The Forest at the Edge of the World

by Mercer, Trish

  She could still recall the exact shape of his earlobes, and it gave her goose bumps as she walked to the market that evening.

  “How adolescent!” she muttered in self-admonition. She approached the outer ring of shops, barely noticing the looks of confusion on the two women she passed as she declared their dresses, hats, or conversation as “adolescent.”

  Mahrree did think she heard one of them utter “—Guarder snatched!” so they likely deserved it.

  And there he was again in her mind.

  Now, there were many qualities he had worth admiring: his quick thinking, his ability to shift emotions, even the way he could stand straight and not appear to breathe for long periods of time. What good that skill was for, she didn’t know. Maybe for sneaking up on Guarders. But it was commendable and she could certainly admire someone’s ability to . . . not breathe.

  “How stupid!” she told herself, and three men in discussion furrowed their eyebrows at her unsolicited criticism.

  It was everyone else’s fault, she decided as she worked her way through the crowds towards the baker’s. Everyone else brought him up, repeatedly. Her teenage students asked endless questions about him, but they weren’t nearly as annoying as her mother. Just yesterday she came over to ask what Mahrree and the captain did when they weren’t on the platform, her eyes glowing with too much imagination.

  “Nothing, Mother!” Mahrree had declared. “We never meet anywhere else. Now go back to your sewing group and tell them there’s nothing to tell!”

  Hycymum just nodded and said, “We’ll see about that.”

  “There will be nothing to see!” she called after her mother who was giggling as she went down the walk.

  “She never listens,” Mahrree grumbled as she paid for her loaf of bread. She pushed past the crowd at the baker’s, not noticing the bewildered look of the baker’s daughter to whom she gave her pay.

  Normally the night before a debate Mahrree would be running different arguments in her head. But tonight she had nothing because Rector Densal had told her the topic would be a surprise for both of them. She tried to imagine what kinds of discussions he might spring on them as she wandered over to purchase some early greens, but her mind couldn’t rest on anything for more than a moment. Every time her thoughts shifted, they shifted in only one direction. It was irritating to see him on every wall of her mind.

  “Oy! Watch out, there!”

  The shout behind Mahrree startled her out of her thoughts, and she turned abruptly to find herself in the arms of Captain Shin.

  In the middle of the market.

  With everyone watching.

  At least, that’s likely how it appeared to the surprised villagers, Mahrree realized in humiliating remembrance later.

  In truth, the captain’s arms were outstretched, because he had a jug in one hand, and a large bunch of flowers in the other, and a young child had just darted in front of him. That was what caused him to raise his arms upwards to avoid hitting the boy. He’d shouted the warning and then stepped awkwardly, losing his balance only to find himself within inches of Mahrree who had just spun around.

  She also was unsteady on her feet as she turned suddenly, and found herself falling inexplicably towards him, her bread in one hand, her bag in another. With both of their hands full of goods, nothing prevented Mahrree’s face from colliding into the captain’s solid chest. She breathed in his earthy-yet-sweet-scent and her mind went blank. Blissfully, serenely blank.

  And then he wrapped his arms around her.

  It was only to steady themselves, she realized in another humiliated moment of remembrance later. It was the jug in his hand clanking against her head with a dull thud that sent her into such a juvenile swoon, she decided even later. That was why she couldn’t think properly for several minutes.

  Instinctively she pushed away from him, trying not dwell on how firm his stomach was as she used it to brace herself.

  “I’m so sorry!” Captain Shin exclaimed. “That child ran in front . . . I didn’t want to hit him, but I hit you instead—”

  Filled with sudden sympathy for his anxiousness, Mahrree cut him off. “Not at all!” She rubbed the side of her head vaguely. “No harm done. My bread’s a little flattened, but I like it that way.” It sounded silly as it came out of her mouth, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Is that so?” he replied with an awkward smile. “I like flattened bread, too.” His voice trailed off and he looked down at the ground, his lips twitching as if they had wished something smarter had just left them.

  His discomfort comforted her.

  She began to notice something different around them. All the usual market noise and talk had stopped.

  The captain looked up slowly at her face, then simultaneously they both looked around. The market was now a silent collective smile pointed in their direction. Mahrree estimated more than one hundred pairs of eyes were staring at them, and it was more unnerving than the thousands at the platform. She chanced a look at the captain.

  His face was partly amused and partly pained. She had to fix it.

  “So!” she said, a little too loudly but so that everyone around them could hear. “I thank you for helping me not to fall, and I’ll see you tomorrow evening.” She nodded to him formally, then to those around her, and began to march towards home.

  In the wrong direction.

  No one else moved but instead watched her take seven or eight steps, then abruptly turn to her right and continue in a line that curved around the still smirking villagers. She didn’t even dare look at the captain. She held her breath all the way, hoping she wouldn’t make another wrong turn.

  A moment later the marketplace resumed its activity and noise, and Mahrree released a sigh of relief as she reached the edge of the shops to begin her walk home. She shook her head as she slowed her pace.

  Stupid! Adolescent! There was no possible way he could not have noticed her blushing! She still felt flushed and hot, despite the cool breeze coming off the mountains. She couldn’t forget the feel of his arms around her, even if it was for just a moment.

  She also couldn’t forget that she couldn’t remember where she lived.

  She heard a few heavy footsteps pounding behind her and glanced back. To her surprise Captain Shin was on her heels. Behind him several villagers were grinning and one waved. Mahrree groaned softly as the captain stopped next to her and continued walking along side. She didn’t know what to do, so she kept up her pace.

  “Umm,” he started inarticulately, “I’m glad I ran into you, or rather, fell, I guess it was.”

  He hesitated and Mahrree peeked up into his face. She saw furrowed brows and a man at an unusual lack for words.

  “What I mean is, I wanted to see you tonight before tomorrow’s debate.”

  Mahrree didn’t know what to answer. He sounded different when he wasn’t in public.

  Tender and tense at the same time.

  “I’ve felt badly about some . . . actually many of the words that have passed between us. You know, we haven’t even been properly introduced? I don’t feel we’ve presented our best sides to each other yet, and I’d like to change that.”

  Mahrree was pleasantly astonished. “You’re right. We should’ve been properly introduced. This may be only Edge, but we do have some rules of etiquette that we occasionally remember. But oh, that first debate was so long ago—nearly three weeks now.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. Please understand that’s not my way. I just wanted to let you know that. And these are for you.”

  He stopped and thrust the flowers in her face.

  She remembered that they looked much fuller and fresher when she first saw him. Their collision and his jog after her had decimated their blooms.

  He blinked at them, perplexed.

  “Presenting flowers to a woman when you meet her—that is a very proper thing to do.” She smiled at the haggard stems. “You’re learning. Next time you’ll remember to keep
the flowers wrapped in the scrap paper the sellers put them in, so that they don’t lose their petals as you go.”

  “But the flowers were wrapped in an old Administrative notice,” he said, his voice curiously hardening.

  “Yes,” Mahrree acknowledged, wondering if he was offended by the notice’s second life. “We use them for flowers, for kindling, and even for emergencies in washing rooms when the wiping cloth hasn’t been cleaned.” Even as she said the words, she wondered why she bothered to add that last unpleasant detail.

  But the captain wasn’t offended. His face relaxed to a smile.

  “This village just becomes more interesting every day. Everything here astonishes me. No wonder I can’t get anything right.”

  Mahrree laughed, surprising herself. “You like flat bread, Captain Shin. That must mean something!”

  Politeness. She should always be polite. That’s what her mother drilled into her head when Mahrree was younger and said all kinds of things Hycymum didn’t approve of to scare off young men. The young men that stopped trying to present her flowers many years ago.

  Then she thought of what her father would do at a moment like this.

  Before she knew it she heard herself saying, “Would you like to join me in eating my flattened bread? My home isn’t too far from here. And I won’t be serving blob. I had to bury it this morning in the back garden. It was becoming . . . a little more than I could handle.”

  It was the only way she could think of describing the stench and the fact that it was beginning to eat away the kiln-fired platter at an alarming rate.

  “Didn’t look like your brother,” she added impulsively. “Wasn’t attractive at all.” She was wincing before she even finished the sentence, realizing she should have stopped talking half a minute ago.

  “Really?” He smiled. “I’m sorry. About the blob, that is, and . . . I’m afraid I already have an appointment elsewhere tonight.” He held up the jug as an explanation.

  Relief and disappointment simultaneously surged through Mahrree.

  “Besides,” he continued, “Edge would have a great deal to talk about if I was seen going to your home, wouldn’t they?”

  “Oh, oh, of course, Captain!” Mahrree blustered in embarrassment. “Until tomorrow, then. And I thank you for the flowers.”

  “I am sorry,” he repeated. He gripped her shoulder clumsily and stared deep into her eyes. “But can I make it up to you some time?”

  Mahrree waxed eloquent again in his dark brown gaze. “Uhhh, sometime I am available should be fine, when we, uh you, can make it.”

  He squinted as he deciphered what she tried to say. “Then ‘sometime’ it is. And please, call me Perrin.” Then he was gone back down the road.

  Father would like him, but Mahrree didn’t know why.

  She turned back around and tried to diagram her last sentence all the way home. Once she got there, she put the haggard stems in a tall mug and tenderly watered them, smiling at the handful of wilting petals.

  Her first flowers, ever.

  ---

  At the fort that evening, the new spyglass that arrived was being tested. It wasn’t sighted on the forest where the Guarders may be hiding and planning their attacks, but on a small house on the northern side of Edge.

  ---

  It was going to be easy—the return of the Guarders—if this young woman was any indication. The man in black had been watching her ever since the first debate, and she didn’t notice anything beyond her books. Except for maybe the captain.

  He’d already searched her house—no one in Edge seemed to know how to work their locks—and found she wasn’t hiding anything interesting. Oh sure, she had slips of gold and silver in her cellar, predictably stored under a bag of flour and a crock of oats. Everyone in the world thought their savings were secure in their cellars. They’d be shoving the hammered metals under their straw mattresses next. Every Guarder knew where to find the goods.

  But thieving wasn’t the point. If it were, they could leave every village destitute within a couple of quiet evenings.

  No, the point was to leave messages.

  That was always the point, although the messages changed frequently over the generations. He really didn’t care what the message was now, so long as he got to be the deliverer. He’d been waiting a long time for such an opportunity, fearing that when the reign of kings died, so had everything else.

  Instead, it was all reborn, just like the return of Planting Season. Except it was reborn with such calculation and planning that the man had been stunned. There’s plundering and murdering, and then there’s this. He hadn’t quite worked out what all of this was yet, but it was certainly better than nothing.

  He stepped out of the shadows of the kitchen and over to the mug of flowers on her work table. He squinted at it, amused. Usually the first blooms of Planting Season were hearty things, able to take a dumping of late, wet snow. They’d just shake it off and rise defiant from the cold ground. But these—these were just stems, with only a hint of “flowerness.” What did the captain do to them?

  The man in black glanced over to the door that led to the combined eating and gathering room. He heard her turn a page in some old book, oblivious to his presence.

  He’d leave her a message, but it wouldn’t be noticed.

  He snapped off one of the traumatized flower tops and placed it deliberately on the other side of the table. But he knew what her reaction would be. She’d assume she had dropped it over there and simply forgot.

  That was the thing about villagers—they saw only what they expected to see. It was said that Guarders left no signs, but that wasn’t true. They left their messages everywhere, but like a soiled rag on the ground that everyone in a crowded stable feels is someone else’s responsibility, it’s bypassed, stepped over, or completely ignored.

  Guarders never attacked without first leaving a warning. That would be unfair.

  It was the villagers’ faults for not noticing the warnings.

  He noiselessly slipped out the back kitchen door, down the back porch, and into the night.

  ---

  Mahrree went to admire her stems again before blowing out the kitchen candle, and noticed one of the flower tops on the other side of the table.

  She smirked to herself as she picked it up, and immediately thought of what her father would say.

  Guarder snatched! Or rather, Guarder snapped.

  Mahrree chuckled quietly. “Oh yes, Father,” she murmured. “Guarders are now interested in rearranging half-dead flowers. How unpredictable of them.”

  But something heavy lingered in the air, and she felt her father more distinctly. He was more than memory. When it was important, it was as if he had never left her side.

  Remember, my daughter—Guarders are unpredictable.

  Mahrree bit her lower lip. It wasn’t as if someone in black had suddenly taken an odd interest in the stems. She knew what he really meant: she needed to be cautious. There was no cowardice in caution. It’s not like she had anything of interest to the Guarders, but still—

  She swallowed hard and glanced at her back door. Just to be safe, she latched the lock. But she was not about to needlessly burn a candle in the window to ward away any intruders.

  “What else should I do?” she whispered to the quiet kitchen.

  Nothing for now. Just . . . be aware.

  Mahrree nodded. “Father? I was just wondering, what do you think of Captain Shin?”

  The mood in the room lightened.

  Perhaps a more important question is, what do you think of the captain?

  “I don’t know what to think,” she answered automatically.

  Oh, I’m sure you do, or you wouldn’t have bothered to try to revive those stems. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.

  Mahrree shrugged, a smile of embarrassment lurking around her mouth. “So what do you think of him?” she asked again.

  Good man. I like him. Doesn’t know beans from flowers,
but that’s all right—he’s not a farmer.

  Mahrree chuckled as the influence of her father faded away. She floated the broken flower top in the water of the mug, blew out the candle, then went to bed.

  Chapter 9 ~ “Debate the merits of Perrin and Mahrree continuing the debates--”

  Mahrree had felt flustered ever since last evening’s encounter when she was alone with him for barely five minutes, but now she was about to face Captain Shin again on the platform. She paced nervously before the young oak tree and warm spring, doubting that she could go through with it. Tonight there was a huge crowd, near capacity at four thousand, with more coming in.

  She tried to calm her breathing. Rector Densal was reading an announcement from Idumea about an improved messaging system, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he said. She considered running off or faking a sudden illness, but then she heard the rector call her name.

  It was too late now. She took a deep breath and bounded up the steps as usual to wave to the crowd. Their typically polite applause was punctuated with cheers and some whoops. She’d never before heard them that enthusiastic.

  She didn’t have any time to worry as to what it might mean, because Rector Densal was now introducing Captain Shin. The loud greeting rose up again. As he emerged from the other side, with his creased blue uniform and polished boots, the captain appeared surprised too. He gave Mahrree a concerned look, then walked over to her and stood uncomfortably close and a little in front of her, as if trying to shield her from the raucous crowd.

  She felt a rush of gratitude at his gesture and wondered if it was a soldier’s instinct.

  “Tonight, we will do something different!” cried Rector Densal to the rowdy villagers. “Neither of our debaters knows what the topic will be for tonight, so there will be no unpleasant surprises left on a table. And, Miss Mahrree,” he said turning slightly to the platform, “I am truly sorry to hear of the demise of your blob.”