Attack of the Amazons by Gilbert L. Morris

him!
    For the next two days Dave went through the most humiliating transformation possible. He spent a great deal of time with Chava, learning how to run the details of the house. These were chores that he had never particularly disliked, but that was when the choice had been his. Now each day Princess Merle came in and gave him a particularly hateful cock of her eyebrow and set forth his duties. It was all he could do to keep from from throwing the dishwater in her face.
    â€œDon’t mind it, my boy,” Chava said kindly. The two of them were peeling potatoes in the kitchen, and Chava had been reminiscing about his own past. He said little about the situation concerning men andwomen in Fedor but listened as Dave explained how things had been in Oldworld.
    Now as the man carefully made a single, long peeling, it dropped into a bucket at his feet. He held up the white potato. “Now, there’s a good potato,” he said. “I grow these myself. Not everyone can grow potatoes like this.”
    Dave looked down at his own potatoes and saw that the peelings were thick and that he had wasted much. “I’ll never get used to this,” he grumbled. “It’s not what I was brought up to do.” He glared at the door as if he expected Merle to come through it. “You have a beautiful daughter, but I can’t stand her.”
    To Dave’s amazement, Chava laughed out loud. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “The captives we get from other tribes where men are the superior beings all feel the same way.”
    â€œDoesn’t it
bother
you?” Dave cried with exasperation. He threw down his potato, picked up another, and began hacking at it. “I mean, after all, you’re the
king
of Fedor.”
    â€œNo, I’m not. I’m the husband of the queen. There’s quite a big difference. We have no kings here—only queens. Always.”
    Dave stopped peeling potatoes, and his brow wrinkled. “I remember something in English history back in Oldworld. Queen Victoria married a man named Albert, and he was
Prince Albert all his life. Even though he married a queen, he never became a king.”
    â€œWas he miserable with that?”
    Surprise touched Dave’s eyes, and he shook his head slowly. “No, as a matter of fact, they had a very happy life together. Queen Victoria loved him with all her heart, and when he died she wore black for the rest of her life as a sign of mourning.”
    â€œI can understand that,” Chava said. He peeled his potato slowly, thinking. Then he said, “I love Faya very much, and I believe she loves me.”
    â€œThen why does she treat you like a—like a slave?”
    â€œIt is the custom,” Chava said with surprise. “I suppose I’m used to it. And I like to garden. I like to keep this house. It takes a lot of intelligence, believe it or not. Houses don’t just run themselves, and actually, my boy, I could never go out and face a tiger as my wife did.”
    This caught Dave’s attention. “You mean she actually fought a tiger?”
    â€œYou probably noticed that her leg is withered. It was mauled by a tiger. She killed him, and that’s his pelt she wears as her royal robe, but she’s never been the same since.” Chava paused. “After all, that’s the problem, if your whole life is based on some physical activity. When you get older, you’ll either get weaker naturally through age—or perhaps injury will strike you down. Then what do you fall back on?”
    Dave frowned. “I saw that happen to some athletes in Oldworld. When they were young and strong, the whole world bowed down to them. But when they got older, they couldn’t perform anymore.”
    â€œAnd they were probably very unhappy. But if you think of people who work with their minds—teachers, poets, musicians—they probably had much happier, much more productive