The Gate to Women's Country

observer. My family has been in this business for generations, you know? Even before the convulsion, I am told, there were Birds traveling the wider world with carnivals and traveling shows. It came down at last to Bowough Bird and his Dancing Dogs, my father’s troupe of mountebanks, and then to me. I am the last male of my line, but these two vixens may continue the work of the Birds, if they choose.” He was talking to cover the awkwardness, to get a distance from it. He should not have suggested she confide in him. It had slipped out from habit, from being so much with Kostia and Tonia, from trying so hard to remedy the confusion of chaotic generations with a sneaky discipline of his own. Musing on this, he went on, “If there is art in our work, it comes from understanding human nature. There are several old words which were once used to describe what we magicians do. One such is legerdemain, meaning ‘deftness of hand,’ but the hand can only misdirect when the mind understands what is to be misdirected….” He allowed his voice to trail off into his teacup.

Old Bowough said, “This is a very good tea, miss. Kind of you to suggest it.”

“Kind of you to have offered it,” said Stavia, giving him a close look. The tea had brought color to his face and a gleam into his eyes. He was older than she had first thought. Ninety, perhaps. A great age for a man in these times, but she did not like the crepitant sound of his breathing. Septemius himself looked well into his fifties, while yet hale and athletic in all his movements. The mother of the girls must have been younger. She became conscious that she was staring. “I was searching for a family resemblance,” she murmured self-consciously. “But the girls do not look much like you, Septemius.”

He shook his head. “Their mother was not related to me genetically. She was a foster child of my mother, the daughter of an old friend. We were reared together. She married late—you are aware of the custom of marriage?—and died in childbirth.”

“Yes, I know of the custom,” she said, being careful not to show on her face what she thought of such barbarism. “You should have brought her into a city of Women’s Country,” Stavia murmured, aghast at the thought of any woman dying in childbirth.

“Uncle Septemius would have done,” said Kostia.

“He has high regard for your sciences,” said Tonia.

“But our father would not permit it.”

“More fool your father, then,” Stavia blurted, outraged.

There was a strained silence, broken, strangely, by Bowough. “He was a fool, yes. We have a saying, we travelers: Tor a man’s business, go to your troupe leader; for a woman’s business, go to Women’s Country. For a fool’s business, go to the warriors.’

“He was a warrior?” Stavia’s face was suddenly ashen.

Septemius nodded. “Much decorated. Much honored. Retired from active duty, so he said, by his garrison. Allowed to travel as he would.”

“I have heard that warriors sometimes decide to travel,” she said with an oddly furtive expression, “but they are never retired from active duty. Not even when they go to the Old Warriors’ Home.”

“So I believe,” said Septemius. “So you know. So these nieces of mine believe and know. But my sister—well, she wished not to believe it.” Seeing the look in Stavia’s eyes, he changed the subject. His nieces had been right. There was something eating away at this girl, and it was more than mere romantic wondering whether some young warrior would keep an assignation.

On the following day, they moved the wagon to the edge of the plaza and set up the stage under the interested gaze of the plaza guards, afterward returning to the hostel with the donkeys. Bowough seemed to be profiting from the rest, and from the extra food. The cook at the hostel had made him his nog, and he had profited from that, as well. They had all tasted it. To Septemius it seemed that something was lacking. It was what was always lacking, some mysterious dimension of taste which his imagination could evoke but which his tongue or nose could not fulfill, some spice or flavoring that did not exist any longer—vanilla in this case, said the cook, referring to her ancient recipe books. “A tropical product, no doubt,” she commented, sighing. “We have nothing from the tropics in this age.”

“Are all the tropics then dead?” Kostia asked, intrigued by Septemius’ annoyance concerning the lack of spices and flavorings.

“Who knows?” Septemius replied, moderating his tone somewhat. “We cannot reach them, if they are yet alive, nor they us. Who knows if they are dead or not?”

“Have you ever tried to go there?” Tonia asked. “Has anyone?”

“To go south? I remember a journey, long ago, when I was young. The troupe went along the coast, circling inland to avoid the gray devastations which lie along the water. My grandfather had heard rumors of inhabited lands there that are not part of Women’s Country.” He said nothing more about the inhabited lands. They were not lands he would want to travel to again, nor would he want Kostia or Tonia to come there, even in flight for their lives. “Our southernmost journey ended in a place where three monstrous devastations came together, a plain of glass beside a huge bay with twisted remnants of great bridges thrust up out of the stone. We could find no way around it.”

“Perhaps farther inland,” murmured Kostia.

“Perhaps if you had had a ship,” murmured Tonia.

“Well, perhaps,” he said. “That was a quarter century ago. It is getting time for Women’s Country to send their exploration teams. They do it every now and then, to see what has changed in that time. Perhaps they will find spices again.”

“We do not miss them,” said Kostia.

“Because we have never had them,” said Tonia. “They are little things, after all.”

“A little spice may outweigh whole generations of potatoes,”