The Forest at the Edge of the World (5 page)

“I have,” Mal tried not to inhale. “In the future I have no doubt I will be able to use you and your . . . talents.”

Gadiman’s face fell. “But I thought—”

“In
time
, Gadiman. We have all the time in the world.”

---

The High General strode out of the Administrative Headquarters, his lieutenants on his heels. He headed to his horse, tethered and watched over by two young pages grateful they weren’t in charge of holding open doors. Without a word he opened a pack secured to the side of the saddle wherein he kept thin papers, finer parchments, and even small vials of ink and quills. The High General believed in recording every bit of information that came his way, to be catalogued in his extensive filing system.

In the afternoon sunshine he wrote out a message on a small piece of paper, signed it, then blew on it until it dried. His lieutenants stood nearby, waiting patiently. He folded the message and sealed it in a thicker parchment envelope.

“Get this to the messaging office immediately,” he said to one of the officers. “There’s a rider heading out in less than half an hour. I want this delivered to the fort at Edge.”

The lieutenant nodded, mounted immediately, and rode away as the High General watched.

“Weather’s shifting again,” he muttered under his breath, without looking up at the sky.

Chapter 3 ~ “The sky really is blue,

and they can count upon that fact.”

“
R
emember, my beloved daughter—sometimes the world really
is
out to get you.”

It was at the oddest times that the last words of Mahrree’s father blew into her mind. They scattered her thoughts as if the cold winds that came down from the mountains behind Edge rushed into one ear and out her other.

Mahrree paused to consider the words after shutting the door to her little house. She was headed to the village green and the outdoor amphitheater for the night’s debate. She shook her head and chuckled as she made her way out of her little front garden which, considering the preponderance of weeds and rocks, insulted the title of ‘garden’. She continued on to the cobblestone roadway and headed south to the center of the village, smiling sadly at the memory of her last conversation with him.

She was fifteen, thirteen years ago. He was thirty-seven. He had started coughing a season before, near the end of Weeding, and a
lmost three moons later it was clear he was dying. His slender, small body was wracked with pain and chesty convulsions.

Mahrree’s mother Hycymum could do nothing more but wring her hands and make yet another creative dish of something which he couldn’t eat. Their rector came over every day to sit with his youn
ger friend, and the village doctors tried every concoction they knew.

Someone even made the long journey to Pools, nearly seventy miles away, to bring the good teacher “healing waters” to cleanse him. Cephas Peto told his daughter he didn’t know how water that
smelled like rotten eggs could be healing, and that he was sure people in Pools and Idumea got sick just as often as people in Edge.

The healing waters, the prayers of their congregation, and the dishes of min-a-
stroh-nee and fall-ah-fal his wife created didn’t work, so on the 89
th
Day of Harvest Cephas beckoned to his daughter.

“Remember,” he whispered to avoid another coughing fit, “my beloved daughter—sometimes, the world really is out to get you!”

Mahrree had laughed in spite of her sorrow. She expected something more sentimental and profound than his usual teasing. Her mother just shook her head and dabbed her eyes. She never understood the cutting sense of humor her husband and daughter shared.

Mahrree had gripped her father’s hand and whispered, “So you’re going to let it get you?” That’s when her tears started.

“And remember, every story has a happy ending, if you just wait long enough.” Then he told Mahrree his extensive collection of books was hers.

Half an hour later he was gone.

Thirteen years later Mahrree still felt the sadness of his passing, but her sorrow was tempered because she still heard him. Not just words he said before he passed, but words he said
after
.

She never told anyone because she feared no one would unde
rstand, but Cephas Peto still spoke to her and gave her advice. And as she strolled through the neighborhoods of Edge, waving to her neighbors who were also heading to the amphitheater, she felt he was walking nearby, still watching out for her.

“The world is out to get me, Father?” She smiled as she breathed in the early Planting Season weather. “Doesn’t quite sound like a happy ending just yet. But send on the world! After such a dreary Raining Season, I’m ready for some excitement.”

Such evenings in Edge of the World were rarely dull, despite what visitors from Idumea might argue. Mahrree would challenge any of them to prove it. And she half hoped that would be the topic of debate tonight: the dullness of a little village like Edge versus the excitement of Idumea.

She sucked in the surprisingly warm air and thought she could smell the deep brown dirt of the farms that ringed their village, just two road
s of houses away from her home. White clouds streaked across the blue sky, and Mahrree predicted they would turn orange-pink with the sunset. The two moons, the Greater as well as the Little Sister which trailed the brighter moon, showed only half of themselves evening.

She was glad she had changed into her lighter tan cotton skirt instead of wearing the heavier woolen black one. She tucked her light brown shoulder-length hair behind her ears. Unlike most of the women in the village, she didn’t wear her hair long only to tie it all up into a bun. Shorter hair was much more practical. And her father had said it looked better that way. But otherwise her features were nothing extraordinary, she thought. Symmetrical, feminine—she never was very good at judging beauty, nor did she see the purpose of it. Her grayish-green eyes were like her mother’s, which her f
ather loved, and her build and frame were as slight as her father’s, which Mahrree loved.

It was the 6
th
Day of the brand new year, and all was coming alive again and growing. Even the air seemed green. Planting Season was her favorite because her students were frequently needed to help their parents in the fields every few weeks—early, middle, and late in the season—affording Mahrree a few weeks’ respite to sit and study. She chose to become a village teacher of all subjects and ages, just like her father, although her mother frequently told her he would have been pleased if she became a wife, too. If it weren’t for evenings like this that forced her outside, she would probably keep studying and forget to notice the greening of the world.

She passed several roads of houses and walked along the co
bblestones past the quieting market towards the amphitheater. Some shops were still opened and the last of the purchases were being made. But soon those shopkeepers would find their way to the village’s green fields, too.

As Mahrree reached the first common field that marked the ce
nter of Edge, she began to count the activities. In the large fields surrounding the amphitheater, with new grasses trimmed by roaming sheep, three groups of little children were already running races and playing Get Him! Older children enjoyed Smash the Wicket, Kickball, and Tie up Your Uncle, which sounded more violent than it was unless someone’s real uncle participated.

Tonight a large group of older children had already decided on the game, but were arguing over who would be tonight’s Wicket. Mahrree smiled as she passed that group. Two of the loudest chi
ldren were her former morning students, and neither would be quick to concede.

“Miss Mahrree! Come decide this,” one officious eleven-year-old called.

“Sorry—I’m off duty tonight.”

“But you’re always a teacher, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not always a mediator. And that’s what you need right now. One of your friends can take on that role.”

The children looked at each, considered the possibility, then promptly went back to quarreling.

Mahrree chuckled and waved to the rest of the children who stood impatiently waiting for a resolution. She walked to the large clump of trees that stood before the theater’s doors. When the children became teenagers, the girls stopped playing and started watching the boys. Now leaning against the trees stood a gaggle of girls preening themselves.

Even as a teenager Mahrree hadn’t understood that behavior. Her friends had sat and giggled while she sat and thought about books from her father’s collection, especially after he died. She knew her lack of attention to young men was why she was single at the overripe age of twenty-eight. The last in her group had married several years ago, and many of her ten morning students were the children of her childhood friends.

But none of the young men in Edge had intrigued her as much as accounts from explorers to the ruins or speculations about the world beyond them. She was fascinated by places and occurrences no one in Edge had witnessed. But when she mentioned such things to her friends, they looked at her as if she were a hairy insect. Studying history, then becoming a teacher, was far more satisfying than learning about the art of flirting.

Mahrree paused to take in the scene before her. Several girls, three of whom were her afternoon students, were clustered a few paces away from a group of older boys who clearly didn’t notice their admirers. They had already divided into two teams for Track the Stray Bull and were deep in planning. The young men never seemed to have a hard time deciding who was the bull, but could spend most the evening trying to agree on strategy that would take three more days to carry out. In the meantime the girls fluffed their hair, straightened their skirts, and eventually sat down to weave grasses together.

Mahrree strolled up behind three of her students and startled them with, “It will be much more interesting inside tonight. We have a new debater before the concert begins. Although this
could
be intriguing. It seems as though our ‘bulls’ have become more disoriented.”

One group of young men seemed to be constructing a model trebuchet out of sticks while their friends pulled off large branches from a dead tree. The other group several paces away was pointing to various heights in the trees and postulating about the strength of the branches. 

“Miss Mahrree!” the girls exclaimed in hushed embarrassment, as if the boys had heard her analysis.

“You may find debating exciting, but . . . well, this is far more, umm,” faltered fifteen-year-old Hitty. She looked at Teeria, who was a wise sixteen-year-old.

“Educational,” Teeria said sagely.

Sareen, also fifteen, nodded in agreement and let escape a gi
ggle.

“Of
course
,” Mahrree said. “Tomorrow afternoon you must explain to me Nature’s Laws involved in retrieving livestock lost high in the pines.”

The girls blushed.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind? I’m sure the boys won’t be doing anything important in the next half hour.”

The girls rolled their eyes. “Sorry, Miss Mahrree,” said Hitty, reciting her students’ favorite rhyme, “but that is so . . .” She rolled her eyes again.

Mahrree chuckled as she entered the amphitheater doors and went up the stone stairs to the wide rows of wooden benches filling with people. In inclement weather, the evening entertainments moved to the largest Congregation Hall usually reserved for weekly Holy Day services. But as the weather warmed, the diversions multiplied and the outdoor facility was necessary. Now the written, developed, composed and practiced pieces which kept the citizens of Edge occupied during the long wet nights of the past season could be properly performed.

Mahrree usually skipped those entertainments in favor of rea
ding in her gathering room. She loved to lay out her father’s collection of writings across her eating table and spend hours thinking. She filled her mind with arguments and theories in preparation for her debates. And her students, of course. Mahrree had engaged in debates in her higher education at the woman’s university in Mountseen, much larger than Edge and only half a day’s walk away, so she could still visit her mother during those two years.

But what passed for debates in Edge would never stand up to the rigors of a formal university argument. Edge’s debates were a sharing-arguing-complaining of ideas, disagreements, and occasio
nally utter nonsense. And that’s what made the debates so interesting. Mahrree made her way up to the raised timber-worked platform, feeling the thrill of the unknown argument. Over four thousand people could be seated on the long lines of wooden benches for large events, which was all of the adults in Edge and a few hundred of their children—far too many people for Mahrree to comfortably face. But on planting evenings like this, only about five hundred people would be there at the beginning. Once the sun set, many more would trickle in to catch the end of a concert or see the last act of a play.

Each performance began with a debate. It might be two neig
hbors arguing over a property line, or a discussion about a public nuisance, such as an aggressive dog or a loud neighbor. One debate was begun by a young woman challenging what behaviors parents could dictate. It turned out the girl was angered by her parents’ refusal to allow her to wear a thin black line of charcoal around her eyes to make them “prettier.”

The audience decided she was pretty enough, and didn’t need to look like an animal that raided the trash heaps at night.

But mostly the debates were forums for new ideas to be analyzed in front of a group. Every village in the world argued, sniped, and shouted in this way, occasionally even to a consensus. In Edge, one of the three rectors always moderated the discussion, since men who knew the Creator could better quell anger than the local magistrate who instead inflamed it.

Mahrree prided herself, though she humbly knew she shouldn’t, on her debating skills. She read everything she could find, listened to each idea, and wrote down any novel concept and the arguments for it and against it. She even ran her students through the paces of an
alyzing an issue, turning the entire front wall of smoothed stone in the schoolhouse into a mass of words written in white chalk and black charcoal to represent the two sides. She interjected ideas from The Writings and found it all great fun.