by Trish Mercer
A small smile emerged above the multiple chins of Mr. Trum. “Colonel!” he called out. “It is a prosperous year and getting better. Why let others’ properties go to waste?”
“I’m not suggesting they go to waste, Trum. I’m suggesting we distribute them more fairly, more equitably,” Perrin clarified. “Many in Edge are struggling to get by. Not everyone’s well off. This is an excellent opportunity to balance some of that. I’m suggesting giving the properties—once we have no relatives wanting to claim them—to those in greatest need.”
Another man stood up. “My two daughters just spent their entire Weeding Season break taking care of our neighbors’ farm. Now you’re telling me we’re not entitled to it? After all their labor?”
Perrin squinted at him. “Two laborers for three weeks’ time? Those wages wouldn’t be near enough to purchase any land. I had no idea property values had plummeted so drastically.”
Nervous chuckles scattered through the amphitheater.
But the man wasn’t finished. “We buried the family, too!”
“Then took their animals as thanks?”
A woman in another part of the amphitheater, petite yet livid, stood up and pointed at the man. “You know full well that hog was supposed to go to us! She had wanted me to have it!”
The first man pointed at her. “The hog? What had you ever done to deserve that hog? He told me how he bought it, raised it, fed it—
He was my friend, and his hog belongs to me!”
“You have three hogs already!” the woman shrieked. “We have only two! The colonel says it’s be to fair, and that isn’t fair!”
Before Perrin could explain that wasn’t what he meant at all, the first man’s wife stood up, her face red with rage. “You sow!” she bellowed at the petite woman.
Perrin recoiled. The only “sows” he knew of were questionable women that hung around the northeast entrance of the fort. Never had he heard that word used that way in mixed company, and certainly not out of the mouth of the cobbler’s wife.
The hog-wanting woman’s husband now joined his wife and pointed at the first man. “Put a muzzle on your own sow and give us back our hog like the colonel ordered!”
Perrin staggered, but no one noticed. It was the makings of a fight, and no Edger wanted to miss out on it as the amphitheater erupted in an explosion of noise and shouting.
Perrin threw up his hands in disgust but the only one who saw him was Mahrree on the front bench, her head slowly shaking in amazement. On either side of her Jaytsy and Peto stared, stunned.
Magistrate Wibble, who’d been wringing his hands, turned to the colonel in desperation. Wibble was all about cooperation, as his campaign speeches declared, and—like all good politicians—he didn’t have the first idea of how to establish that.
The colonel sighed and did the only thing he knew how to deal with out-of-control people. He drew Relf’s sword.
He had intended to bang it on the wooden platform to draw everyone’s attention and have the smith fix the damage to the tip later. But the movement of his arm and the clanging of the sword as it left the sheath was an ominous enough noise that everyone noticed it.
A terrified hush filled the area and everyone sat down, trying to look like as small a target as possible. Even Trum shrank on his bench, reducing him to the size of only two men.
Perrin was tempted to replace the sword in his sheath, but the effect was too powerful to dismiss. Perhaps it was good that the village, while loyal and grateful, had also been terrified of him.
“Enough!” he roared.
The crowd surrounding him inched back even more.
“What’s happened to you? All of you? You just buried your friends and now you’re fighting over their possessions? You aren’t people, you’re vultures! Did they die fast enough for you?”
“Colonel!” Mr. Trum was on his feet again, a brave act for such a large target. “Colonel,” he said more calmly, with a touch of nervousness as the colonel firmed his grip on the sword’s hilt. “No one’s trying to take away the significance of their deaths. We’ve all lost friends, and even some family. But they’d want us to continue, don’t you think? They’d want others to have access to all they had. We’ve suffered greatly this year and a half. We could share stories about it all evening! This is a way of giving some of that back.”
“Giving?” Perrin scoffed. “Who’s doing the giving? No one. You’re just taking! The Creator expects more from you.”
Mr. Trum rolled his eyes and held out his hand dramatically. “Colonel, Colonel, with all due respect—”
Perrin braced for anything. When someone begins, With all due respect, it meant no respect was about to follow.
“—as much as I appreciate that we have a leader that still thinks about the Creator, how can you be sure this is what He expects? Maybe this is His payment to us for making us suffer?”
Perrin wished he was closer to Trum. He was sure the man couldn’t feel the full fury of his gaze from the middle of the amphitheater. “You really think, Trum, that the Creator’s going to kill off part of our population so you can have more? You have the largest fields around, the biggest herds, and now I understand you’re taking over your neighbor’s tannery? Quite a corner on the leather market you’ll have, won’t you? You haven’t suffered at all, Trum, for all the years I’ve known you. Why do you deserve more?”
Trum was unmoved. “Colonel, Colonel,” he said in a sickly sweet tone. “Where did Nature’s Laws come from?”
Perrin wasn’t expecting that odd question. He squinted. “The Creator.”
“And, dear Colonel,” the syrupy tone continued, “why did only certain families die? I have a theory: Nature’s Laws.”
“Nature’s Laws,” Perrin repeated dubiously.
“Nature eliminates those who are not as fit or capable of life. Entire families died because Nature no longer had room for them,” Trum reasoned. “And if the Creator made those laws, then the Creator must have willed them to die, so that we can have their goods. We are those that are stronger and fitter for this world. I’m sorry there are those who have less, but we must consider, Colonel, that Nature doesn’t prefer them, either. Perhaps their poverty is Nature’s way of eliminating them, too.”
“Perhaps their poverty is the result of others’ greed and selfishness,” Perrin countered.
Trum remained unmoved, the insinuation bouncing off his belly.
Bewildered that Trum couldn’t see his part in any of this, Perrin continued. “With that reasoning, then you could argue that the land tremor was Nature’s way of eliminating all of Edge. That’s what Nicko Mal thought; he was ready to let this village die like Moorland. But if Nature wanted all of Edge eliminated, then why are you still here?”
“Because of you, dear Colonel!” Trum simpered sarcastically as he spread open his arms. “That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? Edge is here because of your rescue?”
Perrin didn’t move a muscle, except for a small one near the back of his jaw.
No one else dared move either. The crowd shifted their gaze nervously from Shin to Trum to Shin again—and to his sword—waiting for a response.
But Perrin was too incensed to trust anything that would come out of his mouth at that moment.
Trum folded his arms defiantly again. “Well Colonel, not all of us would have perished. Some of us have more ability than others to survive. Perhaps you saved those who Nature didn’t want saved at all, so Nature came back in the form of the pox to claim those that were too weak. Nature always wins.”
Perrin took a step toward the edge of the platform. “You have ‘more ability’ to survive Nature’s attacks? If Nature sent a bear to chase after the two of us, I’ll give you one guess which of us ‘Nature’ would devour, Trum!”
Trum squirmed. The small movement was accentuated through his layers, causing a rippling affect that normally would have been quite humorous. But no one in the amphitheater saw anything amusing about the first de
bate that platform had seen in over a decade.
“Nature has its own ways of being selective,” Perrin insisted when Trum didn’t respond. “It doesn’t need you to accelerate the process. The Creator allows Nature’s Laws to unfold. But many of those laws are intended for animals to follow, not people! We are to rise above the basic laws and live a higher law. Yes, the world’s unfair, Nature’s unfair, because the Creator is allowing us the opportunity to resolve that, as part of our Test. We can choose to bring balance. We can choose to fix those inequalities.
“I’m not here to force anyone—” he didn’t realize he was gesturing with his sword until Mahrree told him later, “—but I am here to ask you to think of the needs of others. I believe the Creator intends for us to use our surplus to help those in need. He’s giving us an opportunity to do something good for others, not take a reward just for surviving.”
He pivoted to address the entire crowd surrounding him. “All of you received others’ surplus last year. I have the records to prove it. All of you have been beggars waiting in line for the emergency stores from Idumea. Now you have the surplus, so give it to those who need it.”
“Who is to say how much is surplus, Shin?” Trum demanded, causing Perrin to spin around to face his section of the amphitheater again. “If we have another year like last, I’ll need all my resources to make it through! I decide for myself what my family doesn’t need. So far, I don’t think we have enough.”
A few brave voices chorused, “Hear, hear!”
Someone else called out, “Well if Trum doesn’t think he has enough, I certainly don’t either.”
A louder chorus of “Hear, hear!” rippled among the villagers.
“How much did you need to survive last year?” Perrin called over the din.
The people quieted.
“We lived for weeks off of dry bread, shriveled apples, and bits of meat I chose not to identify. But we survived.”
“And I never want to live like that again!” someone shouted.
“I’m not saying you will,” Perrin said. “We have far more than that, but some still don’t. Already your lives are better, so choose to make others’ lives better as well.”
“To a vote!” someone near the back began the chant. “To a vote!”
Trum sneered in challenge at the colonel and punched the air above him. “To a vote! To a vote!”
By the fifth cry, the entire amphitheater was demanding a vote.
Perrin sighed.
It was now beyond his influence. He motioned to the magistrate with his sword. With irritated emphasis, he sheathed his weapon and marched over to his seat to stand by it, his arms folded.
Wibble tried to clear his throat over the noise, but the call for a vote echoed even louder. Wibble looked to the colonel who merely held up his hands and sat down in his chair, shaking his head.
Local votes were to be overseen by the magistrates. Only if the voting ran contrary to Administrators’ decrees could he intervene.
But Perrin didn’t want to. In fact, he wanted nothing more to do with Edgers. He regretted ever wielding his sword in defense of any of them. For seventeen years he sacrificed his life for their safety, on too many occasions. Because of these people he lost sleep, lost time with his wife and children, lost his savings to pay off their expenses, lost his parents and, for a time, even lost his mind.
All for them.
Yet when presented with the possibility of an extra hog, or another bushel of corn, or someone’s abandoned shop, they couldn’t imagine sacrificing anything at all, for anyone.
They were as bad as Idumea.
Perrin hated Idumea.
He looked dully over at Mahrree on the front bench, and she stared back at him, shaking her head in disbelief.
He nodded at her once in agreement.
His children on either side of her looked around dumbfounded.
Finally the crowd began to silence itself.
“We have a call for a vote,” Wibble tried to sound as loud as the colonel. “Do we have a spokesman to articulate the nature of the vote?”
“Let Trum speak!” called someone. Several voices seconded.
Trum waved in acknowledgement and made his way up to the platform with a small grin on his face as others patted him on the back. He was wheezing as he reached the top stair and wisely didn’t look at the colonel. If he had, he most likely would have withered to the size of a regular man under the glare.
Trum gestured with his thick hands clubbing the air. “I propose we vote on the ownership of the properties left by those who died,” he announced. “All property currently in possession of others stays in that possession. All other properties not yet claimed will be done so by those living in closest proximity to the deceased.”
The people cheered in agreement.
Perrin leaped from his chair, ran toward the back of the platform and jumped off, taking the stairs in two large steps. He landed right in front of a very startled Chief Barnie and grabbed his arms.
“Get your men out there, now! To all the abandoned homes not yet claimed.”
“Why?” Barnie asked, his eyes hazy as he tried to catch up to the conclusion the colonel had already reached. For a chief of enforcement, he wasn’t very swift on his feet and was even slower in his brain. “They haven’t even voted on anything yet—”
“But they will,” Perrin shook his arms to jostle some sense into him, “and when they do, what’s going to happen next?”
The chief tried to puzzle it out, but two of his officers nodded as their faces went pale, a bit quicker on the uptake.
They heard the call for a vote come from the magistrate. “All in favor?”
“Chief, NOW! To the abandoned properties!”
Barnie nodded obediently and turned to his six men that were behind him, already heading out the back doors.
A loud chorus of “Favor!” cried out over their heads.
Perrin sat down in resignation on the steps of the platform.
“Any opposed?” shouted Wibble.
Perrin leaned forward and held his head in his hands.
A few timid voices called, “Opposed!”
“Then those in favor have—”
But the magistrate’s voice was drowned in the thunder of thousands of Edgers in a mad dash to be the first to leave the amphitheater by any exit. A few screams suggested someone had been hurt, but the flurry of people didn’t slow. A few even came over the platform and raced down the back stairs past the form of the colonel still hunched on the steps.
Perrin began to rock slowly back and forth. “Animals,” he whispered. “Just a bunch of stupid animals.” He noticed a blue uniform rush up to him, and he looked up at the owner of it.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Offra panted, “what do you want us to do? Head out to the properties as well?”
Perrin shook his head and stood up. “Jon, I don’t want any of my men mixed up in this mess. Tell your soldiers to patrol the roads, protect those who are innocent—especially children and those from Moorland—but do not get involved. We’re done sacrificing for this village.”
---
Mahrree gripped the arms of her children, not worried that they’d join the stampede but to make sure they didn’t get accidentally swept up in the current.
“This is madness! At least we already gave my mother’s house to that family from Moorland.”
Peto turned. “Wow—I’ve never seen this place empty so fast.”
“We need to get out of here,” Jaytsy said, wringing her hands.
“I want you two to head straight home,” Mahrree told them, “and secure the doors and windows with the iron rods.”
“Why?” Jaytsy asked worriedly.
“Precautionary,” Mahrree assured them. “But if someone doesn’t get a piece of property they think is owed to them, they just may come seeking revenge on the colonel’s house.”
“What about you?” Peto said.
“I’m going up to the fort to w
atch what’s going on from the tower, then I’ll get me an escort home. I’m going to find your father so you two head home!”
Jaytsy and Peto nodded and jogged to an exit.
“Peto,” Jaytsy panted as they reached the village green where they could break into a run. Well, as much of a run as Jaytsy’s skirt would allow. “We’re not going home. We’re heading to Deckett’s.”
“Why?”
“Did you hear what they were saying? About those from Moorland?”
“I heard a bit,” Peto said as he cleared a small bush his sister had to go around. He slowed to let her catch up. “Something about them not deserving—oh. I see.”
“Exactly. Stupid skirts,” she muttered as she tried to find a better way to hold them up. “Deck doesn’t know about any of this, especially that those from Moorland may be targeted. Augh!” she cried as her hem caught on a sticky shrub. “Peto, warn him! I’ll catch up.”
“Are you sure?” he called as he jogged backward. “We’re supposed to stay together—”
She yanked until her hem ripped. It was another Joriana-Kuman-Idumea dress, so it didn’t matter. “Just go! Warn him!”
By the time she made it to the Briter-fort farm, Deckett and Peto were securing the last of Deckett’s milk cows in the barn, so Jaytsy rounded up the stray chickens. Eventually all of the animals were locked up—except for the stubborn bull who was destined for the butchers and the soldiers’ table next week anyway. Deckett reluctantly picked up a pitchfork, sighed, and placed himself in front of the latched barn doors.
Peto retrieved a hatchet from the wood pile and took his position next to Deckett, while Jaytsy gaped at them.
“You’re not seriously going to use those, are you?”
“Of course not!” said Peto, insulted. “But as I’ve heard Uncle Shem tell the soldiers before, it’s the appearance of things. If you look threatening, danger often won’t give you a second glance.”
“I hope that’s true,” Deckett said, a bit unsteadily.