Read The Gate to Women's Country for Free Online

idea?”
    â€œOh, I just think I am.”
    â€œWell, greens will hardly make you any fatter. It will make your skin smooth and your hair shiny, however, which young warriors are said to admire. More?”
    â€œWinter food is boring. Cabbage is particularly boring.”
    â€œYes, it is. It is also just about the only leaf vegetable wecan keep all winter. When the town finishes work on the new sunpits this summer, we should be able to have fresh things a little oftener. Do you want more or don’t you?”
    â€œA little, I guess.”
    Joshua shared “the look” with Morgot once more, and the conversation became suddenly very general and amusing, the way it did when Joshua or Morgot didn’t want to talk about something in particular.

C ORRIG FOUND S TAVIA IN THE KITCHEN, LOOKING ill and middle aged, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep, the text of
Iphigenia at Ilium
open on the table before her.
    â€œI heard you moving around during the night,” he said as he stroked her hair. “You look dreadful, dear one.”
    â€œI thank you,” she said laconically.
    â€œWell, let’s say then that you look less lovely than usual.” He filled a pan with water and grain and set it upon the stove.
    â€œI couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about Dawid. Wondering what’s going to happen to him.”
    â€œThat’s normal. It will take a while to accept the fact that he’s gone.” He poured hot tea into the empty cup before her, glancing down at the text. “That’s hardly the most cheerful reading in the world.”
    â€œI know,” she said. “I’m doing it mostly for distraction. I knew it by heart once, all the parts. I’ve seen it every summer, but I haven’t actually thought about it in years. Morgot’s done
Iphigenia
as long as I can remember. I have to learn it all over again if I’m going to do the part in this year’s production.”
    â€œYou’re not doing it until summer. Spring isn’t even really here yet.” His dark brows rose, making perfect arcs over his tilted eyes and long, straight nose, deep furrows curling up from below his chin to bracket his wide, mobile mouth. He licked his lower lip, head cocked, examining her as he chopped up dried apples to add them to the grain.
    â€œI thought it might be easier if I just read it over adozen or so times,” she said listlessly. “Then it might all come back to me without my trying very hard.”
    â€œYou’d have been better off getting another hour’s sleep.”
    â€œI couldn’t sleep. Besides, it should cheer me up. The play’s a comedy.”
    â€œComedy!”
    â€œWell it is, Corrig. The audience laughs.”
    He made a face at her, trying to make her smile. “There are some things about Women’s Country I still find difficult to understand. How old were you when you first did that play?”
    â€œOh, about ten or eleven, I suppose. We did it every year in school, taking different parts, building sets, making costumes.”
    â€œSo you’ve been doing it for at least twenty-seven years. I should think you’d pick something else to do for a while, but Joshua says you Councilwomen never get tired of it.”
    â€œIt isn’t that we don’t get tired of it. It’s that the play is part of the… part of the reminders. You know that!” She ran her fingers through her hair, fingering the roughness of scar tissue at the top of her head, wincing at a little tenderness there which had never gone away. “When’s Joshua coming back?”
    â€œSoon, I hope,” he said. “There’s more to do around here than I can keep up with. Tell you what. If you’re determined to review this play now, I’ll read the lines to you and you see if you can remember Iphigenia’s part.”
    â€œShe doesn’t come in until about page six….”
    â€œThen