Safety Assured Leaving East of Medicetti

by Trish Mercer

Mahrree lay on her back and let the sun cook her.

  Not so long ago she hated the heat. The hard, hot stone beneath made her feel like she was slowly simmering, but she didn’t care. Today, she loved every moment of it.

  She glanced to the side to see where the sun was in relation to her position. She really wasn’t being lazy, taking a late morning nap in the middle of Weeding Season. She was there for a purpose, albeit a thoroughly relaxing and marvelous one.

  Realizing she still had least an hour until the sun was where it needed to be, she rolled over on to her belly and took in the scenery.

  From eight levels in the sky, the world took on an entirely different perspective, one that she could stare at for hours.

  And she had been.

  Admittedly, the very first time she climbed the step pyramid, as Professor Stone called it, she was quite terrified to focus on the distant terrain. She’d beaten Perrin up there, too excited to pace herself and thoroughly enjoying wearing breeches again, as the crowd of thirty archaeologists and students below cheered. But it was an exhausting climb. Maybe the civilization that built this temple had longer legs, because the steps were truly massive, and even Perrin struggled over some areas where the shorter carved steps had crumbled away, and they had to scale instead the precisely cut blocks of stone.

  But when a panting Mahrree scrambled to the last set of blocks before the platform on top, which Professor Stone told her could hold up to forty people, she decided they must have been forty very small, skinny people. She waited for Perrin to join her before climbing to the platform on the pretext of doing it together, but in reality a case of nerves had overtaken her and she could no longer move.

  A moment later he was by her side, slightly winded. “Go on,” he told her. “One more block to the top. I’m sure it’s safe.”

  “So what was all of that they were saying earlier, about sending up the newest visitors first to check out its stability?”

  Perrin chuckled. “They were joking. This is solid stone. It really is a tradition to send up the newcomers first. Peto told me about that from his visit here. Besides, Professor Stone’s son was already up here before the rest of us arrived, to sweep off the top. He told me he made sure there weren’t any giant spiders up here.”

  Both of them eyed the surface anxiously. Just the week before they’d learned about tarantulas.

  “He was also only joking, too,” Mahrree whispered. “Right?”

  “Pretty sure,” Perrin said, not sounding not very sure at all. “Well, we’ve waited our entire lives for the very best view in the unknown world. Stable or not, spiders or not, I’m getting on top of this.”

  “Me to!” Mahrree said, and together they stood up to the renewed cheers from far below.

  But she could barely hear them. She could barely breathe.

  Terryp’s land was more than she could have wished for, and it was truly immense.

  Beside her, Perrin murmured in reverent astonishment. “Over one thousand miles that way until you reach the southern sea,” he pointed. “I can’t imagine that great a distance. Between us and it—just land and rivers and trees and animals. No humans.” He pointed to the west and said, “Two hundred and fifty miles that way—”

  “Actually two hundred fifty-four,” Mahrree managed to whisper.

  “—fifty-four miles that way, and there’s another mountain range, far more massive that anything we know, and then even more land. Behind us, it’s barely over a mile to the mountain range that borders Edge. And then, to the left of us, and less than ten short miles from here is two miles of desert then the village of Sands,” he whispered, as if they would hear him if he spoke louder. “We could walk there today. I can’t believe we’re here.”

  “I don’t think I ever want to climb down,” Mahrree said. “Besides, my legs feel like jelly, my bottom is so achy from sitting on that old mare for three days, and I’m not entirely sure I could get down right now even if I wanted to.”

  He chuckled and kissed her. “I’ll set up our tent. You sit up here and soak in Terryp. Remember, we’ll be here for more than a week.”

  And so, guiltily, she’d sat up there with silent tears of joy dribbling down her cheeks, while everyone else below set up tents, corralled the horses in the stone enclosure they’d made decades ago, and started dinner.

  That was . . . oh, three, maybe four days ago? A week?

  She didn’t care. She was in a land where time held no reckoning. And, once again, she was on the tallest temple pyramid in Terryp’s land.

  Alone.

  She would have thought that sounded frightening, but it was the very opposite. Before her lay the most remarkable land she and Perrin had been exploring, all by themselves, while Professor Stone and the rest of the archaeology party were creeping along, inch by inch, among the vines about two miles to the northwest hoping to find evidence of new ruins.

  To Mahrree and Perrin, it seemed quite tedious, especially when there were buildings and walls and tablets and pits for them to explore, and an entire stack of paper for Mahrree to make rubbings of each and every one of them. Long ago, when Perrin had first suggested to Mahrree that he bring her here, he promised he’d arrange for a second horse just to carry extra paper and charcoal for her to make rubbings of all the engravings around. For their trip, he did just that. Mahrree would be coming home with enough blackened pages to paper their entire home, and eventually she’d use most of them for kindling in the fire, but for now she was living her dream, and even privately gave herself the name Terryp-ee, as if she were him.

  This morning, though, Perrin had gone with the excavating team to help move some fallen logs. They both suspected a reason the Shins were invited to go on the trip was so they could use Perrin’s muscle when the pack mules were tired or they couldn’t negotiate the terrain very well. But he would be returning by noon, when the measurement needed to be taken.

  It happened every year, the same day, the same position of the sun. Usually someone from the archaeology team would be there to check, once again, that when the sun was precisely above the step pyramid that day, the shadows on the corners disappeared. Today was significant for that ancient civilization.

  But the team felt they were close to a discovery, and Mahrree assured them that she and Perrin could watch the event.

  And so Mahrree sat up there soaking in the sunshine, waiting for the correct hour, and keeping an eye on the distant north for when Clark and Perrin would emerge from it. They still had time so, unworried, she watched in a dreamlike state the world moving before her.

  Byson, Terryp had called them. Terryp’s story was told to visitors in detail as they sat on the lower levels of the step pyramid as if at an amphitheater. On their first evening it was Mr. Stone who explained to them what Terryp did, even acting out sections of the story, and Mahrree realized Professor Stone’s husband was a lot more dramatically inclined than his wife.

  Mahrree smiled faintly as she understood the reaction of the king to Terryp’s description of the byson—they really did look like malformed, grotesque cattle. These animals, grazing in herds by the thousands in the vast plains before her, were the evidence King Querul claimed that this land was poisoned. Why, look what it did to the cows! Imagine what people would look like in just a few generations, all humped back and shaggy haired!

  But it wasn’t just the byson that so alarmed Querul. They were just a convenient excuse. When Terryp returned, having been dragged away by the soldiers and forced back to Idumea to make his report, he pulled out hundreds of pages of rubbings that he made of the carvings. He laid them out all over the floor of the newly constructed mansion to show Querul what he had discovered.

  One of the king’s servants at the time was a man who later escaped to Salem, and he witnessed what happened. The king and his servants stared openmouthed at the display, but Terryp saved the best for last.

  “This, your Highness, this is the most remarkable of them all!” Then he pulled out a rubbi
ng that he had preserved in his coat, and reverently unrolled it. “Sir, look at the writing on this one. It’s ours! That land—that was where the Creator first put us down. These words aren’t carved as skillfully as the others, but that’s because it was the mason’s first attempt at cutting stone. Our story, sir. Our ancestors. This describes how the Creator placed our first five hundred families here, how He taught them, how He established the guides, how He told them to create a government—”

  “You’re mad!” King Querul declared. “We’ve never been there!”

  And that was the end. The etchings were all gathered up, Terryp was whisked away to be treated by the doctors, and many weeks later a mysterious fire engulfed all of Terryp’s findings along with the collected family lines. All evidence was destroyed.

  Even Terryp’s mind was severely altered. He was to have escaped with others who followed Guide Pax, but the surgeons at the garrison kept such a close eye on their crazed patient that no ‘guarders’ could retrieve him. By the time they released him, after nearly a year of clarifying to him what really happened in the western lands, there were no more people left in the world who knew the way to escape. And over in Salem, they had been sure Terryp must have died after so long, so no one went to try to rescue him.

  It wasn’t for another twenty years that Salem dared to send out scouts to find those who wanted to leave the world.

  Terryp had died the year before.

  He’d finished out his days a broken man, writing only a few stories for children hoping to excite someone’s imagination enough to think about their confining world in liberating ways.

  “We are, Terryp,” Mahrree whispered to the air. “You freed my husband and me, and our family. You didn’t fail.”

  She watched the herd of byson below and beyond, grunting and snuffing and kicking up dust as they grazed. But what fascinated Mahrree more was what she could see just beyond the herd, in a thick ribbon of forest several hundred paces away.

  Wolves.

  Yesterday evening she and Perrin had watched with rapt and horrified fascination as a pack of wolves, two adults and three pups, came out of those trees intent on finding their dinner. They singled out a slower byson and began their pursuit, the pups not yet as effective as their parents in chasing and goading. For several minutes Mahrree was conflicted as to who she wanted to win.

  Perrin chuckled at her clenched fists and worried expression. “It’s nature, Mahrree. Something’s going to die. Either the old tired byson, or the young pups from starvation.”

  The mother in her decided she didn’t want it to be the pups, so she began to cheer for the wolves. Within fifteen minutes the wolves had won, their prize falling at the tree line. Mahrree watched between her fingers as the family of wolves gorged themselves on the carcass while the rest of the byson herd moved on. This morning about half of their kill still remained for their midday meal, and the wolf pack sat around it, satiated and rested. Before them walked another thousand temptations.

  Mahrree considered that had the wolves been people, they would have spent day and night trying to kill more and more byson, never satisfied with what they had for the day, but feeling the compulsion to possess it all. That was the way of the world.

  “How unprogressive!” Mahrree sarcastically said as she watched the distant wolves. The pups wrestled each other and yapped as playfully as regular dogs. Their parents panted contentedly in the shade of the trees and watched their young enjoying the day.

  “Look at nature,” Mahrree chided. “Relaxing because they have enough. You’ll never get ahead in the world!” she called down to the wolves. “Being satisfied isn’t progressive.” She giggled as she thought one of the wolves turned its head to her. She was much too far away to tell, but in her mind she imagined it winked at her.

  Peto hadn’t mentioned there were wolves when he came back from his excursion to Terryp’s land. Then again, there were a couple hundred teens and leaders, so the wolves probably stayed far away from that noisy pack.

  And, also again, there was a young woman on the trip who Peto was stuck on to like sap, according to Mrs. Bustani who had gone along as a chaperone. When Peto came home from his two weeks, his demeanor was a mixture of happiness and hopelessness. Mahrree didn’t understand it at first, and when she realized he’d forgotten to bring home his sleeping pack, she went over to the Bustanis who were unloading the wagon.

  Mrs. Bustani said, “There’s always a few who forget half of their stuff. Check the pile of unclaimed items on the porch.” Mahrree soon found Peto’s pack, and Mrs. Bustani asked her, “Did Peto enjoy the trip?”

  “I’m not sure,” Mahrree said. “He’s bathing now, thank goodness, but when I asked him, he sighed and said, ‘It was wonderful. I loved everything about it. Just loved it.’ But he certainly didn’t look happy.”

  Mrs. Bustani smirked. “Would you say he looked a bit lovesick?”

  Mahrree smacked her forehead with her palm. “Yes! That’s exactly how he looked!”

  “Mrs. Shin, I’m not sure he or Lilla Trovato saw anything of the ruins. They saw only each other. Every hike, every exploration, every lecture they were paying more attention to each other than anything. I kept a close eye on them, don’t worry.”

  “Oh dear,” Mahrree murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. There are frequently romances that result from these trips.” She blushed as she added, “It’s how Rector Bustani and I first found each other thirty-five years ago.”

  “How serious do you think it is between them?”

  Mrs. Bustani shrugged. “Serious enough that as we dropped off the Norden group, he took her behind a barn and stole a kiss. Well, not really stole. She donated it quite readily.” She chuckled when Mahrree’s eyebrows flew up, “I kept a close eye on them. And they knew it, too.”

  Mahrree had watched Peto after that as he moped around the house. Every day he sent a letter to Norden, and every day two came back.

  Perrin refused to believe anything serious was going on until one morning he came back from the barn looking shaken.

  “What’s wrong?” Mahrree asked when she saw he was pale.

  “It’s Peto,” he said gravely. “He was . . . he was singing. Did you know he could sing?”

  Mahrree snorted. “No. What was he singing?”

  He shuddered slightly. “Something Lilla Trovato made up on our Marking Party.”

  “You need to face it, Perrin. Your son’s in love. With a singer and a hugger.”

  “I never sang when I was courting you.”

  “And I thank you for that.”

  Three long, depressing weeks after Peto came home, he suddenly became happy again, because Shem came over to announce that the Trovatos were coming down to visit Calla and her massive belly, and they were bringing Lilla along. And she was staying—supposedly, to help with Calla and the baby.

  The day they were due to arrive at the Zenoses, Peto watched their house from the front window like an excited puppy. Mahrree didn’t need to ask when their wagon drove down the lane, because she heard the door slam as Peto raced down the road, and even in the kitchen Mahrree could hear Lilla’s squeal of, “Petoooohhhhh!”

  That was the second time Perrin came into the house, pale. “She’s here, isn’t she?” he asked dully.

  “She’s a very nice girl, Perrin.”

  “She’s a very loud girl, Mahrree.”

  “So are we. I thought you once said, ‘Loud means passionate.’”

  He swallowed down a lump in his throat and, without another word, headed upstairs to his office as Mahrree laughed.

  The Trovatos were just in time, because early the next morning Boskos Zenos knocked on their door, full of grandfatherly pride. When Perrin opened it, Boskos announced, “In the middle of the night my newest grandbaby arrived. Mrs. Trovato has gone over to her cousin’s place for a nap, but Calla and Shem want you to come over as soon as is convenient to meet their son—”

  Per
rin and Mahrree cheered.

  “—Lek Zenos.”

  Their smiles froze in place.

  “Lek?” Perrin said as merrily as he could. “After my great-great-grandfather, Lek Shin?”

  Boskos nodded. “They’ll explain it when you get over there. Bring the Briters, too.”

  Perrin closed the door and met Mahrree’s perplexed gaze.

  Peto, coming down the stairs, said what they were both thinking. “Who in Salem would want to name their son Lek?”

  They found out less than an hour later, as the Shins and Briters quietly crept into the Zenos house and up the stairs to the bedroom where Calla, looking far more beautiful and peaceful than any woman who just birthed had a right to look, grinned at them from her bed.

  “He’s here!” she announced quietly.

  Shem sat in a rocking chair next to bed, cradling the bundle in his arms. He didn’t even look up as they filed in, but gazed at his son.

  “I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “I’m finally a father. He’s so amazing. Just look at him. And Calla was . . . so amazing.”

  Perrin leaned over to Calla and gave her a congratulatory kiss on the forehead. “And how long has Shem been sobbing about this?”

  “Since the baby was born, so on and off for about five hours. Lilla’s downstairs getting him a mug of water so he doesn’t dehydrate.” She must have noticed Peto looking around for her.

  “Usually it’s the new mother who needs the extra water,” Mahrree pointed out.

  Perrin went over to Shem and said, “Time for inspection, Sergeant Major.” He extricated tiny Lek from his father’s arms.

  As Shem watched Perrin cuddle him, fresh tears trickled down his face. “What do you think, General?”

  Perrin grinned at the newborn who had light brown peach fuzz for hair. He cleared his throat gruffly, and Mahrree interpreted.

  “That means, He’s perfect, Shem. We’re so happy for both of you!”

  “Yeah, that,” Perrin said, gently kissing the newborn.

  Lilla bounced into the room with a two mugs of water. “Ooh, Papa Pere is such a big softy!”

  It didn’t help that at that moment Perrin sniffled.

  Only the Briters in the corner dared chuckle out loud.

  “Calla,” Jaytsy said, “our children will grow up together. How fun will that be?”

  Already Salema, in Deck’s arms, was straining to see what her Puggah was holding, and called out, “Baby! Baby!”

  When she held out her arms to Perrin, Mahrree realized she was jealous. She knew how to fix that.

  “Take Salema, Perrin, while I take little Mr. Zenos here. Aunt Mahrree needs to inspect him as well.” She couldn’t yet bring herself to call him ‘Lek’ as she took the newborn from Perrin and sniffed in his wonderful scent.

  “All right, if no one else is going to ask,” Peto said, leaning against the wall, “then I will. Lek? You’re really going with Lek?”

  Lilla plopped on to the bed next to Calla and said, “Where did you get that name?”

  Shem and Calla met each other’s eyes.

  “Tell them,” she said.

  Shem turned to the Shins. “I know it seems odd, but we were talking about how it was because of Lek and his wife Lorixania that I eventually went to Edge to bring you all to Salem. Somehow, it seemed important that Lek’s name come here as well. As if . . . as if he’s been waiting to come here. I can’t explain it, but we both felt it. Lek needs to be here.”

  Nobody spoke, but let the notion sink in.

  Eventually Perrin said what Mahrree was thinking. “And now I love the name. I think you’re right. Thank you for bringing him here.”

  “Oh, I love that idea!” Jaytsy squealed quietly. “Deck, we should do that too. Bring your parents to Salem as well. Shem, I think we’re stealing all of the Zenos baby naming ideas.”

  Although Mahrree’s attention was wholly consumed by the newborn in her arms, out of the corner of her eye she noticed that Jaytsy had a hand on her belly.

  Deck nodded. “I think we should bring my parents here, too.”

  Now Mahrree stared at Jaytsy’s belly and . . . was that a slight bulge?

  Calla noticed. “So . . . Jayts?”

  She grinned. “Guess what, Calla? They didn’t guess it this time!”

  “What?” Mahrree said.

  “When I was expecting Salema, I think all of you figured it out before I could announce it. Well, not this time!”

  “You’re expecting too?”

  Jaytsy and Calla laughed together.

  “Good job, Jaytsy!” Calla said. “You did keep it a secret for a while.”

  “Calla, you knew?” Perrin exclaimed, and Shem blinked in surprise.

  “So did I,” Deck mumbled, and blushed a deep red.

  “We expecting mothers can sense these things,” Calla said proudly.

  “I’m about three moons along,” Jaytsy announced. “So this little one will be either Sewzi, or Cambozola.”

  As Mahrree watched the three distant wolf pups playing, she sighed in anticipation. She named them Salema, Lek, and Sewzi/Cambo. In her mind was a list she’d created when Salema was born, and it was titled, “Getting to my dozen children.” She loved to think of the future when she’d sit in the garden weeding, and would be able to count a dozen grandchildren and nieces and nephews around her. So far the first two places were check-marked, and the third would be in less than half a year.

  And then Mahrree burst out laughing because she could, because no one was there to hear her, and because she remembered what happened with Lilla and Peto right after Jaytsy’s announcement.

  Lilla had started to snigger at the name Cambozola, even though her older sister elbowed her.

  “Cambozola,” Calla said, with excessive diplomacy. “That’s an . . . interesting name, Deck.”

  Deck bobbed his head. “Naming children after their ancestors was a tradition on my father’s side. He was named after four ancestors. Probably more, I’m not sure. But I think we could probably just call him Cambo. Or Zola? Probably not Bozo, though—”

  “Definitely not Bozo,” Jaytsy agreed, and she noticed her brother chortling none-too-subtly. “Peto, it’s not as if we don’t have a few unusual names in our line.”

  “True, true,” he admitted. “But someone’s daughter is really going to hate them someday if you all keep up this tradition.”

  Lilla frowned at him. “Why?”

  “Didn’t you hear the name of Lek’s wife?”

  “No.”

  “Lorixania!” he told her, with an accompanying sneer. “If Lek’s here, someone’s got to call a daughter Lorixania. The poor girl won’t even be able to spell her own name until she’s twelve.”

  Lilla tipped her head thoughtfully. “Could do like Deck will with Cambozola. Call her something shorter, like Lori. Lori Shin doesn’t sound bad—”

  She stopped herself too late.

  Everyone in the room stared at either her or Peto, and both of them turned purple.

  The loud silence that followed was soon filled with muffled snorts and concealing coughs, and Mahrree glanced over to Perrin who wore the most pained of smiles.

  Even though Deck whispered it to Jaytsy, everyone heard him. “We weren’t even discussing baby names until we were married.”

  Mahrree, high on her perch on the temple, laughed. She sat up—yes, she dared to do that much by herself—and turned to face the north where her husband was somewhere in the dense thickets dragging logs and shifting rock. “Sometime we’re going to have to discuss this,” she announced. “So I’m practicing now. Perrin, it’s going to happen. The Trovatos see it, as do the Zenoses and Briters—”

  Then, remembering, she pivoted to the east. “By the way, you Zenoses and Briters, you’re supposed to be keeping a close eye on those two while we’re away. Remind Lilla she’s there to take care of her sister and nephew, not hide in the barn with my son who really should know better.”

>   Turning back to where Perrin may have been, and giggling that she was talking out loud and enjoying it, she continued, “Now, Perrin. Brace yourself. I give them only until the end of Snowing Season. By the first of next year, I’m sure they’ll be married and moving into our house, so start planning our addition, and yes—you may make the walls extra thick so you can’t hear the newlyweds singing to each other at night.”

  Laughing, she turned back to watch her wolf family take a nap in the trees.

  In just a few more days she’d have to head back to where time existed again, and so did tasks and projects which she loved . . .

  Except for one.

  She’d put off thinking about it, but at odd moments it popped into her head—the history text of the world she was writing for the university. Calla had been such an excellent assistant, finding journals and conducting interviews and giving suggestions for revisions, that Mahrree knew she never would’ve been able to do it without her.

  They had only one chapter left to finish before little Lek arrived, and it was the toughest of them all: how Mahrree and Perrin Shin “changed the world.”

  One always dreams it’d be in the best of ways, Mahrree thought. Not in ways wherein a new set of laws are named after and because of you.

  It was the balance of how much to record and how much to ignore for the chapter that was vexing Mahrree, along with having to relive in her head the lies the Administrators spread about her and Shem. No matter how much she told herself it didn’t matter what the world thought, it did. She hadn’t realized before how hard it was to let go of certain aspects of the world, such as its opinion of her. The world had dug its claws deep into her, and she couldn’t pry herself free of it.

  So she’d gone to her rector for suggestions, and Bustani, who seemed to know some of the story, likely from Gleace, recommended that Mahrree plow through that chapter with only the bare details, then burn all of her notes from it, a page at a time, to watch it all vanish in front of her.

  She would do that, along with Calla who had been exceptionally tactful about the entire thing, so that Calla could witness the infamy of her husband and her new best friend dissolve into ashes.

  For now, Mahrree shoved all of that away, because she was in a place where time didn’t matter, and no one had ever heard of a chairman or any administrators. They thought their influence was so great, but it didn’t even extend past the narrow desert. The wolves and byson and trees and carved stone didn’t care one lick about any of them.

  And because of that, and for a few thousand other reasons, Mahrree loved Terryp’s land.

  In the north she heard a horse approaching, and she turned to see Perrin on Clark, riding hard for the temple. He was shouting something, but she didn’t understand him until he got closer.

  “They found it! They found it! Pillars! Carvings! Walls! Massive!”

  That almost got Mahrree to her feet, but instead she leaned over the side and called down, “Where?”

  He reined Clark to a stop, tethered him, and started climbing up the stone blocks. “I’ll tell you,” he panted, “only if you agree to go with me there.”

  Already she knew what her answer would be, but she was never one to make things easy. “That means getting back on the old mare.”

  “Yes,” he said, hefting himself over a section where the stairs had crumbled away, “but it also means that you, Mrs. Terryp-wanna-be, would get to really play Terryp.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Professor Stone wants you and your papers and charcoal so that you can make the first rubbings of the never-before-seen engravings.”

  He must have heard her excited gasp, still six levels above him, because he looked up and grinned. “Got you with that, didn’t I? Thought you wouldn’t be able to say no. We’ll watch the shadows disappear here, then we’ll head north to help finish digging and excavating. You should be able to get the first rubbings by dinnertime.”

  Mahrree bounced on her knees in excitement. “I can’t believe it! Are there words?”

  “As far as they could see, but none that look like ours. Perhaps yet another new language we won’t be able to decipher. But some interesting shapes, nonetheless.”

  Mahrree’s hands trembled in anticipation. She might not even need the mare. She might just run—or even fly—there all by herself.

  But first . . . she glanced up at the sky. “The sun’s almost at its zenith, and the shadows are diminishing. Hurry, Perrin!”

  “Working on it,” he grunted as he heaved himself over another massive stone.

  Soon Perrin pulled himself to the top of the pyramid and easily stood up. The height didn’t bother him. And when he was near, it didn’t bother Mahrree either. She stood up too, but stayed close to him.

  He glanced over the edge.

  “We have another minute, I’m guessing,” Mahrree said. “So . . . if you wanted to . . .?” She raised her eyebrows at him.

  A little nervously, but more excitedly, he looked around. “True, no one around for miles . . . I suppose I could.”

  “Do it,” she prodded him. “You know you want to. Do it now!”

  He grinned at her, turned to face the southeast, and stretched out his arms. “I’M HERE, IDUMEA!” he bellowed as Mahrree laughed. “COME GET ME! I DARE YOU! WE’RE STILL ALIVE, SO HA!”

  Perrin elbowed her. “Do it—shout at the world!”

  “I can’t,” she said, giggling nervously. “I’m too embarrassed.”

  “By what?! Come on! Then I’ll do it for you. GUESS WHAT? MAHRREE’S RIGHT HERE, NICKO MAL! YOU DIDN’T DESTROY US! WE WON!”

  Mahrree was able to add a loud cheer to that. Laughing, they peered over the edges.

  “And . . . there it goes,” Perrin nodded, watching the shadows of the pyramid shrink back along the edge.

  Mahrree checked the other side. “Gone on this side, too. So, what do you think the significance of this day was for this civilization?” she asked him, glancing up at the sky to see the sun directly overhead, bathing them in scorching heat.

  “Well, since Terryp wasn’t here in the Weeding Season, he assumed it was some kind of planting signal. But it’s far too late in the year for that. He knew about history, but wasn’t too keen on the movements of the cosmos,” Perrin said. He glanced over another edge while Mahrree checked the opposite side.

  “Perfect alignment!” Mahrree announced. “I like the guides’ theory that this was either the day the Creator brought them to the world, or left them. Probably the same day, three full years apart, just like with our ancestors. They wanted a symbol of Him to always remember Him and His days.”

  Perrin nodded. “There may be other meanings, but I agree—I like that one the most. All of the carvings leading up to here suggest the presence of a Great Being teaching the people.” Then he smiled. “There’s also another significance for this now, but only for us. And because of that, I’m glad we’re alone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know?”

  She shook her head.

  “Seriously?”

  She gave him an apologetic look.

  “Lost track of time, didn’t you. Well then, let me be the first to say it—Happy 20th Anniversary, Mrs. Shin. I hope Terryp’s land was all you ever expected it to be.”

  She grinned and stretched on tiptoe to kiss him. “Everything always exceeds my expectations when I’m with you. You just have that kind of effect on me.”

  Perrin narrowed his eyes at her. “I think I said something like that to you when we got engaged, didn’t I?”

  “See? I do remember a few things, such as, you’re the most perfect man in the world, and I love and adore you more than words can say.”

  “It’s amazing the kind of power you still have over me.”

  She chuckled.

  “You know,” he said, “this was what I wanted for us. When I first started making the copies of Terryp’s map? I wanted Mal to open up the area, so that I coul
d bring you here for our 20th anniversary.”

  “I remember that conversation,” she said. “You promised to not take me to the boring, old seashore, but to the exciting, old ruins.”

  “It didn’t quite work out as I originally planned—”

  “When has anything in our lives worked out as we planned?” she reminded him.

  He chuckled. “You have a point, there. But we made it, Mahrree. We made it anyway. The Creator got us here in a different way, but now that I think about it,” he glanced around at the expansive plains and ruins, all for just them, and sighed in sheer contentment. “His plan was a lot better than what I came up with. You know, it was Him who reminded me in the temple that our 20th was rapidly coming up.”

  Mahrree laughed. “Good thing He remembers everything. I can hardly wait to see what the next twenty years bring us,” she said. “Or thirty! I suggest we come here again, for our 30th, 40th and 50th anniversaries. I’ll make some more predictions today and we can see how accurate I was. First prediction, in another twenty years we’ll agree that our lives have been more perfect than we ever could have imagined.”

  Perrin laughed. “We’ll be sixty-eight. Do you realize that?”

  “Yes, I do. It’ll be harder to make it here for our 60th, I suppose, when we’re eighty-eight.”

  “We better hope we have lots of grandsons who can carry us here, then.”

  “I think we’ll have more than enough,” she said. “And Perrin, I didn’t really forget. While I did lose track of time, I never forgot what today was.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he put his around her waist. “Happy Anniversary, Mr. Shin!”

  “It always is.”

  Chapter 37--“. . . and we all lived happily ever after.”