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

lunch or a nap, but I thought I’d find you here. Though, from the looks of you, you ought to be in bed.” He sat down on the parapet and gave her a hard stare, the light behind him making his gray braid shine like a silver rope across his shoulder. The lines around his eyes were squeezed deep in concentration. “It was really bad, Stavvy?”
    â€œWell, I knew how it would feel, but then I lied to myself a lot,” she confessed, as she would have confessed to no one except Joshua or Corrig. “I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about Dawid, wondering what I might have done differently. Remembering when I was a kid, when things started. You know. How did you find me? You couldn’t see me from down there.” The words were out before she thought, then she flushed. Of course he had known where she would be.
    Joshua took the book from her lap, scanning the section of the play she had been marking with her finger. “Stavvy, you knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that boy would do anything but what he did. Think of Achilles. That’s Dawid. T can’t offend my friends, but you won’t really die, mommy. Athena will send a hind.’ Warriors all think like that or they wouldn’t stay in the garrison. The trouble is with you, you’ve been creating playlets in your head. ‘Dawid’s change of heart.’ ‘Dawid overcoming his heritage and environment.’ ‘Dawid being blinded by the holy light.’ Come on, Stavvy.” He turned away from her, and she, seeing the muscles of his jaw clenching and unclenching, realized that he was trying to keep her from seeing the broken expression on his face. So. Despite his harsh words, he had loved Dawid, too, just as hehad loved Jerby and Habby and Byram. He had hoped, too.
    â€œI wish you’d been here to talk some sense into me before I went down there,” she said softly. “Or after.”
    â€œI wasn’t here for very good reason, as you know. Now quit breaking yourself up over Dawid. He may be half yours, girl, but it’s the wrong half. Come on, I’ll take you to lunch.”
    He half dragged her to the sausage shop, settling his face into a cheerful expression, giving evidence of enjoyment at a plate of mutton links heavy with basil and garlic and a dish of rare, wonderful rice. Around mouthfuls of sausage he told her stories, making her almost laugh. When he had eaten half of what was before him, he asked, “Why are you studying old Iphi?”
    Stavia, who was only playing with a salad of early lettuce, looked down at the dog-eared book. “I’m doing the lead this summer. Morgot has refused to do it again, and they’re all very flattering. They tell me I’m the only Council member who can look convincingly girlish. Don’t laugh. I know what I look like today. Morgot told me.”
    â€œSummer’s quite a time away. I’m doing Achilles, but I don’t intend to look at it for weeks yet.”
    â€œI’d be surprised if you had to look at it at all! You’ve been playing the part for ages. I thought if I read it over every week or so, I’d pretty much learn it again without having to labor over it.” Sudden tears filled her eyes and she gasped at a remembered pain so intimate it was like childbirth.
    â€œStavvy?”
    â€œI’m all right, Josh. It’s just… I was really reading it to distract myself, but I keep finding things in it that apply to me. Like Iphigenia being tricked to come down to Aulis. To get married, they said, when all they wanted to do was use her. You know that, you know all about it, and yet you let yourself….”
    â€œThey wouldn’t be acting it out every year in every city of Women’s Country if it weren’t applicable to something.”
    Stavia picked at her salad, the tears drying in the corners of her eyes, wondering at herself once more. “Things happen to you