by Trish Mercer
“It’s not,” Shem agreed. “In five years your body is used up. I heard the scout.”
“So are a lot of soldiers’ bodies, Shem. I’ve seen them,” Peto pointed out. “Very few make it as long as you and Father.”
Shem bobbed his head. “That’s true. But you’re deceiving your parents by not telling them that first you’re going to play.”
“You don’t know that,” Peto said, wishing Shem didn’t have such a firm grip on his shoulder. “I don’t even know that. I’m still working on it. I have to make the team first.”
“He won’t let you go, you know. Not to Idumea.” Shem held him tighter.
Peto stiffened. “Yes he will. He has to. He has to go there, too.”
Shem looked at him askance. “Why do you say that?”
“Never mind.” Peto rubbed his forehead. “Look, I know what I’m doing. Just let me try to pursue my dream.”
Shem stopped suddenly and Peto walked right out of his grip.
While he realized this was his opportunity to run, Peto was too intrigued as to why Shem halted. He turned to face him.
Shem, seemingly rooted to the ground in the middle of the grassy playing field, reached and caught Peto’s shoulders again.
The intensity of the expression on his face made Peto gasp. Shem’s eyes were deep and penetrating, digging straight into Peto’s soul, and Peto felt himself shrink a little under his sharp gaze. Shem wasn’t angry or frightening, just profoundly earnest. Shem to the power of ten.
“Peto, I have to tell you. I don’t know why, but I simply must.”
His tone had a quality Peto had never heard before, almost as if he spoke with another man’s voice, and that voice carried the message straight to Peto’s heart and nailed it in place.
“I’m not able to take another step,” Shem said, as if under the control of someone else, “unless I make this very clear: Peto, you must not play in Idumea. And your father must not go to Idumea either. The plans the Creator has for you and Perrin lie elsewhere.”
“What?!” Now Peto was sure that Yung was in on this somehow. “Where?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t, or you won’t?” Peto’s voice choked and his chest burned. He wanted to be furious at Shem, but instead found his thoughts filled oddly with his Grandfather Shin, among other confusing things. “Does this have anything to do with Terryp’s land? The expedition hasn’t returned yet, but when they do?”
Shem closed his eyes as if in deep concentration. After a moment he opened them and slowly shook his head. “I can’t tell you. Not yet. Peto, don’t pursue Idumea. You could be very successful there, but that’s not the Creator’s plan for you.”
Peto pulled away from Shem’s grip and sat down hard on the grass. What kind of trick was this? And who was Shem to tell Peto what he should and shouldn’t do! What would Shem know of the Creator’s plans for—
The instant he thought those words he felt a presence—familiar and powerful—that told him, Just listen.
Listen to Shem Zenos destroy all his plans?
“Shem!” he roared angrily to his lap. “Why? No. No—just stay out of it. Ah, you just don’t understand!”
Shem crouched on the grass by Peto. “What don’t I understand? The dreams of a sixteen-year-old? The hope of glory on the field?” He sounded more like himself. “Trust me, Peto. I do understand.”
Peto shook his head. He wasn’t just a self-centered ball player. “It’s more than just that. It’s . . . oh, forget it.”
“What?” Shem said earnestly. “Help me understand.”
Peto sighed. “I can’t! I’m not supposed to.”
Then he felt it, very distinctly. The presence at his side became stronger, more defined.
And then he knew.
It was his grandfather Relf, right there on the other side of Shem. If Peto reached out he could have touched him, or the essence of what Relf Shin was now. Peto couldn’t understand why he was there. Trying to tell him to ignore Shem? To go to Idumea anyway? To make his father follow him to be High General?
No . . . no, it wasn’t that.
Refusing to look up, Peto felt lost in a maze again as he yanked up a fistful of grass.
Grandfather, I’m no good at this! he cried out in his mind. I don’t know what you want me to do! Why are you here?
“Peto,” Shem’s voice came calmly next to his ear. “You’re not supposed to . . . not supposed to tell me? Or . . .”
Peto felt Shem sit down in the grass next to him.
“Oh Peto, I understand. I really do. Actually, I don’t understand it all, but enough. It’s Relf, isn’t it?”
Peto’s head jerked up to stare at Shem.
“I’ve felt him before, Peto. I’ve even seen him before. Not just at the fort, but in Idumea, after he passed away.”
“Wh—. H—.”
“At his burial. That evening I got to know him better than I ever had,” Shem said matter-of-factly, as if he communicated with dead people all the time.
Peto’s eyes bulged. “Uh . . .”
Shem nodded. “He was trying to reach your father that night. So was your grandmother. They didn’t have much success at the time, so they tried through me instead.”
Peto stared at him, dumbfounded. Just when you think you know a man, you discover he’s on speaking terms with your dead grandparents.
Shem took Peto’s stunned silence as a signal to continue. “He’s right here, isn’t he? Peto, your grandfather is proud of your determination to keep your promises. But there are other ways. This isn’t it. He wants you to wait. He knows more now than he did when he first spoke to you about it, but more can’t be revealed; it’s too soon. You need to have faith in Relf, trust his knowledge, and just wait.”
Peto shook his head to try to settle the words in some kind of recognizable order. “Wait?”
Shem smiled and put his hand on Peto’s face. Peto almost recoiled, but didn’t. It was the exact movement his grandfather made just after he entrusted the envelope to his care.
“Just wait, Peto.” The voice was back. “You have a future that today you could never imagine.”
Peto closed his eyes. Now he recognized the voice. He hadn’t heard it in two and a half years, and he hadn’t expected to hear it again until he died.
Near his heart, Peto felt a patch of heat appear, taking whatever remaining breath he had away. Slowly the warmth dissipated.
Shem’s hand slid off of Peto’s face to rest heavily on his shoulder; another classic Relf Shin movement.
Peto wiped away a few tears that for some reason had filled his eyes. The presence of Relf Shin faded, and Shem’s hand came off of Peto’s shoulder. After a long minute Peto opened his eyes and looked at Uncle Shem.
He’d hoped he’d feel that same sense of rescue that he’d felt as a small child, but he was still in the maze. At least he wasn’t alone.
Shem, looking rather drained, attempted a weak smile. “Did you understand all of that?”
Peto nodded, not sure of the condition of his voice.
“Someday, when the time’s right, will you explain to me what just happened here?”
Peto smiled faintly. “Yeah. Relf wants us to wait, though.”
“I caught that part.”
The two of them sat there silently, meditatively, in the grass.
Until a thought hit Peto, and he buried his head in his hands. “But now what? I’m no closer to figuring out my future. Shem, it’s not fair. You know how easy it is for girls? Jaytsy had no worries. She just sat around and waited until some man fell in love with her and married her.”
“Actually, Peto,” Shem said with a sad chuckle, “it was a little more complicated than that.”
Peto waved that off. “That whole Thorne wanting to take her to Idumea thing—that was nothing. Not like this. My parents have tried every title on me in the past few weeks, just to see what sounds best. Doctor Shin. Professor Shin. Rector Shin. Old Goat Milker
Shin—”
“Old Goat Milker?”
“I threw that one in, just to watch their reaction. It was pretty good. You would’ve appreciated it.”
“I kind of like the sound of Rector Shin myself. Rector Yung is becoming Rector Old.”
Peto chuckled. “So why don’t you become Rector Zenos? I don’t know of a man more open to inspiration than you.” The last ten minutes still sat on top of Peto, pressing him into the grass with sobering reality. “Really, Uncle Shem. No one more than you.”
Shem gently elbowed him. “You wait for your calling, Peto. My calling was to be a soldier for your father. Your calling will come to you as well.”
“My calling?” He remembered vaguely his father saying that to him as well, the night they left Idumea. The fact that he had never again thought of those words twanged his conscience.
“You’ll feel it someday, Peto. Not just as a ‘Gee, I’d love to play kickball for the next five years’ kind of feeling, but a drive, a need to do something for the world and the Creator. Most people don’t wait for it. They just jump into the most convenient job that presents itself. But if you ask—and wait—you will eventually feel something deep and clear that demands that you act upon it. You have a calling.”
“I suppose I do,” Peto sighed. “So what do I do in the meantime?”
“Well,” Shem rubbed his chin. “Keep going to school, just to stay sharp. Keep practicing, just to stay sharp, and . . .”
“Wait,” Peto finished for him. “I have to admit, I don’t exactly enjoy waiting.”
Shem’s face fell. “I recommend you get used to it now. Nothing happens when you think it should. There are a lot of things I’ve been waiting for, for a long time now.” He looked up to the mountains, his eyes clouded. “The Creator has His reasons, and we just have to trust them.”
Shem shook out his shoulders, put on his familiar smile, and elbowed his nephew again. “Come on. You need to get home and I’ve got a shift coming up. Going to be another long night for your Uncle Shem.”
---
The forest was very active that night, but no soldiers knew it. Men, horses, and even two women in dark clothing filled a section of the trees north and east of the fort, waiting.
Shem had scheduled the soldiers to patrol in the west.
The deep canal, which normally ran from the river to the few farms on the east side of Edge leading up to where the murky swamps began, was empty of water, as it usually was in the Harvest Season.
But there was still a steady trickle in it heading north.
---
Mahrree opened the door when she heard the knocking. “Thank goodness you got here so quickly . . . oh. Rector Yung! I was expecting the piping man.”
“Oh dear,” Yung said. “A clog?”
“A burst!” Mahrree sighed. “The side of my yard is now a mud bath, in case you know of any dry, hot pigs?”
Yung chuckled. “I wished I could help, but actually I was hoping to catch Peto home.”
“He’s off again,” Mahrree sighed. “Kickball. Although for the past couple of days his heart doesn’t seem to be in at as much.”
“Oh really?” Yung seemed unusually interested in that.
“Yes, I’m not sure why, but whatever has changed in him has certainly made him quieter. Honestly, Rector,” Mahrree lowered her voice, “I’m worried about him. He won’t tell me what’s going on.”
To her surprise, Yung chuckled. “A teenage boy not telling his mother what’s going on? Mrs. Shin, that’s pretty typical.”
“Yes, but my daughter—”
“Is a female. There tends to be a difference, you know.”
Mahrree had to smile at that. “So I shouldn’t worry?”
“Mrs. Shin, I believe you have far less to worry about now than you did a few days ago.”
Mahrree sighed. “If you say so.”
“I wanted to give him this,” Yung said, holding up a small bag.
Mahrree felt the contents through the cotton as she took it. “Feels like . . . rocks?”
“Pits,” Yung clarified. “From peaches, to be specific. I thought he might find it interesting to plant a few, see what comes up? Your garden seems to have a bit of room.”
Mahrree nearly laughed. A bit of room? She hadn’t seen the gravely soil in over a decade, so overrun by unidentifiable foliage that her daughter didn’t know where to start fixing it.
“I’ll give him the bag, Rector. Thank you.”
“Remind him, however, to not plant the pits anywhere near the new piping that may go in. The roots will get all tangled in it.”
Mahrree frowned. “But the piping is down at least two feet.”
Yung tilted his head, amazed. “You really know nothing of gardening, do you Mrs. Shin? Peto will know what to do with them.”
---
Knock-knock . . . knock-knock-knock.
There were very few things that could wipe the guarded smile from Perrin’s face that day. The notion that in a couple of seasons he might be cradling a newborn again—his own grandchild—had filled him with an emotion the past week that he would almost dare label as giddy. As ridiculous as it might seem, as un-soldier-like as it would sound should he ever admit it, he really loved nothing more than squishy cheeks.
But the knock erased his smile for a moment, until Perrin remembered it wasn’t his child.
“Come in.”
Thorne opened the door, and behind him stood three villagers with stern expressions. “Sir, we have a problem with a property line—”
“No,” Perrin interrupted him, “we don’t. Maybe some villagers do, or Chief Barnie does, but we at the fort have no property line disputes.”
The men behind Thorne immediately began to argue that point, but Thorne held up his hand which then became a fist.
Impressively, the men immediately silenced.
He turned back to Colonel Shin with a determined gaze. “Sir. The problem arose back when the pox eliminated the original owners of the property. The line was in dispute at the time, and the issue has arisen again. To avoid violence—”
“You shouldn’t have brought them here,” Shin said with a glare just as penetrating. “The three of you, take your complaint out of my office. We have, as I’m sure you well know, something called a chain of command. I am at the very end of that chain. Begin at front of it. May I recommend Rector Yung? He’s probably the most insightful and fair-minded man in the village. Allow him to mediate your problem. If you still find yourselves in disagreement, then visit Chief Barnie. If he can’t resolve your issue, take it to Magistrate Wibble. Still no satisfying result, then you may SCHEDULE my time in order to come speak to me. Is that understood?”
Thorne’s glare increased by a few degrees. “Yung? The old rector?” he scoffed. “Rectors are naïve and simplistic.”
“Rector Yung,” Perrin said steadily, “can see into the heart of a problem far faster, and can make the correct judgment far better than any man or woman in this village, myself included. And that, I suspect, is why these men do not want to consult with him. He will see right through whomever is attempting to deceive.”
At that, the three villagers huffed and harrumphed and guffawed, and abruptly turned to stomp down the stairs of the command tower.
Perrin smiled smugly.
But Thorne was seething. “Sir, you could have resolved that in five minutes—”
“No, I couldn’t. It would’ve taken them five minutes just to decide who should speak first. And I don’t have five minutes today, Thorne. You know that. For some reason the garrison feels they need a full accounting of every last weapon in the fort, and the inventory sent to them written in my own hand in triplicate. That’s why I sent you out on the village patrol today, and didn’t go out myself. I didn’t want you to bring back trivial problems.”
“That was hardly trivial!” Thorne insisted. “The way we handle the small problems reflects on how well we handle the big ones. If the village sees that we�
��re ready to step in and—”
“And handle every little issue? Every trivial problem? Then they’ll never do anything for themselves again! That’s precisely what the governing body should NOT do—manage every detail of their lives. We are not their meddling grandmothers; we exist to keep them safe so they can make their own decisions, resolve their own problems, and live their own lives as their conscience dictates. We are NOT to become that conscience.”
“Why not? Colonel, if they’re incapable of making intelligent choices—”
“They can’t learn to make those choices if they aren’t given the opportunity, Thorne. Give them the opportunity to learn.”
“And fail?”
“Failure is part of learning, Captain. It’s not to be shunned—it’s to be embraced and learned from. Would you really want someone making all your decisions for you?”
“No! But I’m not like them. Neither of us is. We are superior in training, education, and intelligence. They need us to guide and direct them. They simply aren’t capable of it—”
“HO!” Perrin howled, finally reaching his tipping point. “Who are you to judge who’s capable and who isn’t?”
“These make me worthy of judging!” The captain slapped the Administrative patches on his chest, and Perrin wished the upright sword on the little pine tree patch would have stabbed Thorne’s finger. “These say I’m in control and I make the decisions.”
Perrin took a deep breath and slowly shook his head. “You’re willing to dismiss the advice of a wise, selfless rector in order to put all your faith in a committee of men who are more motivated by their large houses, stashes of gold, and lust for status? Captain Thorne, you have no idea who’s superior, do you?”
Thorne’s jaw slacked. “Colonel Shin, are you stating that the Administrators are not deserving of their positions and power?”
Perrin folded his arms. “Yes. And I’m also saying you should listen to little old rectors every now and then.”
A soft throat-clearing sound came from behind the captain.