"Suzette Haden Elgin - And then there'll be fireworks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

husband, a man of seventeen, and Avalon not only had
not welcomed her bridegroom tenderly and obediently

And Then There S Be Firewwh

as was expected o( her, not only refused to go wiBingly
to the marriage bed where this male twice her size and
near twice her age might do her the favor of placing his
seed in her wombтАФAvalon had tried to hide herself
away. They had dragged her from a granary, half
suffocated already on the grain and on her terror. De-
spite the fact. Granny Leeward had hammered the point
home, that Avalon's womb had been through two full
cycles. And secondly, there was the additional fact that
Avalon of Wommack was a Two. and a female whose
name came to the numeral two was intended by destiny
to be passive and submissive and weak. The giri had also
sinned against her Naming.

That, the Granny had said, was the greater sin of the
two. A young girl, modest and timid as was fully appro-
priate, might be leniently treated for fearing the wed-
ding bed and the inevitable childbed that followed it.
She might well of had only a token stroke or two of the
Long Whip for that, provided she went then and did
her duty ever after.

But to rebel against her Naming was not just to rebel
against Jeremiah Thomas Traveller's orders to many
and be fruitful, the orders of a mere man. It was rebel-
lion against the path laid out for her by the Holy One; a
fearsome evil, a defying of the divine law.

And so the number of lashes had been set at twice
twelve. A memorable number. Eustace Laddercane re-
membered only one other unfortunate to earn so high a
number as that, and that time it had been for stealing
food from the common stores and gorging on it And

And Then There U Be Fireworks

that time the Whip had fallen on the broad back of a
man full grown.

The Long Whip whistled through the airтАФstroke sev-
enteen. The Magicians of Rank put themselves to the
trouble of calling out the number each time for the
watchers, that they might not lose track and think that
surely it had to be almost over.