The Poppy War

It was a testament, perhaps, to the lack of sexual education in Tikany that Rin didn’t learn about menstruation until that morning. Over the next fifteen minutes, the physician’s assistant explained in detail the changes going on in Rin’s body, pointing to various places on the diagram and making some very vivid gestures with her hands.

“So you’re not dying, sweetheart, your body is just shedding your uterine lining.”

Rin’s jaw had been hanging open for a solid minute.

“What the fuck?”

 

She returned to the bunks with a deeply uncomfortable girdle strapped under her pants and a sock filled with heated uncooked rice grains. She placed the sock on her lower torso to dull the aching pain, but the cramping was so bad that she couldn’t crawl out of bed before classes started.

“Do you want me to get someone?” Niang asked.

“No,” Rin mumbled. “I’m fine. Just go.”

She lay in bed for the entire day, despairing at all the class she was missing.

I’ll be all right. She chanted it over and over to herself so that she wouldn’t panic. One missed day couldn’t hurt. Pupils got sick all the time. Kitay would lend her his notes if she asked. Surely she could catch up.

But this was going to happen every month. Every gods-damned month her uterus would tear itself to pieces, send flashes of rage through her entire body, and make her bloated, clumsy, light-headed, and worst of all, weak. No wonder women rarely remained at Sinegard.

She needed to fix this problem.

If only it weren’t so deeply embarrassing. She needed help. Venka seemed like someone who would have already begun menstruating. But Rin would have died rather than ask her how she’d managed it. Instead, she mumbled her questions to Kureel one night after she was sure Niang and Venka had gone to sleep.

Kureel laughed out loud in the darkness. “Just wear the girdle to class. You’ll be fine. You get used to the cramping.”

“But how often do I have to change it? What if it leaks in class? What if it gets on my uniform? What if someone sees?”

“Calm down,” said Kureel. “The first time is hard, but you’ll adapt to it. Keep track of your cycle, then you’ll know when it’s coming on.”

This wasn’t what Rin wanted to hear. “There’s no way to just stop it forever?”

“Not unless you cut out your womb,” Kureel scoffed, then paused at the look on Rin’s face. “I was kidding. That’s not actually possible.”

“It’s possible.” Arda, who was a Medicine apprentice, interrupted them quietly. “There’s a procedure they offer at the infirmary. At your age, it wouldn’t even require open surgery. They’ll give you a concoction. It’ll stop the process pretty much indefinitely.”

“Seriously?” Hope flared in Rin’s chest. She looked between the two apprentices. “Well, what’s stopping you from taking it?”

They both looked at her incredulously.

“It destroys your womb,” Arda said finally. “Basically kills one of your inner organs. You won’t be able to have children after.”

“And it hurts like a bitch,” Kureel said. “It’s not worth it.”

But I don’t want children, Rin thought. I want to stay here.

If that procedure could stop her menstruating, if it could help her remain at Sinegard, it was worth it.

 

Once her bleeding stopped, Rin went back to the infirmary and told the physician what she wanted. He did not argue with her; in fact, he seemed pleased.

“I’ve been trying to convince the girls here to do this for years,” he said. “None of them listen. Small wonder so few of you make it past your first year. They should make this mandatory.”

He made her wait while he disappeared into the back room, mixing together the requisite medicines. Ten minutes later he returned with a steaming cup.

“Drink this.”

Rin took the cup. It was dark porcelain, so she couldn’t tell the color of the liquid inside. She wondered if she should feel anything. This was significant, wasn’t it? There would be no children for her. No one would agree to marry her after this. Shouldn’t that matter?

No. No, of course not. If she’d wanted to grow fat with squealing brats, she would have stayed in Tikany. She had come to Sinegard to escape that future. Why hesitate now?

She searched herself for any twinge of regret. Nothing. She felt absolutely nothing, just as she had felt nothing the day she left Tikany, watching the dusty town recede forever into the distance.