by Trish Mercer
The next morning at school, Mahrree's young students bragged how she had decided the cat and dog issue once and for all. She was impressed they carefully avoided discussing any other points of the evening.
But her teenage class in the afternoon was uncharacteristically silent. During their mid-lesson break, Teeria came shyly up to her. "Miss Mahrree, I hope no one ruined anything for you last night. I've asked around and no one admits to writing that last debate suggestion. We don't know who did it."
Mahrree squeezed her arm. "Thank you for your efforts. I know none of you wrote that. And I also don't believe there was anything to be ruined, so no worries there, all right?"
Teeria looked disappointed, but smiled and nodded before returning to the other girls who anxiously awaited her report.
After school Mahrree went to the markets and quickly bought enough provisions for several days. To make sure she missed Edgers' looks of apology, amusement, or pity, she didn't make eye contact with anyone. She purchased enough food that she could hide in her house until the memory of the last debate was overshadowed by someone else doing something ridiculous or ridicule-worthy.
Then she made good on her word last night and spent the rest of the day catching up on her students' work.
Except that took less than two hours, because the parents did all of the grading and reviewing.
So she found herself that evening sitting at her table in her kitchen after dinner wondering what the night's entertainment would be, before realizing she couldn't show her face in public for at least a few weeks. Instead she looked around her the bookshelves that lined the dining area and leaked over to the gathering room. She needed to gain more knowledge before the next debate that . . .
. . . would most likely never happen.
Brushing aside that discouraging thought, she came up with an idea to keep her mind occupied. She walked over to a shelf and pulled down the copy of The Writings she had since she was a child, along with a stack of blank pages. She tried to read The Writings at least once a year, but had never done so as intently as her father. Now it was time. Tonight she would take notes of the thoughts that came to her as she studied.
That should chase away any thoughts of . . . what's his name.
Page 1, verse 1:
We are all family.
It was always easy to recite the first line.
Verse 2.
We have always been a family.
We have always been progressing.
We have always been.
How was it that we have always been?
A thought came to her: What if you choose to not insist on understanding, but choose instead to just believe? Can you just accept that you had no beginning and have no end, but that you are now in the middle?
Mahrree wrote that down on her paper. She could understand 'middle.'
But I'm an adult, she thought. I should be able to understand all things by now. But then she considered, how much did Hycymum not yet understand? The six-year-olds in her class, how much did they not comprehend beyond the number one hundred?
Why should she be any different?
A new thought rushed through her and she wrote it down: I do not know what I do not know that I do not know.
The next morning when she read that again it still made sense, sort of. She'd spent three hours the night before studying-really studying-The Writings, and had five pages of notes to prove it. In the past she'd breeze through the more mundane descriptions of the first three years their people were in the world. But last night she finally began to see the first five hundred couples that came to the world, highly intelligent and innocent, as real people: her ancestors. She didn't know which specifically her "first parents" were-no one knew anymore-but they were there, somewhere.
And so Mahrree immersed herself in the comfort of their ancient world of 319 years ago, since her current world was quite discomforting.
The Creator had stayed with them for their first three years, teaching them everything they would need to know to be successful in their Test. He told them their lives would be unlike anything they had ever experienced before.
It would be glorious and terrifying.
They would find love and loneliness.
They would learn what they could become and what they already were.
It would not to be a test of theories and knowledge, but a test of application and will.
The Creator had promised the Test was designed to allow all to succeed. He'd even give them notes, show them the way, and provide a way for them to communicate with Him.
All would struggle. All would fail. Some would give up, declare the failures as signs that the Test was unfair and refuse to fix the errors of their ways.
But failure wasn't a fault of the Test, the Creator had told them. The Test, personalized for each who came to the world, may not be equal but it would always be fair. Failures didn't need to be permanent; they meant only that the lessons had not yet been learned correctly, and needed to be tried again until they were.
Mahrree always thought those words were the most comforting in The Writings.
There had even been some who had so little faith in their Creator that they refused to take the Test. Mahrree could never understand that. To not even try? How could one not even want to attempt the adventure, to explore this existence on a new world the Creator designed for them?
True, she had no memory of that life before. No one did. And that, according to The Writings, was the reason those who didn't want to try refused to come. They couldn't imagine the Creator would leave them enough clues, through whisperings or writings or miracles, to make the correct choices.
Mahrree found that tragic. So many people now didn't believe. It was almost as if those who didn't choose to come to the world-those who followed the one they now called the Refuser-had come nonetheless, intent on pulling away those who had once believed.
As Mahrree read the details of her ancestors' first weeks on this world, she put herself with them. She could almost see them as they discovered the wonder of grinding small bits of matter into a powder, mixing it with liquid, adding a rising agent, and then heating the combination into something that smelled wonderful and was called bread. What faith they must have had in the Creator to be the first to put it into their mouths!
She smiled as she considered how unusual it must have been to pull food from trees, from plants on the ground, and even from under the dirt, and then begin the cycle all over again by deliberately returning parts of the vegetation to the soil. She imagined that if the Creator told her to bury the pit of a peach, she would have raised her eyebrows at Him in surprise. She most likely would have done it, but wouldn't have had much faith in her meager gardening effort.
And it was such thoughts that troubled her and stopped her reading.
Would she have had as much faith as her ancestors? Imagine being the first woman to give birth to a baby! The Writings recorded she was taught all about the process by the Creator, as were all the other women expecting at the same time. But still, nothing could have been more bizarre and alarming than the stages of expecting-then delivering-the first child! Mahrree had known about the process since her cat gave birth to kittens when she was four years old, and still it seemed unreal.
Then again, what could have been more amazing than that first tiny baby? He must have been held by every set of arms in the world.
Other aspects of the first families' experiences were amusing. Mahrree loved reading about the ancestors' wonder at first smelting metals from rock. The Creator had to rein in their eagerness to keep them from burning every object they found, hoping to see what may be hiding deep inside.
Other ancestors were truly courageous. The man who first sat on a horse was one of Mahrree's heroes, since she would never voluntarily mount one. And his wife, who was the first to set a broken arm, was as equally gallant.
She read in wonder about the first five hundred families creating mel
odies, then chords, then instruments that were blown and strummed and beat to express those tones. She concluded that not only had the Creator chosen His bravest to begin the world, He also chose His most creative as well.
To express how one sees the world by stretching hides, then covering them with carefully placed colors derived from flowers and earth turned into liquids in order to create the first paintings must have required pure genius.
Mahrree also admired their writing. The Creator gave them language and then ideas for recording it, but allowed a few of the first ancestors to put all the suggestions together to devise their alphabet. What inspired the shapes of their words always intrigued Mahrree. She wished they had spent more time writing about how they created writing, then printing with wood blocks.
That was Mahrree's pattern for the next few weeks. She found herself in a race to finish The Writings before school let out for the Late Planting Season break. Some nights she spent four and five hours trying to get to know her ancestors, wishing she knew which of the names mentioned may have been her family line. She suspected the women who first wove together fibers from plants and sheep to replace animal skins must have been the ancestors of her mother. She imagined the history recorders and story tellers must have been directly linked to her father.
The night she came to the passage about the first guide, Hieram, sacrificing himself for the world's families to fight the growing rebellion in the land, she felt familiar tears of regret and gratitude. It was three years after the Creator had left them, and six years since He first placed them in the world. All had been well until six men decided they wanted to do things their own way. Even as his murderous brothers came at him, Hieram continued to shout about following the Creator's will for them.
Mahrree wondered, as everyone must have at some time, if she would have died as willingly as Guide Hieram. Would she give up her life trying to save her people from their own destruction? She hoped she would, but she suspected she would have hidden in a cave like everyone else. But perhaps she would have been brave enough to witness what happened and insist on recording the truth, as the next guide Clewus has done.
Some passages she read quickly, while others kept her rapt attention for an hour. She nearly forgot all about Captain Perrin Shin.
Nearly.
Sometimes she reflected on him, and instead of feeling pangs of loss at not seeing him lately, she felt an unexpected calm.
Each night she read the histories that the guides recorded and the miracles each saw in his day. Mahrree wondered why no one talked about current miracles. She assumed they still occurred, but that no one noticed them for what they were. She knew she felt the Creator's influence her life. Her father was gone, but she felt him near when she needed his guidance. Wasn't that miraculous?
She read about the conflicts of their people as they expanded and multiplied. Neighborhood arguments evolved into violent village debates. Those erupted into full-out battles which spilled into neighboring villages. Everything seemed to explode in the middle age of their history. Even knives became daggers that grew into swords. It seemed as populations exploded, so did their tempers and pride.
It wasn't as if one village battled with another to avenge a murder or the taking of someone's daughter. They came to blows over minor things. A missing sheep. A misunderstanding about a repair on a chimney. Three mugs of cream that weren't delivered on time.
Chaos over next to nothing.
But the damage done wasn't next to nothing. By the time the people reached one million, Querul the First, who named himself king in 190, vowed to control the growing violence. He believed that uniting the villages under his rule would unite their desires. But the forced unification only made the turmoil grow.
With sadness Mahrree read the accounts of the growing disputes and population, and finally the Great War that started in 195 that destroyed so much over the next five years. She'd always skimmed through those passages, but now with the fort in the village she felt she should try to understand the mindset of going to battle to force peace.
Three hours later she still didn't follow any of the logic.
As she read those passages, she wondered if Captain Shin could explain it to her, but she couldn't imagine ever asking him. Although she'd seen him in Rector Densal's congregation-and the rector had apologized copiously to Mahrree on Holy Day after the fifth debate-she hadn't spoken again to Perrin.
Captain Shin.
He did the same as she did the last two Holy Days: slipped into a back bench unnoticed just as the meeting started. They were always on opposite sides of the hall, and she glanced over at him only three or four times each Holy Day.
But she never caught him looking at her.
One afternoon Mahrree stared at The Writings, her entertainment every night for the past two and half weeks. She tried to imagine a way to approach the captain and ask him a question or two, but she couldn't think of anything that wouldn't have sounded contrived. She came to a depressing conclusion that day.
Her first real romance was over before it had even started.
---
Captain Shin stared at the smashed nib of his quill and winced. It was the third quill he'd destroyed that afternoon. He looked down at the parchment and made a face. He'd have to rewrite the entire second page of his report. The huge blotted out section, and the ferocity with which he had blotted it out, gouged a hole through the thick parchment and stained the large oak desk underneath.
It was the word "armory" that did it.
He started writing "armory," but embarrassingly it turned into something else. That's when he set out to obliterate the mistake to make sure no one saw that her name had leaked into his writing.
Again.
He rubbed his forehead in frustration and looked out the large windows of the command tower to the west. The sun wouldn't be setting for at least another hour. He had to eliminate the distraction. Commanders of forts facing dangers of invasion couldn't afford to be so preoccupied.
He tossed the ruined quill on the desk, put on his cap, and headed out of the command office into the large forward office.
"Lieutenant, I'm just-" He stopped short when he realized Karna wasn't alone. He was looking over some pages with Sergeant Major Wiles. That Captain Shin didn't hear the slender old man, newly assigned to the fort, come up the stairs was also evidence that he was far too unfocused.
"Captain," the sergeant major nodded with a sly smile revealing a few missing teeth in his craggy mouth.
"We're just going over the progress reports, sir," Karna held them out to him. "Did you want to review them?"
"Later, men. I, uh, there's some business that I need to attend to in the village. I'll finish the report to Idumea in the morning. I know I said I'd be here all evening, but there being pressing matters . . ." He didn't know how to end his rambling.
Wiles smiled gappily. "We're on schedule, Captain. The High General will be pleased with our progress. Go on, take care of those matters."
Karna smirked and looked down at the pages in his hand.
"Yes, thank you. Hold down the fort, men." Captain Shin started down the stairs.
"Sir," the sergeant major called down after him. "Would you like me to get someone to repair the two holes in your office wall, or do you suspect there may be a third joining them tonight?"
Shin stopped halfway down the stairwell and closed his eyes. He'd forgotten both of the soldiers had been at that last debate, his new sergeant major arriving just the evening before. Then both of them had been in the forward command office to hear when his frustration with the results of that last debate manifested itself with another fist through the planking.
He massaged his left hand, the gashes finally healed over.
The sounds of Karna snorting a laugh into his sleeve traveled down to him.
Shin answered nothing, but continued down the stairs.
"Good luck, son!" Wiles called after him. "He's gonna need it," he mutter
ed loudly to the lieutenant who snorted again.
Shin marched out of the receiving area of the command tower and out into the busy compound of the fort. He automatically returned the salutes of several soldiers making their ways from the mess hall to their evening shifts. Shin headed straight for his quarters, taking off his cap as he entered his room.
"Not in the uniform," he murmured as he unbuttoned his blue jacket.
---
It was the 39th Day of Planting, just before the weeklong school break, and Mahrree saw she had only four pages left in The Writings. That filled her with satisfaction at completing her goal, and disappointment that the end had come so quickly.
Tonight she would read about the decision of Guide Pax and King Querul to divide the people to establish peace-which didn't happen-and she would read Pax's last prophecies recorded just before he disappeared. One of the assistants of Guide Pax left some notes in a bag that was found when the king's search parties went looking for them. The notes mentioned traitors among them, but little else to describe what happened.
Mahrree knew it was useless to guess, but she couldn't help wonder what happened to the Guarders once they left. Where exactly did they go?
To the north, the violent forests and the massive mountains were impassable-everyone knew that.
To the east and south was the great salty sea as far as the eye could see. Only a few brave men ventured into those waters in their canoes to fish.
To the west were yet more dense forests, and beyond, in the northwest, a massive desert that bordered the village of Sands.
As vast as the sphere where the Creator placed them may have been, it was obvious that only one small segment of it could be inhabited. The rest was just there for . . .?
Mahrree shrugged, the thought too big for her mind to comprehend.
And why had the Guarders been quiet for so long, but now attacking? It seemed reasonable that they needed the livestock and goods and perhaps even the gold and silver they stole, but where did it all go?
A sudden thought entered her mind, bearing the mark of her father. She pondered it for a moment, until her chest grew hot and her breathing increased. A new understanding began to form in her mind.
She shoved back her chair and raced to the bookshelf to pull down several texts of history she used to teach her students. She plopped them on the eating table and flipped the pages, already knowing where to find the information. On a piece of paper she made two columns, and under the heading of the first column she wrote a number. Then she turned a few more pages and wrote another number under the second column. For ten minutes she did that, flipping pages, double-checking the dates, and skimming the text for additional insights. She found a few more, made additional notations, then sat down heavily on a chair.
It was so obvious that she was stunned that she-and no one else-had never noticed it before. But there it was: the Guarder attacks had two distinct patterns. The first were their major attacks on the villages, always just one year and a season minus a week after a new king took power. Just after he rearranged his advisors and told the world that he could, indeed, keep them safe. And always, the Guarders were repulsed and the new king appreciated for his ability to stop a full-out invasion.
Then there was a second pattern, more subtle, but still amazingly coincidental. Outbreaks of rebellion in the world were few and far between, especially since the terror-filled days of Querul the Second and Third. But they did happen, seven recorded times since the Great War. Each time the village or region was complaining about poor treatment by the king, always-always-they were hit by Guarders within six weeks of their uprisings.
About eleven years ago, when Mahrree was a student in Mountseen, a riot occurred in Sands after King Oren levied a high tax on glass sold from there. A Guarder raid hit the large desert village, destroying much of the glass-making shops.
The professor of her history class speculated that the Guarders may have thought that Sands wanted to further rebel against the king, so likely they were coming to join with them. But the villagers mistook the Guarders' intentions and attacked them instead, resulting in so much violence.
But Mahrree had been suspicious, even then. To her the attack seemed more like a vengeful act, rather than a mere misunderstanding. And now, as she traced the timing of subsequent and earlier attacks, the pattern was clear, albeit completely unbelievable.
"A new king. A show of Guarder force just over a year later," she murmured at the numbers on the page. "The king and the army put it down. An uprising by the citizenry, then a Guarder attack . . ."
She bit her lip in concentration and disgust.
"Not at all coincidental, is it? Guarders weren't coming to show their support for the rebellious citizenry. They were coming to punish. Because they were sent."
As soon as she muttered the words out loud, it was as if all the warmth in the room was sucked out.
"And who sent them?" she asked the coldness around her.
I'll give you one guess.
Mahrree closed her eyes in fury. "The kings! Somehow they controlled the Guarders, all this time!" She looked around, panicked, as if anyone might have been able to hear her words. Her house was quiet, but still a heavy lump grew in her belly. "Father, might that be true?"
Remember, my darling daughter, sometimes the world really is out to get you.
She couldn't do anything but stare at the dates and notations on the paper in front of her. The possibility of kings staging the attacks on their own people was simply overwhelming.
"But why?"
You've already pieced most of it together.
Mahrree nodded slowly. "To show they were in power, that no one could prevail against them. To remind the citizenry who's really in charge."
Very good.
Another thought came to her, in a sideways motion slamming against her mind, and it truly confused her.
"But . . . not all of them. Not all of the Guarders? So what does that mean? Some are entrepreneurial thugs? Setting up their own independent raids at discount rates?" she asked with mystified sarcasm.
She felt her father smile, but he answered her nothing. There were no more answers to give her, yet. But that was all right. She wasn't sure she could have handled any more anyway.
"So the attacks were convenient," she whispered to the air. "But now, the kings are gone. We have the Administrators, who have improved and changed so many things . . ."
The air around her developed a cynical quality. Her father was still there, creating a distinct edginess in Mahrree. Cephas Peto was the most thoughtful, gentle, intelligent man she'd ever known, but he also had a strong skeptical side to him that occasionally arose when he told his daughter that things were just not quite right, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
The air around her now was thicker and heavier than a humid Weeding day afternoon, filled with his doubt.
"Father, what do I do?"
Nothing now. Just know. Just watch. But do nothing.
Mahrree wrung her hands with worry, fury, and fascination. "It was you, wasn't it? Placing those suspicious thoughts about the Administrators in my mind during the debates? Making me say such things? Antagonizing Captain Shin?"
The cynical heaviness in the room lifted slightly, replaced by an apologetic yet amused air.
"Why did you do that? Do you realize how much trouble I could have caused?" She couldn't help but smile. Her father must have completely enjoyed those debates. Nothing as scandalous had occurred since he argued that the sky was intrinsically black, and that all other color was merely an illusion.
"But you would never influence me beyond what would be sane and safe, would you?"
Something in the air came closer to her until it was a warm presence just above her heart, where she frequently felt her father.
"I thought you liked Captain Shin. But if you do," Mahrree whispered to her gathering room just beyond her eating table, "then why did you let me say such awful thin
gs to him? About the Administrators?"
If the cosmos could chuckle, it did.
Slowly the presence of her father slipped away, and the air in the room returned to its normal dry, cool Planting Season feel.
Mahrree stared down again at the dangerous page of dates and numbers. Maybe . . . maybe she wasn't the only person who looked at their history and made those connections. Others may have too, but didn't dare say anything. Or maybe they tried to, but someone like the Administrator of Loyalty knocked on the door and-
She picked up her notes and tossed them into warm ashes of the fireplace. A small fire flared up to consume the evidence. There was nothing-absolutely nothing-a simple teacher in Edge could do about any of that. Except to know, wait, and watch.
Mahrree sighed.
Maybe the Administrators were different. It had been over two years since they took power, and the latest hearsay was that Guarders had been spotted in several locations. The pattern was different this time. So maybe it was a genuine threat, and the presence of the fort was necessary. Perhaps the twenty-two administrators and their chairman did know more than one lone woman at the Edge of the World.
Mahrree grumbled to herself over that most aggravating idea.
She took a deep breath and looked again at the remaining pages of The Writings. Her stack of notes awaited her last entries. She closed her eyes to clear her thoughts of Administrators and Guarders and captains and anything else distracting. Even though she'd read the pages often, she was sure there was something new to learn, if only she-
There was a knock at the door, but she ignored it. She mischievously thought it was a Guarder coming to explain his side of the story, or maybe an Administrator who had already gathered the ashes of her notes. But she knew she'd never meet any of those stuffed red jackets since no one in the government ever bothered to travel all the way up to the Edge of the World. And she certainly wasn't about to head down to Idumea for a chat.
At the door was most likely someone telling her they were retrieving their goat that was nibbling the weeds in her yard-
The knocking came again.
She opened her eyes and, feeling a mixture of annoyance and amusement, decided it was one persistent Guarder. Hoping that whoever it was wouldn't take long, Mahrree reluctantly got up and went to the door. When she opened it she could only stare.
There stood a hulking man filling her doorway, dressed in black trousers and a tunic that matched his dark hair. For the briefest of terrifying moments, Mahrree did think it was a Guarder, until she noticed the man's worn brown leather jacket.
And the flowers wrapped appropriately in an old Administrative notice.
Mahrree couldn't move or speak.
It was Captain Perrin Shin.