by Trish Mercer
Deckett wasn’t sure what to say to him. He didn’t know what to say to anyone. He knew no one in Edge, and found the barn and house only because it was across from Fort Shin. He had always planned to come visit them in their new home, but . . .
He thought there was plenty of time.
Slowly Deckett trudged across the back garden to the kitchen door. He opened it but didn’t walk in. Yet he smiled briefly. Definitely his parents’ house. The yellow curtains from the Moorland house hung in the kitchen window here as well.
He stepped into the room and could almost smell his mother’s cooking, could almost hear his father scrubbing up in the washroom. They had been here just a week before, straightening everything up before leaving to see him, never imagining he’d be the one to see the house next. But the plants withering in the windows were stark reminders that the gardeners who tended them were gone.
He pulled a chair out from the table, the one he always used, and reluctantly sat down. The emptiness of the two chairs across from him carved a long, deep gash in his chest.
A soft knock at the kitchen door startled him. “May I join you?”
Deckett jumped in his seat to see again the colonel standing in the doorway, and he quickly tried to get to his feet.
“No need, no need,” the colonel said as he walked in. “Please don’t get up. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Deckett sat at attention, pretending he knew what that would look like. “Fine, sir.”
The colonel smiled kindly at him. “No, you’re not, son. I know you’re not. May I?” he gestured to the chair his father used to sit in.
Deckett considered for a moment before nodding.
The colonel pulled it out reverently. “Whose was this?”
“My father’s.”
“He was a good man,” Colonel Shin said, sitting down. “Helped me make a detailed map of Moorland. He was key to our success.”
“Yes, I know. He was very proud, sir—” Deckett’s voice cracked.
The colonel had the decency to not look him in the face until he could compose himself again. Then he leaned on the table. “Deckett—that’s your name, right? Call me Perrin, by the way. Deckett, more than anyone else, I know what you’re feeling.”
Deckett swallowed nervously. “Everyone has heard about that too, sir. Sorry about your parents.”
Shin’s dark eyes softened even more. “I’m not here as the colonel or as anything else you may have heard about me. I’m here because I know how much you need a brother right now. Losing your parents—and suddenly—is not something you simply bounce back from. I was helped, and now I’d like to try to help you.”
Deckett could no longer look into the penetrating gaze of the colonel, and he wished there was a crumb or something on the swept-clean table for him to examine. “I appreciate that, sir. But I really don’t know what to say.”
The colonel patted his hand. “I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with your parents, but your father certainly was . . .” He paused, unsure of how to put it tactfully.
Deckett was used to that. “A character?”
The colonel chuckled. “Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Why don’t you tell me all about Cambazeela.”
“Cambozola.”
“Yes, Cambazoolo.”
---
After a couple of hours Jaytsy had no more tears. Exhausted, miserable, and desperate for something to do to ease her dreariness, she finally came out of her bedroom.
Her mother smiled sadly at her. “Your father’s spending the afternoon with him, thinking he can help the Briters’ son.” Her forehead wrinkled in concern, but she covered with another smile.
Jaytsy almost smiled back, not because she felt happy in any way, but because Peto had privately pointed out to her that some of their mother’s healing pock marks mimicked a well-known star constellation when she lifted the corners of her mouth. The Squashed Turnip, forever memorialized on their mother’s face.
“This is for the Briters’ son,” Mahrree said, putting a cloth over a large basket. “I thought it would be a good idea if we fed him for a few days. Do you feel up to taking it over? I’ve spent too much time in the sun this morning and I’d rather not go out again.”
Jaytsy numbly made her way over to the table and started to take the basket, but her mother stopped her.
“Somehow, some year, we will all see the reason for this. I promise.” Mahrree hugged her.
Jaytsy nodded, not believing a word of what her mother said, and left with the basket for the Briters’ house.
When she arrived she felt strangely unsure of what do to next. She saw the front door—one that she was sure they never had used and likely didn’t open—and headed for the kitchen door instead. As she passed the window she heard male voices talking quietly and she almost hesitated to knock.
But she did, and a moment later the door opened. Standing there was a young man, maybe twenty-one years old, with brown hair and eyes that were red with grieving.
Jaytsy couldn’t move her feet or find her voice. She wasn’t sure why she felt so bashful. Shyness wasn’t exactly a Shin family trait.
Her father appeared behind the young man. “Ah, Jaytsy. Deckett, this is my daughter Jaytsy, your parents’ Head Weeder, or whatever she’d be called.”
Deckett smiled dimly at her. “My mother mentioned you. Said you had quite the brown fingers. Please come in.”
Jaytsy nodded at the compliment and wondered if she was blushing. By the confused look on her father’s face, she knew she would have to explain the phrase referring to natural gardeners as ‘brown fingered folk’.
She walked into the kitchen and felt it immediately. Or rather, felt the absence immediately.
The Briters had quite the presence, and now . . . it was gone.
She glanced at the son they loved so dearly, and the expression on his face—his not too handsome yet pleasantly rugged face, made even more so by fading pocks—told her he felt the room was a bottomless cavern.
Jaytsy glanced at her father. His eyes were red too, and she worried that she’d interrupted a reverent discussion.
“I just . . . I just came to drop this by. Food. From my mother. She’s still a little tired, or she would have come herself. We’re all sorry. Very.” Jaytsy wondered why it was so hard for her to talk.
Deckett gave her a thankful nod without completely seeing her and set the basket on the table. “Tell her I appreciate it.”
“All right, um. I suppose I’ll go now.” She looked at her father for direction. He nodded his goodbye. “I’ll see myself out.”
Deckett sat back down at the table across from her father as Jaytsy slid out the door.
She stood on the back step and took a deep breath as something in her chest burned.
Suddenly full of an indefinable energy, Jaytsy marched out to the garden, shooed away the soldier assigned for the afternoon, and started yanking weeds.
---
Perrin came home a little before dinner time. Jaytsy was in the washing room digging the dirt out from under her nails when she heard her parents’ conversation.
“Well?” Mahrree asked.
“Nice boy,” Perrin said. “Took him a while to warm up to me—”
“But you’re used to that by now, aren’t you?”
He chuckled sadly. “We had a good conversation. Solid young man, on the shy side though. He’s going to be all right, but he needs some time. I’ll try to visit him once a week, and I’ll be sure to tell Yung about him. Deckett used to go to the Holy Day meetings in Mountseen, and I think Yung knows that rector.”
“What’s he going to do about the farm?”
“He’s staying,” Perrin said with some surprise. “He quit school and decided to finish out his parents’ commitment for this year through the harvest.”
“Really? They would be proud of him, I’m sure.”
“His heart isn’t in farming, but he wanted to honor his parents. He really wants to be a ra
ncher. At the university he was helping with experiments on improving milk and beef yield, but decided he could do some of those experiments himself.” Then Perrin chuckled. “He asked how much I knew about cattle!”
“Just don’t approach the area when he’s working with them,” Mahrree warned him. “You’ll scare them all away!”
“Well I wouldn’t want to do that. I already like him too much.”
In the washing room, Jaytsy’s chest burned again.
---
The next morning Jaytsy set out early for the Briter farm to open the irrigation canal as usual. But noticing that water was already rushing down the rows, she lifted her skirt and ran to the main canal.
He was there.
He didn’t notice her approaching, which gave Jaytsy a moment to evaluate him more fully. She decided that Deckett Briter didn’t seem like someone who’d ever spent the night raiding houses. He was a few inches taller than her, and his hair was a perfect dirt brown. While his face wasn’t as outwardly handsome as Lemuel Thorne’s, his rough features were somehow far more pleasing. His body also wasn’t as proportionately muscled as the captain’s, but his arms and chest seemed to be more than adequate for tackling cattle.
He turned and saw her, his eyes no longer red. They were . . .
Jaytsy gulped.
He smiled slightly. His face would undoubtedly be even more agreeable when the grief eased. Right now his light brown eyes still looked burdened, but a bit hopeful. “You’re here early.”
“I took care of the watering when your parents were away,” she said and took a step closer.
He stood a little taller.
She noticed. “I’m really sorry about them. I was very upset yesterday when my father told me. Your mother taught me a great deal. I guess you could say she was my best friend. And your father was always so kind.”
Deckett stared at the ground. “My mother really liked you. They both mentioned you a few times in their letters. You were the only reason my mother wasn’t terrified of your father.”
Jaytsy managed a chuckle. “My father was having a few problems when your parents first arrived,” she explained. “They weren’t the only ones to experience him that way. There are still a few people in Edge who run to the other side of the road when they see him coming.”
“I don’t know why anyone’s afraid of him,” Deckett said, still not meeting her eyes. “He couldn’t have been any kinder than if he were my own—”
The sentence didn’t need finishing.
He squatted and inspected an ear forming on a stalk of corn. “Should be a good crop this year. Thank you for your help. With no rain lately, all of this would be wilting by now.”
“I come every day,” Jaytsy told him. “One more week and school usually starts again, but they’re postponing it for another two weeks because of all the illnesses. I’m focusing all my efforts here, so that means I should be able to get caught up in the weeding, as if one can ever get fully caught up in weeding!” For some reason she said all of that very quickly.
Deckett squinted at her, trying to catch up to what she just said. Eventually he nodded. “I’ll be helping now. Looks like you’ve been pretty busy already, so if you have something else you’d rather be doing—”
Jaytsy took another step forward. “No! Not at all! This is what I love to do, really.”
Deckett pursed his mouth as if trying to decide if she was telling the truth. “Well, then. I guess you could start wherever you planned to start this morning. I need to check on a few things, then I suppose I’ll find a patch to work on myself.”
“Should you be doing all of that work? You’ve recently been ill yourself,” Jaytsy reminded him.
He shook his head dismissively. “I’m fine. Always been a fast healer. And I need to work.”
Sensing the conversation was over, Jaytsy nodded and turned, wondering why she felt disappointed.
She didn’t see him again until about an hour before midday meal when she looked up between rows of beans to see him weaving down a row to her.
“At this rate, there’ll be nothing left for me to do.” He smiled, almost genuinely. He seemed a little lighter than before as he crouched to examine a plant, but also a bit paler as the heat of the day touched him.
“If you need to go rest and cool off a bit,” Jaytsy said, sitting back on her knees, “I’m fine here. You don’t want to dehydrate.”
He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very polite, would it? Leaving you alone?” He watched for her response.
“I find it restful,” Jaytsy confessed. “I get a lot of thinking done in the dirt. And I don’t mind being alone.” Which, while true, was exactly the opposite of what she meant.
“Oh. Well. Then, I guess I’ll go check on the henhouse—”
“NO!” she barked.
Deckett blinked. “Something wrong with the henhouse?”
“I mean, no, you can stay,” she said, now more in control of her surprisingly flailing emotions. “If you don’t need to rest inside, then you can . . . rest here in the field.” That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her, either.
“Sit and watch you weed?” Deckett shook his head. “My mother would be disappointed if I just left a young woman out here to weed by herself.” Blushing, he added, “And resting would just give me too much time to think. No, I’d rather work.”
He got down on his knees in the row next to her.
She grinned at him.
He smiled back shyly and turned to the dirt.
For the next hour they talked about Mahrree’s hatred of weeding, Sewzi’s love of gardens, cattle’s fear of Perrin, and Perrin’s fear of Cambozola. By the time they finished the second full row, Deckett had chuckled three times. Jaytsy kept count. She also noticed that Deckett was not as talkative and lively as his father, but much more pensive and careful like his mother. Fortunately.
At the end of the beans they stood up and looked at the sun.
“Midday meal. I’m ready for it,” Deckett said, arching his back to work out a kink. “Your mother packed me so much food,” he said, a bit timidly. “Would you care to join me?”
Jaytsy bit her lip. “I’m kind of expected at home for . . .” How could she turn down those sad eyes? And he was all alone.
Her mother wouldn’t want her to leave him recovering, grieving, and all alone, would she? Nor would her father, she was sure.
“Well, my family knows where I am.”
“We’ll eat on the back steps,” he suggested. “In case someone comes looking for you, they can see you.” He flashed her a bashful grin and jogged into the house, leaving Jaytsy at the beginning of the lettuces.
She took several deep breaths and tried to calm her hands that wanted to shake. Noticing a couple of buckets by the fence along the road, which she’d used a few days ago to gather weeds in, she turned to retrieve them.
She skipped, fully aware that she hadn’t skipped since she was seven, to the fence. Once there she saw an ambitious vine growing along the posts threatening to come into the row of corn. Knowing she couldn’t allow that to invade the garden, she yanked on it.
That was when the shadow came over her.
“Miss Jaytsy! Out in the fields again, I see.”
Jaytsy looked up to see a gray horse, and Lemuel Thorne seated on top of it. He wasn’t as pocked as her mother or Deckett, but still looked pale.
Jaytsy felt again the same disappointment—tinged with the tiniest drop of guilt—that she experienced when she heard Thorne was expected to recover. She’d run into him only a couple of times since their incident in the barn, and he hadn’t bothered to apologize for trying to ruin her. He certainly didn’t look contrite now, either, as he beamed down at her with all the innocence of a mountain lion.
“Captain Thorne. I see that you’re recovering. You shouldn’t be in the sun too long, though. Not good for your skin. You should probably be heading in right now,” she hinted as she stood up with the buckets in hand.
Jaytsy ran her previous sentences through her mind to see if that was really what she’d said. She wanted to be cautious with what she said next before Thorne misinterpreted it as a proposal of marriage.
She nodded once, which she assumed would be safe. “Good day, Captain,” and she started toward the Briters’ house.
“How’s the kitten?” he called after her.
Jaytsy stopped. The burning in her chest which she’d felt earlier as she looked at Deckett had now dropped as a nauseating knot into her belly.
She sighed and turned around. “The Cat is very well, thank you. He’s very . . . entertaining. Seems to have taken to my father. I’m sorry, I really must go now. And so should you.”
Captain Thorne apparently heard what he was hoping to hear. He smiled, tipped his cap, and turned his horse back to the fort.
Lighter now that the shadow was gone, Jaytsy pivoted in time to see Deckett standing at the open kitchen door. How long he had been watching the two of them, she didn’t know, but he stood stiffly, watching Thorne ride off.
“No,” Jaytsy whimpered. She didn’t know Deckett well enough to interpret the look on his face.
His gaze shifted from the retreating figure over to Jaytsy as she ambled to the house. His eyes looked a little hard.
Jaytsy put on a real smile. “Found the water buckets! I forgot them there the other day. Sorry if you’d been looking for them.”
“Is he from the fort?” Deckett nodded to the road.
“Him? Oh, yes. Every uniform is, by the way,” she pointed out. “He was asking about the farm. He eats from here, you know. You better get used to the army in your life now, sir.”