and get cut open. Not yet. I want to be changed, but it’s hard to think about that part of it. The blood and the bone and the bits of it. The being broke open and digged down into. It makes me sick to think of it.”
I didn’t say nothing for a second or two. Cup was the best fighter I ever seen – braver and fiercer than anyone, even Catrin Vennastin her own self. It was not a small thing nor yet a middling thing for her to admit there was anything at all in the world that frighted her.
“Them memories is fresh right now,” I said at last. “For both of us. The number of nights I’ve woke with that wound lying open right in front of my eyes…”
“And the bucket,” Cup said. Meaning the bucket where the scraped-off bits of flesh was put.
“Yeah, the bucket too. But you know the way it is with remembering, Cup. Right after something’s happened, you keep on living it over again and it’s almost more real than when it was happening. But it’s like grease on a griddle: it don’t last long. You go from that to not remembering who was there or what was said or whether half of it happened at all. And that’s how it will be with you. You just got to abide it.”
“Ursala don’t want me to abide it. She wants to start the surgery right now.”
“Well, soon or late or never, it’s your choice and nobody else’s. Ursala can wait on you. She’s got to, is what.”
“I know. I know it. But she wants to give me this, Koli. She wants it more than anything. In Many Fishes, it was Monono that was first to talk about giving me hormones. Helping me to change. Ursala was still thinking I was just a child and it was best to give me time to think about it. Like being crossed might be a let’s-pretend game I was playing.”
“She come round quick though.”
“Yeah, she did. But she still feels bad about it. It shames her terrible to think she treated me that way. Only it ain’t in her to say she’s sorry for it. All she can do is to be a long way out in front now to show that her hanging back then didn’t mean anything. And I know it didn’t. She doesn’t need to prove nothing to me. It’s only her own self she’s having this quarrel with.”
“Well, then it’s not a quarrel. Not really.”
“I suppose.” Cup was in deep thought for a few moments longer, then she shaked it off and snapped her fingers at me. “Give me that fencepost here, Koli Witless, and stop dawdling. We got twenty strides to cover yet.”
We went back to work and said no more for a while except bang in this post and clear them weeds. I was thinking the while about how love works and how it shows itself, and how it can’t find a way sometimes to say what it means. But it’s most real when it’s most tongue-tied, the same way a wide and deep river will move quiet between its banks, while a little freshet will sing its heart out all the live-long day.
51
So we set off to fry the fish, which is to say we made a start with our big plan.
We said goodbye to Nanashol and Chevili before we went, and thanked them once again for their kindness to us. I asked them if they would like us to dig out some more fields for their farm. “We could bring good topsoil from the valleys east of here, where there’s plenty,” I said. “And help you plant.”
Nanashol shrugged. “You could do that this year,” she said. “Next year there’d be more than we could manage, and we’d get things growing that we didn’t need or want. We’re good as we are.”
“What about if we left you one of the drudges for hauling and carrying?”
“We’re good as we are.”
That was Nan’s last word, and Chevili never said a thing. We had been careful not to bring our great caravan of tech up to the farm, but it was sitting there at the foot of the hill, all the giant engines ranged round in a big circle. When he seen it there, looking like the chariots that carried the dead god into Heaven, the old man made a Dandrake sign and walked back inside. He didn’t come out again while we was there.