Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) by Orson Scott Card Page B

these syllables apart, if all the “buh” syllables used the same mark? “Bee-bah” and “bo-boo” would look exactly alike. Abram just laughed and said, “What does it matter? No one speaks the language they’re written in, anyway.”
     
    “Then why do you copy it?” she asked. “If no one can read it?”
     
    “Because the words of God can be written in any language, and he will give his servants the power to read it,” said Abram.
     
    “So you can read any language?”
     
    “When the words are from God,” said Abram. “And when God wants me to read.”
     
    “Why don’t you write it down in Akkadian? Or Sumerian? Or Egyptian, so many could read it?”
     
    “I will if God commands it,” said Abram. “And not, if not.”
     
    It made Sarai feel like an illiterate after all, because she could read common messages, the tallies of the shepherds, the laws of the temple, the tales of great deeds that must be remembered. But she could not read the words of God, and Abram only sometimes read to her what was written there. “The hand of Noah wrote this,” said Abram once, and then read her something that did not sound like the words of a man who had watched the world destroyed around him. When she said so, Abram answered impatiently, “This was written before the flood. When he was still trying to save the people from destruction.”
     
    “When he still had hope,” she said.
     
    “When he still had hope for them, ” said Abram. “He never lost hope for himself and his family.”
     
    Sarai laid out the tiles of Qira’s letter. As usual, Qira took no thought for the quality of the clay on which she wrote. Or perhaps water was so scarce that they used less of it for clay-making. Three of the six tiles had cracked, and one had crumbled. It was hard to figure out in some places what she had written. Large pieces could still hold syllables, but once the clay became dust, the syllables vanished. It was a good thing that she never said anything that mattered. Sarai murmured her sister’s words, uttering them in the same pitch and at the same speed that Qira herself would use.
     
Beloved sister, I write in a rush because the girls are such hungry birds, and even though I refuse to give them the breast the moment they have teeth they still will take nothing except from my hand. The burden of motherhood is a heavy one. There’s never time to yourself.
     
    Sarai’s eyes stung at this. Qira had no thought of how her words might affect the one who read them. And it would only get worse.
     
Your messenger says you still have no baby in you, but I think they have no business calling a woman barren when for all you know your husband is casting dead seed into fertile ground, why should the woman get all the blame?
     
    The disloyalty of this was unspeakable. Did Qira blame Lot, then, for the fact that they had only daughters?
     
After all, Lot’s the one who planted girl seeds in me.
     
    Apparently yes.
     
And the way people look at you in Sodom, I sometimes think it’s better to be barren than to have only girls to show for all that fattening up and screaming and bleeding and stink. It’s a lot of trouble to go to, and I don’t know how Father put up with the comments people make. You wouldn’t believe how insensitive people can be.
     
    Yes I would.
     
Of course Father is a king and people don’t speak to him the way they speak to women. I swear in Sodom you’d think women were made of sticks the way we get ignored. There are festivals for men every night of the year, while the women sit home and spin. And the fine fabrics from the east and the bright colors from the north, those end up on the men’s backs, like peacocks they strut. I understand it though because the women really are dull. I miss my dear sister because you were never dull. Well, you were often dull but not as dull as they are, I can’t even make them angry by saying outrageous things, they just look at each other as if I were