by Trish Mercer
“I believe you will!” Sewzi said, and rushed back into the house to get their traveling bag.
Cambozola sidled over to Jaytsy, as if nervous to be near a young woman. “Miss Jaytsy, Sewzi would trust her gardens only to someone whom she feels truly has ‘brown fingers.’ I’ve never seen her put so much faith into someone so young. Thank you. She’d normally never leave her plants in Weeding Season, but after losing my mother last year, and our home in Moorland—” He paused to clear his throat. “We just can’t bear to next lose our only boy,” he whispered. “Too much loss . . .”
Surprised by his soberness, Jaytsy squeezed his arm. “Thank you for your confidence. I promise you’ll both come back to find everything well. And I hope your son will be well, too.”
Cambozola quickly wiped his face and patted Jaytsy awkwardly on her shoulder. “Such a good girl,” he mumbled.
His wife came bounding out the back door, bag in hand, and tears streaking down her face. Jaytsy gave Sewzi one last hug and a brave smile.
“You’ll be back in no time, and he’ll be fine as soon as he sees you again!”
---
Knock-knock . . . knock-knock-knock.
A trap door. Right below his desk. Perrin could open it, slip down, fall to the ground thirty feet below, but it would be worth a broken leg to avoid saying the words—
“Come in.”
The door opened.
Even with his pocked face Thorne had a way of looking dashing, polished, and completely un-soldier-like. Soldiers, when not on some ridiculous parade, should have a little dirt smudged on their faces, a bit of sweat on their brow, and a scent like horses and work.
But Thorne always had a strangely faint odor of something purple, like an older woman’s hair. Just another thing that was so wrong about the boy.
“Colonel Shin!”
“You’re up, I see,” Perrin tried to say airily, but it came out as light as an anvil.
Thorne didn’t notice. “Yes, sir! My mother says it was touch and go for a while, but here I am. Cheated death, twice in one year.”
Perrin’s shoulders tensed. Thorne was never in any real danger, but that’s not how Versula Thorne chose to see it.
Although things were touch and go. Versula always had a way of finding and touching Perrin, and he found ways of quickly going.
And as for cheating death? Death just couldn’t bear taking him yet. The Creator didn’t have any room for someone like him in Paradise, and the Refuser likely wanted the sniveling boy to torment Perrin for a few more years.
“What can I do for you, Captain?”
“Sir, it’s what I can do for you,” Thorne leaned on the desk, cautiously. “I overheard—”
It was remarkable how many things he “overheard.” He must have had several pairs of ears around the compound.
“—that your daughter is requesting assistance in a nearby field? Some passing soldiers brought in the message that the owners left and the fields need tending to.”
Perrin must have been steaming for as quickly as he felt his blood boil and rise.
“I hereby volunteer to help her plant plants! Or whatever.”
“Weed,” Perrin corrected him.
Thorne squinted. “They plant weeds? Why?”
At any other moment that would have struck him as humorous. But he never felt like smiling when the captain was around.
“They pull out the weeds, Captain. They just call it ‘weeding’ to be brief. Obviously you’ve never done the job before.”
“But I can learn, Colonel. Surely you can see that,” he said with his thin smile rooted in place.
“This isn’t a time to learn, Captain. We need experienced men who can find and quickly remove the most pernicious weeds, and we can afford to send only two for a couple of hours each day. Besides,” Perrin was grateful for the sudden recollection, “the surgeon said that those recovering from the pox should limit their time outdoors. The intense heat and sun would further dehydrate you. Now, we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?” He put on his own tight smile.
Thorne nodded, disappointed. “I forgot. Sir, would you please tell Miss Jaytsy that I volunteered? That I wanted to assist her?”
Perrin exhaled. “Oh, I’ll tell her, all right.”
---
When Jaytsy went home for midday meal, she told her mother what happened with the Briters.
“Those poor people,” Mahrree sighed. “I’ll help you with irrigation,” she said, although she wasn’t sure how she could since dealing with the small mob that came to empty her mother’s house that morning had left her needing a nap.
“I’m not sure you should, Mother. You’re rather pale again.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
The door to the washing room opened and Peto came out, his hands rubbed red. “Well I did some chicken coop work this morning after all. It doesn’t seem they could do such foul things, but really—don’t let them fool you. They’re much more than just ‘cluck.’” He inspected his finger nails and shuddered. “Please tell me we’re not having scrambled eggs or cold chicken today.”
“Fresh greens, Peto, and barley bread with goat cheese,” Mahrree assured him.
Peto sat down at the table. “I guess I’ll tell you the atrocities of goats after we’ve finished eating.”
“So let me guess,” Mahrree sat at the table with him, “added to the list of things you don’t want to be when you grow up, under ‘soldier’ is ‘farmer’?”
“Goat herder, chicken rancher—or whatever they call it—sheep catcher—”
“Shepherd!” Jaytsy giggled.
“Yeah, that,” Peto said, taking a massive bite of bread. “Pig gatherer, cattle chaser, dog grower, horse teacher—”
“I’m seeing a pattern,” Mahrree said.
“I’ll eat it, but I won’t take care of it,” Peto decided.
“Eat dogs and horses, Peto?” Jaytsy cringed.
“I won’t eat them, but I certainly don’t enjoy touching them. I’ll just find me a nice job doing . . .” He scratched his head.
“His handwriting is atrocious,” Mahrree said to her daughter, “so he can’t do anything with scribing or writing. That rules out quite a few careers.”
“And even though he’s nearly as tall as me now, he’s still as skinny as green bean,” Jaytsy pointed out. “So that rules out anything requiring muscle, like blacksmithing.”
“Carpentry,” Mahrree added.
“Piping—” Jaytsy continued.
“Hey!” Peto exclaimed. “Father said I’m developing muscle!”
“—basket weaving.”
“Oh, ha-ha, Jayts.”
“You could be a teacher, like me and my father,” Mahrree suggested.
“You mean, ‘my father and me,’” said Peto smugly.
“See?” Mahrree beamed. “You love correcting and ridiculing people. You’d be perfect as a teacher of teenage boys.”
Peto and Jaytsy laughed, and Mahrree thought nothing ever sounded so wonderful.
“What’s going on in here?” they heard a deep voice boom from the kitchen. A moment later Perrin came through the door. “Eating? Laughing? Did I authorize this?”
No, Mahrree thought; Now everything’s wonderful. “What are you doing home?” she asked him as he dropped his cap on the table.
“Just came by for a moment. Jayts, I got your message from the soldiers you stopped. So the Briters actually left?”
Jaytsy nodded. “They were very concerned about their son. I’ve never seen them so upset.”
Perrin sighed and sat down at the table, taking the bread out of Peto’s hands and ignoring his protests. “They’ve experienced a lot of loss this past year. I can understand their fear.”
“So can you spare a few soldiers to help with the farm?”
“I can give you only two, for a few hours each afternoon,” he said apologetically. “We have so many men down, others are helping with the village . . . thank the Creat
or we have no Guarders to contend with right now.”
“Indeed,” Mahrree sighed. “I do every day.”
“It should be enough,” Jaytsy said, just a little worried. “I was hoping to keep the weeds from taking over too much. The soldiers can get the larger ones, I suppose.”
“There was a third volunteer,” Perrin said, reluctantly. “He overheard somehow.”
Jaytsy swallowed. “Who?”
“Captain Thorne.”
Peto grimaced. “Ew. That’s not what a garden needs—thorns!” He looked at his family, wondering why they weren’t laughing.
His sister and father were studying each other, and Mahrree watched Jaytsy, trying to read her response.
“I agree,” said Perrin. “I don’t think he’s ever set foot on a farm before in his life. Nor will he, if I can help it.”
---
That evening Mahrree put away a book that had been sitting in Perrin’s study and paused as she looked at the bookshelf. She glanced around, then pulled out her recently inherited, “Embellishments of the Ages,” from her mother. It was one of the few books Hycymum owned, and it was filled with drawings of how to add unnecessary extras to pillows, blankets, clothing, ceilings, walls . . .
Mahrree opened the book and it naturally fell open to parchments she recently secreted there.
The family lines.
Mahrree licked her lips, glanced around again, and sat down in the chair behind Perrin’s work desk.
There were two copies of family lines. One was her mother’s, which had been first written by her great-great-grandmother Kanthi. It was her and her husband Viddrow Eno’s family lines, all the way back to the first families.
Mahrree had made a copy of it herself, back when Peto was a baby, and sighed in delight at the fading original which was now hers to keep secret and safe. Her chest bubbled with heat when she read again the names of Kanthi’s husband Viddrow Eno, and his older brother Barnos Eno who never married. Their parents were Huldah and Boskos Eno. In 200, when the Great War ended and the Guarders made their presence known, the brothers were 25 and 26 years old; Kanthi, a new bride, was 24 when she made the illegal copy of family lines and secured them away on this expensive piece of parchment her husband had brought her.
Mahrree pored over the lines of names and dates which eventually converged again three more generations back—they had been distant cousins—to see that both Kanthi and Viddrow’s first parents were . . . not Guide Hierum and his wife.
Oh, it was vain to wish they were, Mahrree knew, to hope she had a trickle of the Great Guide’s blood in her. But maybe one of the other family lines, which records she didn’t have, might trace back to them. Still she smiled when she saw the names of Cato and Gaia, one of the first five hundred couples. There were no last names at the beginning, and she wasn’t even entirely sure which name was male or female. Yet being able to run her finger lightly over the fading ink of their names—people who knew the Creator personally—filled her with such energy and joy that she didn’t dare do it too often.
Below Kanthi’s hand was the sloppy but still legible writing of Livia Eno, recording her and her husband Kew’s names. Mahrree was intrigued that Livia—Kanthi’s daughter-in-law—continued the tradition, and Mahrree wondered if Kew knew about the record his mother and wife were secretly keeping.
Then the handwriting changed again to the flowing loopy style of their daughter, Sakal, Mahrree’s grandmother. Maybe her husband Nool Uchben didn’t know of this parchment either.
Then, added below, were the names of Hycymum, Cephas, and their daughter Mahrree. She was fairly certain her father knew of the family lines. He would have been most delighted to see it.
Mahrree opened the other copy, recorded in her hand and secreted away in her own recipes shortly after Peto was born. She had moved it to sit next to her mother’s after Jaytsy brought her the recipes from Hycymum’s house. The lines needed to be together.
Next to Mahrree’s name she had added Perrin, his parents Relf and Joriana, Relf’s parents Pere and Banu, Joriana’s mother Centia, her sister Tabbit and her husband Hogal Densal, then Pere’s parents Ricolfus and Hagnos then . . . the line was dead. So was Joriana’s.
Her own father Cephas’s line went only back to his parents, and while he had known details about his ancestors’ lines that he had shared with Mahrree, no other names were recorded.
But Mahrree had a suspicion. She knew of others in Edge that might be distantly related, and she suspected it was those families that fell ill. Something in their blood, likely.
But Perrin, and even Shem, had something different that preserved their families. If only more people still had recorded lines she could test her theory and might even be able to tell who else would fall ill, which certainly would have been helpful to the village doctors.
However, the fact that she still possessed those family lines—and had made family lines for her husband—was an act that a generation ago would have been a major crime.
But now, who even remembered they had ancestors? Who still spoke about the first five hundred families, or the Creator who brought them to the world and taught them for three years before leaving them? None of it had been taught in the schools for a decade, and hardly anyone went to Holy Day services. As far as anyone remembered, the world began with the creation of Idumea. Rarely did anyone seem to recall that for six years before that, the world was guided by the Creator himself, then by the Great Guide Hierum.
The world was forgetting its roots, and Mahrree knew enough about plants that when the roots were neglected, the rest of it would die. But it seemed to be a slow, agonizing death.
Mahrree slipped the family lines back securely in the “Embellishments of the Ages,” the only book on the shelf she was sure that Perrin—nor anyone, for that matter—would never touch, and smiled sadly as she replaced it on the shelf.
---
“Jaytsy? What are you doing here?” Perrin turned from consulting the map of Edge on his office wall.
His daughter shut the door behind her, the weariness in her eyes obvious. “Father, the Briters have been gone for over a week now. I’m getting worried about them.” She bit her lip to keep it from shaking. “I can barely keep up on the weeding and harvesting . . . I don’t want to disappoint them . . . what if something awful happened? The farm’s so big . . .”
Perrin wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Jayts—”
She melted into his chest and softly cried into his blue jacket. “They should have been back by now! And we have to keep the farm going, or the fort won’t have food—”
“Shhh,” he said as he stroked her dark ponytail. “Don’t fret. I received a message from Yordin at Mountseen just this morning. They’ve quarantined the entire village—no one in or out—for the next few days because the outbreak’s so bad. In fact, the message was written on paper, wrapped around a stone, then thrown at the messenger service’s door just to avoid touching anyone. The Briters are likely fine, just momentarily trapped. They should be able to leave in three days, be back to helping you in four. All right?”
Jaytsy sniffed and wiped her face. “All right. I can keep it up for four more days.”
---
Four days later, Perrin surprised his family again by walking into the house at midday meal, and Jaytsy felt something black appear in her belly because the expression on his face was grim.
Whatever she, Peto, and Mahrree had been chatting about was immediately forgotten because the heaviness with which he came into the room stifled all conversation.
“Jaytsy,” he said somberly, “the Briters’ wagon returned, about an hour ago. I just came from their farm.”
She didn’t know why that made him so gloomy. That was good news! “Whew,” she sighed and set down her fork. “I was really beginning to worry about them, and the weeds are starting to—”
He took a step closer. “Jayts—”
She knew that look on his face. “What’s wrong?” Then she knew. �
��Oh, no . . . did they lose their son?”
Perrin shook his head. “Jayts, I’m so sorry, but it was their son I found. It was Cambozola and Sewzi Briter who didn’t make it. They arrived in Mountseen to find their son recuperating. Before they could come back, they became ill and passed away as quickly as your grandmother—”
“No!” Jaytsy’s fierce whisper cut him off. “No, that’s not right. They’re so strong!”
Peto regarded his sister with genuine sympathy.
Mahrree put her arms around her daughter.
But Jaytsy hid her face in her hands, feeling betrayed by everything in the world. “It’s not right!” came her muffled cry. “It’s just not fair! Land tremors, Guarders, Moorland, the pox . . . all my grandparents are dead . . . friends, soldiers, and now the Briters . . . the Briters!” she sobbed. “Who will go next? When will it end?”
Peto looked at his plate and shifted around his food.
Perrin closed his eyes and tried not to make his own count.
Mahrree had no answer for her daughter but patted her as she held her. “Oh, my dear Jaytsy. I’m so, so sorry—”
Jaytsy pushed her chair away from the table and ran to her bedroom, slamming the door.
“Peto,” Perrin said softly, “run over to the fort. Tell them I’m taking the afternoon off. The Briters’ son is going to need a little help.”
---
Deckett Briter stood in the wide doorway of the barn and looked toward the house. He’d put it off going in there as long as he could. The horses were taken care of, the wagon unloaded, the cows checked on, even each of the chickens caught and inspected.
And even the colonel had been met.
His parents had told him about their first encounter with him. His father summed it up in one word, which was unusually brief for him: terrifying! But when the colonel came by an hour ago he was very friendly, after he realized Deckett wasn’t a thief trying to break into the house. When he picked Deckett from the ground and wiped him off, he was quite apologetic.