“Don’t laugh at me.”
“I’ve just never seen anyone trust in authority the way you do.”
“You think I’m naïve.”
“I know you are, but it’s one of the things I like about you. You’re so damn pure.”
For a moment we sat without talking and then I leaned forward and drew a circle in the sand with my finger. “If there was a way, would you consider living with me in the Northlands?”
She took time before she answered. “Our cultures are so different, Tyton. Maybe we got carried away for a moment, but all my friends are on this side. I’ll see them when I go back home.”
“Where is home?”
“Blue Valley City. It’s around four hours southeast from here. It’s where I went to university and it’s where my friends are… or were.”
“Were?”
“There are still some left, but many of them have moved to other places by now.”
Brushing my hands off on my pants, I ignored how cold I was. “So why go back there?”
Devina rocked back and forth. She was cold too. “There’s nothing for me here. This area was always rural, but the epidemic wiped out a lot of families. That’s why…” She looked away.
“Why you can’t stay?”
“Maybe I’ll stay another month or two to grieve and work on my next book, but I made my grandmother a promise that I intend to keep.”
“Ah, that promise?”
Devina’s teeth were back to chattering a little. “Yes, it was my grandmother’s last words that family is everything, and then she made me promise to have a child.”
“Your grandmother sounds like a wise woman.”
“Tha… thank you.”
“Wow, you’re really cold. Your lips are turning blue. Maybe sitting on the beach all night isn’t the brightest idea.”
“But the wolves.”
“I haven’t heard them since we got here.”
Devina turned her head to look over her shoulder with deep frown lines on her forehead.
“How about I’ll accompany you home and then you’ll draw me a map so I can find my way back here when the sun rises?” Getting up from the beach, I stood in front of her. As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Devina reached her hands up to me.
We clasped our hands together and I helped her up. It was still strange and a bit surreal to me how different she was from any woman in the Northlands and how natural touch seemed to her.
“If I did this to an unmarried woman in the Northlands her protector would kill me for it.”
“Hmm.” She made a sound revealing that she thought I was exaggerating.
“It’s true. You said that on this side you have one man per twenty women, but on our side, we only have two hundred and five women in total. With ten million men that makes for fifty thousand men per woman. The only way to protect them is to have ironclad laws that make it illegal for any man to touch or even address a woman without permission from her protector.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Did you have to kill anyone for touching Wilma?”
“No. It’s instilled in all of us Nmen from early childhood not to touch women, and no one has dared approach her. But then my father, Frederick, or I were always there when she left the house and now that responsibility falls on Emmerson.”
“I can’t imagine being that restricted. I’m used to going everywhere by myself, which reminds me…” Devina pointed to the bike. “Do you know how to ride one of those?”
