And if I Committed female, Hakoore couldn't claim me. His threat to make my life hell if I became a woman gave me chills, but at least I wouldn't have to spend more sessions with him and the hand. Unfortunately, Committing female meant facing all the promises my sister self made to Cappie… including that promise to become the next Mocking Priestess.

Male or female: Patriarch's Man or Mocking Priestess.

The gods were conspiring to give me a future in theology.

When I reached town the streets lay empty, though the sun hung well above the horizon. What other evidence could you want that Commitment Day was a holiday? Cows needed milking and chickens clucked for feed, but other chores would wait till tomorrow. The perch boats wouldn't go out. The blacksmith's forge would stay cold. Water ran down the races at our sawmill and grist mill, but the wheels were locked, frozen for the day.

Even the women, cooking late into the night for the afternoon's feast, would take it easy for an hour now; their preparations were mostly over, and their men were home to watch the children. Fathers were eager to tend the children on Commitment Day — one last lump-in-the-throat chance to see the boys and girls before they became girls and boys.

Thinking about that made me walk faster toward Zephram's house. Waggett would take his first trip to Birds Home today. When he came back — when she came back — how long would it take her to notice how things had changed in her diapers? Over the years, I'd laughed at parents lurking near their children so they'd be present for the moment of discovery… but I fully intended to do the same with Waggett, to catch that look of surprise and curiosity on her face when she saw she'd been transformed.

Outsiders sometimes worried children would be traumatized by the change: former boys wailing that they'd lost something, former girls shocked by the sudden dangly addition. Not so. The reaction was always fascination and delight… or rather, fascination followed by delight as inquisitive fingers discovered interesting sensations when the new architecture was poked and prodded.

Outsiders worried about that too: parents smiling fondly as they watched their children play with themselves. Frankly, outsiders worried too much.

I could smell bacon frying even before I opened Zephram's kitchen door. I could hear it too: not a hot sizzle, but the soft whish of summer rain falling through birch trees. Zephram stood at the stove making dramatic gestures with his spatula, all to impress Waggett who sat giggling at the table. The boy's expression didn't change when he saw me — no cry of "Da-da!" even though he'd spent the night without me. Oh, well. I'd left after Waggett was asleep, and had changed him during the night, so he probably didn't realize I'd been gone.

That's what I told myself anyway.

"So the great vigil's over," Zephram croaked cheerfully. He always croaked these days until he had his first cup of dandelion tea. It was his only sign of age — over sixty and he still had all his hair, with no gray to mar the curly dark brown. Perhaps he'd grown a little rounder, perhaps he walked a little slower… but to me, that wasn't aging, that was just becoming even more Zephram-like than he'd been before.

"How did it go in the marsh?" he asked.

"More interesting than I expected." I laid my violin on the sideboard and gave my knuckles a discreet rub. "How were things with you two?"

"Waggett went the whole night without changing," Zephram answered proudly. "The boy has a bladder of steel."

I ruffled Waggett's hair affectionately. Finally, he deigned to smile at me and try to grab my hands. "Bahkah!" he said… which may have been his version of bladder, daddy, or bacon. For that matter, it may have been his version of Let's play a violin duet  — Waggett invented his own words and the onus was on grownups to figure them out. I picked him up, kissed him on the forehead… then remembered that the last time I'd played with my son, Female-Me had sidled in to take over my body. Women love playing with babies, and who can blame them? But I didn't want to do anything that might encourage her to come back. My sister self had caused enough trouble already.

Reluctantly I eased Waggett back into his chair. To turn my thoughts a different direction, I asked Zephram, "You ever know someone in the cove named Steck?"

His back was to me. I saw it go rigid.

"Steck?" he croaked. "Where'd you hear that name?" He didn't turn around… as if the bacon would take advantage of his inattention and jump out of the pan.

"Leeta," I replied, picking the first person who came into my head. Given my oath, I couldn't tell Zephram the truth. "Leeta roped me in for a solstice ceremony last night. She mentioned that she once had an apprentice named Steck."

"I thought you weren't supposed to talk to anyone on vigil."

"The Mocking Priestess stands outside the rules."

"How do I get her job?" He poked the bacon sharply with his spatula.

"So you did know a Steck?"

He sighed… the way people sigh when they're trying to decide whether to admit to something they'd rather keep hidden. "Yes," he finally said, "I knew Steck."

"Steck who Committed as Neut?" I asked.

"Leeta was chatty, wasn't she?"

I waited.

"Steck was here the first year I was," Zephram said at last. "Fall, winter, and spring."

"And that summer, Steck went Neut."

"She did."

"So Steck was a girl that last year?"

"I wouldn't use the world 'girl,' " he replied distantly. "I know the cove considers you a boy or girl until you Commit permanently. But Steck was twenty; to me, she was a woman."

"Oh." By which I meant Uh-oh.

That was all either of us said for a while. The bacon continued to hiss like summer rain.

"I blame myself," Zephram said.

Breakfast was on the table now, the slabs of bacon beautifully browned. My foster father never burned food, no matter how much weighed on his mind.

"What do you blame yourself for?" I asked.

"Steck turning…" He stopped, as if he couldn't say the word. Suddenly, he blurted, "You call them Neuts, but they aren't neuter. Neuter means sexless, and they're perfectly hermaphroditic. They can even have children: father them or mother them, both ways work."

"How do you know about Neuts?"

"Steck wasn't the first of her kind — you know that. I met another down in Feliss City, almost forty years ago. A manwoman named Qwan. Qwan missed Tober Cove a little, but still thought getting exiled was the best thing that ever happened to her. Or him."

"It," I said pointedly.

"Qwan wasn't an It. Qwan was a contented father of three, and just as good a mother. And don't make faces like you're going to be sick," Zephram snapped. "Half the people in this village have been both mothers and fathers."

"Not at the same time."

"Neither was Qwan: married to a woman for ten years, widowed, then married to a man. Both marriages were happy, believe me."

"And you told that to Steck?"

Zephram sighed. "Yes. I told that to Steck."

"You are to blame."

"So I said." He poked at his bacon with a fork… probably just to shift his attention to something that wasn't accusing him. "I told Steck about the bad parts too. Qwan had two happy marriages, but she sometimes ran into trouble walking down the street. Boys shouted insults… mothers pulled their children out of the way… there were a few close calls with drunks… I told Steck about those things too, but she must have thought it would be different for her. And Steck could never resist a melodramatic gesture. She was the sort of person who had crazy impulses, thought about them a long time, then surrendered to them anyway."