"Yes."
He nodded once. "And how does marriage happen?"
That made my brow crease. "The priest gives a sermon and the pair agree to share their lives before the entire community."
"No, no, no..." He groaned. "I mean how do people get to that point? How does a couple decide to get married?"
"Oh!" Okay, that made his question make a lot more sense. "Well, once a girl turns nineteen, she's given her list. That has the names of all the men she isn't closely related to. Mine was horrible, though. I only had five names, and all of them were old. Meri had a longer list, but Callah's was almost as bad as mine. Mostly because my father had twenty-three children."
"How?" Kanik breathed. "Your mother must've been pregnant forever!"
"Oh, not with one wife," I assured him. "He had something like four with the first, and the next had three before she died. My mother was one of his last wives. She died when I was eleven while giving birth to her fifth child."
Kanik didn't reply. He simply lifted his glass and drank - a lot. The man was guzzling back the fluid as if parched.
"But," I went on, "that list gives us a year to consider the men. We see them in the dining hall. Sometimes, our lists are updated, such as if a man dies or becomes unable to father a child. Then, when we turn twenty, the men may propose. We have one week to choose between the ones who put themselves forward. On the final day, if we have not chosen for ourselves, the Council of Elders will choose for us based on our relatives."
"Love?" he asked.
I scoffed. "That's a fantasy."
"I see..." Slowly, he set his nearly empty glass down on the small table beside him. "And you kicked your husband in the stones, so they held you down and made you marry him anyway?"
"Stones?" I asked.
"Um..." He pressed his lips together and his eyes lost focus. "Testicles? Genitals? Penis? I think those are the right words?"
Which was when I realized what he was trying to say. "Oh! No, I kneed Mr. Morgan in the genitals. He was the man the Council assigned me to marry, but that made him refuse. I wanted him to refuse, so I was happy, but then Mr. Saunders said he'd marry me anyway, and since he was on my list, they decided to marry me to him right then."
"Ayla, that's not normal," he insisted.
"Well, most girls pick a man," I agreed. "Meri did. Her husband smiled at her for six months before her birthday, although he almost didn't live. That night, the hunters came back and he was seriously wounded - " I paused, jerking my eyes up.
"From what?" Kanik asked.
Leaning forward, I set both the book and the cold tea on the table. Then I clasped my hands in my lap and looked down at them. The ring on my smallest finger was brighter than before, almost like it had been polished by being worn. The sight of it was the closest thing to encouragement I was going to get. Keeping my voice soft and polite, I answered.
"He had been shot with four of the Wyvern's blue-fletched arrows."
The silence in the room was almost overpowering. I wanted to look at Kanik to see how he took that, but I wasn't quite brave enough. All I could see with my head down like this was the end of his tail where it laid on the floor, and it was twitching. The purple stinger at the end was partially revealed!
But when he finally said something, Kanik's voice was calm and mild. "And you knew those were Zasen's arrows?"
"We all know about the Wyvern and his arrows."
"So how did this man survive?" Kanik asked. "Zasen rarely misses."
My fingers tightened on each other until my knuckles were white. "I removed them. If we use ethanol on the wounds, it's less likely they will get infected. If we clamp the blood vessels, it will prevent bleeding too much. And depending on where the arrow is located, sometimes it's best to pull it out or push it through."
"So you did this?" he asked.
I jiggled my head. "All girls must help in the infirmary once we turn fifteen. For most of us, it's by praying, but if we sew elegantly enough, we're expected to learn how to heal the hunters." I paused, daring to lift my eyes to see how angry this Dragon would be. "But I liked healing. I liked being in the infirmary, because it's the one place where women are allowed to make decisions and give orders. Before I was married, I was the second-best healer in the compound - although most of that was because I found the library."
"What library?"
"The one with the banned books," I explained. "The one with the anatomy and history books. There were also fantasy books, and I liked those, but I wasn't supposed to even know the room existed."
Kanik lifted his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Oh, Ayla."
"I'm sorry," I whimpered.
He lifted a hand, making me pause. "Don't be sorry. There is absolutely nothing to be sorry for. It's just that I had no idea how the Moles live, and it's not the way anyone - especially women - should be treated." Then he dropped his hand and pulled in a breath. "But it's okay. You're now here as a refugee. Once you learn our language, then we can worry about all the other things that will be confusing to you."
"When do I get to start learning Vestrian?" I asked.
"Right now," he assured me.
Thirty-TwoAyla
That day Kanik did nothing but explain the alphabet of his language to me. While the letters looked the same, the pronunciation of things had become much different. An English F sounded like TH in Vestrian. Ws were pronounced as Vs. Never mind the vowels! E sounded like A. A sounded like it had an H before it sometimes, but not always. The hard click of a T had been softened to be more like a D.
Then, on the next day, he showed me how their written words had adapted to incorporate all of that. The pronoun I knew as "she" had become "sa." The wolf that had allowed him to identify my language as English was something he called a valth in Vestrian. And not only was it now pronounced differently, it was also spelled that way in Vestrian!
But the words were still the same. That was why the men could use English so easily. They didn't have to think of the new word, only how to say it. To me, that meant the same would be true the other way. Even better, Kanik handed me a pair of books to practice with. One was in English. The other was in Vestrian. They were the same story, one he called a "classic."
The covers of them were vastly different, but the words inside meant the same things. It was a tale of a young girl who got lost in a rabbit hole and entered a world called Wonderland. Her name was Alice, and I loved it. Granted, it was much easier to read the English version first.
But just when I was starting to get used to the pattern of my new life, things began to change. While the guys weren't always at the house, for the first few days, they never left for long. That all changed on the fifth day.
