The Maiden, chapter eight

[maculategiraffe]

Kyle checked the clock on his way to the kitchen; as his stomach was hinting, it was past lunchtime, and when he got to the kitchen, the other men looked halfway finished already. Jonas hailed him with, "How's the easy life?"

"Eventful," said Kyle, sliding into his chair. "Listen, guys, do I ever have a story for you."

He told them everything, omitting only what had happened inside the circle; when he got to the part where Sean stepped out of the circle, every man around the table was white to the lips. Kyle spoke on into dead silence, until he got to the part where Rita had offered him the choice of whether Sean stayed or went, when Jonas interrupted, "You are making this shit up."

"I swear to Gaia, I'm not," said Kyle. "She said she'd abide by my choice, whatever it was."

"So?"

Kyle shrugged. "So I said keep him. Give him another chance."

"Holy fucking shit," said Jonas fervently. "You're a better man than I am."

"Nah," said Kyle, shifting uncomfortably. "You'd have done the same if you'd been there-- if you'd seen him-- he was so scared, he was crying and all pale and--"

"You weren't scared she'd decide to get rid of you too?" Jonas demanded. "For, shit, I don't know, countenancing disobedience?"

"I didn't even think about that," said Kyle, startled. "No, she doesn't-- I mean, she wouldn't do that. She doesn't-- ask trick questions."

Jonas pursed his lips, looking skeptical.

"And anyway," Kyle added, half to reassure himself, "she told me I wouldn't regret my kindness."

"She said that?" asked Nick.

"In those words," said Kyle. "Anyway, if you guys see Sean around, be nice to him, okay? He had a really rough morning."

"So did you," said Drew. "Eat. And after lunch, you should relax. Don't worry about helping out, outside."

Kyle nodded and hungrily attacked his plate, thankful that Drew hadn't asked again whether Kyle had broached any sensitive subjects with Rita. Drew was patient, of course, and Kyle was hoping he'd stay patient while Kyle figured out just what he'd gotten himself into now. With his kindness.







Sean, sitting at Rita's feet as she worked at her desk, had figured he wasn't going to get any lunch today-- he'd be lucky if his protectrix let him go to dinner with the other men-- but when his stomach growled, she looked down at him distractedly and said "Oh, dear. You haven't eaten today, have you?"

Sean shook his head, trying to convey with the gesture that skipping a few meals was absolutely no problem in comparison to her bounteous graciousness in letting him sit at her feet, but she was looking at the clock, not him.

"The men will already have eaten lunch," she said. "But there are bound to be leftovers. Come with me."

When she helped hiim to his feet, a rush of dizziness nearly brought him down on top of her. He bit his lip as she steadied him, expecting a reprimand for his clumsiness, but she just looked worried.

"Sit back down," she said, and helped him obey; he looked up at her, waiting. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

Sean didn't want to be left alone in his protectrix' office-- what if some other woman came in and demanded to know his business? What if it was one of the ones from the ritual, who'd seen his disobedience? What if it was Carol?-- but he didn't have much choice. She left, and he sat on the floor, wondering what "right back" meant.

It turned out to be pretty quick; it wasn't ten minutes before she returned, carrying a tray with a plate of food, silverware, a napkin, a glass of water, and a steaming cup of something. She set it down on her desk, reached down to him, and sat him in her desk chair.

"Eat," she said.

His hand shook when he picked up the fork. The food was some kind of pasta, with red meat sauce, baked with cheese over top of it; off to the side was bright green steamed broccoli. The cup was white china, and the liquid inside it was pale greenish yellow.

He put the fork down and reached for the cup, glancing up at Rita to make sure it was all right; when she didn't say anything, he took a sip. It was green jasmine tea, of the sort he used to have at home sometimes, before the center; it was warming, and he drank the whole cup before he picked up his fork again and started to eat.

She kept watching him, which made him horribly nervous and self-conscious of his table manners, but he still felt better, steadier, as he got the food inside him, alternating bites with sips of cool water. When he'd finished and set down his fork, remembering she'd given him permission to speak, he said, "Thank you."

She didn't answer; she just picked up the tray and left again.

Great. Now he was sitting at his protectrix' desk by himself.

He was still sitting there when one of the women from the morning ritual-- attempted ritual-- came in, the one with fluffy, feathered black hair and a friendly expression, who'd been taking notes, and who'd laughed at something Kyle had said.

"Oh, hi," she said, not displaying any obvious anger at seeing a disgraced man sitting at the magistra's desk with his protectrix nowhere in sight. "Where's the magistra?"

"She'll be right back," was the best he could do, though it came out so squeakily he wasn't even sure she'd understand.

"Relax, honey," she said. "I won't eat you; I'm a vegetarian. Are you okay?"

He nodded, not sure what she meant, but pretty sure he was okay in any sense that counted. He wasn't hungry, he wasn't in pain, and he was still, at least theoretically, under Rita's protection.

"I'm Leah, by the way," said the woman. "We weren't really properly introduced, this morning."

"Sean," he mumbled, and immediately felt like an idiot. She didn't laugh, though she did smile.

"I know, sweetie," she said. "I'm one of the magistra's assistants-- me and Bonnie. Bonnie's the redhead. You'll see us both around a lot."

He nodded, still nervous, but liking that she spoke as if he could be expected to be around for awhile, and as if she didn't mind that fact. Apparently she hadn't been one of the "colleagues" who'd been on the side of discarding Sean, in the discussion Rita had mentioned. He wondered which side Bonnie had been on.

"And if you need anything," Leah was saying, "and the magistra's not around, you can always ask me, okay? I mean, I'm just her assistant, but if you need a woman."

He blinked at her, half suspicious-- why was this strange woman being so nice to him?-- and half so grateful for her unexpected kindness that he wanted to go down on his knees and put his arms around her waist, bury his face against her prussian-blue dress, feel her hands on his head in painless benediction: Oh honey. He'd done that with his mother a few times, when he was a teenager-- sixteen, seventeen, moving inevitably closer to eighteen, with no steady girlfriend in sight. She'd done what she could, and though it hadn't ended up being enough, he really missed her sometimes.

Rita came back in, carrying another tray-- or else the same tray, with different things on it-- and said, "Hello, Leah," as she set it down on the floor, then straightened up, looked at Sean, pointed at the floor beside the tray, and said, "Sit."

Sean obeyed hurriedly, looking at the tray. There was a large teapot on it, a new teacup, a medium-sized red apple, and a bowl of grapes. He looked up at his protectrix, bewildered.

"Help yourself," she told him. "Tea is good for you, and I think your system could use some sugar. Don't eat more than you care to, but have as much as you like. Yes, Leah?"

"I've been talking to Carol," said Leah, as Sean wrapped his fingers firmly around the handle of the teapot and, his hand shaking again, poured a thin, wavering stream into the cup, "and-- well, I think she's mostly settled down, but I don't think it would be a bad idea for you to talk to her a little, magistra."

"I'll talk to her," said Rita. "Once I'm through here. In the meantime, tell her I have a reading assignment for her."








Kyle wasn't the insatiable reader Jonas was, but he loved the peace of Rita's library, and there was something wonderfully luxurious about being surrounded by so many books, all of which he was allowed to take down and read. He didn't read particularly fast, and his memory wasn't exceptionally good, but he found the act of reading soothing and stimulating, both at once. Just what he needed right now.

Nobody was in the library when he got there-- at least not to a quick glance; it was possible people were browsing between shelves he couldn't see-- and he wandered for a while, scanning titles without any very clear idea what he was looking for, until he ended up in the history section. The book he finally put his hand on and slid from the shelf was a thick volume called The Origins of Power.

He'd never really read much on the subject before yesterday, when he'd taken a book down from a shelf in Rita's office, more or less at random, to keep himself from gazing at her like a lovesick bull while she did her work. The book had had an interesting title-- Conductrices: Studies in Early Power Use-- but Kyle hadn't been able to make much headway; there were too many things the book assumed you knew already. Kyle had learned some basics in school, of course, but it generally wasn't considered necessary for boys to learn that much about history. Anyway, Kyle hadn't been a particularly good student, regardless of the subject, which was one reason he'd ended up at the center where Rita had found him. Now that it looked like he had a lot of free time on his hands, though, he might as well have a hobby.

He settled himself in an armchair by the window, glad Emily-- given her views about men being allowed on the furniture-- wasn't around, and opened The Origins of Power.

The first few chapters were all about the social climate that had led up to the Enlightenment-- women confined to the home, forced to obey their fathers and, once they had acquired the male equivalent of a protectrix (at least that was what a "husband" seemed to amount to), to obey them. Forced to dress certain ways, for fear that their bodies would enflame the passions of men, who might force them into intercourse; forced into intercourse anyway, with their husbands, and with other men, who used their superior size and strength to hit them and intimidate them, and then accused of promiscuity and punished, sometimes killed. Refused education, on the grounds that they were less intelligent than men; oppressed by various invented religions in which the supreme being took the form of a male who favored men over women, required female obedience, and regarded menstruation and childbirth as unclean. Mutilated, reviled, downtrodden. Kyle knew all this, more or less, minus a few graphic details that made him feel a little sick. After a while, he started flipping through pages, until he got to a chapter promisingly headed, "Salem, 1692."

It is still not known, the chapter started, why the power that would eventually become the birthright of all women first manifested itself only in certain groups. Though there has been much scholarly speculation on the subject, the popular consensus is that the power arrived first in the hands of those who needed it most. As a case in point, the town of Salem in Massachusetts, though not the first recorded manifestation of female power, has been much studied.

Salem was a highly religious community in which belief was firmly placed, as in many contemporary societies, in a singular masculine deity known to his followers simply as "God." The God worshiped by the citizens of Salem was a particularly rigid and misogynistic one, and the women of the community suffered greatly at the hands of his ministers and the men who enforced his commands. Worship services were conducted exclusively by men; women were not permitted to speak, a practice explicitly endorsed by...

Kyle skimmed the rest of the paragraph; the next one looked a bit more action-packed.

Four young girls, ranging in age from nine-year-old Betty Parris to seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Hubbard, began manifesting symptoms wholly unfamiliar to their community; although historical records of the time unfortunately omit any information pertaining to the young women's menarche, their recorded symptoms certainly align with the onset of new power. Doctors were called in to comment on this strange new illness, to no avail; when no medical diagnosis could be made, and attempts to punish and repress the manifestations proved useless, religion was invoked. The devil, an evil (and likewise masculine) counterpart to God, was said to be lending his power to the girls' "affliction." Various accusations were made regarding "witchcraft," including accusations that attempts made by contemporary unmanifested seers to discover the source of the manifestations were the work of the devil and of men or women who had devoted themselves to his service. Women, along with other oppressed and marginalized members of society such as the poor and members of non-European races, came in for particular suspicion in the matter of consorting with the devil.

Lacking any real understanding of their new power, bewildered and harassed by their fathers and masters, the girls' response was involuntary and inevitable. The first recorded death, of the minister Samuel Parris, was followed rapidly by that of William Griggs, a doctor who--

"Doing a little light reading?" said a woman's voice.

Kyle jumped so hard the heavy book nearly fell from his lap, and looked up to see Leah looking over his shoulder. She put a reassuring hand on his back, and he calmed quickly; Leah wasn't scary, and anyway, he wasn't doing anything wrong.

"Sorry to sneak up on you," she said, "but I actually need that particular book."

Kyle closed it immediately and offered it to her; she took it and tucked it under her arm.

"I'll get it back to you when we're done, if you like," she said kindly.

Kyle nodded, and because it was Leah, added aloud, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," said Leah, smiling at him. "It's nice that you're interested in women's history."