Outwardly, Kiva was calm, almost emotionless. But on the inside, a hundred questions buzzed in her mind, bouncing back and forth in her skull. She was so preoccupied she barely noticed that Matthew and Dunne had begun to speak excitedly to each other, their voices rising and their hands beginning to move in the air.
The Ancestors. They are still inside Matthew. He can hear their voice—like the Sisters. Like me.
Kiva’s mind scrambled to understand what was going on.
The Ancestors favor Matthew—a Stranger, a boy. What does it mean?
It might not mean anything, of course. Kiva was the one who had put the Ancestors inside Matthew’s body—when she’d spilled her blood to heal him, they’d entered his veins, gone inside to do their work on him. It wasn’t unheard of for the Vagra to perform the healing ritual on a man. The Vagra before her had done it—when one of the huts in the village had collapsed and Orloph, Rehal’s father, was injured and near death. Then the Vagra had taken him to her hut and allowed the Ancestors to enter his body and heal it. He walked back into the village the next day, whole. That night, there’d been a celebration in the village. Kiva had been nine seasons old when all this happened—and she still remembered it well.
But she didn’t remember that Orloph had begun to hear the voice of the Ancestors. He hadn’t taken on the powers of the Sisters and the Vagra. The Ancestors had gone inside Orloph’s body to heal him, but they didn’t stay to give him visions. They didn’t allow him to hear the thoughts of others.
The men were lesser creatures, concerned with the lower things: caring for the children, building huts for the Vagri to live in, growing food for the Vagri to eat. Kiva had heard this over and over as a child—from Grath, from Liana, from the other adults in the village, and finally, from the lips of the Vagra herself.
But now …
She left the thought unfinished as she looked to Matthew once more. There was something different about him. Even before she’d healed him, she’d seen him in her visions. More than seen him—she’d shared a vision with him. His consciousness had been inside hers—in the dream where he’d come over the hill to find her lying in the grass. He couldn’t seem to remember this dream, but Kiva had a feeling it would come back to him soon.
First the vision, the dream they’d dreamed together—and now this. What were the Ancestors trying to tell her?
She had to be sure.
Matthew broke off from his conversation with Dunne and moved toward Kiva, breaking through her racing thoughts. His cheeks were red, and Kiva quickly recalled the color of the blood on his chest when she’d ripped his shirt open back on the plain.
He was blushing.
Matthew cleared his throat. “We want to know … ,” he began, then broke off and muttered to himself, “God, this is embarrassing.”
“What is it?”
“We want to know how you reproduce,” Matthew said. “How you make babies.”
Now it was Kiva’s turn to blush, her gray skin turning a deeper shade as her black blood rushed hotly to her cheeks. But she answered without hesitating.
“Our women mate with our men,” she said. “They visit their huts at night, after the men have finished their daily work. Sometimes they come back with a baby growing inside them.”
“And after the children are born, then what?”
“Then we bring the child to the men. The men care for the children until they come of age. Until the boys are ready to build their own huts and grow food for the village. And until the girls have their first visitation by the Ancestors.”
Matthew relayed everything back to Dunne. Sam stood off to the side, listening to what Matthew said with his lips pursed.
After Matthew had finished, Dunne spoke back to him. Matthew nodded and turned back to Kiva.
“The women and the men—do they get married? Do they have families?”
Kiva squinted. “I don’t understand.”
“Do your people choose one person to be with and have children with?”
Kiva nodded. “I see. Usually the women choose one man and stay with that one for most of their lives. But they don’t have to. Some of the women have more than one man that they mate with. Sometimes two or more women share the same man. It’s all up to the women—they choose who they want.”
Matthew was silent a moment.
“What about you?” he asked. “Have you chosen a mate yet?”
Kiva dropped her gaze. Her hair fell across her face. “The Vagra doesn’t take a mate,” she said.
“Why?”
“Haven’t you learned by now? Because the Ancestors have chosen it to be that way. As Vagra, my allegiance can be to no one man, to no one child. I am the mother to all the Vagri—to all the Sisters, to all the men and children.”
Matthew waited a few seconds before relaying Kiva’s responses back to Dunne. In those short moments, he seemed to retreat inside himself. Kiva couldn’t quite make out his thoughts, but the look on his face was unmistakable.
It was a look of disappointment. Of sadness.
Whether Matthew’s sadness was for himself or for her, Kiva couldn’t tell.