The clanswomen nodded, and they settled down on the floor of Kyra’s shelter. Kyra carefully placed a berry into her mouth. It was good—plump, sweet, and a little tart. She let the juices pool under her tongue, hesitant to swallow, but then decided her companions had easier ways to harm her than to give her bad berries.

Mela straightened and looked Kyra in the eye. The sun had almost completely set, but like other Makvani, she seemed unfazed by talking in the dark. “Did you really grow up amongst the humans?” she asked.

The questions both relieved Kyra and put her on her guard. It seemed that these two were simply curious, but Kyra didn’t know what was safe to share. “I had no idea I was anything but human,” she said.

Mela leaned forward eagerly, her earlier caution falling to the wayside. “What are they like?”

“I—I don’t know. I guess I’ve nothing to compare them to.”

“How do humans live so closely packed all the time?” asked Mela. “I would go mad.”

Kyra realized that she’d never seen the Makvani gathered together for long periods of time. They’d come together for the clan gathering and the deer kill, but otherwise, Kyra never saw more than two or three together at once. “Don’t the Makvani live in groups?”

“Yes, but not piled on top of each other like humans.” Mela shrugged. “It keeps the peace. Though I suppose it’s good for us that the humans are so closely packed. It makes for easier hunting.”

Kyra felt bile rise in her throat. “Do you…hunt the humans?”

Adele shook her head. “Just their livestock, though it’s a different matter if they get in our way. It would be strange, hunting them, since they look so much like us.”

“Do you ever trade for their livestock?”

Both clanswomen looked curiously at her. “You have strange ideas, halfblood,” Mela said. “Should we bring clover to the bees for their honey?”

Kyra hesitated to respond. Thankfully, Mela seemed more interested in their previous topic, because her eyes lit up mischievously. “Perhaps the humans live in crowded groups because all their females bear children. They multiply too quickly to spread out.”

Adele gave Mela a long-suffering look. “That is not the reason. They only have one child at a time, whereas our mothers have many.”

Kyra got the impression that the fair-skinned girl often talked her friend out of fanciful ideas. She wondered what it would have been like to grow up with these two as sisters. They reminded her of serving girls, in the way they spoke and acted.

“What do you mean by ‘all their females bear children’?” asked Kyra.

Mela raised her eyebrows. “Do they not? If they choose to?”

“I suppose so, but—”