Read Online The Just City by Jo Walton - Free Book Online

now?”
    â€œYou were born a woman.” Maia smiled. “Your body will be making some changes. Your breasts will grow, and you might want to pleat your kiton so it falls over them. If they grow very big so that they flop about and feel uncomfortable when you run, I will show you how to strap them up.”
    â€œWhat will—” I stopped. “What happens here about marriage?” I realized I’d never heard a word about it, nor even thought about it since I had come here. All of the masters lived alone, and all of the rest of us were still children.
    â€œWhen all of you are older there will be marriages, but they will not be like the marriages you … should not remember!” Maia said. “No need to worry about it yet. Your body is not ready to make children, even if bleeding has begun.”
    â€œWhen will it be?” I asked.
    Maia frowned. “Most of us think twenty, but some say sixteen,” she said. “In any case, a long time yet.”
    Then she took down a book. “Long ago I promised to show you Botticelli’s Spring, ” she said.
    Spring was as marvellous and mysterious as the other three seasons. I tried to figure it out. There was a girl at the side, and a pregnant woman in the centre with flowers growing around her. “Who are they all?” I asked. “Are those the same flowers that are growing in Summer ?” I glanced at the opposite page of text for help, and was astonished to see it was in the Latin alphabet, but a language unknown to me. I looked inquiringly at Maia.
    â€œIt’s the only reproduction I have. Nobody knows who they all are, though some think she’s the goddess Flora.”
    I stared back at the picture, ignoring the mystery of the text. “I wish I could see the original at full size like the others.” I turned the page and gasped. It was Aphrodite rising from the waves on a great shell. Maia leaned forward, then relaxed when she saw what it was.
    â€œI really wish you could have seen the original of that one,” she said. “It’s so much better than the reproduction. It fills a wall. There are strands of real gold in her hair.”
    â€œWhen will we be taught to paint and sculpt?” I asked, touching the picture longingly. The paper was glossy to the touch.
    â€œWe don’t have enough masters who can teach those things,” Maia said. “Florentia should have a turn next year, or perhaps the year after. Ideally, you’d have been learning all along. Meanwhile, I was intending to ask you if you would teach some beginners to swim in the spring.”
    â€œOf course,” I said. Growing up in the Delta, I’d been swimming for almost as long as I’d been walking. I had won the swimming race at the Hermeia, as well as coming in second in the footrace. I’d been given a silver pin for these accomplishments, which had been the proudest moment of my life. Silver meant bravery and physical prowess. Only gold, for intellectual attainment, ranked higher, and nobody I knew had a gold pin yet.
    Maia put her hand out for the Botticelli book. I took a last look at the Aphrodite and gave it back. She turned the pages and showed me a portrait of a man in a red coat. “We don’t know who he was, some scholar of the time I’ve always thought.”
    â€œI love his face,” I said. “Is that picture in Florentia too?”
    â€œYes,” Maia said.
    â€œPerhaps I’ll travel there one day.”
    â€œIt wouldn’t do you any good. You know they haven’t been painted yet.” Maia smiled.
    â€œMaybe I’ll go there in the time when they have been painted. When I’m grown up and finished being educated, I mean.”
    â€œNo.” Maia looked serious now. “No, we’ve been brought here out of time by Pallas Athene for a serious purpose. We’re here to stay now, all of us. We can’t go wandering about in time on