The Gate to Women's Country

as they went down the stairs and into the street. Her mother’s friend Sylvia was there with her daughter Beneda, both of them very serious-looking and pink-cheeked from the cold. Sylvia’s servitor Minsning stood to one side, chewing his braid and wringing his hands. Minsning always wrung his hands, and sometimes he cried so that his bulbous nose turned red as an apple. There were other neighbors, too, gathered outside their houses, including several serving men. Joshua, Morgot’s servitor, had gone away on business, so he wasn’t able to tell Jerby good-bye. That was sad, too, because Joshua and Jerby had been best friends, almost like Stavia and Beneda were.

“Our condolences go with you,” a neighbor called, dabbing at the inside corners of her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief.

Morgot bowed, receiving the words with dignity.

Sylvia said, “Morgot, are you going to be all right?”

Stavia’s mother nodded, then whispered, “As long as I don’t try to talk.”

“Well don’t. Just bow and keep your veil straight. Here, let me carry Jerby.”

“No!” Morgot stepped away, hugging the little boy through his quilted coat. “Sorry, Syl. I just… want to hold on to him as long as I can.”

“Stupid of me,” Sylvia dithered, turning red. “Of course.”

The six of them went down the hill in a quiet procession: Morgot carrying Jerby, with Sylvia alongside, then Myra by herself, then Beneda and Stavia—who was trying not to cry and to look dignified at the same time, and failing at both. Beneda giggled, and Myra cast them an angry red-eyed glare over one shoulder.

“You little girls behave yourselves.”

“I am behaving myself,” Stavia said, then more softly, “Beneda, you stop getting me in trouble.” Beneda often said things or did things suddenly that got them both in trouble, though she never meant to. Stavia was more self-conscious. When Stavia got into trouble, it was generally over something she had thought about for a very long time.

“I wasn’t getting you in trouble. I was just laughing.”

“Well, it’s not funny.”

“You look funny. Your face is all twisted up.” Beneda mimicked Stavia, screwing up her eyes and mouth.

“Your face would get twisted up, too, if you had to give your little brother away.”

“I don’t have a little brother. Besides, everybody has to. It isn’t just you.”

“Jerby’s not everybody. Joshua will really miss him.”

“Joshua’s nice.” Beneda thought about this for half a block. “Joshua’s nicer than Minsning. I wish our family had a servitor like Joshua. Joshua can find things when you lose them. He found my bracelet that Mother gave me. He found Jerby that time he was lost, too.”

Stavia remembered hysteria and weeping and Joshua calmly concentrating then going to the empty cistern and finding Jerby curled up in it asleep. “Maybe we can do something to make it up to him.”

“Maybe Mother will have another baby boy,” said Myra, not looking back.

“She’s had three already,” said Stavia. “She says that’s enough.”

“I didn’t know that,” Beneda said, looking curiously at the women. “My mom only had one. And then there’s me and Susan and Liza.”

“Mother had Myra first, then Habby, then Byram, then me, then Jerby,” Stavia confided. “Myra’s seventeen, and that means Habby and Byram are thirteen and twelve, because they’re four years and five years younger than Myra, and that’s how we keep track. How old is your brother? What’s his name?”

Beneda shook her head. “About the same age as your brothers, I think. His name is Chernon. He’s the oldest. He went to the warriors when I was real little, but I don’t think he’s fifteen yet. Something happened and he doesn’t visit us anymore. He goes to Aunt Erica’s house. Mom doesn’t talk about him.”

“Some families don’t,” Myra offered. “Some families just try to forget about them unless they come home.”

“I won’t forget Jerby,” Stavia announced. “I won’t.” Despite all her good resolutions, she heard the tears in her voice and knew her eyes would spill over.

Myra came back to them abruptly. “I didn’t say you would,” she said angrily. “Jerby will be home twice every year, for visits, during the carnival holidays. Nobody’s going to forget him. I just said some families do, that’s all. I didn’t mean us.” She turned and stamped back to her place ahead of them.

“Besides, maybe he’ll return when he’s fifteen,” comforted Beneda. “Then you can visit him, whatever house he’s assigned to. You can even travel to visit him if he goes to some other town. Lots of boys do come back.”

“Some,” amended Myra, turning to glare at them with a peculiar twist to her mouth. “Some do.”

They had walked all the way past the Market District to the Well of Surcease. Sylvia and Morgot each took a cup from the attendant and filled it, spilling some toward the Lady’s Chapel for the Lady, then sipping at it, drawing the time out. Myra took their offering to the poor box outside the chapel door, then sat on the well moping, looking sulky. Stavia knew that Myra just wanted to get it over with. There was no necessity for stopping at the well. The water was purely symbolic—at least when drunk directly from the well like this—and offered no real consolation except a reminder that surcease would come if one didn’t fight it. “Accept grief,” the priestess said at services for the lost ones. “Accept grief, but do not nurse it. In time it will go.” At the moment, that was hard to remember, much less understand.

“We all have to do things we don’t want to do,” Morgot had said. “All of us here in Women’s Country. Sometimes they are things that hurt us to do. We accept the hurt because the alternative would be worse. We have many reminders to keep us aware of that. The Council ceremonies. The play before summer carnival. The desolations are there to remind us of pain, and the well is there to remind us that the pain will pass….”

Stavia wasn’t sure she could ever learn to find comfort in the thought, though