The Forest at the Edge of the World

by Mercer, Trish

  “Yep,” Heth nodded. “No girls.”

  Dormin clenched his fists. “Sonof—Heth, why are you here?”

  “Why not?”

  “I mean, what possessed you to join the army? I thought you hated Mal. And Shin was the one who had our father executed!”

  “Nothing better to do,” Heth said dismissively. “Exactly why are you here?”

  Dormin took a deep breath. “Last time we spoke I told you that I was going to read The Writings. Well, I did. I know why Great Grandmother hated it so much. She was the very embodiment of evil The Writings warn against.”

  Heth chuckled. “Yeah, she was a piece of work, wasn’t she? They discussed her in one of my classes. I really didn’t know how tough an old bird she was. Took all my self control to not puff up in pride.”

  “She’s not something to admire, Sonof—Heth.” He sighed again. “My point is, there’s a better way to live. There’s so much in The Writings about how the Creator—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa—I know what this is. You’re trying to get me to read The Writings, aren’t you?!”

  Dormin shrugged. “It’s just that I’ve gained so much—”

  “Oh, please,” Heth snickered. “Don’t start, just don’t start any of that nonsense. You know what believing in The Writings does? It makes you blind! You don’t think for yourself—”

  “Stop right there!” Dormin said, almost too loudly. “I think very well for myself. I’ve been doing all kinds of thinking, and I’m thinking our family has never done anything right. Our father never thought about anyone but himself, he—”

  “He was your father!” Heth hissed. “How dare you speak against him?”

  “No, I’m not speaking against him,” Dormin defended. “I’m trying to point out that he simply didn’t understand. He never had a chance to be something better, because he didn’t know. I loved him, and now I have even more respect for him. He should have been more horrible, considering it was his grandmother who had his mother killed, and then she controlled his every move. But he really did try. He could have been good, but he was manipulated by those who never taught him to think. Sonoforen, The Writings have been teaching me to think, to test all things, to ponder, to—”

  “Become a bag full of nuts!” his brother finally cut him off. “That’s what you are, you know that? You’ve been talking to a rector, haven’t you?”

  “I have!” Dormin said eagerly, “and he’s the one who—”

  “Doo-doo Droppings,” Heth said sadly, calling his brother the name he came up with when he was eight. “And you came all this way to—”

  “Try to get you to listen. Look, we can fix things. We could do great things for the world, give back for all that we took.”

  “I am,” Heth said coldly. “I’ll be giving back all kinds of things. And when I’m done in two more years, I will fix everything in the world.”

  Dormin leaned back. “Why do I get the feeling that while we’re saying the same things, we’re meaning the opposite?”

  “Are you about finished here? Because it’s late.”

  Dormin reached into a pack on his back and pulled out a bound set of parchments. “I want to give this to you, have you read it. Think about—”

  His brother snatched it out of his hands and peered at the title in the dim light. “As if I don’t have enough reading to do . . . Oh, I am not bothering with this, Doorpost.”

  “I’m not asking for a bed, or for gold, or for anything else. I’m merely asking you to read this. Please. It just may change the way you see everything.”

  “Doorknob, I don’t want to see everything differently,” Heth said as he shoved the book back into his brother’s hands. “I like what I see in my future. And you don’t happen to be in it.”

  “But what if you can see things better? Wouldn’t that be worth finding out?”

  “Look, Doorhead—”

  “That one never even made any sense!” Dormin spouted, losing his patience. “What’s that supposed to mean: Doorhead?”

  Heth sneered. “Just always said it to irritate you. You’re seventeen years old now—”

  “Twenty-one!”

  “—and it still works. Look, I realize you came a long way, and what makes it even more pathetic is that it was for nothing. I’m happy. You obviously aren’t. Maybe you’re the one who needs to see things differently. Now, if you’re finally done, get out. They’ve been doing surprise inspections in the middle of the night and it would be so tragic to find that Dormin, King Oren’s youngest son, was found breaking into the university dormitories. So many questions would be asked . . .”

  Dormin stood up, The Writings clutched in his hands. “I’d hoped this would go better.”

  Heth shrugged. “Don’t know why.”

  “Because you’re my brother. I worry about you. And I . . . love you,” he stumbled.

  “Ew,” Heth cringed. “All right, it’s definitely time for you to get out.” He stood up and headed straight for the door.

  His younger brother nodded. “Well then, that’s it. I tried. I failed, but I tried,” he mumbled as he got up. “I might never see you again.”

  “That’s fine, Doorgirl,” Heth said, pushing him on the back towards the hallway.

  “What’s that supposed to mean: ‘Doorgirl’? I never got that either!”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t get, Dormaniac. If ever I see you again, I’ll make you a list.”

  Heth slammed the door.

  “And they thought our father was the idiot,” he mumbled as he fell back into bed.

  ---

  It took Dormin almost two weeks to get back from where he started, reaching the village by the middle of Harvest Season, just before the Festival. First he finished out the week removing rubbish in Idumea, then told his supervisor he was quitting. He travelled by night along the rivers, avoiding other loners also trying not to be noticed. Eventually he found himself at the small house that sent him. It was before dawn, but he knew he was expected to knock on the back door, no matter the hour.

  A few moments later it opened up to reveal a small, middle-age man blinking sleep out of his narrow black eyes. They popped open when he saw who stood there.

  “Come in, come in!” he said quickly, pulling Dormin into his small kitchen. “Are you safe? Have you been seen?”

  Dormin smiled at the man who seemed genuinely happy to see him. “I’m fine and safe, Rector Yung. No one recognized me.”

  Rector Yung looked up at the ceiling. “Thank you!” he called as if the Creator lived in the attic.

  “Who is it, dear?” a woman’s voice came from behind a partially closed door.

  “Our wandering lamb, my love!”

  “Dormin’s back? Is he all right?” She sounded just as Dormin always thought a mother should: pleasantly worried.

  “I am, Mrs. Yung,” he called back. “I’m sorrow to bother you so early.”

  “Not at all!” said a cheerful voice. “Let me start breakfast. I’ll be right out.”

  “Come in, son. Tell me everything!” Rector Yung led Dormin out of the kitchen and to a small sofa in the gathering room.

  Dormin sat down. “I saw him, but Rector, I failed. He wouldn’t even take it.” He pulled his pack off his back and retrieved the copy of The Writings the rector had given him almost a season before.

  “Ah, well. We had to try, didn’t we?” The rector took back the book as he sat next to Dormin. He ran his fingers through his black hair speckled with white, as if remembering he hadn’t yet combed it that morning. “I suspected it was a long shot, but like feeding an abandoned puppy, sometimes we have to try again and again until it finally accepts the milk that will sustain it.”

  “Well, the puppy hates me,” Dormin exhaled. “Always has. And I didn’t do much to win him over, either. He’s always been so arrogant, so annoying . . .”

  Rector Yung patted him kindly on the back. “Siblings have a way of recognizing our most sensitive points, then
stabbing at them, don’t they?”

  “Yes!” Dormin groused. “I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t have let him control me like that, and for a while I did all right. It’s just that . . . I failed. I lost my temper, but I did tell him what you said to tell him.”

  “And how did he respond?”

  “By showing me the door,” Dormin groaned. “You said it would make me feel better. I must have said the words wrong, because it didn’t work.”

  “The words ‘I love you’ do indeed have power, but not the kind I think you’re expecting. Trust me, Dormin—someday you will be glad you said them. At least you’ll know that he heard them once from you.”

  “Whatever you say, Rector,” Dormin said wearily. “You’ve been right about most everything else.”

  Yung chuckled. “Well, thank you for that enormous display of faith, son.”

  “Sorry. So now what do I do?”

  Rector Yung looked at him in the muted light of the dawn, the sky beginning to lighten and tinting everything a pale orange, matching the dozens of pumpkins growing around the rector’s small home. “Now, you will eat some breakfast, then take a very long nap in our guest room—”

  “I mean, with my life!” Dormin slumped against the sofa. “Rector, I took work as a rubbish collector! Me, the son of King Oren, the descendent of all the kings, removing rubbish!”

  “And that was the noblest work anyone in your family line has done in six generations, Dormin,” Rector Yung declared.

  “Ha!” Dormin scoffed. “Whatever. I have no skills, Rector. The tutors I had as a boy—I realize now they never told me anything true. Merely more rubbish. Maybe that’s why I was good at removing it. My supervisor even said I had a knack,” he shuddered. “Said in maybe five or six years, with ‘consistent performance’ and ‘continued perseverance’ I could become a head remover,” he said dismally.

  Yung swallowed. “Head what?”

  “Removing trash, Rector. Not heads. No, I haven’t joined my great grandparents’ killing squads, although who knows—maybe that would have been the only other thing I could be successful at.”

  Rector Yung patted him on the arm. “Dormin, you have remarkable skills. You’ve been gone for nearly a season getting by on your wits, finding yourself work, keeping yourself from being discovered, and . . . where was it that you finally found your brother?”

  “In the dormitory. Command School,” Dormin said dully. “Stopped by my aunt’s and there was a message for me about him.”

  Yung blinked in surprise. “Did you get in to the dorms?”

  Dormin nodded. “Snuck in at night. Watched the guards for a while to time their routes. Talked to Sonoforen—Heth, as he now calls himself—then snuck back out again.”

  “And no one but your brother saw you?”

  “I guess not.”

  Yung breathed out. “Remarkable skills, indeed! Dormin, do you realize how hard it is to get in and out of the Command School dormitory? To be on campus and not be stopped?”

  “No one cares about rubbish men,” Dormin explained. “I figured that was the best way to slip in and out.”

  Yung had a smile tugging at both ends of his mouth. “Very remarkable, Dormin. Sometimes our skills lie in what we’ve learned, but other skills are natural. I think we’ve found your natural ability.”

  “Great,” Dormin rolled his eyes. “I’m good at taking out the rubbish and sneaking in to talk to my brother who cares nothing for me. What’s the point, Rector? I know you keep telling me this life is a test, but I’m failing it. I’ve got no more family—at least, none that cares about me—no friends, and no one that would even notice if didn’t exist. In fact, I can think of one or two older men who’d be happy to hear I was no longer alive so I won’t pose any threat to their rule. I just take up space, Rector. I’m even a waste of that space. I’m rubbish, too.”

  Rector Yung couldn’t help himself. He leaned over and embraced Dormin.

  Dormin’s chin trembled, but finally he put his arms around the rector and squeezed him back.

  “You are a son of the Creator, Dormin,” Rector Yung whispered, “and that’s far more significant than being descended from some old kings.”

  “Thanks,” Dormin murmured.

  Rector Yung released him a moment later. “You’ve lived such a narrow existence that you simply don’t know all there is to know. Well, I know of something you can do, something amazing to match your remarkable skills. But I warn you, this may take some time.”

  “Time is what I’ve got plenty of, Rector,” the young man mumbled. “No gold or silver or home or food or purpose, but plenty of time.”

  “Time is the most valuable gift the Creator gives us, Dormin. Trust me.”

  He shrugged. “So what can I do?”

  “You will stay with us, Dormin, as our hired hand,” Yung decided. “No one here knows you or your heritage. We can say you’re our nephew. As scruffy as you appear right now, not even your mother would’ve recognized you. You can work for us, we’ll feed and house you, and during our evenings, I’ll teach a few things. Things you’ve never imagined. But how long this takes depends on your response to one question.”

  Dormin eyed the rector suspiciously. “All right. I guess I would be foolish to reject your offer.”

  “If ever you don’t want to continue, Dormin, you are free to leave,” Yung assured him. “I’m not forcing you, just giving you an option. You’ll not be a prisoner in my house.”

  “A prisoner,” Dormin whispered with growing dread. “How did you know about that?”

  “Your family may think they kept quiet the fact that for three generations they enslaved their servants, but Dormin, word has way of trickling out of even the most tightly kept houses,” Yung whispered back. “Just know that I know, and I’d never treat you in such a way.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” Dormin said apologetically. “And I’m grateful for the offer. Actually, I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than with you and Mrs. Yung. She makes the best biscuits.”

  “That she does!” Rector Yung said, sniffing the air that was already filling with the scents of breakfast.

  “So,” Dormin said, clapping his hands on his legs. “What’s your question?”

  Rector Yung studied him. “Dormin, what color is the sky?”

  “Blue,” he answered automatically. He didn’t even glance out the window at the blazing orange that leaked into the room, tingeing everything around them in a carroty hue. “Everyone knows that.”

  Rector Yung glanced out the window at the ignored evidence and sighed.

  “Dormin, you’re going to be enjoying my wife’s cooking for a very long time. But that’s all right. That’s why we’re here.”

  ---

  A full moons’ period after his brother’s late night visit, Lieutenant Heth left his last class, marched out onto the greens of the campus, and over a slight rise at the edge of it. The cool Harvest Season air showed his breath as he walked. A few minutes later he strode down the gentle hillside and over to the massive Administrative Headquarters. He kept his cap down low over his eyes, marched up the white stone stairs, and through the grand entrance doors.

  The last time he did that, he had a butchering knife in his hands and a flock of guards on his tail. Today no one thought twice about another young man in a uniform entering the Headquarters.

  He walked past the old gold and leather throne still on display and proceeded towards a large outer office. He paused at the desk and nodded to the two men in red jackets.

  “Lieutenant Heth, sirs.”

  One checked the ledger. “He’s expecting you, Lieutenant. Go right in.”

  Heth turned towards the large double doors, opened them, walked through, and shut them behind him.

  “A much better entry than six moons ago. Sit down, Heth,” Chairman Mal nodded to a seat in front of him.

  Heth sat obediently in the chair he occupied back in Planting Season and waited.

  �
�Normally I would begin by quizzing you on some of your past exam material,” Mal explained, “but you’re not a typical officer-in-training, are you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Dormin came to see you, didn’t he?” Mal casually sprung on him. “About a full moons ago?”

  Heth’s mouth dropped open. “Uh, yes . . . yes he did. How did you know—”

  Mal clasped his hands in front of him. “I know all kinds of things, Lieutenant. Why didn’t you tell me?” His tone turned sharp.

  Heth swallowed. “It wasn’t a good visit, sir. He wouldn’t have been interested in what you could offer him.”

  “Are you sure?” Mal asked harshly.

  Heth nodded and answered swiftly, “Yes sir! He was trying to give me a copy of The Writings. Wanted me to read them.”

  Mal pulled a face. “The Writings? Hm. That’s too bad,” he reluctantly admitted. “He had a good mind. Could have used him.”

  Heth shifted uncomfortably, having been under the impression that he was the one with a “good mind.”

  “Did he question you about your new position?”

  “He did. I told him that my great-grandmother left me the gold to pay for Command School.”

  “And he believed that?”

  “He did, sir.”

  “Good. Did he ask why you were here?”

  “Yes, sir. Told him I had nothing better to do.”

  Mal squinted. “And his response to that was . . .”

  Heth shrugged. “He believed it.”

  “Coming from you, I suppose it’s not unexpected.”

  Heth wondered if he had just been slighted. “When he left, he said he didn’t know if I would ever see him again.”

  “Where does he live, Heth?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, sir,” he confessed.

  Mal leaned forward. “Do you recall that I asked you specifically to find out where he lives if ever you saw him again?”

  “You did, sir.” He gulped.

  “So what is he doing?”

  “Moving rubbish, sir.”

  “Moving rubbish,” Mal repeated tonelessly. “Where?”

  Heth hesitated. “He didn’t reveal that, sir,” realizing that he shouldn’t add, Because I forgot to ask.