Terra Nova: An Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Science Fiction Read Online Free PDF Page B

spilled information.
    Because Charni could no longer be called a
girl but a young woman. And after the rite of initiation took
place, she would earn the right to be considered a Ksatrya because
she would finally be a fully complete woman at the service of the
world and the women who inhabited it.
    Although it was too soon for that. Her body
was not sufficiently developed for the ritual, so it could be fatal
for her. Yet her mother had great hope. She had produced her first
man when she was thirteen cycles old. If Charni did it when she was
only twelve cycles old, without a doubt that would be a clear,
almost indisputable sign that she deserved to succeed her as
queen.
    That obsession again. An
invisible but tremendously heavy weight hung over her body. Why was
her mother so interested in her being queen? What was so good about
it, besides having a separate house and assistants to do tedious
tasks like cleaning, washing or cooking? Everything else was just
responsibilities and more responsibilities. A constant weight on
her shoulders and constant worries about other people’s problems on
her mind.
    But Charni never said that to her mother.
Somehow she knew that it would disappoint her so much that her
heart would break. So, as always, she did what she was told and got
ready and tried to convince herself in the process that everything
was for her own good. It always had been.
    So Charni attended extra classes with five
other young women like her whose internal time had also arrived
early.
    Without a doubt it was a special class
where, to begin with, there were no chairs or desks. Instead they
sat or lay on small mattresses, sheets, or cushions on the floor.
The teacher, who always sat in the middle, spoke to them calmly and
in a soft, relaxing tone. She never became angry when a young woman
failed to understand something, and she had infinite patience,
which Charni admired. Because, according to the teacher, there was
no hurry even though their bodies were hurrying. What mattered was
that they understand the reason behind things.
    So, during the first alarms, she spent
waters and waters explaining to them what it meant for them to have
an internal time, how to recognize the symptoms before a bleeding,
the troubles they could feel the first few days, the emotional
changes they could feel and how to face them, how to feel clean in
spite of the inconveniences, and she even managed to keep them from
worrying when she explained that their urinating could become
irregular.
    In the most recent alarm they had begun to
combine theory with practice: how, for example, to know when to
change the blood cloth or what the holder for the cloths should be
made of to avoid bad odors, be comfortable around the waist, but
not make too much noise if it hit the container for urine.
    For the next alarm, after they had each made
their holder, lessons about their own bodies would begin, teaching
them to explore them and to recognize changes and the especially
sensitive areas.
    Oh! She was dying to tell all these things
to Deva, but the teacher had frequently insisted that it was not a
good idea to share this information with girls since their bodies
were not ready to receive the lessons, and in the long run it would
be even worse because when the moment came, it could cause
self-rejection and trauma. And although Charni did not understand
that last word very well, she perceived that its connotations were
not good, so she had no other choice but to be patient and
quiet.
    It was hard, especially considering that
with all the time that the extra classes took, she and Deva had
hardly had any time to meet and share feelings. When they could,
they were so happy to be together again that they could not stop
talking and talking. Although she was a young lady and her friend
was a girl … she was still Deva, and until a few alarms ago she
could tell her anything.
    And during the fourth hunger of that day,
when Latha blocked her path as she was returning home,