Flight of the Wounded Falcon

by Trish Mercer

They had created the new emergency shelter on the Back Door route three weeks ago. That meant it was now time to fill it, especially since there was a brief lull in the harvest.

  Peto, standing at the wide loading doors of the largest storehouse in Salem, showed one of his ever-rarer smiles as he surveyed the crowd that had assembled that morning. There were hundreds of volunteers—entire families—waiting to fill their wagons with the dried foods, medical supplies, blankets, and the herb-treated planks which would be made into crates on site to hold everything securely in the emergency shelters on each of the five routes.

  Peto gripped the supply lists as emotion overwhelmed him. He’d never done this without the General of Salem. Now he was simply the rector, trying to fill very large boots.

  The hundreds of Salemites, however, beamed eagerly at him, full of far too much confidence.

  “Thank you,” Peto began, too quietly, he realized. He cleared his throat and announced more loudly, “Thank you all for coming out on this fine morning. It seems the good weather will hold through today and tomorrow, according to Professor Torrich and his new air pressure reading device. Beyond that, we’re not sure. So no lolly-gagging on the trail.”

  The crowd laughed good-naturedly, even though it wasn’t that funny, as if they were trying to force joy back into Peto Shin. Everyone knew about the Shin family’s recent sorrows, and tried to alleviate them.

  Peto chuckled obligingly, as one does for an expectant crowd. “You’ve already been placed into five columns, and in just a few moments we’ll be loading you up based on the route you’ll be completing. Those taking the Back Door route, I’ve been assured you realize the peril of the last few hundred paces.”

  Several families nodded, and a few little boys jumped up and down excitedly.

  Peto sighed to himself. There was a reason he was sending Dr. Boskos Zenos on that route again. In fact, he would be at the rock face by now, waiting. The families wouldn’t have been as eager if they had seen the rock face themselves.

  “It was among General Shin’s last notations, to make sure an emergency shelter was established on the Back Door. I thank you all for fulfilling the general’s last order.” That he said all of that without choking up was, he decided, his triumph for the day.

  But many Salemites sniffled on his behalf.

  Peto plastered on another happy face. “Well, what am I doing, delaying all of you? Let’s get loading! Back Door route, right here in the middle in front of me. The other columns, file up behind the assistants . . .”

  No one else could hear what he had to say, because a few wagon drivers were already backing up their wagons to the loading bay, the jangling of their horses and the creaking of their long wagons drowning out his words.

  Peto smiled at their enthusiasm. He didn’t have anything else to add, anyway. It wasn’t as if he had to supervise anything, either. Everything in Salem—from the retrieving of the items from the shelves, to the boxing, to the loading, to the checking off on the charts—was so orderly and precise, he probably could’ve stayed in bed all day and no one would’ve known the difference.

  But it was his calling to be there. To nod gratefully to the women who organized the traffic in the storehouse and frequently called out directions to avoid collisions. To smile approvingly to the men handing down the goods from higher shelves to be loaded into the moving carts. To point needlessly to indicate that it was the next cart’s turn to unload into the waiting wagons. To shake the hands of those leaving the storehouse and heading to their routes.

  General Perrin Shin had created the plan years ago to improve flow and move goods swiftly. All Rector Shin had to do was follow the plan, like everyone else.

  Yet Salemites looked at him as if he held some importance, some power to help them like his father had. It wouldn’t do any good to explain he wasn’t a general. He was just the son of a great man, merely pretending to be as good as him.

  Still he smiled and waved as another wagon pulled up in front of him, waiting for its load for the Back Door. Only two wagons were needed, since the wide crevice created by the rock slide a couple of years ago, and now turned into the last emergency shelter, wouldn’t be able to hold too much.

  “I’m looking forward to this, Rector Shin,” the driver of the wagon exclaimed. “Should be an interesting climb. My sons and I are eager for it.”

  Peto smiled at the three young boys bouncing in the seat next to him.

  “Glad to hear it, Mr. Rescatar. Now, what about your wife and daughter?” He looked over to the side where the man’s wife and teenage daughter stood by the wagon, checking a list of all that was to be loaded in there.

  Mrs. Rescatar looked up and forced a smile. “Well . . . at least I get to wear breeches,” she said, and held up a leg to show off the wide trousers that women wore occasionally in Salem.

  “I’m glad to hear you’re so looking forward to this, Mrs. Rescatar.” Peto smiled bleakly.

  “Ha!” She smiled grimly back at him.

  “Quite a drive, all the way down from Norden,” Peto commented. The Rescatars were neighbors of his in-laws, and their daughter Febe frequently helped Grandma Trovato gather her eggs.

  “I have a brother on the edges of The Quiet Fields, rather close to the Back Door,” Mr. Rescatar explained as he took another crate and placed it in the wagon box. “We haven’t seen much of each other, and we stayed with him last night. Things haven’t always been the easiest with him.” He gave Peto a look with all kinds of meanings.

  Peto nodded back sadly. “Understood. Was it a good reunion?”

  Mr. Rescatar looked at his wife for her opinion.

  She shrugged. “No bloodshed or bruising, so . . .”

  Mr. Rescatar turned to Peto. “About all that could be expected. We were hoping he’d want to go with us on the route—he’s always been an adventurous one—but he’s talking about going to one of the dissenter colonies again.”

  Peto winced. “I’m sorry. Sometimes when someone gets an idea . . .” That was all he needed to say.

  The Rescatars regarded him with complete understanding.

  “Yes,” Mr. Rescatar grunted as he put another crate in, “when someone gets an idea . . . What’s this for?” He reached into the crate and pulled out an iron cooking pot with a handle.

  Peto checked his master list although he already knew. “There are no pots listed to be in any shelters.” He was about to ask Mr. Rescatar to hand it over to him so he could put it back in the storehouse when he found himself saying instead, “Just take it along. I imagine there’s room.”

  Mr. Rescatar looked at him dubiously. “A pot? For . . .?”

  Peto shrugged at the silliness of it too, but something in the back of his mind told him it needed to go.

  “Just take it. Stash it somewhere. The pot needs to be in that shelter.”

  Mr. Rescatar nodded at Peto’s authoritative tone and, without another comment, set it back in the crate.

  “It’s a good idea to stock the shelters with medical supplies,” he said, changing the subject when the next crate was handed to him. He peered inside. “Numbing agent, bandages,” he set down the crate to hear a few bottles clank together. “Oops. I better be gentler with that one.”

  “That’s all right,” Peto said. “Dr. Toon assured me the bottles were all well-protected. We didn’t want to store medical supplies until we had a proper way to do so. The treated crates will make sure someone won’t unravel a bandage only to find a family of mice in it.”

  Febe Rescatar shivered at the thought, and her mother chuckled.

  “And what are these?” Mrs. Rescatar asked as thick, knotted ropes were handed to her for placement in the wagon.

  “Net ropes—slings. The kind they use to transport expecting mothers out of the world,” Peto told them. “Should someone be injured, and unable to move on their own, we can still carry them with the slings and poles. The logs that are cut and used to mark the entrances for the emergency shelters
will also be the correct length to hold the slings.”

  “Clever!” Mr. Rescatar declared. “But how will the net slings work on the rock face of the Back Door?”

  “Likely not too well,” Peto admitted, scratching his chin.

  “Well, let’s just pray no one needs them, then,” Mrs. Rescatar suggested as she tried to fold the heavy ropes into some kind of fashion. Eventually she gave up and tossed them onto the crates. “Febe,” she turned to her daughter, “is that everything?”

  She looked over the list and nodded. “Got it all. I guess we’re ready.” Her voice lost a bit of enthusiasm.

  Peto smiled sympathetically. “Febe, I’m guessing you’ll beat all your brothers up that rock face.”

  She squinted at his suggestion of a race.

  “That is, if you were to have a race,” he fumbled. “Not that we encourage—”

  It hit him again. His father and son, both who loved to race, were gone. It was these random pangs of remembering that undid him. The moments that stopped him mid-sentence because sudden grief took all his breath.

  Mr. Rescatar noticed. He hopped on to the loading bay and gave him a quick, one-armed hug. “You’re doing an excellent job, Rector. We all appreciate you and your family. We’ll get out of your way, now.”

  A few minutes later the Rescatar family, along with dozens of other Salemites, headed out. Some turned north for The Quiet Fields, now covered in falling red, orange, and yellow leaves from the nearby forest, which always reminded Peto of Paradise.

  Where he imagined General Shin sat and watched him trying to do his job.

  ---

  Some weeks later, Salema heard her front door open.

  “Just me,” called a familiar voice.

  “Grandpa Shem!” her little boys cried.

  Salema smiled, wiped her hands on a towel, and left her kitchen for the gathering room. Her sons were already hugging their grandfather who had crouched next to them on the floor.

  “Papa Shem, what brings you here today?” Salema asked as she came into the room. He looked up at her, and she sighed when she saw the gloom in his eyes. “Oh, I forgot. It’s Counsel Day, isn’t it?”

  Shem nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t seem to keep track of the days.”

  Shem stood up and gave his daughter-in-law a quick kiss on the cheek. “Not at all. That’s how it’s supposed to be with small children in the house. If you know when the sun sets, I think you’re doing very well.”

  “Do you need Perrin?” she guessed.

  The expression on his face said it all.

  “I just put him down, but I’m sure you won’t wake him.”

  “Thank you.” He removed his overcoat, because the first snowflakes of the new Snowing Season had fallen that day, then went up the stairs to his son and daughter-in-law’s bedroom. Quietly he opened the door and made his way to the cradle. He smiled as he saw the tiny boy with tufty black hair just like his mother’s, just like his great-grandfather’s.

  Shem scooped up the infant, now two moons old, breathed in his scent, and listened to his grunts and groans as he stretched in his sleep. He sat down in the rocking chair, positioned the baby on his chest, waited to feel the rhythm of his own heartbeat, then patted the baby’s back at the same rate. He closed his eyes and thanked the Creator again for the healing power of the babies.

  Quietly the door opened again, and Shem wasn’t surprised to see the frame filled with a massive, dark man.

  “Jothan,” Shem whispered so as to not disturb the sleeping infant, “do you follow me everywhere?”

  “Of course I do. Your big brother asked me to. Salema let me in,” he told him as he sat on the bed next to Shem’s rocker. “And no, I don’t follow you everywhere, but I do remember seeing my grandfather wear the weight of Counsel Day home each week. Sometimes he needed a listening ear.”

  Shem nodded in gratitude. “This reminds me of the forests above Edge, years ago. Only, instead of sitting on a log in front of a hot vent chatting about the world, we’re sitting in my son’s bedroom.” He paused. “Now that I say that out loud, it suddenly sounds awkward.”

  Jothan chuckled, deeply and quietly, and even Shem smiled.

  Without thinking, Jothan folded a crumpled baby blanket on the bed, turning it into a neat square. “The world seems to be heavier for you today,” he hinted, and began to fold the pile of clean changing cloths Salema hadn’t yet had time to get to.

  “Perhaps,” Shem said. “Three couples were granted termination of their marriages. They’d been struggling for quite some time . . .”

  “It’s not your fault, Shem. If out of a population of one hundred fifty thousand, a handful of marriages fall apart each year, that’s still an excellent ratio—”

  “But it feels like a community tragedy,” Shem murmured. “Somehow, we failed.”

  “We all always fail,” Jothan told him. “Then we keep trying. That’s the Creator’s way, you know. To keep trying?”

  “Thank you, Rector Hifadhi,” Shem smirked. “We also have a few who have petitioned to go to the dissenter colonies.”

  “And you’re letting them go?”

  Shem shrugged. “Choices, always, in Salem.”

  Jothan nodded his agreement. “But there’s something else. Something you’re afraid to tell anyone.”

  “Oh, there was some good news, today,” Shem said. “Peto and Cephas reviewed the trails, and now, four weeks after the resupply groups, there’s no evidence anyone was ever there. We were worried the trails would be overrun, or appear too obvious, but once again, Salemites were careful.”

  “Shem, I’m not sitting here folding changing cloths because it’d make my wife proud of me, or because I can’t abide a mess, which I can’t. I’m waiting for the real news. The one that nearly forced you to crawl home today. What happened?”

  Exhaling long and low, Shem finally said, “A scout reported in. Fortunately after Peto and Cephas left—”

  Jothan sat up. “News about Young Pere?”

  “No. No, still no sightings of him. It’s been eleven weeks, you know,” Shem said, sounding mystified. “We’ve scouted every province in the area all the way to Sands, checking with everyone we have. We even subtly questioned the contacts we found on the list Eltana Yordin had given him, and none of them have seen him.”

  “I heard you even employed your food supplier scouts,” Jothan said. “That they asked for tours of the forts on the pretext of trying to see him?”

  “And nothing, Jothan. I’m making Honri come home in the next week, before the snows in the mountains get too deep. He’s stepped up his search, but I worry that Young Pere’s changed somehow and that no one would recognize him at this point—”

  “Except for maybe family,” Jothan suggested.

  “I still won’t let Relf go,” Shem whispered.

  “Why not? He doesn’t look anything like a Shin or Zenos—”

  “No,” said Shem with such finality that Jothan rocked back.

  “No more Shin boys are to be lost to the world.”

  “Relf’s as solid as the stone he cuts,” Jothan insisted, “and would make an excellent scout—”

  “What, has he been working on you too?”

  “No, I just thought—”

  “He’s petitioned me three times,” Shem said. “And he’s not the only one. Even Zaddick requested to go search—”

  “Oh, do not send Zaddick!” Jothan exclaimed, but quietly. “He’s the spitting image of you at that age, and if Thorne happened to see him—”

  Noticing a worried look come over Shem at Thorne’s name, Jothan slowly nodded. “And there it is. That’s the big problem. What did that scout from the world tell you?”

  Shem patted his dozing grandson as he searched for the words.

  “Practice on me, Shem, before you have to tell anyone else. Like Peto—”

  “You mean, like Kellen Riling.”

  Jothan frowned. “I don�
��t know the name.”

  “Husband of Amory Riling.”

  “Oh,” Jothan said, dread building in his voice. “What happened to her? Has she passed?”

  Shem scoffed lightly. “That would be easier news to deliver.”

  Now Jothan slowed in his folding. “Something’s harder to do than to tell a man his wife’s died?”

  “This won’t affect only Kellen,” Shem whispered. “It could affect all of us, in some terrible way. The scouts spotted Amory, and it was definitely Amory, in a fancy silk dress and floppy hat hanging on the arm of her newest conquest.”

  Jothan dropped the changing cloth he was folding. “Oh no . . .”

  “Oh yes. Lemuel Thorne has a new mistress.”

  Jothan exhaled at the news, and silently the two men sat, lost in thought about this latest development, until Jothan finally said, “Would it be terribly tacky to ask Kellen if Amory talks in her sleep?”

  “Oh, Jothan,” Shem murmured. “That was truly indelicate.”

  “Sorry to make you smirk,” Jothan said, and the two men looked down to compose themselves. Jothan folded another stack of changing cloths before they could look at each other again.

  “Can I confess something to you, Jothan?”

  “I’ve got another pile of changing cloths to get through, Shem, so go right ahead.”

  It took Shem a while to say, “No one worked harder than you and me to get Perrin to Salem.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Jothan, did he finish his work?”

  Jothan paused in mid-fold. “Perrin’s work? Marking the paths?”

  “Yes. Did he finish all of it?”

  “Well . . . yes. Why? Do you have doubts?”

  Uncharacteristically, Shem shrugged.

  Jothan nearly dropped the cloth. “What’s worrying you?”

  “I just always thought,” Shem said in barely a whisper, “that Perrin was . . . that maybe he was the Deliverer.”

  Jothan relaxed and smiled. “Perrin, the Deliverer,” he chuckled.

  Shem didn’t expect that. “You . . . you didn’t think so?”

  “I heard my grandfather Tuma discuss that passage a few times. He said to look at each sentence, standing alone. Perrin fulfilled marking the paths, but the line following about the Deliverer coming before the Destruction—well, that was something different entirely.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is really bothering you, Shem?”

  “It’s not like I doubt,” Shem was quick to assure Jothan, who had no doubts himself. “I just kind of wished . . . had expected, I guess, ever since I met him, that he’d be the one . . .”

  Jothan’s gentle smile never faded. “Still you have that glint of adulation in your eyes. You’ve never recovered from your little hero worship of him, have you?”

  Again Shem shrugged. “Sounds childish when you put it that way.”

  “No, not at all. Sounds like a little brother missing his big brother. Shem, are you worried about The Last Day?”

  He scoffed. “Of course! I’m the guide, now. The youngest there’s been since the first two. I worry that . . . I’m not wise enough. That I may miss something. The Creator’s told me I’m not missing anything important, but—”

  “So you have no inkling as to who the Deliverer is?” Jothan cut him off gently.

  Miserably, Shem shook his head. “I’ve prayed and prayed, and the Creator simply won’t answer that question. I need to know when to expect him, Jothan. I need to prepare this people for whenever he makes his appearance, so that they’ll follow him on the Last Day, should it happen in my lifetime. How will I even recognize him?”

  Jothan continued his smile and said, as he folded the last pile of changing cloths, “You’ll recognize him as easily as I have, when the time is right. I have no doubts. Never have.”

  Shem blinked at him, baffled and slightly envious.

  Chapter 28--“I’m hoping he’s gone for a very long time.”