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

really virgins. It’s supposed to be a satire, you know?” She frowned, trying to remember something an instructor had said. “A commentary on particular attitudes of preconvulsion society.”
    â€œI know.” Stavia knew it was a commentary, but knowingand feeling were two separate things. She felt the play in ways she didn’t know it.
    Myra went on, “Hecuba and Andromache are all tarted up, like a pair of river Gypsies, with red on their cheeks and their lips as bloody as Talthybius’s are supposed to be. And where he says Andromache’s young yet, he puts his hand on her, you know? Then Achilles comes down the stairs with that great dong on him, sticking way out and bobbing around like anything, looking for Polyxena….”
    â€œI
know
, Myra! I just keep thinking of Jerby, that’s all.”
    â€œHe’ll be all right,” Myra had said, not sounding as though she believed it. She no longer talked very much about Jerby. His being down at the garrison confused her. She did want him to come home, and yet men who did come home were cowards and tit-suckers, according to Barten, the young warrior she’d been spending a lot of time talking to from the top of the wall. Cowards and tit-suckers and impotent, too. Or else gelded when they came back. All the warriors said so. Until recently she had not thought of Joshua as a coward and a tit-sucker, and she wasn’t sure what gelding really did to a man, but she supposed he must be if Barten said so. “Jerby’ll be coming for a visit soon.”
    â€œIt’s only two months to midsummer carnival.”
    â€œI know.” Myra got up off the floor where she had been sitting to cue Stavia in her part. “Oh, I know.” She looked at herself in the mirror, turning her head from side to side, striking a dance pose with her arms.
    â€œYou’re going to have an assignation, aren’t you?”
    â€œMaybe.” She tossed her light red hair. “One of the warriors has been courting me.”
    â€œIs he good-looking?”
    â€œMmmm.” Myra rolled her eyes and made fainting motions. “Shoulders out to here, with the cutest bottom, and blue, blue eyes and his hair and eyebrows are black, and he has these lips that curve down in the middle….”
    â€œWhat’s his name?”
    â€œBarten. He’s in Michael’s command. Tally’s fit to be quarantined, she’s so mad at me. He was courting her until he met me.” She preened, throwing her head back,looking for an instant as beautiful and mysterious as Morgot sometimes did.
    â€œHow old is he?”
    â€œHe belongs to the twenty-two, I think. He’s not twenty-five, at any rate. He doesn’t have any scars yet.”
    â€œWhat’s the real reason they don’t let them fight until they’re twenty-five?”
    â€œYou know. They told you in women’s studies.”
    â€œI know what they told me. They’re strongest and healthiest and most virile between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five, and if they’re going to father babies, that’s the time to do it. So, they aren’t risked in battle until they’re older. But is that the real reason?”
    â€œWhat else?”
    â€œI thought it was maybe to give them a few more years to decide if they want to come back or not.”
    â€œNot very many come back after they’re twenty,” Myra said definitely, her lightly freckled face drawn into a frown. “Hardly any at all.”
    â€œI’ll bet you were hoping….”
    â€œI wasn’t hoping anything!” she said angrily. “Don’t be silly. Barten is proud to be a warrior. He’d never do that. Morgot says it’s better if they don’t get talked into it, either, or you end up with someone coming back who’s just miserable. ‘A warrior home against his will remains at heart a warrior still.’ Do you want to do your