This one’s from 1998. I am grateful to my old friend Josef C. for finding it. In a way, this story makes me very sad for the person I was when I wrote it. I’m also glad my writing’s improved substantially since then.
“No”, said Jentner, “I won’t do it.”
His mother laughed and spooned out more of the fragrant soup into his bowl. “You will do it Jentner”, she said kindly. “All of us have, in our own time. How do you think your father and I met?”
Jentner shrugged. “There must be those who have not participated.”
His father paused in the act of slurping up the soup with a hunk of bread and glared at him. “Outcasts”, he muttered. “Fools.”
Outcasts? “Were they cast out of the township, Father?” Jentner asked with equal parts hope and fear.
“Don’t you be thinking that will be your salvation, boy”, replied his father, jabbing a finger in his direction. “You’ll choose, and then someone will proclaim, and it will be done.”
The soup lay like ashes in Jentner’s mouth. “I won’t”, he said, pushing himself away from the table. He walked out of the room and out of the house before his father or mother could object.
“Let him go”, his mother counseled her husband. “He will come around in time.”
“He has one day”, his father growled, hiding the affection he had for his odd son. “He had better come around.”
Jentner left the town as the sunset painted the fields orange and gold. He walked through the waist-high grass until he came to the river, and sat down at its edge, as he had done many nights during his eighteen years.
He sat in silence, skimming stones across the river as the sky changed from rust to electric blue, and then to darkest blue and black. It was the first time he could remember that being in his favorite place did not soothe him.
The twin moons slowly rose through the sky, and Jentner cursed them. It was only when the twin moons were nearly over each other that the ceremony was held, once every year. He had been prepared for it his entire life, and now that his time had come, he wanted no part of it.
Jentner skipped another stone and watched the reflections of the moons break apart. If only it were so easy.
Every year, all who were eighteen years old gathered on the town green for the ceremony. The town elders erected a large tent for the purpose, though only one youth would enter it at a time.
Jentner had heard tales of the myriad of tunics within: glittering sequins, or deepest violet, seasoned leather or finest silk. Each youth would have his or her chance to choose the tunic they thought would show them to their best advantage. And then they would leave the tent, face the remaining crowd of youths, and wait, nay hope, for someone to proclaim their love for them.
A fool’s game, Jentner thought bitterly, gazing at the moons’ reflection as it coalesced. There were those who had already formed secret liaisons and merely awaited the opportunity to make them formal. Of the remainder, a handsome face or lissome body would certainly guarantee a mate for life.
His eyes drifted downwards to take in his own reflection at the water’s edge. When it came to that, he had no chance. He shrugged at his forlorn features reflected in the water. Beast, he thought. Beast.
Jentner heard a soft rustle as the grasses parted behind him. “You can show yourself, Hake”, he said, smiling and not turning around. A moment later he felt his friend’s hand on his shoulder and made room for him.
“Your parents are worried”, Hake said, grinning. “Your failure to consume your mother’s soup has left her concerned.”
“The soup will wait”, Jentner, said, tossing a flat stone along the surface of the water. It sank almost at once.
“If it’s about tomorrow–” Hake said.
Jentner turned to his friend and silenced him with a shake of his head. “I will not go.”
Hake put his arms around his knees and hugged them. “Jent, it’s your one chance to meet a partner. We don’t get another.”
“How can one choose a mate on looks alone?” Jentner asked.
“There you are mistaken”, Hake said, laughing and clapping an arm on his friend’s shoulder. “They are all of the town. You know them already. You have known them since you were a boy.”
Jentner remained unconvinced. “One night, to choose someone for the rest of our lives…”
“Then *choose*”, Hake said. “But choose wisely.”
Jentner did not know if his friend meant choosing a tunic, or choosing his mate, but as he looked back at the river the thought spoke itself again to his mind. Beast, it said. Beast.
The next night was a night of feasting and parties, knowing laughter from those who had been through the ceremony and nervous laughter from those who were about to undergo it. Exotic spices from foreign lands permeated the night air, and every now and then a firework would explode in a hundred sprays of light, to the delighted laughter of younger boys and girls.
Jentner waited at the edge of the group of those who awaited the ceremony. A young boy ran by with a sparkle-stick, giggling. For one brief moment he wished he could be as young, to run off and concern himself with no more than the fireworks and viands.
He contented himself with observing the others of his age as the elders began to describe the ceremony. Contrary to Hake’s assertion, many were from other nearby towns, but Jentner did know most of them, at least by sight.
And then it started. ” Terey Aileen”, one of the elders called out, reading from a list. A young woman Jentner knew from the general store blushed and hurried into the tent. He wished her luck.
A short while later, she emerged, wearing a deep turquoise tunic that rippled in the torchlight like waves on the river. Scattered applause and some laughter ensued, the usual greeting for most participants. Terey ducked her head, then held it high, so that potential partners could see her eyes that matched the color of her tunic.
It did not take long. A half-dozen men and one woman stepped forward. “I proclaim!” said a brash hulking young man who Jentner recognized as the butcher’s son. The crowd held its breath as Terey studied him.
“It is done!” she said at last, and all but the five not chosen erupted into applause.
And so it went, down the list, as the heat from the summer’s day dissipated and fireworks sparked overhead. Jentner was strangely calm. It was almost like all the other times he had attended. Almost.
“Jentner Da Re”, the elder called out. Ignoring the chuckles and comments of the others, he walked to the tent. Steeling his resolve, Jentner pulled aside the canvas and entered.
He nearly gasped at the sight. Dozens, nay hundreds of tunics hung in rows around the tent. Although he had been to eighteen ceremonies in his life, he had seen but a fraction of the tunics available.
“Impressive, is it not?” the wizened old clothier said, approaching him. “You have much to choose from.”
Jentner ran his fingers along a red tunic of heavy wool, another that was made of light, hammered metal, and a third that was nearly transparent, but shone in soft green and brown like the foliage along the riverbed.
He walked over to a full-length mirror and looked at himself, standing in plain street clothes. “You are a thinker”, the clothier said, busying himself among the tunics. “It is known around the town”, he said to Jentner’s surprised face. “One who gazes at the stars at night and wonders…no?”
Jentner took another look at himself in the mirror as the clothier chattered on. “This tunic”, the old man said, “the celestial bodies…very appropriate.” Jentner turned around. The tunic the clothier had selected was pitch black with golden stars and planets splashed across it.
He laughed. “No”, Jentner said, and turned back to the mirror.
He heard more rustling, and saw in the mirror the old man approach with several wildly differing tunics on his arm. “You have to choose, boy”, the clothier said. “Else how will *you* be chosen?”
Jentner shook his head. They were only tunics, after all. Everything he’d accomplished, everything he wanted to be, he’d come to it as he was now, not dressed in a flashy tunic. They were symbols, he realized, of a language he did not speak.
He took the bundle of tunics from the clothier and went through them. One was a midnight blue, silk with gold piping. Another, a serpent coiled around a caduceus in a design that made him smile. After a long moment, Jentner nodded. “I have chosen.”
When he stepped back out into the crowd, there was a collective gasp, then silence.
Jentner stood dressed in street clothes, the same he had been wearing when he had entered the tent.
Nobody stepped forward. “What kind of joke is this?” a voice he didn’t recognize called from the milling crowd.
“The tunics tell all of you of the person beneath you”, Jentner said. “But I have come here to tell you that I am only myself.”
Silence again. Then the crowd parted to reveal a solitary figure. “I proclaim”, Hake said.
Jentner watched his oldest and best friend approach. It was so easy, he thought, to miss something that had been right in front of his eyes all these years. A friendship beyond friendship, a bond that had formed unspoken between them from childhood. And now, the only person who understood what he’d done, the risk he’d taken. Hake.
Jentner stepped down from the platform. “It is done!” he said, embracing his friend and mate. He had chosen.
Notes
- This hurt a lot for me to read. “Beast, it said. Beast.” Ouch.
- I didn’t realize I’d already been interested in cozy-ish fantasy as long ago as that. I thought it was a more recent concern.
- Love the queernorm aspect.
- Simple names for secondary characters: I really like ‘Hake’ and might use it again.
- My recurring interests in romance, suitable partners and putting on various disguises and uniforms surface again.