Page 47 of The Boy Bride

I gave him a chance to go home, and he didn’t take it, Vanu reminded himself. He is here now. In the days before the wedding, Vanu had thought several times about going to the boy—even though by custom he wasn’t supposed to see his bride that week—and asking if he was here because he had no place else to go, if he would rather be anywhere else, if this whole situation horrified him. This was even before he realized Lill was the son of Madurasha. He didn’t do it, either before Gurti showed him the seal or after, because Madurasha’s son was a man, and no man could answer a question like that honestly and keep his honour. More than likely he would lie and resent the questioner, and Vanu would have gained nothing. Besides, with no one to interpret for him, there was a real possibility that Vanu wouldn’t have been able to make the boy understand the question.

They arrived back at the gathering place, and the absurd wedding continued. If Vanu had thought that Khatu’s antics in the bride hunt, putting on voices and costumes and popping in and out of deserted houses like a madman, was the most ridiculous this day was going to get, he’d have been disappointed.

Gurti, Susami, and Atari met them, now in the guise of the women of Vanu’s household—well, that is what Susami and Atari were, of course, but Gurti was just taking on all the women’s roles that required speaking. Mikhi seized Lill’s free hand and marched him over to join the women, which was what was supposed to happen at this point. Halza also detached himself from Vanu’s party and drifted toward the women. Vanu was going to catch his eye and glare at him again, but he was distracted by Padunu.

“My lord, I had no idea that Lord Faru was unaware of your wedding plans,” the shaman said reprovingly as he appeared at Vanu’s elbow. “I had assumed that he was away on some errand connected with the wedding and that he had given his consent for the ritual to take place in his stronghold. It is highly irregular. Lord Faru is your host and⁠—”

Vanu turned the glare that he’d intended for the lowlander on Padunu, and the shaman’s smooth voice came to a strangled halt.

“Of course he has not precisely forbidden the wedding,” he went on quickly. “He would not be within his rights, as you correctly—er—but we will have to relocate some of the ceremonial preparations, and it has been quite inconvenient. Er, however, I’m sure that it will be all right.”

“I rejoice!” Tirtu declared suddenly. “My beloved daughter—Earth’s tits—son has been restored to me! And I grieve, for sh—he must go to the home of another man. Yet I am not losing a son, I am gaining a, uh, another son. Padunu! Padunu? Where is he—doesn’t he have to do an invocation or something?”

The door of the great house was standing open, and Faru appeared in it again at this point, with an armload of lowland wedding paraphernalia, which he dumped on the doorstep.

“What are you doing with that?” Padunu yelped, running in the opposite direction to snatch an incense burner out of Halza’s hands.

At least the lowlander had not been bothering Susami, Vanu noted. He was standing next to Lill and seemed to be talking urgently to him. Vanu stepped over to the table and scooped the last handful out of the bowl of nuts. Had anyone given Lill anything to eat? He was in the care of the women, still with his veil hiding his face. They would probably have thought to give him some food.

Padunu began dancing and chanting as Faru brought out another armload of things from inside the house to throw on the flagstones. Halza gave a yelp of dismay and limped hurriedly over to start gathering them up. Padunu nearly tripped over him. Vanu took an apple from the table and walked over to the women’s side to offer it to his bride. Lill put out a hand from under his veil and took it but did not bite into it. Vanu went back to stand on the men’s side as he was supposed to.

Faru came back out of the great house and stood on the doorstep with his arms folded, glowering like an impotent thundercloud.

The shaman had become petulant. He was all but pouting as he cast the divination sticks, and several of them rolled under the table. Atari dove to retrieve them, Padunu shrieked at her not to touch them, which did no good as she couldn’t hear him, and the whole thing had to be done over again after Mikhi was finished yelling at Padunu for being rude to her sister and everyone else was finished reminding Mikhi not to be rude to the shaman. After all that, the divination came out as unclear, neither a good omen nor a bad one. Padunu looked like he was ready to cry by this time. Halza and Tirtu were running around trying to recreate the pile of ritual objects that had been assembled inside.

Lill still hadn’t taken a bite of his apple. In fact, at one point he dropped it, and it rolled away from him. He made a move to retrieve it, but he looked unsteady on his feet. Vanu was alarmed.

He would have gone to Lill’s side immediately, but Gurti was there already and had taken the boy’s arm, while Atari picked up the apple for him.

“Is he all right?” Vanu signed.

Gurti looked at Lill and back to Vanu. She had no language in common with the boy. None of the women did.

“I don’t know,” she signed.

“Do. You. Relinquish. Your. Son. To. This. Man?” Padunu said, very loudly, with the air of someone repeating himself.

For a moment everyone looked at him in confused silence. Then Lill stepped forward, shuffling a little, his long skirt dragging on the ground, and made a rather sketchy version of a Zashian military salute. Khatu and Barda, lounging behind Vanu, gave appreciative barks of laughter. Their father glared at them.

“Not you!” Padunu wailed. “You’re the bride!”

“Ah, ah!” Tirtu jumped to his feet from where he’d been arranging things under the trees, and dusted off the knees of his trousers. “This is me, hey? Right. Uh—yes! I relinquish my … You know, I don’t feel right calling him my son in the sight of the ancestors like this, Shaman.”

Padunu made a noise that could have been a sob and turned away. Khatu and Barda snickered loudly.

“But yes,” Tirtu went on, “I relinquish him to Lord Vanu. It is my great honour.”

Padunu turned back and composed himself hastily. “Lord Vanu, do you accept this man into your household as your bride?”

“I accept him,” said Vanu. He had meant just to say it aloud, but he found himself signing the words at the same time without thinking. He often did that.

The father of the bride was supposed to pass his daughter formally to the groom at this point, but Tirtu had made no move to do this, so Vanu covered the distance between himself and Lill in a few strides and offered his hand again. After a moment, Lill took it and gripped it, oddly tightly.

“Be no longer the son of Tirtu but the bride of Vanu!” Padunu declaimed. “In the sight of the ancestors and the spirits of the earth and sky, in the eye of the Blue Heaven, be as Tu and Naturi, united as one!” He had thrown up his arms, looking toward the grey sky in a dramatic pose, which he held for a few moments. Then he dropped it and said in a normal voice, “Now Halza has some more rituals for you to do. Is everything ready for that, Halza?”

Lill was leaning slightly against Vanu at this point, as if he was trying hard not to need support but couldn’t quite stay on his feet without it. Vanu tried to pretend he hadn’t noticed. All the same, he was very tempted to tell Tirtu he was taking his bride home, and the wedding could finish without them. He and Lill were married now. Did they have to be doubly married? Did it matter to Lill whether they were married in the manner of his people as well as Vanu’s? Mikhi had reported that he hadn’t seemed to care when she’d talked to him.

But it turned out that lowland wedding ceremonies took place with everyone sitting on the ground (or, as it was supposed to be done, inside the bride’s family’s house), so he decided they might as well go through with it. He retrieved the apple from Atari, and as he knelt beside Lill in front of the tray of spices and candles and lowland odds and ends, and Halza recited some confusing Zashian prayers, Vanu got out his knife and cut wedges off the apple and passed them discreetly to Lill, who took them and nibbled them methodically under his veil. Maybe he hadn’t eaten anything that morning and had been faint with hunger. Vanu felt as if he was being rather a good husband so far.