Soldier at the Door (7 page)

He sighed. “Mahrree, I don’t think it happens anymore. I like to believe they did, but now . . . have you heard of anyone recently dreaming, I mean, dreams with
meaning?
”

“Oh Perrin, people don’t share such dreams lightly. It took me more than two years to dare tell it to you.”

Perrin sighed again. “Tell me more about it. What else is there? Any landmarks, any activity?”

Mahrree hesitated, but he did seem open to the idea, even if o
nly a little. “Well, there
is
something else. I guess this is the part that makes it seem truly unbelievable.” She paused then rushed on. “I was sitting in a garden, a big one, and I was weeding it and I was happy!”

Perrin burst out laughing, startling his daughter who was drif
ting off to sleep on the blanket. “Well there you have it! Ridiculous! What kind of garden was it?”

Mahrree sighed miserably as she confessed, “Vegetables.”

He grinned as if he’d just easily won a complicated game. “Ah, well, then. You know what I think it is? It’s ‘your condition’ playing tricks on you.”

His smugness insulted her.

“I was not in ‘my condition’ when we became engaged!”

“Ah, but you were dreaming of the time you would be, right?” He smiled virtuously. “You went to bed that night dreaming of the day you could hold your own little baby. Come now, I know the minds of women well enough now.”

Two years of marriage had made him an expert.

Mahrree felt as if a crushing boulder had just rolled on top of her hope, and it made her chest tight and achy.

“I hate to admit it, but that’s a bit true,” she murmured. “That night we decided to marry, I was thinking of you. Of a family.”

But the dreams had seemed so real, so vivid that she could even make out from which direction
the sun hit the house. She couldn’t let it go so easily. Maybe it
could work
, if only he’d think about it—

“Do you
really
think it was only my imagination and coincidence?”

“Definitely,” he said in a tone that suggested she never speak of it again.

“Now,” he continued, suddenly cheerful, “I suggest we get these sleepy children in the house and catch a nap ourselves before Peto’s next feeding which should happen, by my estimation, in seventeen minutes.”

And just like that, it was over.

Her dream house, her garden, her hopes for more children—all of it wiped away as if it were merely a drawing in the dirt.

Perrin the deluge destroyed it all.

Well, not so much
him
, she admitted grudgingly as the ache in her chest sharpened into genuine pain. It was the Administrators, it was their world—it was everyone. He was merely reminding her of all the obstacles that stood in her way. He didn’t create them, just pointed them out.

Sti
ll, couldn’t he have looked a bit harder for a way around them?

She watched Perrin as he gently scooped up his little girl, wrapped her in the blanket, and kissed her sleeping form. Mahrree loved him, she was sure of that. But he seemed further away tonight. Not so much the most perfect man in the world.

She almost forgave him as he tenderly carried Jaytsy into the house. But she couldn’t let this go.

Women have a list in their brain that keeps a tally of
everything
. The title of a list which she’d made some time ago materialized again in Mahrree’s mind: “Ways in which Perrin’s mind is
not
like mine.” Underneath
Dogs are better than cats,
and
Boots do belong on the eating table,
Mahrree recorded,
Dreams are nonsense.

They didn’t talk much that evening after Perrin put Jaytsy to bed. Just brief, civil exchanges before he went to his study. And du
ring Peto’s last feeding Mahrree fell into a deep sleep, fed by exhaustion mixed with absolute despair.

She despaired that there was nothing she could do about the date, already set for next week. The midwives had made the a
ppointment when they reported to Idumea the names of all the women who had recently birthed a second time.

Then next week a coach carrying an assistant from Family Life and several vials of the drink would stop at a small, windowless build
ing right outside the market, as it did every two weeks.

Mahrree had seen the assistant’s arrival a couple of times b
efore. She was a brutish woman, nearly as large as Perrin, likely chosen because she was both female—allegedly—and powerful enough to strong-arm any woman who had a sudden last minute change of heart.

Mahrree had also seen the mothers waiting for their turn, usua
lly a handful each time. Some were there voluntarily after their first babies, not wanting to endure the experience of birthing again. But none of them ever looked up, as if some oppressive and invisible hand from the building forced their heads down to inspect the gravel at their feet. Then they were ushered, one at a time, into the wooden building accompanied by their own mothers, grandmothers, or the occasional brave husband.

The mothers didn’t look any different coming out again after swallowing down a concoction of bitter herbs and a burning liquid—the brutal recipe created by Dr. Brisack. No, the effects didn’t occur for about another hour, Mahrree had been told. That’s why the wo
men went straight home, because the brew soon made its way into the womb and cramped into a useless nothingness.

Perrin had said the Guarders were cruel to force their women to have so many children, but she was sure that deliberately killing the part of her body that made new life was crueler.

Now she was rethinking her decision to have Perrin, with his current attitude, accompany her instead of her mother.

Then again, while Hycymum had been most attentive and hel
pful during birthing, she also had a way of multiplying Mahrree’s anxiety. Being concerned about each pain was one thing, but gasping in worry and rushing to horrible conclusions was quite another. Hycymum meant well, but Mahrree was quite sure that the constant reassurance that everything was going to be all right was supposed to go from grandmother to birthing mother, not the other way around.

Maybe, Mahrree thought glumly as her heavy head nodded that night, she’d just go by herself to take The Drink. She already felt u
tterly alone.

Perrin hadn’t bothered to come to bed yet either, nor would he. They’d done too much fighting that night to consider anything like an
argument
.

As she drifted off to sleep, her infant tucked securely next to her, she didn’t know that a candle remained lit until the small hours of the night on their eating table until it eventually extinguished i
tself.

Nor did she know her copy of The Writings and old maps lay open next to several pages filled with dates, calculations, cross outs, notes, and more calculations.

Nor did she realize that Perrin snored peacefully with his head on the table, and a quill balanced in his fingers.

Early in the dark morning, Mahrree padded wearily down the stairs in search of clean changing cloths. Both children wer
e in her bed, again. It was simply easier to keep Peto within arm’s reach during the night, and now Jaytsy was braving the dark to climb the stairs and scale the side of the massive bed to sleep with her parents. Now while the bed was big enough for eight soldiers, it somehow wasn’t large enough for two small children when they stretched and rolled, pushing their parents to the very edges.

That was likely the real reason Perrin hadn’t come to bed. Jaytsy had kicked him so hard a few weeks ago she actually bruised her father’s ribs. He felt safer on the small sofa.

In the light that poured into the side window from the full Greater moon, Mahrree saw him sprawled on the sofa, snoring softly. She made a mental note that they should buy something that could accommodate his long legs and broad shoulders.

As she turned by the table she saw The Writings and notes. Why all of those were out, she couldn’t imagine, and she didn’t really care right then. She had only a few minutes before her babies would be
waking and . . .

She found herself stopping and turning back to the table. Nois
elessly she shifted the papers and bent closer to make out the notations in the dim light. Something burned in her aching chest as she read Perrin’s writing and recognized the other pages.

References to The Writings.

Calculations of Guarder population growth in varying circumstances.

Minimum dimensions of land needed to house different popul
ation sizes.

Maps from his collection.

Calculations of the Idumean world population, before and after the Great War.

The words
weathered gray
and
window boxes.

Mahrree looked over at Perrin. She was tempted to rush over and kiss him, but knew he needed the sleep almost as much as she did.

Her husband. That’s who he was right now.
Captain Shin
had been there the night before, growling at her like a rabid wolf, but he was gone now. She lived with two men, both too large to be contained in one body at the same time.

Captain Shin had stood on the podium shouting at her during the debates, but it was Perrin she fell in love with away from the pla
tform.

Captain Shin was the man with the sword and the barely-controlled temper raging through the forests, but Perrin was the man who pulled his babies out of her arms the moment after he took off his uniform jacket.

Captain Shin was the one who declared her thoughts traitorous, Perrin was the one who tried to see if anything could be done about her dreams.

She could live with both of them, as long as Perrin was around more than the officer.

She pulled out her mental list and did her best to blot out
Dreams are nonsense
as she took the clean cloths back upstairs.

Nothing had changed, she knew. There was no more hope for her, for a bigger family, for any alternatives. The Drink was still in her near future. But she felt as if her husband had spent the night lif
ting off that crushing boulder and heaving it away as far as he could. Granted, he couldn’t send it far at all, but the point was,
he had tried
.

She got up again an hour later as the sun was rising, and carried both babies down the stairs balanced on each side. The pain in her chest had subsided to a dull ache, but she could live with that. Not surprisingly, the eating table was completely cleared and Perrin snored in a new position on the sofa.

She smiled sweetly at him and dropped his babies on his chest.

“Let me guess,” he mumbled as he slowly opened his eyes and put a steadying hand on each child. “It’s morning already.”

“According to some farm animals, yes.” She bent over and kissed him.

He grinned sleepily. “Mm, not that we have any time to
argue
, but I’m curious—what was that for?”

“For being
my husband
.”

---

Perrin struggled to sit up with his children—his baby cradled in one arm while his toddler sat unhelpfully on his belly—as his wife went into the kitchen to start breakfast. He righted himself and glanced in a quick panic at the table, then sighed when he remembered he had already cleaned up his work.

He didn’t need her seeing it.

Not again.

No one
would see his calculations and notes again, now smoldering on the hearth.

He couldn’t shake Hogal’s words to him in Raining Season, right after he was injured. Hogal had said that not only was the Refuser after Perrin, but his family, too. And why?

Because Mahrree could someday prove to be a very dangerous woman.

Perrin had thought maybe some year, or decade, but not within a few moons! But there it was: Mahrree could see what no else bot
hered to look at. She already
was
the most dangerous woman in the world.

That’s why Perrin burned all his notes. He didn’t need written evidence of that lying around.

Her calculations had been correct. Her suggestions of how many Guarders there could be somewhere else, even at conservative birthrates, were staggering.

And there was nothing he could do about it, he realized. Maybe send some of the ideas to his father to suggest 15,000 in the army might
not
be enough? But the notion of going somewhere
else
? Exploring? Increasing their own family size?

People simply
weren’t supposed to think like that. There were
rules
and
limits
to their world—

Why was he suddenly thinking like an Administrator?