“Me?” My hand flew to my chest. “I didn’t do anything to them. My father and brother were gentle and kind men who would have never treated a woman the way you treated me.” My voice shook with emotions. “Just because we Motlanders don’t engage in wild orgies doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us.”
Tyton snorted and rolled his eyes. “A whole fucking country of lesbians.”
“Whoa, whoa, can we take this down a notch?” Wilma faced Tyton. “I know this is upsetting to you, but Devina isn’t the enemy.”
Crossing his arms, he looked like he disagreed.
“She is our guest, Tyton.” Wilma gave him a pleading look, but it was clear that her words meant little because he kept going.
“She’s no guest if she came to kidnap you.” He pushed his chair back and got up to pace the floor in front of the couch. “Everyone knows that if we cross that border and bring someone back here, we’ll pay with our life. Kidnapping should be illegal on both sides.”
I moved to the edge of my seat. “I was never going tokidnapWilma.”
“No? Then how did you plan to get her back to lesbo land? Did you think she’d go willingly knowing that she can never have a full life there?”
I gasped with indignation. “Take that back. We have full lives in the Motherlands.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me. I predict that within a year my sister will give life to someone from the next generation. What can be more fulfilling than that? Humanity was almost wiped out and every life is precious.”
“She can have children in the Motherlands too. How do you think you Nmen get your boys every year? We have children.” With angry tears forming in my eyes, I placed my hand on my chest. “I’m planning to have a child and start my own family.”
“How?” Tyton stopped to glare at me. “How do you plan to have a child if you’re not planning on marrying?”
I pushed the words out in the fieriest argument of my life. “That’s what insemination clinics are for.”
Tyton looked like I’d hammered a bat against his forehead. He opened his mouth to speak but then he closed it and swallowed hard.
“That’s how I was conceived and everyone else I know.”
“You were made in a clinic?” Wilma’s tone carried pity in it.
“Yes. Everyone is made in a clinic. Nmen included.”
“Not Tyton and me. We were born here and came from our parents’ lovemaking.”
I stroked my hair back, unsure what to say to that.
Sitting back down again, Tyton gave me a hard stare. “Tell us about the boys that are sent here. How are they made?”
Taking a deep breath, I calmed myself and spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “All I know is that the women who carry the Nboys are called peacekeepers.”
“So, the boys grow inside women then?”
I frowned. “Yes, of course they do.”
“Well, what the fuck do I know?” Tyton’s hands swung in the air. “Maybe you people developed some sort of cocoon for them or something.”
I ignored that comment. “The peacekeepers give birth to the Nboys, but they don’t always raise them. It takes someone special to pour all their love into a child knowing that when he turns three years old, he’ll be sent to live in the Northlands.”
“Why are they called peacekeepers?” Wilma asked.
“Because supplying the Northlands with boys is part of the peace treaty between our countries. Before that, Nmen would kidnap women from our side of the border to have breeders.”
The two siblings exchanged a disturbed look. “Did you know that?” Wilma asked her brother.
Tyton groaned. “No, but it was different times back then. Maybe the men were looking for love and went about it in a wrong way.”
“They stole women. That’s why we have the border to protect us from you.”
