by Trish Mercer
The day after his father’s resignation when he went to school for that last time, his friends surrounded him.
“They made him a general?”
“You’re going to Idumea! You can try out for the teams.”
“When are you leaving?”
The only way he could respond was, “No . . . it’s complicated.”
He was grateful when class started just moments later.
Then the door opened, right after midday meal. Peto didn’t bother to look up from his reading because the way the air dampened he knew it was about him. His teacher cleared his throat, and reluctantly Peto looked up. There stood Mr. Hegek and Lieutenant Radan.
Hegek looked like he was about to cry.
Radan looked like he wanted to burn something.
Peto slammed shut his book and leaned back in his chair. “Well?” he asked cockily.
Mr. Hegek shook his head before saying, “Peto Shin, because of incidents last night, I’m sorry, but—”
Radan had jabbed Hegek so forcefully that Hegek coughed and took a step forward. Every boy watched him keenly.
“Congratulations, son!” Hegek slipped into an awkward speech he must have memorized only moments before. “You are hereby awarded this notification that you no longer need to attend the Administrators’ School in Edge.” He held out the parchment with a trembling hand.
Peto nodded once, gathered up his books, and walked past the rows of desks to the front of the classroom.
“That’s not fair,” one of his friends whispered. “Why does he get—”
Lieutenant Radan loudly clearing his throat shut Peto’s friend right up.
Peto took the parchment without opening it, nodded to Hegek, and left the classroom without another word. He noticed Radan and Hegek remained behind, probably to explain things to his classmates.
Later that afternoon, when a few of the boys walked past the Briters’ farm to go to an empty field to kick around a ball, they didn’t look at him at all. Peto knew they saw him. But what he didn’t know was what Radan and Hegek told them.
And suddenly, that was that.
No more friends, no more kickball, no school, and no universities. Just today a letter came from the University of Idumea stating that they wouldn’t have room for Peto Shin that year, should he be thinking of applying. It was accompanied by a terse note from the head of kickball Mr. Flamafoul uninviting Peto for tryouts.
Just that quickly, the world had changed.
And strangely, Peto was all right with that.
Chapter 35 ~ “I have an idea, a plan!”
Mahrree hadn’t realized the water was flooding the field until it stopped flowing.
“Oh,” she stared, bewildered, at her feet.
“And here I thought you were doing better with watering,” she heard Perrin’s voice. “Distracted?”
Mahrree rolled her eyes at the obvious. “It’s been three weeks, Perrin. Shem should be returning—”
She stopped short.
She still couldn’t get used to it: Perrin, in one of Cambozola Briter’s old floppy hats. Deck had pulled it out for his father-in-law, and Perrin appreciated the loose weave of the pale straw. But whenever Mahrree saw her husband, her first reaction was always terror that a towering scarecrow was creeping up on her.
“Actually, Shem’s back tomorrow,” Perrin said, and he put on what Mahrree was calling his Farmhand Face to began his slow drawl. “Mr. Briter says we done well today! We can go home for dinner now, Missus. The boy’s already headed back, Missus. Jus’ me and you for a stroll?” He waggled his eyebrows.
Mahrree cracked a smile. “Sometimes I just don’t understand you. I think a bit of Cambozola’s spirit must be in that hat. How can you be so cheerful when the village still won’t even acknowledge we’re alive?”
He chuckled as he put his arm around her to steer her to the far west side of the farm. While avoiding the fort road meant their walk home took a bit longer, it was worth it to circumvent the traffic. “I had a breakthrough today with someone who used to shun us.”
“Really?” For the first time in weeks Mahrree felt a glimmer of hope. She was growing weary of neighbors and villagers turning their backs to her, fleeing the shops when she and Jaytsy arrived as they opened, and catching the sidelong glares of soldiers. “Who’s tolerating us?”
“Clover!” Perrin announced.
“Clover . . . wait. Isn’t that one of Deck’s cows?”
“It is!” he said breezily. “We tried one of his experiments. While he was doing that sweet talking to her, ‘Who’s a good milker? Who’s a good milker? My Clover is!’ I snuck around behind her. Instead of Deck sitting down at the bucket, I did. I nearly had the bucket full before Clover turned and noticed it was me. She tried to stomp on my boot only twice, but I got her milked.” He held up his hands. “We’re calling it an udder success!”
Mahrree groaned.
“Oh, come on. Even Peto thought that was funny.”
“It’s definitely the hat. There’s no other excuse.”
“I do like the hat,” Perrin declared. “But primarily for the reason coming up.”
Mahrree looked ahead and sighed.
Soldiers.
It had taken them three days to figure out that the Shins were no longer using the main road. Now there were pairs stationed along the perimeter of the farm and the back alleys Perrin and Mahrree took to get home. For the past week, however, there had been fewer guards, and today the two positioned beyond the gate had their heads bent down over something.
Perrin adjusted his hat, pulling it down to his eyebrows. When he tipped his head down, the soldiers couldn’t see his face—although they knew the brawny scarecrow was him—and Perrin could spy on them through the gaps of the straw.
Today the pair on duty merely glanced up at the Shins, then went back to studying what looked like a book. Mahrree had seen the dark red cover in the window of Sareen’s book shop, and thought it odd that soldiers were reading instead of soldiering.
They passed in silence, and only once they were twenty paces away did Perrin release a low whistle. “Our dear Captain Thorne is in trouble,” he said smugly.
“How do you know?” Mahrree was tempted to turn back to see what her husband noticed, but knew better than to draw attention to herself.
Grinning, Perrin pushed the straw hat above his brow. “While I know the soldiers were never perfect under me, none would have ever dared be so derelict in their duties. That tells me a few things. One, the soldiers have no respect for Thorne. Those sergeants aren’t even worried that someone may notice their lax behavior.
“Two, I didn’t recognize those sergeants, which means they came recently from another fort. And when fort commanders transfer soldiers, they always unload their troublemakers. The sergeants probably don’t even know why they’re on this route, or who we are. If Lemuel asked for help from other forts, he didn’t get it. That means we’re no longer a high priority, and I suspect that Thorne’s biggest concern right now is that he’s losing men.”
Mahrree was mystified. “How did you put that together?”
“Early this morning when I came to help Deck with the cows I spied four soldiers with their full packs jogging from the fort. I knew those soldiers, and none of them had leave coming. They were deserting,” he chuckled darkly.
Mahrree couldn’t help but snicker as well. “And the ones on duty are reading books about love!”
Perrin cleared his throat. “Uh, not exactly reading. And not quite love.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “In the brief, unfortunate moment that I happened to focus on the page they were poring over, I noticed that it was a woodcut. Of a woman. Without clothes.”
Mahrree stopped dead in her tracks.
“Keep moving, keep moving,” Perrin hissed as he pulled her along. “We’re now in view of a watch tower, and a soldier is actually watching. Act natural.”
She forced to her feet to
keep up with him. “How can I ‘act natural’ when you tell me that Sareen is selling books with woodcuts of—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words.
“I know,” Perrin whispered, keeping his gaze through the straw focused on the tower. “All right, he’s no longer watching us. This is good, Mahrree. Better than good. It’s turning out to be great—”
“Great?” Mahrree wailed in a whisper. “Great that Sareen has brought to Edge books of . . .” Still she couldn’t say the words.
Perrin smiled as they turned east on the alley that would lead to their back garden. “No, not about the book, but about the soldiers. Look—the other pair that’s normally posted here isn’t. Do you realize what this means?”
“Sareen’s having a sale, and all of the soldiers are waiting in line?”
“Well, maybe. But it’s working—Yung’s advice? Stay low and quiet until the soldiers get bored? No one’s paying extra attention to us, Mahrree! That means we can . . . start doing something else,” he whispered conspiratorially.
“Such as?”
“Remember how a couple of weeks ago I told you I was working on a new plan?”
“Yes.”
“Wanna hear it?”
Mahrree grinned at his boyish enthusiasm. “Yes!”
He gripped her arm. “Wait till we get home. And stop smirking. I see another soldier trying to hide in the shrubs.”
“You’re smirking, too,” Mahrree pointed out. “Someone really should tell Thorne that no one believes a shrub has undertones of blue and boots that stick out.”
They couldn’t help but snicker together as they passed the spying soldier. Mahrree hadn’t felt so light-hearted in weeks, and guiltily realized it was partly because all that her husband had built for the past nineteen years was falling apart because he left it.
They went in the back door and found Peto at the table, sleepily finishing off the chicken pot pie. Seeing her weary son sobered Mahrree again. The poor boy had nothing—no friends, no kickball, no future.
Perrin’s smirk had dissolved as well. “Leave us anything to eat?” he asked his son.
“Couple of crumbs,” Peto yawned. “I’m heading to bed. When I die, I’m going to ask the Creator why cows insist on being milked so early in the morning. Surely He could have planned that a little better. Some One all knowing should have known I hate early mornings.”
Perrin chuckled until Peto shut his bedroom door, and Mahrree heard the contrived tone of it.
She sighed. “You know that message he got a few days ago and threw in the hearth? I fished it out. It was to inform him that the University of Idumea wouldn’t have room for him, and that the professional kickball teams didn’t want him to come for tryouts. I had been hoping our family troubles were confined only to Edge, and that maybe Peto could go south—and that you and I with him—until all of this died down, but now I realize . . .” her voice began to break, “there’s no where we can go. The whole world will shun us.”
Perrin pulled her into his arms. “I agree that we can’t go on like this,” he whispered. “We have to do something for Peto. He’s almost seventeen and has nothing to look forward to.”
“But Perrin, what can we do? Maybe when Shem comes back, he’ll have some news—”
“Mahrree, he’s already back. He rode by earlier this morning.”
“But you told me he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow!”
“Sorry, but I didn’t want to worry you until we got home. Shem sent me a quick look—wasn’t safe for him to stop and talk—and I could tell that he knows something and . . . it’s not good.”
She sagged in his arms. She was going to suggest that perhaps Shem could take Peto to his father’s ranch near Flax, and that maybe they could go as well, but if Shem heard even on the southern edges of the world about the Shins—
“But Mahrree?” Perrin cut into her thoughts. “I have a plan, remember? It’ll fix a great many things, and give Peto something to do!”
She pulled out of his embrace to see him . . .
Well, the only way to describe his demeanor was nearly giddy. And it wasn’t because of Cambozola’s hat, which he’d taken off.
“Since the soldiers aren’t watching us anymore, it’s time to share with you what I’ve been working on for the past weeks.”
He released her, rushed to the study and came back with rolls of maps and pages of notes.
Mahrree watched in astonishment and thought she even heard what could only be identified as a giggle escape as he placed the stack of papers on the table. He unrolled a large piece of paper that looked like a map and used the mugs from midday meal to hold down the corners.
Mahrree’s breath caught when she realized what she was seeing.
“You want to find the ruins? Terryp’s land?” She ran her hand over a new large map Perrin had made, complete with arrows, lines, potential paths, camp locations, and question marks.
“Yes, and beyond!” He struggled to keep his voice low in his excitement. “And there is a beyond. I’m positive there’s no danger, no poison, no undetectable gases that kill entire populations overnight. There never was! Only land and vast amounts of it, just waiting to be explored and settled. I’m sure it’s where we began, where the Creator placed the first five hundred families. I want to find the proof! Now, Mahrree, you know I’ve had old maps, but I must confess I never showed you these.”
She watched breathlessly as he shifted some of the papers and put others on top. The parchment of the three maps he laid out before her seemed far older and thicker, with dark patches and stains.
“Some of these suggest what’s beyond our borders. King Querul the First’s scouts made this one, the oldest in my collection. Vast regions of land to the west, right there, beyond the desert.”
Mahrree stared in wonder, not daring to touch the parchment that was dated more than130 years ago.
“Perrin,” she whispered in awe, “how did you get—”
“I took them from the old garrison when the new one was being constructed. They were nearly buried by dirt in the old storage room my father used. They were probably destined for that fire Querul started, but were forgotten about. If I had more time I would have dug some more.”
Mahrree alternated between holding her breath and panting as he spoke.
“There seemed to be a crate buried there, too,” he continued, “but I felt rather guilty for finding and taking these, so I left before anyone saw me. I never had another chance to go back or investigate the crate. It’s probably still there, in fact. I moved an old cabinet in front of it to hide it, but now it’s buried along with all of my father’s paperwork. I doubt anyone ever looked for these maps. I shouldn’t have taken them, but I was twenty-two and I rationalized that no one wanted them. I told you that I rescued them from a rubbish heap, but . . . well, I did rescue them. Anyway, Mahrree . . . Mahrree?”
She heard his voice but was too stunned by all that he laid before her to.
He wanted to go. He wanted to find the ruins.
He was saying her name.
She forced herself to stop staring at the fantastic display and looked up at him.
He grinned with the enthusiasm of an eleven-year-old. His dark eyes were so vibrant they lit up his entire face. “Mahrree,” he said with a passion she had never heard before. “You’ll love this one. I’ve been saving it for a very long time. Well . . . now it’s time!”
He took one of the maps he hadn’t yet unfurled and gently slid out a smaller map concealed inside it. The parchment was brown on the edges and slightly crumbly.
“What is this?” she whispered as he carefully unrolled it. “And why have you never shown it to me before?” She could already tell it was something ancient and important and beautiful.
“This, my darling wife, is Terryp’s map.”
She gasped.
“His original one.”
She stopped breathing.
She stopped moving.
Her heart may hav
e stopped beating, but then it began again with such pounding force she felt it in her throat.
Right there, in front of her, with markings and writings and notes and everything—Terryp’s own map!
Without meaning to, her hand hovered over it.
“Just don’t fondle it,” he whispered in her ear. “I don’t think the old parchment likes to be handled as a statue. So, Mahrree, tell me . . . what do you think?”
She was thinking too many things at once. She wanted to scream, to shout Terryp’s name, to leap up and down and kiss her husband and kiss him again, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t even blink. She didn’t want to miss any of it.
There, in ink still dark enough that Terryp could have applied it yesterday, was a detailed map of a land directly west of Sands.
She felt her knees grow weak as she began to realize what was before her, what had been done . . .
“Perrin!” she breathed. “It was you! You . . . did it? You . . .” She heard a chair pull up behind her.
“You better sit down. You’ve gone gray.”
She sat down, only to be closer to the map. Gingerly, she tenderly fingered a corner of it.
Perrin sat next to her. “Happy 19th Anniversary, a bit early.”
Mahrree let out a very reverent but very excited whimper.
“You . . . you made the copy!”
He grinned and nodded, nearly exploding with enthusiasm. “Several, actually.” He gestured to the rolls which had hidden Terryp’s map. “When I made the map of Moorland, I realized I could make other maps too. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you see the first copy of Terryp’s map I sent to the Administrators which they then sent back here for me to ‘authenticate’. Although I disguised my writing, I was sure you would’ve recognized some of the characters I made. I couldn’t let you know yet. I made the extras,” he indicated the roll of additional maps, “to send out to others should the Administrators declare the land still poisoned. I fully intended to smuggle them out in the army messenger bags as I did with the first one I sent, but now I don’t have that access anymore so here they sit, waiting for me to come up with another solution.”