45. Kuret

45

Kuret

"It is still strange to me that you do not give your lives to have children," I tell her.

Her eyebrows furrow but I catch the faintest hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She looks away and then back at me, an amused glint in her eyes.

"Well, some women might argue that it is a type of death, though that's mostly when you speak to those with very young ones and not a lot of support from others. The children grow up eventually and then we have our freedom, though we miss them. Most of them go on to have their own careers and families , leaving their mothers to do whatever they wish."

"You know your children?"

My voice comes out lower than I expect, and I clear my throat. I mean, it's logical based on what she's said, but it still feels so foreign.

This is unheard of amongst my people. I have no memory of my mother, and I know she never knew hers. They were dead. I try not to let my shock show on my face, but I know I am failing horribly.

Nasrin absently twirls a blade of grass, twisting it around her fingers and staring at it like it is the most interesting thing on earth. "Of course. We get to raise them until they are independent enough to socialize with the rest of the world.

She looks like she wants to say more but decides against it.

I am unsteady from all the information and have nothing but more questions for her. "You're saying your children never kill you?"

She cocks her head to the side. "Sometimes they do, when there are complications, but it happens very rarely."

It's still hard to comprehend, even though I believe her.

While relief washes over me knowing I'll never lose Nasrin to the dangers of childbirth, I can't help but marvel at how different things are here. Before I was taken, I had thought my world was all that there was, my way of life being the most honorable, but I am evidently wrong.

Females can live through childbirth. Then raise their children.

Everything I assumed comes crashing down, but in the most pleasant way possible. If our females could live…

How can I get this home to them?

I don't realize that I am lost in my thoughts until Nasrin places a hand on my shoulder and softly squeezes.

"Kuret, are you alright?"

I struggle to find the words to explain what's happening so she naturally has no idea how different this all is to me. I look at her with an urgency that seems to shock her. "I have more questions but I have asked so many already…" The wind howling through the valley is the only sound around us for a second as I struggle to find the words to convey my discomfort.

Nasrin shakes her head and pulls her hand away from me. "You can ask whatever questions you have, Kuret. I have many things to ask you as well."

I turn and see there is a small smile playing on her lips and I relax. She has never been one to lie, and I am relieved that I can speak freely to her and not be spat on. "After having these children, do you keep all of them with you?"

She nods her head. "Newborns are tender and cannot live without their mothers, so yes."

My eyes widen. "Even the male children are kept with their mothers?"

Nasrin looks at me with wide eyes as well, surprised by my question. "Yes, we keep all of them. Why would we not keep the male children? They could die without their mother."

"Females do not keep their male children among my people," I mutter. "Not past weening."

Her eyes increase in size. I know that she is just as surprised as I am at the differences in our cultures.

Her hands are in front of her and she is fiddling with her small fingers.

I put my hand out in front of me and try to mimic her, though it isn't really possible because she has more fingers. She catches me and lets out a soft, chuffing sound that pleases me.

"You know, I was holding onto the hope that we had more in common, but I think this conversation has made me realize just how different we are."

I chuckle. "I knew we were different the moment I put my eyes on you."

She has no idea how true those words are, but I will do my best to explain it to her.

"Your people are much less panicked than mine, and tender, and it explains much of the difficulty we experienced when we met."

This makes her laugh again, a sweet, trilling sound that is muffled when she places her hand over her mouth. "I'm not so sure about that. And I am not as tender as I seem and far, far more panicked. It's always been my way of coping, and even more important here. Everything was too different for me, and I needed to feel some stability."

I smile at her. "I understand what you mean."

She picks up a few more long grasses and weaves them together. "Can you describe a cloister to me? Not the kind that Ree is building but the type you know of." She looks at me and I smile softly at her in agreement.

I clear my throat before speaking. "On my planet, almost every woman dies in childbirth. It's why they wait until the end of their lives to have children. The cloister is where most of the females live and the males protect them and the community."

Nasrin is still fiddling with her leaves when she asks her first question. "There are males in the cloister protecting it?"

"In the outer parts of it, yes. I was a cloister guardian. We do not live there. We just make sure that it is always safe for the women. We protect them from predators that may try to harm them from the outside and from males who may try to ruin their lives."

She nods her head. "Why do they only keep the females?"

Reaching out, I take the woven leaves and begin to separate them with careful fingers. "One of the reasons the women are so afraid of being around males is because of how fertile they are. After a woman has been with her donor, she always ends up pregnant with three young—two males and one female. After their birth, they are left to be taken care of by the cloister, but the males are taken away once they are weaned."

"But if all the pregnant women die, how do they feed them?"

I hadn't thought of that before. "I don't know."

She grabs the blades of grass and throws them behind her, then picks up two more from the pile. "So the girls are raised in the cloister and the boys are taken where?"

She hands one of the new blades to me and tears hers in half to start tying it into knots again.

"They are excluded and raised by other males to become protectors as well. If they are battle-hardened enough when they grow older, they also get to be donors."

My hand reaches up to the tip of my left ear. The one I could pierce now, if I wanted.

I can see her discomfort plainly on her face, but I understand that, from what she has said of her people, all this must seem odd.

Nasrin bites on her bottom lip as she empties her hands and wipes them against her front. "It sounds like such a circuitous life," she says.

I mimic her and nod in agreement. "It might be, but I have never questioned it before. It creates an easy justice system. If a man lies with a woman before she is of age and she gets pregnant, he has to stand up for it and claim to be her donor. She is also questioned, and if she says it was not consensual, he is sentenced to death."

"What about the children?"

"I don't know," I say. "I never tried to find out. We knew what our role was, and we did it earnestly. Everything else was a distraction."

Her puzzled expression shifts into one of compassion. She looks at me the way she looks at her pet argila and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Except that there's hope in my chest and I like how it feels.