Soldier at the Door (Forest at the Edge)

by Mercer, Trish

In the light that poured into the side window from the full Greater moon, Mahrree saw him sprawled on the sofa, snoring softly. She made a mental note that they should buy something that could accommodate his long legs and broad shoulders.

  As she turned by the table she saw The Writings and notes. Why all of those were out, she couldn’t imagine, and she didn’t really care right then. She had only a few minutes before her babies would be waking and . . .

  She found herself stopping and turning back to the table. Noiselessly she shifted the papers and bent closer to make out the notations in the dim light. Something burned in her aching chest as she read Perrin’s writing and recognized the other pages.

  References to The Writings.

  Calculations of Guarder population growth in varying circumstances.

  Minimum dimensions of land needed to house different population sizes.

  Maps from his collection.

  Calculations of the Idumean world population, before and after the Great War.

  The words weathered gray and window boxes.

  Mahrree looked over at Perrin. She was tempted to rush over and kiss him, but knew he needed the sleep almost as much as she did.

  Her husband. That’s who he was right now. Captain Shin had been there the night before, growling at her like a rabid wolf, but he was gone now. She lived with two men, both too large to be contained in one body at the same time.

  Captain Shin had stood on the podium shouting at her during the debates, but it was Perrin she fell in love with away from the platform.

  Captain Shin was the man with the sword and the barely-controlled temper raging through the forests, but Perrin was the man who pulled his babies out of her arms the moment after he took off his uniform jacket.

  Captain Shin was the one who declared her thoughts traitorous, Perrin was the one who tried to see if anything could be done about her dreams.

  She could live with both of them, as long as Perrin was around more than the officer.

  She pulled out her mental list and did her best to blot out Dreams are nonsense as she took the clean cloths back upstairs.

  Nothing had changed, she knew. There was no more hope for her, for a bigger family, for any alternatives. The Drink was still in her near future. But she felt as if her husband had spent the night lifting off that crushing boulder and heaving it away as far as he could. Granted, he couldn’t send it far at all, but the point was, he had tried.

  She got up again an hour later as the sun was rising, and carried both babies down the stairs balanced on each side. The pain in her chest had subsided to a dull ache, but she could live with that. Not surprisingly, the eating table was completely cleared and Perrin snored in a new position on the sofa.

  She smiled sweetly at him and dropped his babies on his chest.

  “Let me guess,” he mumbled as he slowly opened his eyes and put a steadying hand on each child. “It’s morning already.”

  “According to some farm animals, yes.” She bent over and kissed him.

  He grinned sleepily. “Mm, not that we have any time to argue, but I’m curious—what was that for?”

  “For being my husband.”

  ---

  Perrin struggled to sit up with his children—his baby cradled in one arm while his toddler sat unhelpfully on his belly—as his wife went into the kitchen to start breakfast. He righted himself and glanced in a quick panic at the table, then sighed when he remembered he had already cleaned up his work.

  He didn’t need her seeing it.

  Not again.

  No one would see his calculations and notes again, now smoldering on the hearth.

  He couldn’t shake Hogal’s words to him in Raining Season, right after he was injured. Hogal had said that not only was the Refuser after Perrin, but his family, too. And why?

  Because Mahrree could someday prove to be a very dangerous woman.

  Perrin had thought maybe some year, or decade, but not within a few moons! But there it was: Mahrree could see what no else bothered to look at. She already was the most dangerous woman in the world.

  That’s why Perrin burned all his notes. He didn’t need written evidence of that lying around.

  Her calculations had been correct. Her suggestions of how many Guarders there could be somewhere else, even at conservative birthrates, were staggering.

  And there was nothing he could do about it, he realized. Maybe send some of the ideas to his father to suggest 15,000 in the army might not be enough? But the notion of going somewhere else? Exploring? Increasing their own family size?

  People simply weren’t supposed to think like that. There were rules and limits to their world—

  Why was he suddenly thinking like an Administrator?

  For a brief moment he envisioned his grandfather glaring at him in disappointment. Wasn’t it General Pere Shin who told him to go over the wall, invade the forest, do what no one else could do?

  Perrin did many things no one else had done, but he simply couldn’t do this. There was no way he could see successfully doing what Mahrree dreamed. He tried almost all night, but no possibility he entertained ended happily.

  Everything ended in Idumea.

  He adjusted his small children on his lap and kissed each one of them as they stared up at him with eyes far too wide awake for such an early hour. One pair was a dark chestnut brown, the other pair was pale blue, turning gray.

  Annoy and anger the Refuser.

  According to Hogal, these two soft little faces would someday annoy and anger the Refuser. Perrin sighed at his babies and tried to smile. Maybe Hogal was mistaken. He’d been up the entire night before he told Perrin his impressions of his family, and he must have been exhausted. Perrin Shin and his family were no threats to anyone—

  But the words sounded hollow in his mind. Rector Hogal Densal, in all his 82 years, was never wrong. And he had dreams too. He’d never told his nephew how he knew the Refuser had a personal grudge against lowly Perrin Shin, but Hogal’s dreams were so vivid he couldn’t deny them.

  And now Mahrree was having dreams.

  But Perrin considered them nightmares.

  Chapter 3 ~ “Such a document would be

  too dangerous to discuss.”

  Although it was Hycymum Peto’s day off from cooking at the Inn, she was busy in her kitchen working on a new confection she decided should be called mer-ang. At a critical moment in its whipping, she heard an urgent knock on the front door.

  Conflicted, she looked into her bowl, decided whipping it even more in a minute might be a good idea, then took off her third best apron with the little caterpillars stitched on it, and went to the front door. When she opened it she was surprised to see her son-in-law, his infant son cradled in one arm, his daughter held in his other, and his face etched deep with concern.

  “Mother Peto, could you please come check on Mahrree?” his deep voice quavered. “I’ve never seen her like this.”

  Hycymum blinked several times to make sure her massive son-in-law wasn’t actually cowering just a bit. Then a terrible thought struck her.

  “Wait—was it today?” She could already see the answer. “Why didn’t she tell me?!”

  Perrin’s face went wretched. “She didn’t want to bother you—”

  But Hycymum was already grabbing a sweater without worrying if it matched her skirt. “You left her alone?!”

  “It’s been only a few minutes,” he defended feebly. “I—”

  Hycymum pushed past him. “And I here I thought you were supposed to be a smart man! Stay here!”

  Several minutes later Hycymum, panting at her effort to run down the road—an activity she hadn’t engaged in for over forty years—pushed open the front door of her daughter’s house. She listened for a moment, then did her best to move up the stairs as quickly as possible for a woman her size and age.

  In the bedroom she found her daughter curled up like a squirrel, sobbing.

  “My poor girl!” Hycymum rushed over, climbed
onto the bed with a grunt, and cradled her daughter’s head. She rocked and soothed, “I’m so sorry it hurts. I’m so sorry it hurts,” while Mahrree’s gasping body shuddered and shook.

  After a while, neither woman could say how long, Mahrree sobs finally slowed. Between gasps she asked, “Where are my babies?”

  “Safe, with your very worried husband, at my house.”

  “Your house isn’t very safe then, is it?” Mahrree whispered.

  “Don’t you worry about that. I can always get more seashells.”

  Mahrree trembled. “Mother, no one said it would feel like this.”

  “No one ever will, my poor girl. And I am so sorry about that,” Hycymum smoothed her hair. “We never speak of it. It wouldn’t help if we did.”

  “I don’t mean the pain, Mother,” Mahrree said hoarsely, “I feel some cramping, but nothing unbearable. What I feel is, what I feel is . . .” She began to sob again.

  Her mother hugged her head awkwardly. “I know what you feel. The pain of what could have been. You’ve lost the ability to give more life.”

  Mahrree sat up with effort and wiped her wet face. “I knew I would feel some sorrow, but this—This is far worse than I imagined! Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded between sniffles.

  Her mother shook her head apologetically. “For the same reason you won’t tell little Jaytsy when it’s her time. Could you have gone through it—willingly—had you known?”

  Mahrree hadn’t considered that.

  “No. I was already having some doubts,” she confessed. “But then of course we hear from the Office of Family,” she spat contemptuously, “that the herbs are safe, that there’s little pain, that it’s our duty.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  “It is safe,” Hycymum admitted bleakly, handing her a handkerchief a bit too late. “I don’t know of any women who died. But were depressed or grief-stricken? Yes, all of them. For a few, dying might actually have been easier.” She scrunched her mouth and looked at the ceiling.

  Mahrree could tell she was searching for the right words. It wasn’t really her strength, but the dear woman was trying.

  “It hurts . . .” Hycymum began, paused, then said, “it hurts because the Creator can’t work through us anymore. When we become mothers we enter into something like a sweet bond with Him. Oh, expecting and birthing is painful, and it’s ridiculous to see how our bodies become shapes we no longer recognize! But there’s . . . there’s still something sweet about it all. And then it’s taken away. Forever. And that’s agony.”

  Mahrree had stopped crying, amazed at her mother’s insight. She thought her head held only cotton.

  And fine linen.

  And a bit of worsted wool.

  “Oh Mother, that’s it exactly!”

  Hycymum sat a little taller. It wasn’t often she got a compliment from her daughter.

  Mahrree stared at the woman who seemed to get a little smarter each year.

  “I just realized how selfish I am to complain. Here I have two babies, and you had only one. I’m so sorry.” Because her eyes were finally clearing up, she looked at her mother properly for the first time. Her gray and brown curls were in disarray, her sweater didn’t match her dress, and bits of white sugar clung to her round face.

  And her mother went out in public like that?

  Of course she did, for her daughter.

  “Thank you, Mother. I don’t think I say that enough. Sometimes we’re so different, but I do appreciate you.” She brushed some of the sugar off her face.

  Hycymum rubbed her other cheek and frowned at the sugar on her chubby fingers. “That bag cost three slips of silver this week. Ah well. I’m merely doing what mothers do,” she said dismissively, and with a tinge of embarrassment.

  To get a compliment from her daughter was quite unexpected, but gratitude as well? Hycymum could barely take it all in.

  “You make up for what was lost,” she added mysteriously, wiping her nose for sugar grains.

  Mahrree cocked her head. Something in the tone of her bubble headed mother sounded as heavy as a boulder. “Lost? What did you lose?”

  Hycymum stopped fretting about sugar and sighed loudly.

  A depth of pain Mahrree had never seen before on her mother erupted and filled her eyes with sudden grief. “I think now you can understand, Mahrree. We lost your sister,” she confessed. “You weren’t quite two. She was born early, like Jaytsy, but even smaller. I had pains just as you did with Peto, but we couldn’t stop them. Her tiny little lungs . . . they weren’t ready yet.” Tears slid down her face.

  Fascinated and dismayed, Mahrree sat up and took her mother into her arms. “I had no idea! You did have a second child?”

  Hycymum began to weep softly. “I shouldn’t be burdening you with this. I thought I was over it, but today, seeing you . . . it just all came back,” she squeaked out between sniffles.

  Mahrree handed her back her moist handkerchief. Some things can be shared between mother and daughter.

  “A member of the king’s Family Services visited me the day after,” Hycymum said damply. “I was still resting at my mother’s. That representative had The Drink. She said it was obvious I couldn’t birth healthy children. I was half delirious with fever, pain, and exhaustion. My mother, your Grandmother Sakal, tried to stop her . . .” Hycymum shook her head. “I never got to replace my lost baby.”

  “Oh, Mother,” Mahrree breathed. She felt guilty that she had two beautiful babies that came out yelling as loudly as their parents. She closed her eyes and wished for something helpful to say. Instead, all she came up with was, “How did you bear it?”

  She felt her mother chuckle under her arms. That was the last thing Mahrree expected. Then again, nothing she was hearing or feeling today was anything she expected.

  Hycymum pulled back and was actually smiling. “Cloth!” When Mahrree looked at her blankly she said, “No, really. I met another woman who also lost an early baby. Together we made a blanket for our babies. We spent days looking at the market to find the right cloth, and oh! We never had sewed something so beautiful before!” Hycymum smiled tearfully at the memory. “Then together we buried it near the unmarked graves of where Family Services buried our babies. Wouldn’t even let us do that on our own,” she added with a bitter tone Mahrree had never heard from her mother before.

  “And then,” she continued, a bit more brightly, “we found other grieving mothers. We helped them make blankets. Then we helped each other make clothes for our surviving children. Then we made curtains and pillows and everything else.”

  Mahrree smiled, not realizing she could still do it. “Your decorating friends! All of them lost someone?”

  She nodded with a sad smile. “Yes, each one. I guess you feel as much pain for losing a child as you do when you lose the possibility of a child. Mahrree, you’ve joined our club, filled with women forced to take The Drink. And in our club is every mother who’s lived in the past fifty years. They’ll be here again, to help until you get over this. Because they understand.”

  Mahrree shook her head in amazement, seeing her mother with new eyes, and seeing her fondness for decorating everything in a different way.

  “So it took me only thirty years to finally understand you?”

  Hycymum laughed softly and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “You’re doing better than me. I still don’t understand you!”

  They sat in silence few moments, both sniffing and passing the soggy handkerchief between them.

  “I wished I could have seen Grandmother Sakal trying to take on the official,” Mahrree said eventually.

  Hycymum smiled. “My mother was special, much like you. She knew losing my baby didn’t mean I couldn’t have more.” In a softer voice she said, “Did I ever tell you she was expecting five times? She lost three of her babies before she could carry them full term, but was able to carry my twin brothers and me. That’s why she believed I could have more.” She sighed.

  Mahrree sighed to
o. She’d often forgotten her mother had two younger brothers who died as small children from a fever and pox. Suddenly Mahrree wondered if she needed to worry about her own babies—

  Oh, there were simply far too many things to worry about today. She was already drowning in dread.

  Fortunately her mother spoke again.

  “She tried to tell the representative, but of course she wouldn’t listen.” Hycymum reflected for a moment. “Mahrree,” she said in a tone Mahrree had heard from her teenage students when they had news they were sworn to keep secret—except only after they shared it just this once, “I have something I think you’re ready for.”

  Again surprised by her mother’s changing demeanor, Mahrree smiled warily. “Might as well, Mother. I’m rather expecting anything now.”

  Hycymum glanced around as if someone could have been hiding in the bedroom. “It’s about your great-great-grandparents, Kanthi and Viddrow. About the time King Querul the First was asking for the family records. I don’t know if you remember that time—”

  “Mother, I teach history,” Mahrree interrupted. “Three hundred twenty years is a lot to remember, but I do know about the family records collection. The goal was to create a complete family histories, everyone’s father and mother. They wanted to trace their lines to the original Five Hundred Families to put into The Writings. It should have happened right before the division.”

  “Supposedly that’s what they planned,” said her mother flatly.

  Mahrree had to grin. She’d never seen her mother like this before.

  Sly. Cynical. Mysterious.

  If only she didn’t still have bits of sugar in her eyebrows that made them look frosted, she would have been quite alarming.

  “Why do you say that, exactly?”

  “That’s not what my great grandfather Viddrow believed,” Hycymum said, glancing around again for extra ears.

  Mahrree couldn’t help herself. Ludicrously she peered out the window.

  “I never told you this,” Hycymum continued, feeling sure the Administrator of Loyalty wasn’t in the wardrobe, “but he had a dream. Quite vivid. The next night he had the dream again.”