“With Oma’s bleeding, we want to be sure that you won’t hurt her.”
Hunlath’s big forehead furrowed in extreme concentration. “I’ll try.”
Addie smiled slightly. “I’m sure you can do it. For Oma.”
He nodded, more sure this time. “It may hurt, but I’ll wait.”
“What will hurt, Hunlath?”
“Me,” he said simply. “I’ll hurt. Without mating.”
It was Addie’s turn to furrow her brow in concentration. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what will hurt you.”
“Every tapped male hurts without a mate. Some say it isn’t too bad at first, but that it gets unbearable as time passes.”
Addie slowly lowered her hands. A deep disconcerting feeling that she was somehow missing a critical point came over her. “Tell me about it, Hunlath. I am afraid human males don’t experience pain. An urge, maybe, but not the pain.”
“Urges, too.” He nodded emphatically, pleased she was getting it. “Very strong. But you must know that already. This is what the city was about, where injured males came to live. Because of your women.”
“I just thought… they wanted an easy lay.”
“Yes. They wanted… that.” He shifted uncomfortably, thinking of Addie as one of the “easy lays,” no doubt. But at this moment, she didn’t care what he thought.
A chill spread within her chest. No one had told her. And Addie had never asked the right questions because she hadn’t known to ask.
But Iolanthe must have known it about the For men. That was the power that Iolanthe had held over Hoban, and Wynn, and all the others.
“How long does it take for you to start feeling the pain?” she asked Hunlath.
“I don’t know. I’ve always had Oma. I hear it depends on the man. The strongest ones and the recently tapped feel discomfort within days. Others can go without much longer.”
Days!Addie thought in dismay. Not months, or even weeks.Days.
“What if you don’t have a mate anymore? If she leaves you, for example? Or dies?”
“You have to find another one.”
“But what if you… can’t?” A picture of pale crippled Zoark hovered on the periphery of Addie’s mental imagery.
“It will keep hurting,” Hunlath said simply.
“Does the pain ever pass? If you tough it out, do you become like you were before the ‘tapping’?”
Hunlath chuckled, finding Addie’s ignorance cute. “No, Addie-woman. You can’t become un-tapped. That’s not how it works.”
“I see,” Addie said quietly.
Hunlath repeated his many thanks and left her, placing his beautiful knife near her stone pit as Addie nodded silently in farewell.
After he left, she wandered around her small campsite without aim, thinking what an informative visit she’d had with Hunlath.
Her mind rewound to her life in the city, and she was now seeing the events that had taken place there with new eyes.
For males, it turned out, were prisoners of their own physiology. For reasons unknown, nature molded these people’s male population in a peculiar fashion, likely to ensure the procreation of the species. As a medic, Addie theorized that their male hormone balance was dependent on consistent mating, and abstinence caused some hormone levels to either drop or increase, causing a strong reaction.
The women at the city had held immense power over the men who lived there, and yet, they hadn't. What would it take for someone of Hoban’s size to overpower a woman who had no tribe to protect her, to make them all their slaves?
Iolanthe must have realized it, and had worked to position them as equals, of a sort. Women had very little leeway in saying no. Iolanthe had been playing a dangerous game and winning, God rest her clever scheming soul.
