The next three weeks were unlike anything the Shins, Edge, or the world had experienced before, which was why each morning Mahrree forced herself out of bed, a difficult daily ritual.
“I’m healthy enough that I can help,” she reminded her weak muscles. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she felt drained every day because of the pox, the extra work, or because her mother had died. Anyway, lying around didn’t help. Moving, however, did.
This morning Perrin was already up, judging by the sounds coming from the kitchen downstairs. He was trying to make breakfast again which Mahrree wholly appreciated but needed to prevent. In his earnestness to get her strong again, he’d cook more bacon than the entire neighborhood could consume, then wondered why she didn’t finish it all. Peto did his best, but even a growing teenager had his limits.
Mahrree dressed and made her way down the stairs to find Jaytsy putting on a battered straw hat which—may Joriana’s spirit forgive her—a few years ago was a pricey piece of art from the hat district of Idumea.
“I was just on my way out,” Jaytsy told her. “Porridge is ready, but I think Father’s adding sausage to it.”
Oh dear, was what Mahrree was tempted to say, but instead she smiled. “Thank you, all, for helping. I think I can manage from here on out now.”
“Good!” Peto said, coming out of his room. “Let’s just say that Father and Jaytsy don’t have Grandma Peto’s knack for cooking.”
Jaytsy glowered at him. “If Mother would let me have Grandmother’s recipe file, I might!”
“Later, I promise,” Mahrree told her. “I just need to organize it a bit. With so many loose pages, I’m afraid something will fall out of it if I don’t sort them all first.”
But Mahrree wasn’t worried about losing a recipe. She’d sent Jaytsy to her grandmother’s as soon as she was coherent enough to explain where the recipe file was hiding—in a false bottom of Hycymum’s underwear drawer. So exhausted was Mahrree that it took her a few minutes to understand why her children thought that description was funny.
Hycymum’s recipes were her most prized possession—probably the only thing Mahrree wanted of her mother’s, along with a few good serving forks and a wide platter—and Hycymum never wanted anyone else to have her recipes but her family.
And Mahrree knew why. Secured in the middle of them, between some seemingly mundane descriptions of how to use herbs that everyone else would likely skip over, was a fragile, ancient piece of parchment written in a small, careful hand over 130 years ago.
Mahrree couldn’t let even her husband or children know she had forbidden documents that were to have been handed over to King Querul, then to be destroyed—accidentally, of course—in that great fire. Mahrree had already memorized the document in the middle of the day when everyone was gone, feeling the force of ancestors, and wondering where she should secure it next.
And she really did want to sort the rest of the recipes. Hycymum was a wonderful cook, but why she thought “pork” and “pickles” should be clustered together, Mahrree couldn’t fathom.
“There she is, up and about!” Perrin boomed cheerily as he brought a big pot of something steaming from the kitchen and set it on the table.
“My, but you’re in a good mood,” she grinned. He’d been quite chipper for the last couple of days, ever since Versula Thorne left.
“The message arrived last night; she’s arrived in Idumea and therefore we’re all safe!” he informed them.
Jaytsy sighed in relief. “So I don’t have to worry about running into her at the market again, where she can tell me all about how sitting next to her dear Lemuel all day is boring, books were boring, and how she’d still prefer to have my company.”
Perrin nodded. “Nor do I have to hear her hint for any more dinner invitations—”
“And I’m so sorry I kept having relapses,” Mahrree sighed dramatically as her children snorted.
“Oh, yes,” her husband said soberly. “And it was quite convenient that I had to run home to check on you the day she discovered there are a couple of inns in the village that could have fed us—”
“Just the two of you,” Mahrree clarified. “I’m sure that’s what she was thinking when she invited you.”
“Yes, subtle,” he rolled his eyes. “Eating alone with another woman in public. And guess what just opened up again?”
“The dress shops?” Jaytsy said. “Not that I wished for the owners to get ill, but it was good timing so that Mrs. Thorne couldn’t take me to buy ‘something decent’.”
“It’s because she saw you wearing that in the market.” Mahrree gestured to Jaytsy’s dress, another Idumean one-of-a-kind pale blue linen sewn specifically for Joriana Shin, now with a few mud stains and the sleeves shortened by removing several inches of ruffles.
But since it was created by Kuman, neither Mahrree nor Jaytsy had any qualms about letting it become Jaytsy’s favorite battered work dress. Jaytsy had earlier torn off the ruffles in order to tie up tomato plants in a neighbor’s garden—a phrase Mahrree still wasn’t too sure of, but didn’t feel like showing her ignorance about.
Peto merely shrugged as he peered into the pot. “I don’t know what all of you are going on about. I never saw the woman.” He gave the porridge and sausage mix an experimental sniff and bobbed his head. He’d eat it. He’d eat anything.
“Well, of course you didn’t,” Mahrree said, scooping out the slop for Peto that reminded her of something she used to clean up in his changing cloths. “She had no interest in you, and since none of us have any interest in Idumea, I think we can forget all about Mrs. Versula Thorne.”
Something in Peto’s gray eyes darkened when Mahrree said that none of them had any interest in Idumea, but he dug into his breakfast anyway.
“So where are you off to this morning?” Mahrree asked brightly.
Peto recovered, swallowing down his breakfast. “Rector Yung said a family on the west side needs someone to look after their goats. It seems today I’m learning how to milk them,” he grimaced. “Yung had a lot of other tasks and families needing help on that list of his, but no . . . I’m destined to be a goat milker.”
Jaytsy took her seat next to him. “They have a baby, Peto. She needs the milk. If you want, you can join me in gathering eggs at five different houses, and weeding at the Briters’, and—”
“All right, all right,” he sighed loudly. “Yung’s got a list all ready for me. I don’t need to share in yours.”
Mahrree sighed as well. “It’s become Needing Season this year, instead of Weeding Season. So many people ill, so many needing help . . .”
“And here I thought I was lucky for being immune,” Peto grumbled.
“You are,” Perrin said sternly. “People aren’t just being ill, Peto; they’re dying, too. I have soldiers digging mass graves in the burial grounds to accommodate them all. If this continues we may lose up to ten percent of the village. You can certainly milk a goat or two, and learn a few more tasks.”
“I know,” Peto murmured apologetically. “I was just—”
“—being your usual, obnoxious self, I know,” Perrin said, a bit calmer. “I was like you at your age, and I wished I hadn’t been.”
“Me too,” Mahrree confessed.
Peto looked up at them. “So I’ve inherited this? Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“And today,” Mahrree announced, “I’ll try to get my mother’s house in order.”
Her husband winced. “That sounds like a lot of work, Mahrree.”
She shook her head. “I already took what I wanted. I was just going to throw open the doors and let the neighborhood have what they wanted.”
“A lot of those old ladies are still sick, though,” Jaytsy pointed out. “I think Grandma Peto infected a third of her friends.”
“She did,” Mahrree agreed sadly. “I’ll check with them to see which ones want her collection of carved painted bugs, who might want her stack of cloth scraps—may be a riot for that—who wants to claim
her dish cloths—”
“First best, second best, third best . . .” Peto murmured.
Mahrree exhaled, realizing it did sound like a lot of work.
“Some people sell it all,” Jaytsy suggested.
“But we don’t need to take anyone’s silver,” Mahrree told her. “We have enough. Let others enjoy all the things my mother felt necessary to acquire over the years. I have no problem giving it away.”
“And I thank you,” Perrin said as he served himself breakfast, “that you’re not bringing home her collection of porcelain purple chickens that whistle when you blow into them.”
“We’re all thankful for that!” Peto declared.
Perrin shook his head sadly. “I never had the heart to tell her that chickens don’t whistle. And aren’t purple.” He hesitated and turned to Jaytsy. “They’re not, right?”
She giggled. “How is that my parents can be so smart and so ignorant at the same time?”
“I know,” Peto mumbled as he swallowed his breakfast. “Chickens whistle all the time. Parents know nothing . . .”
---
Jaytsy hurried over to the Briters after breakfast to get an early start on thinning the carrots before the day grew too hot; she’d take care of Yung’s list of families requesting assistance later.
When she approached the Briters’ farm she noticed unusual activity. Mr. Briter was hitching their horses to their wagon, and Mrs. Briter was rushing to put a basket in the back.
Jaytsy broke into a run to reach them. “What’s happened? Where are you going?”
Sewzi Briter set down the basket and turned to Jaytsy, distraught. “It’s our son,” she said tearfully. “We received word late last night that he’s been taken with the pox. Mr. Briter’s brother and his wife have been tending to him, but Jaytsy, they don’t think he’s improving.” She wiped away a few tears, and Jaytsy put a comforting arm around her.
“I’ll pray that he’ll be fine,” she said. “If my mother can beat it, surely your son can. Just don’t worry, Mrs. Briter.”
Cambozola Briter smiled at her as he finished adjusting a strap on one of the horses. “That’s what I keep telling her, Miss Jaytsy. Maybe she’ll believe you.”
“I’ll take care of the farm while you’re gone,” Jaytsy promised.
“Oh, you sweet girl.” Sewzi shook her head. “But it’s impossible for you to do alone. If you could just keep the fields irrigated—it’s been so dry lately. And thin out the carrots, and maybe harvest the beans and peas, then . . . the rest can just wait until we return.” She looked over at the massive farm and cringed, realizing how overgrown it could become in just a week.
“Don’t you worry,” Jaytsy assured her. “I’ll get some help from the fort—they eat this food, they better help take care of it. And I’ll even draw pictures to make sure they pull the right things. What about the cattle?” She hoped they wouldn’t ask if her father could assist.
“Spoke to a rancher west of here this morning,” Cambozola told her. “He has some laborers that will tend to them and the chickens.”
Jaytsy nodded. “Then go take care of your son. I’ll take care here.”
“I believe you will!” Sewzi said, and rushed back into the house to get their traveling bag.
Cambozola sidled over to Jaytsy, as if nervous to be near a young woman. “Miss Jaytsy, Sewzi would trust her gardens only to someone whom she feels truly has ‘brown fingers.’ I’ve never seen her put so much faith into someone so young. Thank you. She’d normally never leave her plants in Weeding Season, but after losing my mother last year, and our home in Moorland—” He paused to clear his throat. “We just can’t bear to next lose our only boy,” he whispered. “Too much loss . . .”
Surprised by his soberness, Jaytsy squeezed his arm. “Thank you for your confidence. I promise you’ll both come back to find everything well. And I hope your son will be well, too.”
Cambozola quickly wiped his face and patted Jaytsy awkwardly on her shoulder. “Such a good girl,” he mumbled.
His wife came bounding out the back door, bag in hand, and tears streaking down her face. Jaytsy gave Sewzi one last hug and a brave smile.
“You’ll be back in no time, and he’ll be fine as soon as he sees you again!”
---
Knock-knock . . . knock-knock-knock.
A trap door. Right below his desk. Perrin could open it, slip down, fall to the ground thirty feet below, but it would be worth a broken leg to avoid saying the words—
“Come in.”
The door opened.
Even with his pocked face Thorne had a way of looking dashing, polished, and completely un-soldier-like. Soldiers, when not on some ridiculous parade, should have a little dirt smudged on their faces, a bit of sweat on their brow, and a scent like horses and work.
But Thorne always had a strangely faint odor of something purple, like an older woman’s hair. Just another thing that was so wrong about the boy.
“Colonel Shin!”
“You’re up, I see,” Perrin tried to say airily, but it came out as light as an anvil.
Thorne didn’t notice. “Yes, sir! My mother says it was touch and go for a while, but here I am. Cheated death, twice in one year.”
Perrin’s shoulders tensed. Thorne was never in any real danger, but that’s not how Versula Thorne chose to see it.
Although things were touch and go. Versula always had a way of finding and touching Perrin, and he found ways of quickly going.
And as for cheating death? Death just couldn’t bear taking him yet. The Creator didn’t have any room for someone like him in Paradise, and the Refuser likely wanted the sniveling boy to torment Perrin for a few more years.
“What can I do for you, Captain?”
“Sir, it’s what I can do for you,” Thorne leaned on the desk, cautiously. “I overheard—”
It was remarkable how many things he “overheard.” He must have had several pairs of ears around the compound.
“—that your daughter is requesting assistance in a nearby field? Some passing soldiers brought in the message that the owners left and the fields need tending to.”
Perrin must have been steaming for as quickly as he felt his blood boil and rise.
“I hereby volunteer to help her plant plants! Or whatever.”
“Weed,” Perrin corrected him.
Thorne squinted. “They plant weeds? Why?”
At any other moment that would have struck him as humorous. But he never felt like smiling when the captain was around.
“They pull out the weeds, Captain. They just call it ‘weeding’ to be brief. Obviously you’ve never done the job before.”
“But I can learn, Colonel. Surely you can see that,” he said with his thin smile rooted in place.
“This isn’t a time to learn, Captain. We need experienced men who can find and quickly remove the most pernicious weeds, and we can afford to send only two for a couple of hours each day. Besides,” Perrin was grateful for the sudden recollection, “the surgeon said that those recovering from the pox should limit their time outdoors. The intense heat and sun would further dehydrate you. Now, we wouldn’t want that to happen, would we?” He put on his own tight smile.
Thorne nodded, disappointed. “I forgot. Sir, would you please tell Miss Jaytsy that I volunteered? That I wanted to assist her?”
Perrin exhaled. “Oh, I’ll tell her, all right.”
---
When Jaytsy went home for midday meal, she told her mother what happened with the Briters.
“Those poor people,” Mahrree sighed. “I’ll help you with irrigation,” she said, although she wasn’t sure how she could since dealing with the small mob that came to empty her mother’s house that morning had left her needing a nap.
“I’m not sure you should, Mother. You’re rather pale again.”
“Thank you for noticing.”
The door to the washing room opened and Peto came out, his hands rubb
ed red. “Well I did some chicken coop work this morning after all. It doesn’t seem they could do such foul things, but really—don’t let them fool you. They’re much more than just ‘cluck.’” He inspected his finger nails and shuddered. “Please tell me we’re not having scrambled eggs or cold chicken today.”
“Fresh greens, Peto, and barley bread with goat cheese,” Mahrree assured him.
Peto sat down at the table. “I guess I’ll tell you the atrocities of goats after we’ve finished eating.”
“So let me guess,” Mahrree sat at the table with him, “added to the list of things you don’t want to be when you grow up, under ‘soldier’ is ‘farmer’?”
“Goat herder, chicken rancher—or whatever they call it—sheep catcher—”
“Shepherd!” Jaytsy giggled.
“Yeah, that,” Peto said, taking a massive bite of bread. “Pig gatherer, cattle chaser, dog grower, horse teacher—”
“I’m seeing a pattern,” Mahrree said.
“I’ll eat it, but I won’t take care of it,” Peto decided.
“Eat dogs and horses, Peto?” Jaytsy cringed.
“I won’t eat them, but I certainly don’t enjoy touching them. I’ll just find me a nice job doing . . .” He scratched his head.
“His handwriting is atrocious,” Mahrree said to her daughter, “so he can’t do anything with scribing or writing. That rules out quite a few careers.”
“And even though he’s nearly as tall as me now, he’s still as skinny as green bean,” Jaytsy pointed out. “So that rules out anything requiring muscle, like blacksmithing.”
“Carpentry,” Mahrree added.
“Piping—” Jaytsy continued.
“Hey!” Peto exclaimed. “Father said I’m developing muscle!”
“—basket weaving.”
“Oh, ha-ha, Jayts.”
“You could be a teacher, like me and my father,” Mahrree suggested.
“You mean, ‘my father and me,’” said Peto smugly.
“See?” Mahrree beamed. “You love correcting and ridiculing people. You’d be perfect as a teacher of teenage boys.”
Peto and Jaytsy laughed, and Mahrree thought nothing ever sounded so wonderful.
“What’s going on in here?” they heard a deep voice boom from the kitchen. A moment later Perrin came through the door. “Eating? Laughing? Did I authorize this?”
No, Mahrree thought; Now everything’s wonderful. “What are you doing home?” she asked him as he dropped his cap on the table.
“Just came by for a moment. Jayts, I got your message from the soldiers you stopped. So the Briters actually left?”
Jaytsy nodded. “They were very concerned about their son. I’ve never seen them so upset.”
Perrin sighed and sat down at the table, taking the bread out of Peto’s hands and ignoring his protests. “They’ve experienced a lot of loss this past year. I can understand their fear.”
“So can you spare a few soldiers to help with the farm?”
“I can give you only two, for a few hours each afternoon,” he said apologetically. “We have so many men down, others are helping with the village . . . thank the Creator we have no Guarders to contend with right now.”
“Indeed,” Mahrree sighed. “I do every day.”
“It should be enough,” Jaytsy said, just a little worried. “I was hoping to keep the weeds from taking over too much. The soldiers can get the larger ones, I suppose.”
“There was a third volunteer,” Perrin said, reluctantly. “He overheard somehow.”
Jaytsy swallowed. “Who?”
“Captain Thorne.”
Peto grimaced. “Ew. That’s not what a garden needs—thorns!” He looked at his family, wondering why they weren’t laughing.
His sister and father were studying each other, and Mahrree watched Jaytsy, trying to read her response.
“I agree,” said Perrin. “I don’t think he’s ever set foot on a farm before in his life. Nor will he, if I can help it.”
---
That evening Mahrree put away a book that had been sitting in Perrin’s study and paused as she looked at the bookshelf. She glanced around, then pulled out her recently inherited, “Embellishments of the Ages,” from her mother. It was one of the few books Hycymum owned, and it was filled with drawings of how to add unnecessary extras to pillows, blankets, clothing, ceilings, walls . . .
Mahrree opened the book and it naturally fell open to parchments she recently secreted there.
The family lines.
Mahrree licked her lips, glanced around again, and sat down in the chair behind Perrin’s work desk.
There were two copies of family lines. One was her mother’s, which had been first written by her great-great-grandmother Kanthi. It was her and her husband Viddrow Eno’s family lines, all the way back to the first families.
Mahrree had made a copy of it herself, back when Peto was a baby, and sighed in delight at the fading original which was now hers to keep secret and safe. Her chest bubbled with heat when she read again the names of Kanthi’s husband Viddrow Eno, and his older brother Barnos Eno who never married. Their parents were Huldah and Boskos Eno. In 200, when the Great War ended and the Guarders made their presence known, the brothers were 25 and 26 years old; Kanthi, a new bride, was 24 when she made the illegal copy of family lines and secured them away on this expensive piece of parchment her husband had brought her.
Mahrree pored over the lines of names and dates which eventually converged again three more generations back—they had been distant cousins—to see that both Kanthi and Viddrow’s first parents were . . . not Guide Hierum and his wife.
Oh, it was vain to wish they were, Mahrree knew, to hope she had a trickle of the Great Guide’s blood in her. But maybe one of the other family lines, which records she didn’t have, might trace back to them. Still she smiled when she saw the names of Cato and Gaia, one of the first five hundred couples. There were no last names at the beginning, and she wasn’t even entirely sure which name was male or female. Yet being able to run her finger lightly over the fading ink of their names—people who knew the Creator personally—filled her with such energy and joy that she didn’t dare do it too often.
Below Kanthi’s hand was the sloppy but still legible writing of Livia Eno, recording her and her husband Kew’s names. Mahrree was intrigued that Livia—Kanthi’s daughter-in-law—continued the tradition, and Mahrree wondered if Kew knew about the record his mother and wife were secretly keeping.
Then the handwriting changed again to the flowing loopy style of their daughter, Sakal, Mahrree’s grandmother. Maybe her husband Nool Uchben didn’t know of this parchment either.
Then, added below, were the names of Hycymum, Cephas, and their daughter Mahrree. She was fairly certain her father knew of the family lines. He would have been most delighted to see it.
Mahrree opened the other copy, recorded in her hand and secreted away in her own recipes shortly after Peto was born. She had moved it to sit next to her mother’s after Jaytsy brought her the recipes from Hycymum’s house. The lines needed to be together.
Next to Mahrree’s name she had added Perrin, his parents Relf and Joriana, Relf’s parents Pere and Banu, Joriana’s mother Centia, her sister Tabbit and her husband Hogal Densal, then Pere’s parents Ricolfus and Hagnos then . . . the line was dead. So was Joriana’s.
Her own father Cephas’s line went only back to his parents, and while he had known details about his ancestors’ lines that he had shared with Mahrree, no other names were recorded.
But Mahrree had a suspicion. She knew of others in Edge that might be distantly related, and she suspected it was those families that fell ill. Something in their blood, likely.
But Perrin, and even Shem, had something different that preserved their families. If only more people still had recorded lines she could test her theory and might even be able to tell who else would fall ill, which certainly would have been helpful to the vill
age doctors.
However, the fact that she still possessed those family lines—and had made family lines for her husband—was an act that a generation ago would have been a major crime.
But now, who even remembered they had ancestors? Who still spoke about the first five hundred families, or the Creator who brought them to the world and taught them for three years before leaving them? None of it had been taught in the schools for a decade, and hardly anyone went to Holy Day services. As far as anyone remembered, the world began with the creation of Idumea. Rarely did anyone seem to recall that for six years before that, the world was guided by the Creator himself, then by the Great Guide Hierum.
The world was forgetting its roots, and Mahrree knew enough about plants that when the roots were neglected, the rest of it would die. But it seemed to be a slow, agonizing death.
Mahrree slipped the family lines back securely in the “Embellishments of the Ages,” the only book on the shelf she was sure that Perrin—nor anyone, for that matter—would never touch, and smiled sadly as she replaced it on the shelf.
---
“Jaytsy? What are you doing here?” Perrin turned from consulting the map of Edge on his office wall.
His daughter shut the door behind her, the weariness in her eyes obvious. “Father, the Briters have been gone for over a week now. I’m getting worried about them.” She bit her lip to keep it from shaking. “I can barely keep up on the weeding and harvesting . . . I don’t want to disappoint them . . . what if something awful happened? The farm’s so big . . .”
Perrin wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, Jayts—”
She melted into his chest and softly cried into his blue jacket. “They should have been back by now! And we have to keep the farm going, or the fort won’t have food—”
“Shhh,” he said as he stroked her dark ponytail. “Don’t fret. I received a message from Yordin at Mountseen just this morning. They’ve quarantined the entire village—no one in or out—for the next few days because the outbreak’s so bad. In fact, the message was written on paper, wrapped around a stone, then thrown at the messenger service’s door just to avoid touching anyone. The Briters are likely fine, just momentarily trapped. They should be able to leave in three days, be back to helping you in four. All right?”
Jaytsy sniffed and wiped her face. “All right. I can keep it up for four more days.”
---
Four days later, Perrin surprised his family again by walking into the house at midday meal, and Jaytsy felt something black appear in her belly because the expression on his face was grim.
Whatever she, Peto, and Mahrree had been chatting about was immediately forgotten because the heaviness with which he came into the room stifled all conversation.
“Jaytsy,” he said somberly, “the Briters’ wagon returned, about an hour ago. I just came from their farm.”
She didn’t know why that made him so gloomy. That was good news! “Whew,” she sighed and set down her fork. “I was really beginning to worry about them, and the weeds are starting to—”
He took a step closer. “Jayts—”
She knew that look on his face. “What’s wrong?” Then she knew. “Oh, no . . . did they lose their son?”
Perrin shook his head. “Jayts, I’m so sorry, but it was their son I found. It was Cambozola and Sewzi Briter who didn’t make it. They arrived in Mountseen to find their son recuperating. Before they could come back, they became ill and passed away as quickly as your grandmother—”
“No!” Jaytsy’s fierce whisper cut him off. “No, that’s not right. They’re so strong!”
Peto regarded his sister with genuine sympathy.
Mahrree put her arms around her daughter.
But Jaytsy hid her face in her hands, feeling betrayed by everything in the world. “It’s not right!” came her muffled cry. “It’s just not fair! Land tremors, Guarders, Moorland, the pox . . . all my grandparents are dead . . . friends, soldiers, and now the Briters . . . the Briters!” she sobbed. “Who will go next? When will it end?”
Peto looked at his plate and shifted around his food.
Perrin closed his eyes and tried not to make his own count.
Mahrree had no answer for her daughter but patted her as she held her. “Oh, my dear Jaytsy. I’m so, so sorry—”
Jaytsy pushed her chair away from the table and ran to her bedroom, slamming the door.
“Peto,” Perrin said softly, “run over to the fort. Tell them I’m taking the afternoon off. The Briters’ son is going to need a little help.”
---
Deckett Briter stood in the wide doorway of the barn and looked toward the house. He’d put it off going in there as long as he could. The horses were taken care of, the wagon unloaded, the cows checked on, even each of the chickens caught and inspected.
And even the colonel had been met.
His parents had told him about their first encounter with him. His father summed it up in one word, which was unusually brief for him: terrifying! But when the colonel came by an hour ago he was very friendly, after he realized Deckett wasn’t a thief trying to break into the house. When he picked Deckett from the ground and wiped him off, he was quite apologetic.
Deckett wasn’t sure what to say to him. He didn’t know what to say to anyone. He knew no one in Edge, and found the barn and house only because it was across from Fort Shin. He had always planned to come visit them in their new home, but . . .
He thought there was plenty of time.
Slowly Deckett trudged across the back garden to the kitchen door. He opened it but didn’t walk in. Yet he smiled briefly. Definitely his parents’ house. The yellow curtains from the Moorland house hung in the kitchen window here as well.
He stepped into the room and could almost smell his mother’s cooking, could almost hear his father scrubbing up in the washroom. They had been here just a week before, straightening everything up before leaving to see him, never imagining he’d be the one to see the house next. But the plants withering in the windows were stark reminders that the gardeners who tended them were gone.
He pulled a chair out from the table, the one he always used, and reluctantly sat down. The emptiness of the two chairs across from him carved a long, deep gash in his chest.
A soft knock at the kitchen door startled him. “May I join you?”
Deckett jumped in his seat to see again the colonel standing in the doorway, and he quickly tried to get to his feet.
“No need, no need,” the colonel said as he walked in. “Please don’t get up. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
Deckett sat at attention, pretending he knew what that would look like. “Fine, sir.”
The colonel smiled kindly at him. “No, you’re not, son. I know you’re not. May I?” he gestured to the chair his father used to sit in.
Deckett considered for a moment before nodding.
The colonel pulled it out reverently. “Whose was this?”
“My father’s.”
“He was a good man,” Colonel Shin said, sitting down. “Helped me make a detailed map of Moorland. He was key to our success.”
“Yes, I know. He was very proud, sir—” Deckett’s voice cracked.
The colonel had the decency to not look him in the face until he could compose himself again. Then he leaned on the table. “Deckett—that’s your name, right? Call me Perrin, by the way. Deckett, more than anyone else, I know what you’re feeling.”
Deckett swallowed nervously. “Everyone has heard about that too, sir. Sorry about your parents.”
Shin’s dark eyes softened even more. “I’m not here as the colonel or as anything else you may have heard about me. I’m here because I know how much you need a brother right now. Losing your parents—and suddenly—is not something you simply bounce back from. I was helped, and now I’d like to try to help you.”
Deckett could no longer look into the penetrating gaze of the colonel, and he wished there was a crumb or so
mething on the swept-clean table for him to examine. “I appreciate that, sir. But I really don’t know what to say.”
The colonel patted his hand. “I didn’t spend a whole lot of time with your parents, but your father certainly was . . .” He paused, unsure of how to put it tactfully.
Deckett was used to that. “A character?”
The colonel chuckled. “Yes, that’s a good way to put it. Why don’t you tell me all about Cambazeela.”
“Cambozola.”
“Yes, Cambazoolo.”
---
After a couple of hours Jaytsy had no more tears. Exhausted, miserable, and desperate for something to do to ease her dreariness, she finally came out of her bedroom.
Her mother smiled sadly at her. “Your father’s spending the afternoon with him, thinking he can help the Briters’ son.” Her forehead wrinkled in concern, but she covered with another smile.
Jaytsy almost smiled back, not because she felt happy in any way, but because Peto had privately pointed out to her that some of their mother’s healing pock marks mimicked a well-known star constellation when she lifted the corners of her mouth. The Squashed Turnip, forever memorialized on their mother’s face.
“This is for the Briters’ son,” Mahrree said, putting a cloth over a large basket. “I thought it would be a good idea if we fed him for a few days. Do you feel up to taking it over? I’ve spent too much time in the sun this morning and I’d rather not go out again.”
Jaytsy numbly made her way over to the table and started to take the basket, but her mother stopped her.
“Somehow, some year, we will all see the reason for this. I promise.” Mahrree hugged her.
Jaytsy nodded, not believing a word of what her mother said, and left with the basket for the Briters’ house.
When she arrived she felt strangely unsure of what do to next. She saw the front door—one that she was sure they never had used and likely didn’t open—and headed for the kitchen door instead. As she passed the window she heard male voices talking quietly and she almost hesitated to knock.
But she did, and a moment later the door opened. Standing there was a young man, maybe twenty-one years old, with brown hair and eyes that were red with grieving.
Jaytsy couldn’t move her feet or find her voice. She wasn’t sure why she felt so bashful. Shyness wasn’t exactly a Shin family trait.
Her father appeared behind the young man. “Ah, Jaytsy. Deckett, this is my daughter Jaytsy, your parents’ Head Weeder, or whatever she’d be called.”
Deckett smiled dimly at her. “My mother mentioned you. Said you had quite the brown fingers. Please come in.”
Jaytsy nodded at the compliment and wondered if she was blushing. By the confused look on her father’s face, she knew she would have to explain the phrase referring to natural gardeners as ‘brown fingered folk’.
She walked into the kitchen and felt it immediately. Or rather, felt the absence immediately.
The Briters had quite the presence, and now . . . it was gone.
She glanced at the son they loved so dearly, and the expression on his face—his not too handsome yet pleasantly rugged face, made even more so by fading pocks—told her he felt the room was a bottomless cavern.
Jaytsy glanced at her father. His eyes were red too, and she worried that she’d interrupted a reverent discussion.
“I just . . . I just came to drop this by. Food. From my mother. She’s still a little tired, or she would have come herself. We’re all sorry. Very.” Jaytsy wondered why it was so hard for her to talk.
Deckett gave her a thankful nod without completely seeing her and set the basket on the table. “Tell her I appreciate it.”
“All right, um. I suppose I’ll go now.” She looked at her father for direction. He nodded his goodbye. “I’ll see myself out.”
Deckett sat back down at the table across from her father as Jaytsy slid out the door.
She stood on the back step and took a deep breath as something in her chest burned.
Suddenly full of an indefinable energy, Jaytsy marched out to the garden, shooed away the soldier assigned for the afternoon, and started yanking weeds.
---
Perrin came home a little before dinner time. Jaytsy was in the washing room digging the dirt out from under her nails when she heard her parents’ conversation.
“Well?” Mahrree asked.
“Nice boy,” Perrin said. “Took him a while to warm up to me—”
“But you’re used to that by now, aren’t you?”
He chuckled sadly. “We had a good conversation. Solid young man, on the shy side though. He’s going to be all right, but he needs some time. I’ll try to visit him once a week, and I’ll be sure to tell Yung about him. Deckett used to go to the Holy Day meetings in Mountseen, and I think Yung knows that rector.”
“What’s he going to do about the farm?”
“He’s staying,” Perrin said with some surprise. “He quit school and decided to finish out his parents’ commitment for this year through the harvest.”
“Really? They would be proud of him, I’m sure.”
“His heart isn’t in farming, but he wanted to honor his parents. He really wants to be a rancher. At the university he was helping with experiments on improving milk and beef yield, but decided he could do some of those experiments himself.” Then Perrin chuckled. “He asked how much I knew about cattle!”
“Just don’t approach the area when he’s working with them,” Mahrree warned him. “You’ll scare them all away!”
“Well I wouldn’t want to do that. I already like him too much.”
In the washing room, Jaytsy’s chest burned again.
---
The next morning Jaytsy set out early for the Briter farm to open the irrigation canal as usual. But noticing that water was already rushing down the rows, she lifted her skirt and ran to the main canal.
He was there.
He didn’t notice her approaching, which gave Jaytsy a moment to evaluate him more fully. She decided that Deckett Briter didn’t seem like someone who’d ever spent the night raiding houses. He was a few inches taller than her, and his hair was a perfect dirt brown. While his face wasn’t as outwardly handsome as Lemuel Thorne’s, his rough features were somehow far more pleasing. His body also wasn’t as proportionately muscled as the captain’s, but his arms and chest seemed to be more than adequate for tackling cattle.
He turned and saw her, his eyes no longer red. They were . . .
Jaytsy gulped.
He smiled slightly. His face would undoubtedly be even more agreeable when the grief eased. Right now his light brown eyes still looked burdened, but a bit hopeful. “You’re here early.”
“I took care of the watering when your parents were away,” she said and took a step closer.
He stood a little taller.
She noticed. “I’m really sorry about them. I was very upset yesterday when my father told me. Your mother taught me a great deal. I guess you could say she was my best friend. And your father was always so kind.”
Deckett stared at the ground. “My mother really liked you. They both mentioned you a few times in their letters. You were the only reason my mother wasn’t terrified of your father.”
Jaytsy managed a chuckle. “My father was having a few problems when your parents first arrived,” she explained. “They weren’t the only ones to experience him that way. There are still a few people in Edge who run to the other side of the road when they see him coming.”
“I don’t know why anyone’s afraid of him,” Deckett said, still not meeting her eyes. “He couldn’t have been any kinder than if he were my own—”
The sentence didn’t need finishing.
He squatted and inspected an ear forming on a stalk of corn. “Should be a good crop this year. Thank you for your help. With no rain lately, all of this would be wilting by now.”
“I come every day,” Jaytsy told him. “One more
week and school usually starts again, but they’re postponing it for another two weeks because of all the illnesses. I’m focusing all my efforts here, so that means I should be able to get caught up in the weeding, as if one can ever get fully caught up in weeding!” For some reason she said all of that very quickly.
Deckett squinted at her, trying to catch up to what she just said. Eventually he nodded. “I’ll be helping now. Looks like you’ve been pretty busy already, so if you have something else you’d rather be doing—”
Jaytsy took another step forward. “No! Not at all! This is what I love to do, really.”
Deckett pursed his mouth as if trying to decide if she was telling the truth. “Well, then. I guess you could start wherever you planned to start this morning. I need to check on a few things, then I suppose I’ll find a patch to work on myself.”
“Should you be doing all of that work? You’ve recently been ill yourself,” Jaytsy reminded him.
He shook his head dismissively. “I’m fine. Always been a fast healer. And I need to work.”
Sensing the conversation was over, Jaytsy nodded and turned, wondering why she felt disappointed.
She didn’t see him again until about an hour before midday meal when she looked up between rows of beans to see him weaving down a row to her.
“At this rate, there’ll be nothing left for me to do.” He smiled, almost genuinely. He seemed a little lighter than before as he crouched to examine a plant, but also a bit paler as the heat of the day touched him.
“If you need to go rest and cool off a bit,” Jaytsy said, sitting back on her knees, “I’m fine here. You don’t want to dehydrate.”
He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be very polite, would it? Leaving you alone?” He watched for her response.
“I find it restful,” Jaytsy confessed. “I get a lot of thinking done in the dirt. And I don’t mind being alone.” Which, while true, was exactly the opposite of what she meant.
“Oh. Well. Then, I guess I’ll go check on the henhouse—”
“NO!” she barked.
Deckett blinked. “Something wrong with the henhouse?”
“I mean, no, you can stay,” she said, now more in control of her surprisingly flailing emotions. “If you don’t need to rest inside, then you can . . . rest here in the field.” That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her, either.
“Sit and watch you weed?” Deckett shook his head. “My mother would be disappointed if I just left a young woman out here to weed by herself.” Blushing, he added, “And resting would just give me too much time to think. No, I’d rather work.”
He got down on his knees in the row next to her.
She grinned at him.
He smiled back shyly and turned to the dirt.
For the next hour they talked about Mahrree’s hatred of weeding, Sewzi’s love of gardens, cattle’s fear of Perrin, and Perrin’s fear of Cambozola. By the time they finished the second full row, Deckett had chuckled three times. Jaytsy kept count. She also noticed that Deckett was not as talkative and lively as his father, but much more pensive and careful like his mother. Fortunately.
At the end of the beans they stood up and looked at the sun.
“Midday meal. I’m ready for it,” Deckett said, arching his back to work out a kink. “Your mother packed me so much food,” he said, a bit timidly. “Would you care to join me?”
Jaytsy bit her lip. “I’m kind of expected at home for . . .” How could she turn down those sad eyes? And he was all alone.
Her mother wouldn’t want her to leave him recovering, grieving, and all alone, would she? Nor would her father, she was sure.
“Well, my family knows where I am.”
“We’ll eat on the back steps,” he suggested. “In case someone comes looking for you, they can see you.” He flashed her a bashful grin and jogged into the house, leaving Jaytsy at the beginning of the lettuces.
She took several deep breaths and tried to calm her hands that wanted to shake. Noticing a couple of buckets by the fence along the road, which she’d used a few days ago to gather weeds in, she turned to retrieve them.
She skipped, fully aware that she hadn’t skipped since she was seven, to the fence. Once there she saw an ambitious vine growing along the posts threatening to come into the row of corn. Knowing she couldn’t allow that to invade the garden, she yanked on it.
That was when the shadow came over her.
“Miss Jaytsy! Out in the fields again, I see.”
Jaytsy looked up to see a gray horse, and Lemuel Thorne seated on top of it. He wasn’t as pocked as her mother or Deckett, but still looked pale.
Jaytsy felt again the same disappointment—tinged with the tiniest drop of guilt—that she experienced when she heard Thorne was expected to recover. She’d run into him only a couple of times since their incident in the barn, and he hadn’t bothered to apologize for trying to ruin her. He certainly didn’t look contrite now, either, as he beamed down at her with all the innocence of a mountain lion.
“Captain Thorne. I see that you’re recovering. You shouldn’t be in the sun too long, though. Not good for your skin. You should probably be heading in right now,” she hinted as she stood up with the buckets in hand.
“Nothing could improve me more than seeing you.” He smiled broadly, and it struck Jaytsy to be a practiced expression. “And I see you’re still concerned for my welfare. That means a lot to me.”
Jaytsy ran her previous sentences through her mind to see if that was really what she’d said. She wanted to be cautious with what she said next before Thorne misinterpreted it as a proposal of marriage.
She nodded once, which she assumed would be safe. “Good day, Captain,” and she started toward the Briters’ house.
“How’s the kitten?” he called after her.
Jaytsy stopped. The burning in her chest which she’d felt earlier as she looked at Deckett had now dropped as a nauseating knot into her belly.
She sighed and turned around. “The Cat is very well, thank you. He’s very . . . entertaining. Seems to have taken to my father. I’m sorry, I really must go now. And so should you.”
Captain Thorne apparently heard what he was hoping to hear. He smiled, tipped his cap, and turned his horse back to the fort.
Lighter now that the shadow was gone, Jaytsy pivoted in time to see Deckett standing at the open kitchen door. How long he had been watching the two of them, she didn’t know, but he stood stiffly, watching Thorne ride off.
“No,” Jaytsy whimpered. She didn’t know Deckett well enough to interpret the look on his face.
His gaze shifted from the retreating figure over to Jaytsy as she ambled to the house. His eyes looked a little hard.
Jaytsy put on a real smile. “Found the water buckets! I forgot them there the other day. Sorry if you’d been looking for them.”
“Is he from the fort?” Deckett nodded to the road.
“Him? Oh, yes. Every uniform is, by the way,” she pointed out. “He was asking about the farm. He eats from here, you know. You better get used to the army in your life now, sir.”
Deckett analyzed her carefully as if looking for something that remained from her talk with the officer.
Jaytsy gave him her brightest face.
He didn’t see anything but her smile, so he smiled back. “Well, don’t just stand there. I order you to get some water! Please?”
She grinned and saluted.
When she came home that afternoon from weeding, her mother, going over some papers at the table, looked up at her.
“Missed you at midday meal,” she said, giving her daughter a deliberate look.
“Oh. Yes. Sorry about that. Deckett invited me to stay to eat. I thought it would be rude to leave him all alone. You sent over so much food, you see, and . . . and . . .” Jaytsy bit her lower lip, hoping she wasn’t turning colors.
Mahrree smiled at her and nodded. “As long as you’re safe.”
Jaytsy smiled back.
“Perfectly!”
Chapter 20 ~ “Tell me about cow eyes.”