by Trish Mercer
Chapter 3 ~ “Such a document would be too dangerous to discuss.”
Although it was Hycymum Peto’s day off from cooking at Edge’s Inn, she was busy in her kitchen working on a new confection she decided should be called mer-ang. At a critical moment in its whipping, she heard an urgent knock on the front door.
Conflicted, she looked into her bowl, decided whipping it even more in a minute might be a good idea, then took off her third best apron with the little caterpillars stitched on it and went to the front door. When she opened it she was surprised to see her son-in-law with his infant son cradled in one arm, his daughter held in his other, and his face etched deep with concern.
“Mother Peto, could you please come check on Mahrree?” his deep voice quavered. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
Hycymum blinked several times to make sure her massive son-in-law wasn’t actually cowering a bit. Then a terrible thought struck her. “Wait—was it today?” She could already see the answer. “Why didn’t she tell me?”
Perrin’s face went wretched. “She didn’t want to bother you—”
But Hycymum was already grabbing a sweater without worrying if it matched her skirt. “You left her alone?!”
“It’s been only a few minutes,” he defended feebly. “I—”
Hycymum pushed past him. “And I here I thought you were supposed to be a smart man! Stay here!”
Several minutes later Hycymum, panting at her effort to run down the road—an activity she hadn’t engaged in for over forty years—pushed open the front door of her daughter’s house. She listened for a moment, then did her best to move up the stairs as quickly as possible for a woman her size and age.
In the bedroom she found her daughter curled up like a squirrel, sobbing.
“My poor girl!” Hycymum rushed over, climbed onto the bed with a grunt, and cradled her daughter’s head. She rocked and soothed, “I’m so sorry it hurts. I’m so sorry it hurts,” while Mahrree’s gasping body shuddered and shook.
After a while, neither woman could say how long, Mahrree sobs finally slowed. Between gasps she asked, “Where are my babies?”
“Safe, with your very worried husband, at my house.”
“Your house isn’t very safe then, is it?” Mahrree whispered.
“Don’t you worry about that. I can always get more seashells.”
Mahrree trembled. “Mother, no one said it would feel like this.”
“No one ever will, my poor girl. And I am so sorry about that,” Hycymum smoothed her hair. “We never speak of it. It wouldn’t help if we did.”
“I don’t mean the pain, Mother,” Mahrree said hoarsely, “I feel some cramping, but nothing unbearable. What I feel is, what I feel is . . .” She began to sob again.
Her mother hugged her head awkwardly. “I know what you feel. The pain of what could have been. You’ve lost the ability to give more life.”
Mahrree sat up with effort and wiped her wet face. “I knew I would feel some sorrow, but this—This is far worse than I imagined! Why didn’t you tell me?” she demanded between sniffles.
Her mother shook her head apologetically. “For the same reason you won’t tell little Jaytsy when it’s her time. Could you have gone through it—willingly—had you known?”
Mahrree hadn’t considered that. “No. I was already having some doubts,” she confessed. “But then of course we hear from the Office of Family,” she spat contemptuously, “that the herbs are safe, that there’s little pain, that it’s our duty.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“It is safe,” Hycymum admitted bleakly, handing her a handkerchief a bit too late. “I don’t know of any women who died. But were depressed or grief-stricken? Yes, all of them. For a few, dying might actually have been easier.” She scrunched her mouth and looked at the ceiling.
Mahrree could tell she was searching for the right words. It wasn’t really her strength, but the dear woman was trying.
“It hurts . . .” Hycymum began, “it hurts because the Creator can’t work through us anymore. When we become mothers we enter into something like a sweet bond with Him. Oh, expecting and birthing is painful, and it’s ridiculous to see how our bodies become shapes we no longer recognize. But there’s . . . there’s still something sweet about it all. And then it’s taken away. Forever. And that’s agony.”
Mahrree had stopped crying, amazed at her mother’s insight. She thought her head held only cotton.
And fine linen.
And a bit of worsted wool.
“Oh Mother, that’s it exactly.”
Hycymum sat a little taller. It wasn’t often she got a compliment from her daughter.
Mahrree stared at the woman who seemed to get a little smarter each year. “I just realized how selfish I am to complain. Here I have two babies, and you had only one. I’m so sorry.” Because her eyes were finally clearing up, she looked at her mother properly for the first time. Her gray and brown curls were in disarray, her sweater didn’t match her dress, and bits of white sugar clung to her round face.
And her mother went out in public like that?
Of course she did, for her daughter.
“Thank you, Mother. I don’t think I say that enough. Sometimes we’re so different, but I do appreciate you.” She brushed some of the sugar off her face.
Hycymum rubbed her other cheek and frowned at the small grains on her chubby fingers. “That bag cost three slips of silver this week. Ah well. I’m merely doing what mothers do,” she said dismissively, and with a tinge of embarrassment.
To get a compliment from her daughter was quite unexpected, but gratitude as well? Hycymum could barely take it all in.
“You make up for what was lost,” she added mysteriously, dusting off her nose.
Mahrree cocked her head. Something in the tone of her bubble headed mother sounded as heavy as a rock. “Lost? What did you lose?”
Hycymum stopped fretting about sugar and sighed loudly.
A depth of pain Mahrree had never seen before on her mother erupted and filled her eyes with sudden grief.
“I think now you can understand, Mahrree. We lost your sister,” she confessed. “You weren’t quite two. She was born early, like Jaytsy, but even smaller. I had pains just as you did with Peto, but we couldn’t stop them. Her tiny little lungs . . . they weren’t ready yet.” Tears slid down her face.
Fascinated and dismayed, Mahrree sat up and took her mother into her arms. “I had no idea! You did have a second child?”
Hycymum began to weep softly. “I shouldn’t be burdening you with this. I thought I was over it, but today, seeing you . . . it just all came back,” she squeaked out between sniffles.
Mahrree handed her back her moist handkerchief. Some things can be shared between mother and daughter.
“A member of the king’s Family Services visited me the day after,” Hycymum said damply. “I was still resting at my mother’s. That representative had The Drink. She said it was obvious I couldn’t birth healthy children. I was half delirious with fever, pain, and exhaustion. My mother, your Grandmother Sakal, tried to stop her . . .” Hycymum shook her head. “I never got to replace my lost baby.”
“Oh, Mother,” Mahrree breathed as she embraced Hycymum. She felt guilty that she had two beautiful babies that came out yelling as loudly as their parents. She closed her eyes and wished for something helpful to say. Instead, all she came up with was, “How did you bear it?”
She felt her mother chuckle sadly in her arms. That was the last thing Mahrree expected. Then again, nothing she was hearing or feeling today was anything she expected.
Hycymum pulled back and was actually smiling. “Cloth!” When Mahrree looked at her blankly she said, “No, really. I met another woman who also lost an early baby. Together we made a blanket for our babies. We spent days looking at the market to find the right cloth, and oh! We never had sewed something so beautiful before.” Hycymum smiled tearfully at the memory. “Then to
gether we buried it near the unmarked graves of where Family Services buried our babies. They wouldn’t even let us do that on our own,” she added with a bitter tone Mahrree had never before heard from her mother.
“And then,” she continued, a tad more brightly, “we found other grieving mothers. We helped them make blankets. Then we helped each other make clothes for our surviving children. Then we made curtains and pillows and everything else.”
Mahrree smiled, not realizing she could still do it. “Your decorating friends! All of them lost someone?”
She nodded with a sad smile. “Yes, each one. I guess you feel as much pain for losing a child as you do when you lose the possibility of a child. Mahrree, you’ve joined our club, filled with women forced to take The Drink. And in our club is every mother who’s lived in the past fifty years. They’ll be here again, to help until you get over this. Because they understand.”
Mahrree shook her head in amazement, seeing her mother with new eyes, and seeing her fondness for decorating everything in a different way. “So it took me only thirty years to finally understand you?”
Hycymum laughed softly and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “You’re doing better than me. I still don’t understand you.”
They sat in silence few moments, both sniffing and passing the soggy handkerchief between them.
“I wished I could have seen Grandmother Sakal taking on the official,” Mahrree said eventually.
Hycymum smiled. “My mother was special, much like you. She knew losing my baby didn’t mean I couldn’t have more.” In a softer voice she said, “Did I ever tell you she was expecting five times? She lost three of her babies before she could carry them to full term, but was able to carry my twin brothers and me. That’s why she believed I could have more.” She sighed.
Mahrree sighed too. She’d often forgotten her mother had two younger brothers who died as small children from a fever and pox. Suddenly Mahrree wondered if she needed to worry about her own babies—
Oh, there were simply far too many things to worry about today. She was already drowning in dread.
Fortunately her mother spoke again. “Mahrree,” she said in a tone Mahrree had heard in her teenage students when they had news they were sworn to keep secret—except only after they shared it just this once, “I have something I think you’re ready for.”
Again surprised by her mother’s shifting demeanor, Mahrree smiled warily. “Might as well, Mother. I’m rather expecting anything now.”
Hycymum glanced around as if someone could have been hiding in the bedroom. “It’s about your great-great-grandparents, Kanthi and Viddrow. About the time King Querul the First was asking for the family records. I don’t know if you remember that time—”
“Mother, I taught history,” Mahrree interrupted gently. “Three hundred twenty years is a lot to remember, but I do know that the goal was to create a complete family history for the world. Querul wanted to trace everyone’s lines to the original Five Hundred Families.”
“Supposedly that’s what they planned,” said her mother flatly.
Mahrree had to grin. She’d never seen her mother like this before.
Sly. Cynical. Mysterious.
If only she didn’t still have bits of sugar in her eyebrows that made them look frosted she would have been quite alarming.
“Why do you say that, exactly?”
“That’s not what my great grandfather Viddrow believed,” Hycymum said, glancing around again for extra ears.
Mahrree couldn’t help herself. Ludicrously she peered out the window.
“I never told you this,” Hycymum continued, feeling sure the Administrator of Loyalty wasn’t in the wardrobe, “but he had a dream. Quite vivid. The next night he had the dream again.”
Dreams!
Mahrree felt a familiar warmth open up just above her heart. Someone in her family dreamed! And she didn’t even know about it until now. There were dreams, unrevealed to the world.
“It was only days before the king sent his official,” Hycymum told her. “There was a festival in every village, with food and songs and a great presentation ceremony where the head of each family walked up to the visiting official and handed him all the copies of their family papers.”
Hycymum huddled in closer, nearly crowding Mahrree off the bed.
“Viddrow told Kanthi to secretly make a copy of their lines,” she whispered. “Kanthi questioned why, since all of it would be compiled and she’d not only have their records but the records of everyone else. This was before paper was being produced so cheaply, so all they had was expensive parchment, and they didn’t have much silver to their names. But he insisted. ‘Copy the records, and tell no one about them.’ They hadn’t been married very long, and Kanthi wasn’t about to doubt her new husband. So she made a copy and secured it in her collection of recipes.”
Mahrree gasped. “Where are they now? Do you have our family lines? You know who our first father and mother were?” Chills of delight ran up her arms.
“Yes, I do!” Hycymum whispered. “And what a blessing that was, considering what happened. Great grandfather Viddrow never believed the fire that destroyed all the records was an accident. In the dream he saw the fire, knew all records would be destroyed, and it was all because a few men wanted to control the world. My great grandmother told me this when I was just a child, before she showed me the copy kept in my mother’s recipe book.”
“I knew it!” Mahrree whispered back, clapping her hands. “Everything was destroyed to keep us in the dark so we forget who our parents are, where we came from, what we once were.”
Almost immediately her enthusiasm faltered. Maybe her mood shifts were a result of The Drink, but she reflected on the fire with a new sense of poignancy, feeling as if it had just happened. She closed her eyes and remembered all that was lost.
The additional writings of the guides not yet included in The Writings. Scientific surveys of surrounding lands. Theories of past civilizations. Evidence of natural phenomena not witnessed by anyone alive. Maps. Stories. All of the important writings of the day in one secured stone vault, and engulfed by one mysterious fire. An intentional fire.
Her heart ached.
Fortunately her mother broke into her thoughts with, “Mahrree, did you know that your great-great-great—” She paused to count on her fingers, shrugged, then said, “A grandmother long ago had thirteen children? Her mother before her had nine. Kanthi and Viddrow had seven. Your father’s line was prolific too! He knew that his great-great—” Again she hesitated, lost in the greats. “Well, one his grandmothers had at least eight. Expecting didn’t destroy those women. Losing babies didn’t mean they were defective or deformed. Yes, some women struggled to have only one. And some mothers died in birthing. But rarely. And no one—no matter what that silly Administrator claimed in his report—went crazy from having babies!”
Mahrree blinked in surprise.
“Yes, I read it,” Hycymum proclaimed proudly. “Or tried to. Most of it. The important parts. But you see, no one remembers anymore. But,” she leaned conspiratorially toward her daughter, “we do!”
Mahrree squeezed her mother’s arm. “Do you think anyone else still has their family histories?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hycymum confessed. “Such a document would be too dangerous to discuss. I like to believe others may have been warned too. When you’re feeling better, though, I want you to make a copy to keep safe. Add our names, and the names of your children.”
“Of course. My recipe book could use a few additions.”
“And Mahrree,” her mother said somberly, “I hope you understand when I say this, but I don’t think you should tell Perrin. Not that I don’t trust him, but . . . I don’t think his position as corporal will allow him to keep such a family secret.”
Mahrree stifled a smirk at ‘corporal’ and nodded. “I’ve seen that already. And Mother? Thank you, for everything today. And for trusting me.”
/> Oh, the secrets women keep, she thought to herself. If only we had the power to organize them.
“I’m just glad I actually helped,” Hycymum said, sounding as if she’d passed her first math exam in thirty years. “You know, being a mother is so much easier when your babies are small.”
Mahrree groaned. “Oh, you did not just say that . . . Really? I’ve been thinking nothing could be more difficult than two small children!”
Hycymum shook her head. “My poor daughter, I’ll never understand how someone as bright as you can be so dim.”
---
Mahrree’s recovery from the effects of The Drink was really quite simple. She reminded herself how blessed she was, how adorable her two babies were, that she had a caring mother and a wonderful husband, and once she put her mind to it she could get over her deep sense of loss and easily move on.
Except her heart didn’t believe a word of it.
So Mahrree spent the next several weeks living in a pit of hopelessness.
She halfheartedly nursed her son, vaguely watched her daughter, and stared at her house from her bed or from the sofa.
Without any comment, mothers and grandmothers—most of them Hycymum’s friends—came in each day and straightened up Jaytsy’s messes, took her for walks, or cradled Peto while Mahrree napped. This service had been given to them as well. They knew the pain.
They also knew that in a few weeks the heavy sorrow would start to lighten, Mahrree would begin to sit up more often, watch her children more carefully, and begin to smile again.
In the meantime, the women took turns in her home until Perrin returned each evening. They would touch him on the arm, tell him what was cooking, and inform him who would come the next day. Hycymum came in daily to brush Mahrree’s hair, do the washing, and add herbs to the dinners.
But Perrin was at a complete loss.
“No one told me this would happen,” he said resentfully to Tabbit when she came over with loaves of bread four days after Mahrree took The Drink. “I’ve already received two letters from my mother telling me to wait. Wait for what, Auntie? This has destroyed Mahrree!”
She lay on the sofa, staring at nothing, not noticing the conversation between her husband and his great aunt by the table. She only hazily watched Jaytsy tearing paper that might have been important while Peto slept in the cradle.
“She’ll come out of it, Perrin, I promise. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times before. Eventually, her heart will come to terms—”
“Why didn’t anyone warn us?” he snapped at her.
“What good would that have done, Perrin?” Tabbit said, remarkably composed considering the commander of the fort was threatening to explode.
Then again, when you’ve changed someone’s soiled cloths as a baby, that tends to lend you a bit of authority over them, no matter what their position later in life.
“No man really wants to know,” she told him evenly. “Certainly not the Administrators or anyone else in authority. Women don’t fight battles, or hold positions of power, or even challenge the Administrators. We’re not a threat, but barely an asset. So what happens to us is irrelevant.”
“Well, I don’t feel that way,” he said, softening slightly.
“No, Perrin, you don’t, for which I thank the Creator. Neither does Hogal, nor did Cephas, and neither does your father. I don’t know if you realize this, but your birthing was quite difficult on Joriana—more than two days, because you were an enormous baby. Relf was quite distressed to see how much your mother suffered with you, so he convinced her to take The Drink early so as to not risk another expecting. He, too, was stunned and angry at how deeply The Drink affected her. I know because I was there. Your grandmother had already passed and I came to help Joriana.”
Perrin rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t know any of that.”
Tabbit kissed his elbow, as high as she could reach on him. “Perrin, individually men care enormously about their wives. But collectively, a world ruled by men sees women as mere support for their efforts, and a surplus at that. And surplus support is, as I think the army would put it, expendable.”
He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, Auntie Tabbit,” he whispered. “I don’t see it that way.” He looked at his very still wife. “Here I’ve been upholding the Administrators’ doctrine, their noble and proven explanations as to why women can’t have more than two children, but really, what would have been wrong with her trying to have three or even four? Why is it someone else’s decision as to how many children we have? She wanted more, you know. We could have handled it—”
“Perrin, Perrin,” Tabbit tried to quiet him, but he was as easy to calm as a cornered rattlesnake.
“The house is big enough! I earn enough!” he plowed on, but he knew the argument was as useless as pushing the rain back into the clouds. Still, he felt the need to shake his fist at the darkened sky.
“Grandpy Neeks never wanted to get married. There’s two children we could have had in his stead,” his voice wavered as the rationale struck him, far too late. “And Gizzada,” his voice turned into an anguished mumble. “Likely will never marry. Two more children. Could have been six,” he whispered. “Or seven.”
Tabbit hugged his arm.
“I never understood why couples risked punishment to have a third child,” he said quietly. “I thought it was selfish. But it was unselfish, willing to defy even the government to do what their hearts told them was right.”
Tabbit leaned against him. “Please, Perrin—you have to let this go. Nothing can be done now. You of all people shouldn’t say such things—”
“Even my mother knew this would happen,” he spat, momentarily full of venom again. “Do you women keep secrets about everything?”
“Actually, we do,” Tabbit smiled sadly. “But we’re not purposely secretive. It’s just that men don’t care about what we discuss, or worry about what we go through. As long as we keep your clothes clean and your food cooked, whatever else goes on in our world can stay in our world, well beyond your concern. You know what I mean,” she added gently when she saw the hurt look in his eyes.
Perrin squinted, surprised and unsure of what to do with her evaluation. “So that’s true for all women?”
Tabbit shrugged and nodded.
Her nephew groaned quietly. “I can’t help but think I took her to have it done—”
“You didn’t do this to her. You were saving her,” she assured him. “If you hadn’t brought her in they would have forced you, especially because of your last name. Be the example to the village and all that—”
“Just last season I broke the laws over and over to save her and our children,” he whispered as he watched her prone form. “Then, five moons later, I broke her instead.”
“What else could you have done, Perrin?”
I could have tried, he thought despondently. I could have argued that the population is likely decreasing, since many don’t have children, and we could have—
“Nothing!” his aunt cut into his pointless planning.
She’s right, he concluded glumly. Any appeal would have gone through Dr. Brisack, and any inquiry would have drawn the attention of Gadiman, or worse, Nicko Mal. While Perrin was confident Mal remembered him only sporadically, why give the paranoid man reasons to stay up all night stewing about his ideas?
“Now, Perrin,” Tabbit said soothingly, “what you can do is help her recover. Sit with her. Kiss her. Talk to her. Love your babies. Give them the attention she can’t. And just wait.”
There really was nothing else he could do, he realized that night as he sat next to her. His anger wasn’t constructive or restorative. He had to somehow let it go so that he could reach her.
The damage was done, Perrin understood about a week later, but that didn’t mean it would destroy her forever. His back was permanently scarred with a jagged slash, but he felt as strong as ever. Maybe, somehow, she could recover too. There would always be a scar, but she could still be
strong again. He had to focus on bringing back the woman he fell in love with.
For now she was merely a shell.
So each evening he sat awkwardly next to Mahrree as she distantly asked about the soldiers, and he wondered how to wipe away the shadows that covered her. He bounced his children, read reports from Idumea, watched neighbors go to the night’s entertainment, and waited.
He felt guilty about going to the fort where he knew the busyness of the day would help him forget the misery at home. But once he came home he was greeted by two little children who filled him with joy while their mother could not.
Although he always liked children, he was surprised by how much he loved his. He never knew how entertaining one-year-olds could be. Watching his little girl with big dark eyes explore the house, empty the bookshelves, and try on his cap was the best time of his day. When she giggled as she tried to put both of her legs into one of his boots, he surprised himself by whispering, “Absolutely adorable!”
He held his little boy and watched with delight as his son attempted his first grins to match his father’s. More than once he muttered, “That’s so cute!”
Then Perrin would glance over to his wife who seemed to see right past her children, or noticed only half of how amazing they were. He prayed that when she came out of it she wouldn’t know what she had missed.
After two weeks he finally identified the pang in his heart: he missed her.
He missed their conversations, their fights, and their arguing afterward.
He needed her stubbornness and her ability to make absolutely perfect sense of things he failed to recognize before.
But as she stared off into nothingness, it didn’t seem that she missed him.
But still he waited.
---
One night, about three and a half weeks after The Drink, Mahrree dreamed again.
Beautiful land. Lush garden. Mountains. More than a dozen children. Gray wooden house. Window boxes filled with herbs.
She woke and sat up in her bed in the dark. Perrin spent every night on the sofa now, Jaytsy hadn’t come up the stairs, and Peto was still down in his cradle. She was completely alone.
The only thing to do was cry. But before she could, she felt her father unexpectedly close and startlingly clear.
Mahrree, it’s not too late. You see too small a view, imagine too small a life. You’re so limited now. But the limits will expand until they disappear.
“Oh, Father,” she whispered miserably to the dark. “You just don’t understand.”
The words came gently, fervently. My beloved daughter, it’s you who does not understand. The Creator knows your emptiness, and He’ll fill it to overflowing. But in His time. He has ways you can’t understand, but you will.
The warmth that appeared in her heart when she remembered her father expanded beyond the confines of her chest. She felt her body fill completely with heat and energy that reached even the darkest regions of her soul, flooding it with light. And the light brought something with it.
Joy. Pure joy.
She was so surprised by it she actually laughed in spite of her tears. Pain and sorrow leaked mercifully away, replaced with sublime anticipation.
“You promise, right Father?” she said out loud.
He was there—she knew it. She couldn’t see him or hear him, but she could feel him, and that was stronger than any other sense. He surrounded her.
Of course I promise. You have a glorious future with this sweet family. You don’t need to sorrow any more. Never doubt your husband. Remain faithful and don’t fear. You are surrounded by help, always.
---
The next morning Perrin awoke to the unmistakable sounds of someone making breakfast. He checked his attire to make sure he was covered enough to greet whatever gray-haired woman had snuck past his sleeping form and was in their kitchen so early. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and tried to shake himself awake as he walked quietly to the kitchen door and gently pushed it open.
“You!” he said, a little too loudly.
Mahrree jumped and dropped an egg. She turned to him, smiled, and said, “Were you expecting someone else?”
“Actually, yes,” he smiled tentatively and walked over to her.
The light was back in her eyes. Not only light, but hope.
He stopped in front of her. “Someone a bit older, with more wrinkles,” he said as he gingerly touched her face. When she didn’t shrink back he stepped closer and took her face in his hands. “Someone with white hair and a marvelous gift with yeast and eggs. But,” he sighed dramatically, “I suppose I’ll have to settle for you.”
She grinned at him.
He glanced down at the floor to avoid stepping in the egg mess and kissed her gently.
She kissed him back. “Hmm. And how many of these women did you greet this way each morning?” she teased.
He cocked his head toward the door. “Just take a look outside and see the line of gray-hairs waiting for their turns.” His face softened and his eyes became damp. “Oh, it’s good to see you back!”
He squeezed her so hard he was worried for a moment he might break her, but she was solid. He saw it in her eyes.
“They said you’d come back,” he whispered in her ear as he lifted her, “but that it takes time. I don’t know what changed, but I did pray for you.” He put her down and beamed.
“My father,” she whispered.
Perrin looked at her, confused.
“He said all would be fine,” she explained, sort of. “And that I didn’t have to be sad anymore.”
“I wished I could have met Cephas,” Perrin said reverently. “He’s the one you heard argue that the blue sky is an illusion, isn’t he? He surmised the true color of the sky is black.”
Mahrree nodded. “He always saw further and deeper than I ever could.”
“Further and deeper than anyone,” Perrin whispered. “I wished I had his insight. He could reach you when no one else could.”
“You would’ve liked him,” she said, running her hand through his black hair. “After all, he’s always liked you.”
