Soldier at the Door (8 page)

For a brief moment he envisioned his grandfather glaring at him in disappointment. Wasn’t it General Pere Shin who told him to go over the wall, invade the forest, do what no one else could do?

Perrin
did
many things no one else had done, but he simply couldn’t do
this
.  There was no way he could see successfully doing what Mahrree dreamed. He tried almost all night, but no possibility he entertained ended happily.

Everything ended in Idumea.

He adjusted his small children on his lap and kissed each one of them as they stared up at him with eyes far too wide awake for such an early hour. One pair was a dark chestnut brown, the other pair was pale blue, turning gray.

Annoy and anger the Refuser.

According to Hogal, these two soft little faces would someday annoy and anger the Refuser. Perrin sighed at his babies and tried to smile. Maybe Hogal was mistaken. He’d been up the entire night before he told Perrin his impressions of his family, and he must have been exhausted. Perrin Shin and his family were no threats to anyone—

But the words sounded hollow in his mind. Rector Hogal Densal, in all his 82 years, was never wrong. And he had dreams too. He’d never told his nephew
how
he knew the Refuser had a personal grudge against lowly Perrin Shin, but Hogal’s dreams were so vivid he couldn’t deny them.

And now Mahrree was having dreams.

But Perrin considered them nightmares.

Chapter 3 ~ “Such a document would be

too dangerous to discuss.”

A
lthough it was Hycymum Peto’s day off from cooking at the 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, 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 just 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, paused, then said, “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 sugar on her chubby fingers. “That bag cost three slips of silver this wee
k. 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, wiping her nose for sugar grains.

Mahrree cocked her head. Something in the tone of her bubble headed mother sounded as heavy as a boulder. “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 a
fter,” 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. 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. I
nstead, all she came up with was, “How did you bear it?”

She felt her mother chuckle under 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 together we buried it near the unmarked graves of where Family Services buried our babies. Wouldn’t even let us do
that
on our own,” she added with a bitter tone Mahrree had never heard from her mother before.

“And then,” she continued, a bit 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 di
fferent 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 trying to take 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 full term, but was able to carry my twin brothers and me. That’s why she b
elieved 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.

“She tried to tell the representative, but of course she wouldn’t listen.” Hycymum reflected for a moment. “Mahrree,” she said in a tone Mahrree had heard from 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 changing demeanor, Mahrree smiled warily. “Might as well, Mother. I’m rather expecting an
ything now.”

Hycymum glanced around as if someone could have been hi
ding 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 teach
history
,” Mahrree interrupted. “Three hundred twenty years is a lot to remember, but I
do
know about the family records collection. The goal was to create a complete family histories, everyone’s father and mother. They wanted to trace their lines to the original Five Hundred Families to put into The Writings. It should have happened right before the division.”

“
Supposedly
that’s what they planned,” said her mother flatly.

Mahrree had to grin. She’d never seen her mother like this b
efore.

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 the familiar warmth seize her 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 for the festival,” 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.”