The Forest at the Edge of the World

by Mercer, Trish

  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 roads 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 father loved, and her build and frame were as slight as her father’s, which Mahrree loved.

  It was the 6th 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 cobblestones 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 center 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 children 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 giggle.

  “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 reading 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 occasionally 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 t
he end of a concert or see the last act of a play.

  Each performance began with a debate. It might be two neighbors 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 analyzing 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.

  What students thought of it, that didn’t matter as long as they learned to think.

  Tonight a sizable crowd was gathered already, at least six hundred. Word had spread that there was a new debater “Just for Mahrree,” Rector Densal, her father’s old friend, had told everyone that day. Not only did the debater bring ideas from Idumea, he was from there.

  “And I’ll warn you now, Miss Mahrree—he’s an officer,” he informed her three days ago when he suggested the debate.

  “In the army?” Mahrree asked the obvious to give herself time to think about this man whom no one in the village had been happy to hear had arrived. While he seemed to keep well enough to himself up at the forest edge, it was only a matter of time before he wandered down among them and did something . . . official.

  Rector Densal smiled warmly. “Miss Mahrree, the army is not what it once was. A great many changes have occurred since Querul the Third’s reign.”

  “I know.” Although the thought of standing face to face with a member of the army filled her with momentary angst.

  She still felt unsettled by the news, and now the size of the crowd unsettled her further. As she walked to the front she saw her favorite old rector coming from the front row to meet her.

  “I hope you’re ready, Miss Mahrree,” he smiled as he shook her hand.

  “I fear no one,” Mahrree told him more confidently than she felt.

  “Oh, I know you don’t fear,” Rector Densal said, and something a little bit too lively happening in his eyes put Mahrree on guard. “I invited him to our debate for your entertainment. I hope you will find him engaging. I think he’s precisely what you need!”

  Mahrree looked at him, puzzled. “I didn’t know I was in need of anything or anyone.” She had a thought and sighed. “Have you been speaking to my mother again?”

  Rector Densal laughed. “Not lately, but I do owe her a visit! Well then, maybe he’s in need of you.” His wrinkled face added new ones as he grinned and slowly climbed the steps to the top of the platform to make general announcements before the debate.

  Mahrree chuckled; everyone needed a bit of her.

  She walked to the back of the platform and readied to take one of the sets of stairs that led up to it. She stooped to soak the tension out of her hands in the warm bubbling spring that gurgled next to her favorite young oak tree. This spring wasn’t as hot as some of the others that were tapped and pumped into homes to be used as bathing and washing water. She’d heard that in Idumea some of the houses had water that was near boiling. But even though the ground was much more active near Edge, the springs that fed Mahrree’s home were just pleasantly warm.

  She went through her pre-debate routine: she stood back up, shook out her hands, rubbed her cheeks with her fingers, tucked her hair behind her ears again, smoothed down her skirt, and waited for the rector to introduce her. When she heard her name called she marched confidently up the steps and on to the platform, to the applause of the crowd. She waved genially to them as she had dozens of times before and waited for the next introduction.

  “Today we have a newcomer to our community,” Hogal Densal said to the crowd. “He’s been educated in the university at Idumea, has been a member of the army for six years, and was recently assigned to the new fort being built in our village. I’m sure you’re all just as eager to get to know him as he is to get to know you. He’s heard of our debates and wants a chance at taking on our one of our favorite daughters, Mahrree Peto.”

  Mahrree saw a movement to her right and glanced over just in time to see a large and muscular man bound up the stairs on the side of the platform. He wore the uniform of the army—dark blue jacket with silver buttons fastened appropriately up to his throat, blue trousers, and, tucked formally under his arm, was a cap with brim.

  He stepped on to the platform and paused in mid-stride when he saw Mahrree. He glanced over at the rector, then back at her. A small smile—or maybe a smirk—crept across his face.

  Mahrree took a deep breath she hoped no one noticed and firmed her stance. She told herself she would not be intimidated. However, she was unnerved that what she was feeling was not intimidation. And oddly, she suddenly wondered what her hair looked like. She tried to force herself to concentrate, but it wasn’t easy since she couldn’t stop staring at him.

  He was considerably taller than her, but then so was everyone over age thirteen. His uniform was smartly pressed, as was Mahrree’s best cotton dress. His black hair was neat and short and would probably feel thick if she ran her fingers through—

  Mahrree blinked in surprise. Where had that thought come from?! It was as if the influence of her three teenage students had rushed into the amphitheater and overwhelmed her reason. Had they been standing next to her they would have pointed out his straight nose, his dark eyes, and even the tiny scar on the side of his mouth. One of them probably would have nudged her to notice his penetrating gaze. When she did, she was alarmed to realize he was studying her. He cocked his head as if trying to interpret the expression on her face. Mahrree shook herself a bit, not daring to guess how long she stared at him. He smiled broader and took a few more steps towards her.

  From somewhere she heard the rector’s voice. “Let us see how our children’s teacher will handle our new captain!”

  Our new captain!

  Had her students been standing next to her, that’s what they would have been cheering. Mahrree felt strangely weak before remembering she hadn’t breathed for the past minute. She filled her lungs and smiled at her challenger.

  “Well, Mr. Captain,” she began, “What’s the newest belief in Idumea? I understand ideas are emerging each day. In the 319 years of our existence in the world, we have heard many strange things, but I’m sure what you will present to us will simply amaze us.”

  Her voice was sweet and stinging at the same time, and she felt her confidence return. Mahrree always saw the debates as two boys fighting for possession of a boulder. She pictured herself starting on the top, with her opponent down below where she could throw bits of gravel at his eyes—his unexpectedly dark eyes—which she chose not to look at. Instead she focused on a scar above his left eye and tried to imagine how it got there. A stick seemed to be involved.

  “Perrin,” was all the captain replied.

  “What?” Mahrree was startled too quickly out of her scenario of a girl whacking him across the forehead.

  He stepped closer to Mahrree. “My name is Perrin Shin. And you are . . .?”

  She knew that family name: Shin. She should know that name, but it escaped her for the moment.

  As did, e
mbarrassingly, her own.

  “Uh, I’m . . .”

  Maybe it was good her teenage students hadn’t joined her that evening.

  “Uh, Mahrree. Peto. Yes. That’s me.”

  Eloquent. Poised. Like as a hog trying to jump a fence.

  She thought she heard chortling from the audience. In the space just above her heart, a warmth filled her that she’d often felt before, and she immediately thought of her father. He would like this man, Perrin Shin.

  “Well, Mrs. Peto—”

  “Umm,” she interrupted. “I’m Miss Mahrree.”

  Captain Shin sent a quick glance towards someone in the audience. Then in a low deep voice only she could hear he said, “I should have known.”

  Mahrree’s previous flightiness flew away as she put her hands on her waist. There was nothing wrong with her age and her single status. Oh, let that be the debate topic: the age at which a woman should marry! She’d won that argument many times with her mother. She eyed the captain and would have rolled up her sleeves of her linen tunic if they weren’t already short.

  In a much louder voice he announced, “There is a great deal of talk in the Idumea. And the talk is, there’s too much talk.”

  Mahrree smirked. How could she respect a man so unsuccessful at cleverness? People from Idumea, especially an officer, were supposed to be sophisticated and infallible. She watched him as if he was an infestation of approaching ants.

  “There’s too much talk,” he repeated, “about issues we no longer need to discuss; theories and facts that the Administrators are now suggesting have been decided and need no more debate.”

  Mahrree was suspicious and intrigued. “What kinds of issues?”

  “Things such as the color of the sky; which is better, cats or dogs; the origin of our civilization; why the western ruins exist; what really happens when a volcano explodes. Small, simple things.” He looked at her haughtily.

  “I had no idea all these had been decided!” she exclaimed derisively. “Now, I agree that one or two of those things need no discussion, but to say we know the exact color of the sky? We could argue that all night.”