by Trish Mercer
Deckett analyzed her carefully as if looking for something that remained from her talk with the officer.
Jaytsy gave him her brightest face.
He didn’t see anything but her smile, so he smiled back. “Well, don’t just stand there. I order you to get some water! Please?”
She grinned and saluted.
When she came home that afternoon from weeding, her mother, going over some papers at the table, looked up at her.
“Missed you at midday meal,” she said, giving her daughter a deliberate look.
“Oh. Yes. Sorry about that. Deckett invited me to stay to eat. I thought it would be rude to leave him all alone. You sent over so much food, you see, and . . . and . . .” Jaytsy bit her lower lip, hoping she wasn’t turning colors.
Mahrree smiled at her and nodded. “As long as you’re safe.”
Jaytsy smiled back.
“Perfectly!”
Chapter 20 ~ “Tell me about cow eyes.”
Knock-knock . . . knock-knock-knock.
Perrin dropped his quill and held his head in his hands. Couldn’t Thorne be one to get the pox twice? There’d been a few cases . . .
He felt cheated as he sighed, “Come in.”
It wasn’t fair that Thorne’s pocks were fading so quickly. He’d still have the faint scars, but at least those added a hint of ruggedness that the captain was so severely needing.
“I just wanted you to know that I spotted your daughter working in the fields across from the fort. She looked quite well and happy.”
Not because of you, Thorne! Perrin wanted to say, but he wasn’t entirely sure why Jaytsy looked happy. “Yes, I’m sure she’s just fine. She enjoys farming. Seems to be her calling.”
Thorne frowned. “Calling? Farming?” he scoffed lightly. “Not Miss Jaytsy, sir. Surely not.”
Perrin leaned back in his chair. “Why not? Working the land to produce food for others—what could be more important?”
Thorne chuckled mirthlessly. “Why, lots of things! People who work in the dirt are so . . . dirty.”
“So are men whose hands get stained with blood, Thorne,” said Perrin. “But when our work’s done, men are injured or dead. When farmers are done, people live. I find that exceptionally valiant.”
Thorne rolled his eyes. “But that’s what uneducated people do, sir! People who can’t do anything else stick things in the ground then pull them up again. There’s no intelligence or science or thought needed for that. Animals do that.”
Perrin blinked. “Animals . . . plant . . . farms?”
Thorne gestured wildly. “In a way squirrels do, but I mean, they use animals—”
“So do we. We use animals in our work.”
“But we use horses! They use impotent steers to pull plows. Sir, your daughter is capable of so much more. Surely this is just a passing fancy of hers before she becomes serious about something . . . more serious.”
Perrin folded his arms across his chest. “And what should she become serious about, Captain?”
Perrin could see the answer on his lips. In fact, for just a moment it seemed he would actually break out with, “ME!”
But he didn’t. His mouth worked for a few moments, trying to find the right words. “I’m . . . I’m not entirely sure, sir. Perhaps work in a dress shop?”
Now Perrin rolled his eyes. “And that’s ‘serious?’ Keep that girl trapped inside, she’ll go mad, Captain.” Then, heavily, he added, “Never, never keep her trapped.”
It took Thorne a moment to register the colonel’s meaning. When he realized it was a reference to the incident in the barns, he actually had the decency to blush. “Understood, sir. I’ll be leaving now, unless there was—”
“There’s nothing else, Thorne.”
---
The next day Deckett was waiting at the fence when Jaytsy arrived. “I have to take care of the cattle, but I’ll be back later to help. Is that all right?”
“Absolutely!” she grinned.
Jaytsy’s morning fluctuated between rushing by quickly to dragging on slowly, until Deckett met her in a row to weed for a while before midday meal. As they ate together again, Jaytsy asked about his cattle experiments.
“You really don’t want me to talk about that, do you? I can’t imagine that’d be interesting to you.”
“All right, I’m not that interested in cows,” she confessed. “Just in what you’re doing.” She turned pink.
His face flushed as he examined his hands. “I’m doing on a small scale one of the experiments we were going to try this Raining Season: finding ways to encourage cows to give more milk. We wanted to see if . . . if we talk to the cows—well, if they produce more when they feel appreciated,” he finally finished.
Jaytsy stifled a giggle, but not too well.
“I know, I know. My father had the same reaction. But that’s why we need to test it,” he explained with an embarrassed smile.
“You really like cattle, don’t you?”
“You could say that. I know they’re not as graceful and beautiful as horses—”
He’s the very opposite of Lemuel, Jaytsy’s mind wandered. The Anti-Thorne.
“—but there’s such an honesty about cattle. A realness.” He sighed. “I wish I could explain it. I just feel them. Always have.” Then he chuckled. “Cow eyes,” he murmured.
“Cow eyes?”
He shook his head. “Never mind.”
“No, no,” Jaytsy elbowed him gently. “Tell me about cow eyes.”
“It’s . . . it’s something I would pull on my mother,” he said as his pink went wholly red. “Whenever I wanted something, or was trying to avoid getting into trouble, I would give her what my father called my ‘cow eyes’. Melted her every time.”
Jaytsy grinned. “Show me?”
“No! You wouldn’t appreciate it like she did—”
“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me about cow eyes then not show me. Do cow eyes, in honor of your mother.”
He squinted at her. “That’s really low.”
Jaytsy looked down apologetically.
“Effective,” he admitted, “but low just the same.”
She looked back up at him. “Show me just the same?”
He groaned in embarrassment. “For my mother. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” He looked down, shook out his shoulders, then lifted his head with the biggest, brownest, sweetest eyes ever.
She burst out laughing.
“Augh, I knew you’d laugh! That’s what I get. I knew that was a bad idea.” He turned away from her and hid his face in his knees.
“No! It was really sweet.”
“Sweet? Oh, that’s got to be worse . . .” He moved to get up, but Jaytsy grabbed his arm.
“No, Deck.”
He stopped and looked at her hand on his arm.
She looked at it too. “I’m sorry I laughed. I just wasn’t expecting . . .” She didn’t finish, because she really wasn’t sure what she was feeling at the moment, besides his ample arm under her fingers.
He smiled timidly at her. “We need to get back to the farm,” and he patted her hand with his free hand.
The touch was unexpected, startling, yet somehow familiar.
And overwhelming.
Jaytsy had always thought it would be a soldier. Likely an officer, but not Lemuel. Maybe someone like Jon Offra, but not as tall. Or as nervous. Or as pale, or hesitant—
All right, someone not even remotely like Jon Offra or Lemuel Thorne, but in a uniform. Someone to argue with, like her parents argued. Someone to chase up the stairs . . .
Jaytsy forced away the blush that heated her cheeks.
Deckett reddened as his hand stayed on hers, which they both stared at. Their gazes traveled to each other’s faces, which turned shades of purple, and they released each other. Simultaneously and without a word they marched out to the rows of onions.
The next two weeks flew by. They talked each afternoon about everything under the sun a
s they pulled weeds. Life in Moorland. Life in Mountseen. Life in Edge. Life in Idumea. Life in general. Jaytsy even got him to do cow eyes for her again. And each night she fell asleep giggling at his expression and hugging her pillow.
---
“There are a few reasons why I like that boy,” Perrin murmured under his breath, but no one was in his office to hear him and he’d shut the door to make sure that he wasn’t disturbed.
He twisted the knobs on his spyglass a little this way, then just a little bit that way . . .
“The first reason is, his last name’s not Thorne.” Perrin tapped the shaft gently and smiled at the result. “The second reason is, he lives . . . right . . . there.”
Perrin pulled up a chair and made himself comfortable as he peered into the eyepiece again. “Never takes her into the house, but keeps her out in the open. Very safe. Very manly. Kneels in the dirt close enough for conversation, but not too close as to touch her.”
He twisted a knob slightly again.
“He’s subtle about his feelings for her, although, young Mr. Briter, I can read you like a book . . . from several hundred paces away that is.” He chuckled to himself. “I used to watch your parents this way when I was a bit more paranoid,” he confessed in a whisper. “But this is a healthy paranoia, and I’m sure you’ll agree once you have a daughter—”
He sat up abruptly, the notion of who the mother of that eventual daughter might be shoving itself in his mind and causing all of his thoughts to stumble. It took him another minute to regain himself, and as he hunched over to watch the weeders in the fort’s farm he considered the prospect.
“She could do much worse,” he mumbled. “And likely . . . not a whole lot better. I never find myself twitching when I have my weekly chat with him.”
Young Mr. Briter was gathering weeds to put in a bucket, and reached past Jaytsy to retrieve what seemed to be a particularly prickly one. He shook his head as she went to pick it up. Perrin read his lips: Don’t want you to get pricked by a thorn.
Perrin smiled. “That makes two of us, son—”
“What in the world are you doing?”
The loud voice at the door made Perrin jump and jostle the spyglass. He sighed in exasperation. “Zenos, don’t you ever knock?”
“I did,” Shem chuckled, closing the door behind him. “But whatever captured your attention in the spyglass prevented you from hearing.”
Perrin deliberately turned the angle to point it at the boulder field.
Shem smirked. “What, are Jaytsy and Deckett Briter now heading up to the boulders?”
“That’s not what I was . . . I mean, what I was doing was—”
“If you’re at all curious, I approve of him too.”
---
Jaytsy was well on her way home that afternoon when she realized she’d left her hat at the Briter farm. She jogged back, picked up Joriana’s hat from the stairs that led to the kitchen, and paused. There was a strange noise coming muffled from behind the barn, but it took her only a moment to identify it. She’d heard it too often over the past year, and there was nothing quite as disconcerting as the sound of a man sobbing, especially when the man wasn’t accustomed to doing it.
Quietly she crept around the barn to see Deckett sitting on the ground, his head on his knees, quivering. He was supposed to be setting the cheese—
Jaytsy knew what to do, having seen her mother do it many times last year. She sat down next to Deckett, who suddenly stopped. His head came up as she gingerly placed a comforting hand on his back, and he stared at her, startled.
“What are you doing back here?” he asked, wiping his nose on his sleeve and trying to appear as if nothing was wrong.
“I forgot my hat,” Jaytsy said, her eyes brimming with tears to see his still overflowing. “Deck, how often to cry back here, alone?” she asked gently.
He rested his chin on his knees. “I don’t . . . it just . . .” He sighed in surrender. “Not often.” He closed his eyes as a new batch of tears fell from them.
His shoulders heaved and Jaytsy flung her arms around him, hoping to hold him tightly enough to stop his convulsions of grief. Deckett leaned against her, resting his head against her shoulder and letting his tears seep between his fingers.
“I miss them too,” she told him. “I’m sure you loved them much more than I did, but I came to think of them as my aunt and uncle. They were so good to me, and they’ve left such a hole—” She couldn’t say anything more, but sobbed right along with him, aware that some of her tears were sliding on to the back of his head. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that Deckett didn’t mourn alone and that Jaytsy held him as tightly as she dared.
It was several minutes until their weeping subsided, and Deckett, his head still down on her shoulder, attempted a few words.
“After you left, I headed into the house and . . .” His chin trembled and he held his face with his hands. “I started to call out to my parents to tell them something . . . and I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten they were gone,” his voice quavered. “I’d been working and was happy and . . . What’s wrong with me that I forgot?!”
“You did nothing wrong,” Jaytsy told him, now rocking as she embraced his shoulders. “It’s not as if you actually forgot them being gone, because you still feel them here. They love you so much! They’d be thrilled to know you felt happy again. Deckett, I don’t think they’re really gone. I mean, they’re still around us, in so many ways.”
He shrugged against her, still keeping his face covered.
She squeezed him tighter, forgetting the fact that she’d never done more than touch his hand or arm before. Sometimes a moment demands a closer presence, and forgives it as well.
With her own tears flowing she said, “Remember earlier today, when we both suddenly remembered the canal water was on, and we got to the onion patch just before it flooded? Deckett, as we were running I thought of your mother. She seemed so close, and maybe it was her who reminded us. They’re still your parents, and they’re still watching and helping. Paradise isn’t far away; it’s here!”
The heaving of his shoulders slowed as he listened to her.
She realized that she was stroking his hair, but it seemed important to do. “My mother lost her father when she was 15, and she told me once that she still hears him from time to time, that when something’s very important he still advises her.”
Deck roughly cleared his throat. “The calf yesterday, the one that wandered? I could have sworn it was my father telling me to check the cattle fence along the forest’s edge. That’s where I found her.”
“I think that was your father too, Deckett,” Jaytsy said, realizing that she was twisting bits of his coarse, shaggy brown hair between her fingers. She subtly slipped them out, and slid her hand back to hold his shoulder. He’d removed his hands from off of his face, and one was now resting lightly on her knee. But still he didn’t look up.
“My hat there,” she nodded to it, dropped on the ground a few feet away from them, “was my grandmother’s. When I stabbed the holes in it to make it less Idumean, I was sure I heard her giggling.”
Something in Deckett’s shoulders relaxed, collapsing him ever so slightly in her direction. She felt his breathing against her throat and she smelled his hair, realizing that his scent was, in its own unique way, a form of earthy-sweet. Mixed with cow. It took all of her effort to keep her chest calm, worried that if it burned any hotter Deckett would feel it emanating from her dress.
“I think you should keep talking to your parents,” Jaytsy said. “Go into the house and tell them what you planned to say. They’ll hear you. They’re still concerned about you and they still love you. Remember what Yung said last Holy Day? That the work of those who go to Paradise is the work of taking care of their descendants who remain here? My father, when he was very bad a few moons ago, called out for his great uncle Hogal,” she told him quietly. “Something had come into the house that night,” she whispered. “Som
ething horrible and black, as if the night had come to life and planned to destroy us all. I hid in my bedroom, hearing my father yelling at it, and he called out for Hogal. He’d died when I was just a toddler, but Hogal and my father had been very close. Hogal and Tabbit were why my father came to Edge in the first place.”
She smiled sadly and unconsciously twisted a hank of Deckett’s hair again.
“Not that my father would ever confess it, but I suspect that he wasn’t the best young man. So when he was 18 he spent a season with Hogal and Tabbit, and I think they straightening him out a bit. Hogal was also his rector here, and when my father needed him . . .” She struggled to get out the next words, “he came. The Creator sent Uncle Hogal. I could feel him come into the house, Deckett. Everything got brighter and safer, and my father changed for good.” Now her own chin shook too much for her to continue.
Deckett nodded awkwardly against her shoulder. “Your father’s the one who told me to cry,” he sniffled. “He said tears were fine for a man, and that the only time I should be alarmed is when I no longer feel tears for anything. Or something like that.”
Jaytsy smiled. “I know what you mean. What he means.”
Deckett sat up slowly, and Jaytsy let her hand slide down his back to release him, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. She’d never before realized how much intimacy is created when two people weep together. She suspected Deckett felt it as well, because he moved a bit away from her as he straightened up.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, not daring to look her in the face.
She didn’t look at him either. And even though she wasn’t sure precisely what he was thanking her for, she nodded.
She spied him out of the corner of her eye. “May I ask a question?”
“Sure.”
“What did you want to tell your parents when you went into the house?”
He shrugged. “Can’t remember anymore. Just one of those things that I guess I’ll struggle with for a while, learning how to live without them. I mean, the way I was used to live with them.”