My dearest Wilma,
I wish I could talk to you in person and make sure that you mean what you say. It’s confusing that you’re contradicting your first plea for help. Is someone reading your letters before you send them?
For now, let me answer your questions.
1: I’m twenty-eight.
2: No, we do not hate men. Why would you think that?
3: This question made me laugh. I don’t have hair on my chest and neither do any of my friends.
4: I’m not married and neither should you be if you’re truly only fifteen. I’m crossing my fingers that I misunderstood something because surely it can’t be legal for a child to get married. Marriages here are very rare. Personally, I’ve never met anyone who is married or wants to be, but I’ve read about it in books and know what it means. When you say that you’ll choose more carefully than your sister, what do you mean? What is a tournament exactly?
Please thank your brother for throwing the bottle over the wall. If you’d like, I can give you instructions on how to build a catapult so you don’t have to rely on a boy for help.
May you walk on a path of abundance and happiness,
Devina
I groaned and snatched the letter from her. “I’m no fucking boy and what’s wrong with you relying on my help? Don’t listen to her.”
My sister skewed her mouth. “Why would she think I’m a child when I’m fifteen?”
“Because women are brainwashed on that side of the border. They always have been.”
CHAPTER4
Alerting the Authorities
Devina
The small woman in front of me had deep wrinkles and no make-up on. Her shirt was a few sizes too small and she kept pulling at it as if it would somehow make it bigger. “I assure you we have no missing person cases on a fifteen-year-old girl.”
I pushed the two letters on the table toward her. “Please, Dolores. So maybe Wilma wasn’t kidnapped, but she’s in danger and we need to help her.”
Clearing her voice, Dolores, the new official representative in our local town, picked up the second letter from Wilma and read it again. I watched her eyes moving from side to side until she lowered her hands and gave me a troubled look. “How do we know this is even written by a girl? What if it’s a man trying to get your attention?”
“A man?” I hadn’t even considered that possibility.
“Yes. This could be written by anyone. There’s no way to know.” She handed me the letter back. “Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it since it doesn’t relate to a Motlander.”
“You’re just going to let a child getmarried?” My tone was incredulous as I leaned back in my seat with disappointment.
“We don’t have much choice. I wish I had all the time in the world to investigate your claim because honestly, rescuing a young girl sounds much more exciting than cleaning up after an epidemic. But…” She shrugged.
“Please, Dolores, couldn’t you speak to a council member and have them negotiate with the ruler of the Northlands?”
Dolores moved some papers around on her desk. “The Council is under a lot of pressure and now isn’t the right time. Besides, they don’t have any authority in the Northlands.
“But we could send in someone to help her out, couldn’t we?”
Three prominent wrinkles formed on Dolores’s forehead as she watched me. “I don’t know which old movies you’ve watched, my dear, but that’s not how we do things these days. As long as the Nmen stick to the peace treaty and keep on their side of the border, we’ll stay on this side and not bother them.”
When I opened my mouth to speak, she held up a hand and continued, “I’m going to stop you right there because the truth is that we don’t have the skills or the technology to break into foreign territory and rescue anyone. Back when they had hundreds of countries in the world, there might have been a need to spy on each other and get foreign intel, but after the first council got rid of countries and we all adapted to the same language, we haven’t focused on that sort of thing.”
“But there’s still a border wall.”
“Argh, yes, but the Northlanders are just ten million men compared to the rest of our one point five billion people. They are a nuisance of course, but before I came here, I’d thought they were nothing but a tall tale.”