The Gate to Women's Country Read Online Free PDF Page A

business about the tantrums still rankled, and she was trying to get over it.
    A week went by while Morgot moped and Stavia watched. Then they were in the kitchen one night, and Stavia realized that Morgot hadn’t cried all day.
    She kept her voice carefully casual as she said, “Sylvia’s son, Chernon, came up to me in the plaza, Mother. He asked me who I was, and he told me who he was. Why hasn’t he ever come home on holidays?”
    Morgot stepped back from the iron-topped brick stove, the long fork dangling from her hand as she pushed hair back from her forehead with her wrist. In the pan, bits of chicken sputtered in a spoonful of fat. Morgot put down the fork and dumped a bowl of vegetables into the pan, covering it with a high-domed lid, before turning to give Stavia a long, measuring look. It was an expression shehad whenever she was deciding whether something should be said or not said, and there was no hurrying it. The pan sizzled and hissed. Morgot uncovered it and stirred, saying, “Sylvia thought it was best. When Chernon was about nine or ten, he came home for carnival and said some ugly, terrible things to Sylvia. Things no boy of that age could possibly have thought up.”
    â€œBut you said boys do that. You said that’s just warriors’ ritual, Mother.”
    â€œYes, there is some ritual insult that goes on, though most warriors are honorable enough not to suggest it and some boys are courteous enough not to be part of it. This stuff was far worse than that, Stavia. Sick, perverted filth. We learned that one of the warriors had instructed Chernon to make these vile accusations and demands of Sylvia. The warrior’s name was Vinsas, and the things he wanted Chernon to say were… degenerate. Very personal, and utterly mad. Sylvia was taken totally by surprise. Hearing them from a child, her own child… well, it was unnerving. Disgusting.
    â€œIt turned out that Vinsas had told the boy he had to come back to the garrison and swear he had followed instructions on threat of cruel punishment.”
    â€œWell then, Chernon didn’t mean it.”
    â€œWe knew that, love. It wasn’t Chernon’s fault. But Chernon was being used in a very unhealthy way, don’t you see? These weren’t things a ten-year-old boy should even think of, and yet by the rules and discipline of the garrison, he was obliged to obey a senior warrior. It was unfair to Chernon to put him in that position.” She lifted the pan onto the tiled table and left it there, steam escaping gently from around the lid.
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œSylvia suggested that since the warrior was obviously mad, Chernon just put him off by saying, yes, he’d told Sylvia and she didn’t respond. Somehow, Chernon didn’t feel he could do that. His visit turned into an interminable argument about what he could and couldn’t say, about what the warrior would want to know, and what Chernon would have to tell him. It was almost as though Chernon himself had been infected by this madness and was using it to whip himself up into a kind of prurient tantrum.” Morgot frowned. “I was there once whenChernon was doing this crazy thing. It was like hysteria. Sylvia asked my advice. I told her there were only two things she could do: speak to the Commander of Vinsas’s century—Michael as it happened—or refuse to have Chernon come home thereafter. She couldn’t go on with every carnival becoming a frenzy of frantic, ugly confrontation with her own son. So, she spoke to Michael, and he chose to do nothing.”
    â€œI thought he was nicer than that.”
    Morgot considered this, wrinkling her forehead. “No. Charming on occasion, yes. Sometimes witty and sometimes sexy, but I don’t think anyone could call Michael ‘nice.’ Well, at any rate, Sylvia sent word that Chernon should go to his aunt’s house during carnival. Sylvia has a