“When did this happen?” Bryan demanded.
“Billy Ray getting the farm? Over the past few months. Mayleen wants to marry him—no, I haven’t heard her say so, but I’ll wager Maybelle has.”
“She’s right, Daddy. It’s all Mayleen talks about.”
I nodded. “And if she’s pregnant, which I have no doubt she is, unless you’re capable of forcibly aborting her, Bryan, then locking her up in the attic for the next ten years, she’s going to manage being with Billy Ray, one way or another.”
“And you accept this?” he asked angrily.
“Accept it?” I, sighed, at a loss. As I’d accepted Rueful? As I’d accepted becoming his nurse? As I’d finally accepted that one of my children was born to misery. “What are our choices, Bryan? Tell me if we have any. I’d love to know.”
He mumbled and grumbled to himself, gradually losing steam as his kettle cooled.
I said, “There’s one good thing, Bryan. Our family here, Maybelle, and you and I, will be much, much happier with Mayleen married and living somewhere else. Ninety-nine percent of our upsets and problems are Mayleen.”
Bryan said plaintively, “God, Margaret, she’s only sixteen!”
“After the number of years we’ve lived in The Valley, you should know every man here believes if a girl is big enough, she’s old enough, and the ruing can come later!”
Bryan, deflated, rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t foresee my own daughter being considered big enough.”
“Well you can rue that come next Rueday. Maybelle and I’ll stand right beside you and rue it double.”
“No, I won’t,” whispered Maybelle. “Because you’re right, Mama. We’ll be so much happier if she’s somewhere else. She just makes our lives a misery.”
It was a mistake, of course. I had forecast Mayleen’s life, but I had not considered Mayleen’s children, all ten of them. Yet another mistake to add to the endless chain. Still, as I often tried to console myself years later, it was quite possible, given Mayleen’s stupidity and Billy Ray’s pigheadedness, nothing could have prevented it, even if I had known where it would lead.
I Am Wilvia/on B’yurngrad
On B’yurngrad, my years of study had come to an end. I was congratulated by my instructors and was honored by being summoned by the High Priestess for an interview concerning my future life. I had never been to the High Priestess’s office, which was known to be high in the dome of the Temple, between the outer shell of stone and metal and the inner shell of plaster and gilded tiles. One of the novices offered to guide me up the endless stairs that spiraled through echoing spaces above the Temple vault.
“Does the High Priestess climb these stairs every day?” I asked, puffing slightly.
“Wilvia, we don’t know,” said the novice, a woman even younger than my twenty years or so. “When she summons us, we climb up, and she’s there. If she doesn’t summon us, we don’t go, and we have no idea where she is.”
We climbed farther. The stairs leveled into a ramp that curved gently upward to a wide door.
“In there,” the novice said. “Knock first.”
I knocked. A voice bade me enter, which I did, struggling with the weight of the door. The room was empty except for two chairs, one of them occupied by Lady Badness.
“Well, come in, Wilvia. Don’t stand there gawking.”
“I didn’t know you…how long have you…”
“How long have I been head of this agglomeration? A very long time. Is it rewarding? Yes. Does it take a lot of my time? Not really. Your teachers are pleased with you.”
I flushed. “They seem to be, yes. I’m surprised. The final examination was not at all as I expected it to be.”
“The judging of cases. No. It’s never as we expect it to be. That’s why we train women judges here at Temple. It is the nature of men to make rules for everything and to play complicated games with them. For them, the game is more important than justice.
“Ordinary people prefer justice. They prefer that things be taken case by case, they prefer an attempt at justice over the rules of law, for they know that pure law is often used by the clever to victimize the innocent. Sit down, child.”
I lowered myself into the other chair. In the center of the room was an open well surrounded by a railing. I could hear the shush of footsteps and the murmur of voices far below in the Temple. Above, a similar hole pierced the dome to show the sky, where white birds darted across an infinite blue.
Lady Badness spoke: “You have done what was required, learned what was necessary, and I have come to take you away.”
“Away?” The word, leaving my mouth, sounded bruised and tentative. “But…Joziré will come here to find me…”
“Joziré is waiting for you on Fajnard. His mother, the queen, has died, not at the hands of Frossian assassins as was feared, but from sorrow, an illness we do not know how to cure. Joziré must now take the throne. He wishes to do so with you at his side, if that will be good for his people. Will it, do you suppose?”
“He never sent me word,” I cried angrily. “Never once…”
“He could not have done so without risking his life and yours. Would you have wished him to do that?”
I bit my tongue. “Lady Badness, no. I didn’t think.”
“You will have to think if you marry Joziré, will your marrying him be good for his people?” repeated Lady Badness obdurately. “You marry them when you marry him.”
Over the past five or so years, in those few moments when I had had time for reflection, I had asked myself this question many times.
“I believe I will be good for his people,” I said firmly. “I will love them as I do him, and they will be my people.”
She nodded, looking at me with what I
