Grazing The Long Acre by Gwyneth Jones Page B

longer. I knew what had happened, this morning in Canditinggi. The balance had fallen and there was a new prince for Timur. It had been a hard debate: the tension of the delegates’ minds, locked together, had reached us all, affecting each according to capacity. Now they had decided, in grief, and that grief had swept through our hearts. It was ours. This was the power of the Dapur. This was the different road. I thought of my adopted family. Had they intended me to have this experience? Perhaps they didn’t even know what would happen to anyone near a great Debate. We had given up a great deal, in coastal Timur, for the sake of staying alive.
    “You have chosen.”
    “Reluctantly, yes,” said the lady. “It was delicate. A choice of harms: a little could have changed it. But I believe, as you perhaps do not, that the people’s minds are with me when I debate, just as our troubled minds have been with Canditinggi these past days. So be it, then. It is generally better not to fight against fate.”
    Silk whispered as she rose, and with a slight bow she left me. She was gone before I realised I ought to thank her. In one small space of time I had been given everything I asked from Canditinggi. Recognition from a Dapur lady, inside knowledge of the debate –and the prince I had wanted for Timur. But it was too late now.

    Derveet invited me to walk with her up to Candi Daulat. It was a rare afternoon without rain. We climbed through the glistening trees and vines, on the remains of the old road: steep, engineered curves from another time. The sky above the hilltop was soft and water vapour rose from the ground in thin white veils. We sat on slabs of fallen sculpture by the squat black shrine and looked down on Canditinggi.
    “It’s strange,” I said, “but I have never wanted to be a woman.”
    “Why should you?”
    “Isn’t it obvious?”
    “Women are not better than men. Only different.”
    I answered that platitude as it deserved—not at all, and she grinned lazily.
    “You can’t deny it was Woman to whom God turned for help, at the renewal of the world.” I leaned back and craned upwards to where this transaction was represented in stone: the Mother of Life dancing on the newborn mountaintops, receiving Divinity. There is no man in that picture,” I pointed out.
    “But it is man then who comes to God face to face, a difficult thing for any woman to do. Dealing with the Divine as a business partner tends to get in the way.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of being human. Of humility.”
    Days had passed, and we had all begun to recover from that strange, frightening wave of depression. No one spoke of it. No announcement had been made: the Dapur does everything slowly. But Derveet and I knew it was all over. Silently, our abstract conversation acknowledged her defeat.
    Candi Daulat means Temple of the Sovereigns; these fallen stones were carved all over with the eagle insingia of the vanished Garudas. It was not strictly safe to be here; we might be spotted coming or going. The shrine had few visitors, even up in the defiant mountains.
    “Shall we go back?”
    Derveet stood. She touched carved stone ruefully, and touched her brow, half-ashamed of the sentimental gesture. I saw suddenly how young she was, only a little older than myself. And how very much alone. She caught my glance.  I quickly looked away.
    Someone was coming up the road. It was Annet, the Aneh woman, in her black dusty robes. No greeting.
    “They told me I’d find you here,” she said, ignoring me. “Well, I’ve voted, finally. It will be announced tomorrow. Jagdana discovered Ida Sadia has piles. Gamartha counted up, and decided the Bangau have only have sixty-three generations, not a hundred and twenty after all. Timur reluctantly yielded to social pressure, so we are now unanimous. You’d better give me some more of that foul paper money. I have to pay up at the hotel, and I’ve nothing left.”
    They went. I stayed. So Gusti Ketut