The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper Read Free Book Online Page A

who killed her.
    H ECUBA Daughter of Agamemnon? The man who says he’ll take Cassandra?
    I PHIGENIA Ah well, we know the truth of that, old woman. He will not take her far nor keep her long. And you need not curse him. I’ve cursed him quite enough without your curses.
    A NDROMACHE Is that my child?
    I PHIGENIA If I am my father’s child, this
is
your child. No, this is a better child to you than I to my father, for this babe does not curse you. See, he smiles.
    H ECUBA YOU curse your father?
    I PHIGENIA I curse him who killed me. And him who tricked my mother into letting him.
    A NDROMACHE Give me my child.
(She reaches for him but cannot hold him)
    I PHIGENIA He is beyond your grasp, unhappy queen. But see, he smiles again. Be glad he’s come to me. He has kinfolk who walk among us ghosts. Polyxena will rock him in her arms and give him buds of asphodel to suck.
    H ECUBA Polyxena dead! But Talthybius said she served Achilles’ tomb.
    I PHIGENIA She was slain on Achilles’ tomb, if that is service.
    H ECUBA Oh, false Talthybius, to riddle me these serpent’s words. My daughter dead.
    I PHIGENIA Her throat was slit above Achilles’ corpse as mine was cut above Artemis’s. They like the smell of virgin blood, these men.
    H ECUBA They tell us that the Gods are pleased with blood.
    I PHIGENIA Oh shhh, shhh, don’t curse the Gods, old woman. It’s man who puts the blood-stink in their noses and clotted gore upon their divine lips. Would you drink human blood instead of meat? Do not the Gods have cows? Don’t they have cooks?
    (Enter, upon the battlement, the ghost of Achilles)
    A CHILLES I seek my servant, Polyxena!

    Starid’s eyes were closed as though she might be asleep.
    Corrig watched her for a moment, then asked gently, “Who’s going to play Achilles?”
    â€œJoshua, I think. He has several times before.” She blinked.
    â€œGood old Joshua.”
    â€œGood indeed,” said Stavia. “You know, Corrig, I remember once when I was about eleven, Myra was readingthe play for me, cuing me, just the way you were….” Her voice trailed off as she thought of Myra.
    Corrig didn’t speak for a time. Then he asked, “Have you seen Myra lately?”
    Stavia came to herself with a start. “Not for months. I only see her if I happen to run into her at the market or somewhere. I guess she’s never really forgiven Morgot for asking her to move out.”
    Corrig shook his head slowly. “No, she’s never forgiven you, Stavia. Because you stayed.”

M YRA’S LEAVING M ORGOT’S HOUSE HAD BEEN IN evitable from the moment Myra met Barten. Not that Barten had intended it or Myra foreseen it or Morgot known it would happen. No one knew, but it was inevitable just the same.
    On the day the rift between Myra and Morgot began, Stavia had just turned eleven. She and Myra were in Stavia’s room, going over the opening lines of the play, both of them already more than a little bored with it.
    â€œYou know, Stavia,” Myra said in her dramatically fed up older-sister voice. “You’ve got most of the lines all right, but you seem to keep forgetting this is a comedy!”
    â€œI don’t forget,” Stavia objected, rolling over on her bed to stare at the low ceiling. Last winter the rain had come in through the roof tiles and left a long, swirling stain that sometimes looked like a man with a long beard and sometimes looked like something else. “I do fine until they get to that bit about throwing the baby over the wall, then I think of Jerby and it doesn’t seem funny.”
    â€œWell you’ve
seen
it every year, for heaven’s sake. You go with the rest of us, just before summer carnival. They use that crazy clown-faced doll for the baby. It doesn’t even look like a real child. It isn’t supposed to be a real baby. The old women aren’t real old women. The virgins aren’t