The Wise Man's Fear

so they brushed the back of her neck. She closed her eyes and tipped her face up toward mine.

“They are lovely, and more than enough,” I said, and bent to kiss her.

“I was right,” Penthe said with a contented sigh as we lay naked among the flowers. “You have a fine anger.” I lay on my back, her small body curled under my arm, her heart-shaped face resting gently on my chest.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. “I think anger might be the wrong word.”

“I mean Vaevin,” she said, using the Ademic term. “Is that the same?”

“I don’t know that word,” I admitted.

“I think anger is the right word,” she said. “I have spoken with Vashet in your language, and she did not correct me.”

“What do you mean by anger, then?” I asked. “I certainly don’t feel angry.”

Penthe lifted her head from my chest and gave me a lazy, satisfied smile. “Of course not,” she said. “I have taken your anger. How could you feel such a way?”

“Are . . . are you angry then?” I asked, sure I was missing the point entirely.

Penthe laughed and shook her head. She had undone her long braid and her honey-colored hair hung down the side of her face. It made her look like an entirely different person. That and the lack of the mercenary reds, I supposed. “It is not that kind of anger. I am glad to have it.”

“I still do not understand,” I said. “This could be something barbarians do not know. Explain it to me as if I were a child.”

She looked at me for a moment, her eyes serious, then she rolled over onto her stomach so she could face me more easily. “This anger is not a feeling. It is . . .” She hesitated, frowning prettily. “It is a desire. It is a making. It is a wanting of life.”

Penthe looked around, then focused on the grass around us. “Anger is what makes the grass press up through the ground to reach the sun,” she said. “All things that live have anger. It is the fire in them that makes them want to move and grow and do and make.” She cocked her head. “Does that make sense to you?”

“I think so,” I said. “And women take the anger from men in sex?”

She smiled, nodding. “That is why afterward a man is so weary. He gives a piece of himself. He collapses. He sleeps.” She glanced down. “Or a part of him sleeps.”

“Not for long,” I said.

“That is because you have a fine, strong anger,” she said proudly. “As I have already said. I can tell because I have taken a piece of it. I can tell there is more waiting.”

“There is,” I admitted. “But what do women do with the anger?”

“We use it,” Penthe said simply. “That is why, afterward, a woman does not always sleep as a man does. She feels more awake. Full of the need to move. Often full of desire for more of what brought her the anger in the first place.” She lowered her head to my chest and bit me playfully, wriggling her naked body against me.

It was pleasantly distracting. “Does this mean women have no anger of their own?”

She laughed again. “No. All things have anger. But women have many uses for their anger. And men have more anger than they can use, too much for their own good.”

“How can one have too much of the desire to live and grow and make?” I asked. “It seems more would be better.”

Penthe shook her head, brushing her hair back with one hand. “No. It is like food. One meal is good. Two meals is not better.” She frowned again. “No. It is more like wine. One cup of wine is good, two is sometimes better, but ten . . .” She nodded seriously. “That is very much like anger. A man who grows full of it, it is like a poison in him. He wants too many things. He wants all things. He becomes strange and wrong in his head, violent.”

She nodded to herself. “Yes. That is why anger is the right word, I think. You can tell a man who has been keeping all his anger to himself. It goes sour in him. It turns against itself and drives him to breaking rather than making.”

“I can think of men like that,” I said. “But I can think of women too.”

“All things have anger,” she repeated with a shrug. “A stone does not have much compared to a budding tree. It is the same with people. Some have more, or less. Some use it wisely. Some do not.” She gave me a wide smile. “I have a great deal, which is why I am so fond of sex and fierce in my fighting.” She bit at my chest again, less playfully this time, and began to work her way up to my neck.

“But if you take the anger from a man in sex,” I said, struggling to concentrate, “doesn’t that mean the more sex you have, the more you want?”

“It is like the water one uses to prime a pump,” she said hotly against my ear. “Come now, I will have all of it, even if it takes us all day and half the night.”

We eventually moved from the grassy field to the baths, and then to Penthe’s house of two snug rooms built against the side of a bluff. The moon was in the sky and had been watching us for some time through the window, though I doubt we showed her anything she hadn’t seen before.

“Is that enough for you?” I said breathlessly. We were side by side in her pleasantly capacious bed, the sweat drying off our bodies. “If you take much more of it, I might not have enough anger left to speak or breathe.”

My hand lay on the flat plane of her belly. Her skin was soft and smooth, but when she laughed I could feel the muscles of her stomach jump, going hard as sheets of steel.

“It is enough for now,” she said, exhaustion plain in her voice. “It would upset Vashet if I left you empty as a fruit with all the juice pressed out.”

Despite my long day, I was oddly wakeful, my thoughts bright and clear. I remembered something she had said earlier. “You mentioned that a woman has many uses for her anger. What use does a woman have for it that a man does not?”

“We teach,” she said. “We give names. We track the days and tend to the smooth turning of things. We plant. We make babies.” She shrugged. “Many things.”

“A man can do those things as well,” I said.

Penthe chuckled. “You have the wrong word,” she said, rubbing at my chin. “A beard is what a man makes. A baby is something different, and that you have no part of.”

“We don’t carry the baby,” I said, slightly offended. “But still, we play our part in making it.”

Penthe turned to look at me, smiling as if I had made a joke. Then her smile faded. She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me for another long moment. “Are you in serious?”

Seeing my perplexed expression, her eyes grew wide with amazement and she sat upright on the bed. “It is true!” she said. “You believe in man-mothers!” She giggled, covering the bottom half of her face with both hands. “I never believed it was true!” She lowered her left hand, revealing an excited grin as she gestured amazed delight.

I felt I should be irritated, but I couldn’t quite muster the energy. Perhaps some of what she said about men giving away their anger had some truth to it. “What is a man-mother?” I asked.

“Are you not making a joke?” she asked, one hand still half-covering her smile. “Do you truly believe a man puts a baby in a woman?”

“Well . . . yes,” I said a little awkwardly. “In a manner of speaking. It takes a man and a woman to make a baby. A mother and a father.”

“You have a word for it!” she said, delighted. “They told me this too. With the stories of dirt soup. But I never thought it a real story!”

I sat up myself at this point, growing concerned. “You do know how babies are made, don’t you?” I asked, gesturing serious earnestness. “What we have been doing for most of the day is what makes a baby.”

She looked at me for a moment in stunned silence, then dissolved helplessly into laughter, trying to speak several times only to have it overwhelm her again when she looked up at the expression on my face.

Penthe put her hands on her belly, prodding it as if puzzled. “Where is my baby?” She looked down at her flat belly. “Perhaps I have been sexing wrong these years.” When she laughed, the muscles across her stomach flickered, making a pattern like a turtle’s shell. “I should have a hundred babies if what you say is true. Five hundred