On a gasp, Petra reeled back. “The demon—”
“Why demon?” Duncan demanded, peeling off his coat to toss it over the back of the couch. “We don’t believe that. You can if you want, but we don’t. We have a gift, and for us it comes from the light. Anyway, I’m starved.”
“He’s always hungry,” Tonia commented as Duncan wandered back toward the kitchen. “So, take off your coat.”
“It’s not really—”
“It is now.” Tonia took off her own, tossed it with Duncan’s, waited while Petra carefully took off a blue parka just a little too big for her thin frame. “Our sister Hannah’s probably over at the clinic. Maybe you met her.”
“I don’t know.”
“You got checked out, right?” Once again, Tonia led Petra, steering her back to the kitchen. “The doctors and all that.”
“They said I had bad nu …”
“Nutrition. So let’s eat.”
“Mom scored!” Duncan let out a whoop. “We got pizza.”
“They make it at the community kitchen,” Tonia explained as she hunted up a sealed bottle of ginger ale. “And we can freeze it, then cook it up. And we’ve got this.”
“What is it?”
“Ginger ale. Ginger root and sugar and lemon and yeast—for the bubbles—and water. Hannah made this batch, but we all have to take cooking lessons, and chem. Making stuff like ginger ale, it’s chemistry. Plus, it’s good.”
Tonia poured out three short glasses while Duncan held his hands over the pizza until the crust browned and the cheese bubbled.
“What’s your gift?” he asked Petra, casually. Then shrugged it off when her shoulders hunched. “Okay. So, how’s it going over at the group house?”
“The doctor—the doctor said some of us are contagious, and need medication, and the nursing babies need better milk. And Clarence and Miranda both took the boots of animal flesh, and now we have to shun them.”
“Harsh.” Duncan cut the pizza into slices.
“It’s hard, I guess, because you lived somewhere and some way, and now you’re living here, and a different way.” Tonia got plates. “But you couldn’t stay there.”
“If the divine brings violence to take our lives …”
“You just lay down and die?” Duncan slid pizza onto the plates. “Doesn’t sound very divine.”
“How old are you?” Tonia asked, then sat at the counter and pointed to the stool beside her.
“I’m not sure. I’ve come into womanhood, but I haven’t conceived.”
“What?” A slice halfway to his mouth, Duncan froze.
“I’ve come into womanhood,” Petra repeated. “And though I have given myself, even to Javier, I haven’t been blessed with child.”
“You’re saying you have to do it, and with that old guy?”
“Javier has no age,” Petra said, beaming. “It’s a great honor to conceive a child with him.”
“Bullshit. It’s sick and twisted.”
“Duncan—”
But he ignored his sister’s warning. “Did you want to do it with him? Or did you have to because he made it his law or something?”
“It’s a great … I was afraid,” she whispered. “But that was my weakness. And it hurt me, but that’s the sacrifice of all women for the sin of Eve.”
“And that’s more bullshit.”
Tonia waved Duncan off as Petra’s head drooped. “I’ll take this. That’s not how things work here. And if you read books and listen to the older people, it’s not how it worked before. People who did stuff like that got punished if they got caught. You have rights. Everybody does. And just because we’re women doesn’t give anybody else the right to hurt us or make us have sex. No one’s going to do that to you here.”
“But there must be children to increase the flock, to care for the elders, to spread the word. So many of them die, inside the womb or soon after birth. We all do our duty.”
Tonia, a born feminist, but more diplomatic than her twin, kept her voice easy. “Around here and in a civilized society, people have kids because they want them, and because they want to take care of them, love them. How long were you in that camp?”
“I’m not sure. I wasn’t born there. Two winters, I think. Before, we just moved and walked and hid. And my father hit me and cursed me because of my curse, even though he was cursed, too. Javier and our people didn’t hit me or curse me. And my father stopped, too, when he embraced redemption.”
“He stopped hitting you, but the rest is just a different kind of abuse.” The thought of it, all of it, burned Duncan’s craw. “We have laws here, too. If somebody deliberately hurts somebody else, he’s punished for it. Everybody pulls weight in whatever way they can. We take care of each other.”
“One question,” Tonia put in. “Were you happy there?”
“It was … I don’t know.” Obviously distressed, Petra twisted her fingers together. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you’ll figure out if you’re happy here. Pizza’s getting cold.”
Petra looked down at her plate. “I’m thankful for the food, but … is this animal flesh?”
“Pepperoni.” Duncan bit into his slice. “Pick it off if you don’t want it.”
“They mostly make it at the big farm,” Tonia told her. “And distribute it to the community kitchen.”
Petra carefully peeled off the disks of meat, then took a tiny bite of pizza. Her eyes widened. She took another, bigger bite. “It’s so good!”
“They can make it without the pepperoni,” Tonia said, then handed Petra one of the napkins stacked on the counter.
“You can just have it?”
“Everyone pulls weight,” Duncan repeated. “Everybody eats.”
“You have this big house and all the things.” With wondering eyes, Petra looked around the kitchen. “Just you?”
“And our sister, Hannah, and our mom. Kids don’t live on their own until they’re at least sixteen. Some kids come in without parents or adults. But somebody takes them in, takes care of them.”
Petra bit her lip. “Clarence can go, and he wants to, with others. To live. He tried to run away from the divine, but they brought him back. His curse is wings, and balls of light and—”
“Faerie,” Duncan finished.
“He had to be shunned many times, and closed into the redemption hut before he stopped giving in to his demon. Because he was a child, he wasn’t cast out, but we were afraid he’d give in to his demon again when he reached the age of judgment.”
“Not his demon, his nature,” Duncan corrected. “His gift. Did he ever hurt anyone?”
“Once—twice,” she corrected, “he fought with other boys who said hard things to him.”
“That’s different. That’s called standing up for yourself.”
“He’s going tonight with people called Anne and Marla.”
“They’re nice,” Tonia said with her mouth full. “They live near the academy. They raise sheep and llamas, and weave blankets and sweaters. And make art, too. It’s pretty. Anne’s an elf, but Marla’s a civilian—no abilities. I heard before the Doom, when they lived in Baltimore, they were going to have a baby together.”
“They’re both women. It’s not possible. And it’s sinful.”
“It’s not sinful to love someone. And before the Doom there was science and medical technology to help people have babies when they wanted them. They’re really good people. Clarence is lucky to have them.”
“He said … He told me Miranda can go with him. And that these women would take one more. I could go.”
“You should give it a shot—try it,” Duncan explained. “If you don’t like it there, you don’t have to stay.”
“I could go, then not stay?”
“Anne and Marla wouldn’t make you stay if you weren’t happy.”
“It’s so different. Everything’s so different.”
“Don’t cry,” Tonia comforted. “It’s going to be okay. Have some ginger ale.”
Obediently, Petra lifted the glass, sipped. And laughed as she wiped at tears. “It tickles.”
“It’s the bubbles.”
“I never drank bubbles before. Or don’t remember. So much from before is blurry or mixed up. Esme said we had to go back.”