Wilma took my hands. “No, but I can’t believe you were willing to come all this way for me.”
My shoulders hung low and I sat quietly on the sofa as Tyton brought us tea. I took it but feeling suspicious of him, I didn’t drink any of it.
Sitting down in a chair across from us, Tyton held his own cup and watched me. “Is it normal in the Motherlands to show up at someone’s house after midnight?”
I lowered the cup to my thigh. “No.”
“Devina came to save me.”
Wilma’s statement made Tyton raise his brow. “From what?”
“She thought I didn’t want to get married, or what was it you called it?” One side of Wilma’s lips rose with amusement. “Auctioned off, was it?
“Ahh… so this was an attempt to save my sister from marriage?”
“Yes.” For a moment I suppressed my polite Motlander ways and gave him a challenging stare. “I’m here to offer Wilma a better life in the Motherlands.”
A triangle formed between his eyebrows. “Interesting. And what would this so-called better life entail?”
“Freedom.”
He leaned forward. “Care to elaborate on that?”
Even though Tyton was now dressed and sipping on a cup of tea, he still looked dangerous and unpredictable. I hadn’t forgotten how he’d thrown me around like I weighed nothing, but my anger with him made me meet his eyes when I answered, “In the Motherlands Wilma could live the way she chose to. She could live anywhere in the world and get an education. There would be no men telling her what to do.”
“So, no husbands?”
“Nooo.”
“You sound like the idea of a husband is offensive to you.”
“Because it is.”
“Why? Do men and women not fall in love in the Motherlands?”
“It’s rare.”
Wilma pulled her feet up under her. “What about children then?”
“What about them?”
I was looking at her, but it was Tyton who spoke. “Obviously, you’ll need to procreate to keep the world going.”
Procreate was a word I’d only met in old books. “If by procreate you mean reproduce, then yes, but we have family units for that.”
“Ahh, now I get it. Men and women live together and have children – they just don’t marry, is that it?”
Wilma was looking from him to me as I answered, “Sometimes a family unit has a father, but it’s rare. For every twenty women we have only one man. Many of them prefer to live together in groups.
Tyton held up a hand. “Slow down, pixie. Are you saying that Motlander men could live with several women and have sex with all of them, but they choose not to?”
“Sex? Who said anything about sex?”
Tyton looked accusatory when he pointed his hand at me. “So, it’s true then, youdocastrate men.”
“Nooo,” I sputtered. “That’s grotesque.”
“If you’re claiming that men on that other side of the border have access to twenty women per man but they don’t pursue any of them, then I have to question their manhood. What the fuck did you do to them?”
