The Mansions of Idumea (Book 3 Forest at the Edge series) (9 page)

Horses and wagons from the fort speeding to
the center of Edge passed the Shins frequently. Mahrree recognized
Major Karna as he led the fire brigades back and forth, and she
wished she could stop him and ask what was happening. The smell of
fire was undeniable and the family tried not to think about whom it
may be affecting or where their husband and father were.

In a small, sinister way that she was ashamed
about, Mahrree rather hoped some of the finer shops were burning to
the ground. At least those with an extraneous
p
or
e
somewhere. Maybe if Edgers did without their luxuries for a few
weeks, they’d realize the luxuries never brought them happiness,
but only a temporary euphoria of having got something. Then they’d
have to get something again for the same feeling . . . Sometimes
Edge was more insatiable than Peto at mealtimes.

But, her skeptical mind reminded, this event
likely wouldn’t change anything. Big things rarely do. The tremor
may stun people for a moment, like an unexpected slap across the
face, but once the sting is gone everything sinks back to normal
again.

As she progressed through the neighborhoods
looking for ways to help, Mahrree experienced a variety of
feelings. Horror for the widespread devastation—no house was
untouched—then a strange yearning of hope, that maybe, just maybe,
this land tremor
would
wake up everyone.

It seemed to do it a bit for Mr. Hegek. The
Shins ran across him near one of the two-story, gray block school
houses. He stood in front of it, his hands on his waist, staring up
at a cracked window.

Mahrree sidled over to the director of
schools. “Evaluating if we can have school tomorrow?”

He jumped a little in surprise and turned to
her. “It’s remarkable! Look how well it held up. The only damage I
see is that window up there. I must confess, I snuck through it
looking for cracks, but didn’t see anything major.”

Mahrree blinked in surprise. “You actually
went in?”

“I pushed on the walls first,” he defended
himself. “I didn’t just blindly rush in there, you know. I do have
a bit of common sense, Mrs. Shin.”

She smiled. “Well, not everyone here does. As
for school?”

Mr. Hegek shook his head. “I’m cancelling it
for a few weeks,” he told her, and Jaytsy and Peto emitted little
cheers. “With this kind of mess, I think everyone needs to focus on
cleaning up. The End of Year testing can be put off for a few
weeks, I’m sure.”

Mahrree shook her head in wonder. “Mr. Hegek,
you have more than a bit of common sense. Well done, sir!”

Hegek blushed at her praise. “Besides,” he
said more quietly, “I’ve already told two families they can move
into the lower classrooms, once the soldiers have deemed them safe.
My neighbors lost everything, Mrs. Shin. My wife, son, and I dug
them out of a pile of rubble this morning. The Administrators
surely can forgive using their school building as a temporary home,
don’t you think?”

Mahrree squeezed his arm. “Absolutely.
Especially since none of us will tell them, right?”

She decided then that Mr. Hegek was the best
thing that morning.

Because shortly after that, the Shins
experienced the worst thing. They turned on to a road to see that
several soldiers had stopped at a pile of rock and planking.
Mahrree froze in her tracks when she realized that what looked like
a pile of debris had been a house. No damage they’d come across had
been as bad as that, yet.

A soldier jogged over. “Mrs. Shin, I don’t
recommend you bring your children here. There are fatalities.”

Mahrree nodded and Peto asked quietly behind
her, “Mother, what are ‘fatalities’?” The tone of his voice
suggested he knew the meaning, but was hoping for some other
definition.

Jaytsy began to weep silently. “I knew that
family. They had a little girl, about ten.”

Mahrree tried to keep her voice calm. “Peto,
it means the Creator has taken them to Paradise.”

“Oh,” Peto whispered.

“Six hours of working and I thought maybe
Edge had been spared something worse. . .” Mahrree murmured. She
felt the undeniable urge to sit down and begin weeping like so many
she’d passed that morning.

How obtuse of her, she thought, to demand the
villagers to get up and get moving, to do something about the
devastation around them, to swallow down their terror—

Another soldier approached her, but Mahrree
didn’t see him. Her eyes were blurring with the horror that people
had died in their homes. Like a landslide, all the destruction of
that morning started to pile on top of her.

“Mahrree,” the soldier said and gently placed
a hand on her shoulder.

She recognized the voice of her favorite
soldier and turned to him. Already Jaytsy was hugging him, and Peto
punched his free arm in a nonchalant manner that carried the hope
that his customary greeting would somehow make everything else
normal as well.

Shem kissed Jaytsy on top of her head and
ruffled Peto’s hair. Then he turned to Mahrree with his ever sweet
and calm eyes. “Are all of you all right?” He looked each one of
them up and down.

“Yes, we’re fine,” she sighed guiltily, her
gaze shifting back to the ruined house. “Just seeing what we can do
to help.”

“Go home,” he said softly, reading the
emotion in her face. “Karna’s got the fire under control, Grandpy’s
securing the southern part of Edge, so now we’re moving toward the
northern houses to help Rigoff’s groups. Go home and . . . and . .
.” He shrugged as ideas failed him.

“I
am
hungry, Mother,” Peto admitted
as if he didn’t want to.

Mahrree sighed as she interpreted Shem’s
expression. There was only more devastation ahead. His sky-blue
eyes were clouding over with the images he’d seen that he didn’t
want his claimed family to witness.

She nodded feebly at him. “Cooking. I need to
start cooking, don’t I? You’re supposed to be by to eat. You missed
steak last night,” she added absently. “There’s too much to clean
right now. But I can cook.”

Shem squeezed her arm. “Consider that there
may be many, many more who need dinner tonight. The lieutenant
colonel said your house was in relatively stable condition, at
least the larder. Whatever you can do for your neighborhood,
Mahrree, you best start figuring out now. And Perrin told me to
tell you he’ll be by later to check on you, so you better be where
he expects you to be.”

Mahrree smiled at that. He’d sent Shem to
find her. He was the only master sergeant messenger in the entire
army, a task usually reserved for fast running privates, but he was
always so much more than just their messenger.

She remembered the pages clutched in her
hands. “Here,” and gave him her surveys. “This may help speed up
your work.”

Shem sifted through the pages. “Perrin said
you’d know what to do,” he said quietly. “Thank you. Now, go.
Jaytsy, Peto—do what your mother says.”

Normally they rolled their eyes whenever
their “uncle” sounded like their father, but not today. Peto nodded
to him, and Jaytsy squeezed Shem one more time.

Shem patted Mahrree on the arm and turned to
jog back to the destroyed house, but Mahrree needed one more
thing.

“Shem!” she cried urgently. “My mother! Do
you know anything about the Edge of Idumea Estates?”

He turned around and shook his head. “Got hit
as hard as everywhere else. I’ll send someone to check on her for
you, though, as soon as I can. All right?”

Mahrree nodded. “Thank you, Master Sergeant,”
she remembered to call her ‘little brother’ by his formal title in
public.

“Now, go home, before the colonel gets angry
with us,” he ordered.

Seeing Shem always made her feel better, and
hearing him shout commands to the soldiers moving debris gave her a
surge of hope. Master Sergeant Zenos was on the job; it would be
done right. Already he was handing out her surveys of damage to
three smaller groups of soldiers, gesturing for them to start
moving north.

“Be careful, Uncle Shem,” Jaytsy called
quietly after him, knowing he couldn’t hear her, but still wanting
to send the warning.

“Uncle Shem will be fine,” Peto declared, as
if his words controlled the world. “He always is.”

Mahrree put an arm around each of her
children and headed for home. She felt as if half of the landslide
had just been lifted from her shoulders and placed securely on the
strong back of Uncle Shem.

He’d be by later tonight, Mahrree was sure,
with Hycymum. He’d check on her himself. That’s just what Shem
Zenos did for them. Every illness, every injury, every family
celebration, every Holy Day, Shem Zenos was there. When Perrin was
gone training officers in other forts around the world,
then-Sergeant Zenos put himself on guard duty at the Shins every
night. He was theirs, even more than if he’d been born into their
families. And Mahrree was still going to find him a wife.

As Mahrree, Jaytsy, and Peto slowly walked
the several roads back to their house, evaluating the progress and
stopping here and there to lend a hand, Mahrree talked to women
whose houses weren’t too badly destroyed, those who could still
retrieve supplies. By the time she reached her road a dozen women
had committed to come by when they could make dinner for those who
couldn’t, with whatever they could cobble together.

As they neared home, Mahrree was grateful to
see Mrs. Hersh had watched over the Shins’ house as well as hers.
The woman held a large stick which she used unnecessarily for
walking, for occasionally prodding a rock, and for shaking at
things. As Mahrree approached, Mrs. Hersh brandished the stick as
if it were a sword, and waved it about with as much determination,
but only for a few seconds because the piece of wood was rather
heavy for the dumpy woman with very little arm muscle.

“There were a few of them skulking boys
around here,” she said with an insulted huff. “But I shook this at
them—”

She waved the stick experimentally again, and
Mahrree took a cautious step backward in case the weight of the
wood got the better of the middle-aged woman.

“—and I told them, ‘We’re not putting up with
that kind of nonsense today. So go get a shovel and go be
useful!’”

Mahrree clapped her hands. “Well done, Mrs.
Hersh! And what did they do?”

Mrs. Hersh let the wood fall back into
walking cane position, and behind Mahrree, Peto sighed dramatically
in relief. “Why, they left, naturally. Scowled a bit, but slinked
away with nothing to pad their pockets with.” She sniffed proudly.
“Should sign me up to be a soldier.”

Mahrree patted her son behind her in warning,
knowing he was about to snigger. But Mahrree saw something in the
woman’s eyes that Peto wasn’t mature enough to recognize. Sometime
during the morning the cowering thing had found her bravery in the
form of a piece of kindling and her ability to do something.
Mahrree hadn’t seen so much resolve in her neighbor in all the
years they’d lived next to each other.

“Mrs. Hersh, if I could make it up to my
bedroom, I’d retrieve for you one of my husband’s blue jackets and
let you wear it today. I’ll be starting dinner soon for whoever in
the area needs to eat. You’re certainly invited for standing guard
all day.”

The woman smiled, waved the stick again, and
Jaytsy snorted in worry. “Thank you, Mrs. Shin. I’ll continue
patrolling the area until dinner, then.”

Mahrree saluted her as Mrs. Hersh snapped to
some semblance of attention, and marched to the other side of her
yard. Mahrree hoped Mrs. Hersh didn’t hear the stifled guffaws of
her children.

“She’s doing us a service,” she told them as
she tried to squelch her own giggle. “Nothing quite as fearsome as
a female with a stick. And I’ve never seen her so determined. Good
for her!”

Still, Mahrree rather preferred their guard
was someone just a bit more threatening. She actually wished their
old smelly dog Barker was still alive. They could’ve tied him up to
the front door as a guard. It wasn’t as if he would have done
anything to potential intruders except slobber on them, even though
his drool was intimidating. But he had passed away almost two years
ago, lovingly buried by Perrin, Peto, and Shem outside the fort
walls, and Mahrree even surprised herself by shedding a few tears
that he was gone.

But then again, on a day like today she’d be
struggling just to feed her family and neighbors. Feeding an animal
that weighed as much as her might not have been a wise use of
resources.

Mahrree turned to her house with dread and
hope. She’d put off thinking about its condition all morning, but
now she had to face what she feared: that her beloved home might
dissolve into a pile of rubble. She’d imagined it several times
during the day when they saw other houses that appeared stable
suddenly collapse, but she never allowed herself to linger on the
thought. The home her father and the villagers helped build, and
the additions Perrin put up—the thought of losing any of it was too
much to bear. But now her mind was filled with the possibility.

“What do we do now?” Peto asked, eyeing his
bedroom.

“What we’ve been doing all day,” Mahrree told
him. “Try to evaluate if it’s stable. You two, stay back a
way."

Jaytsy wrung her hands nervously as her eyes
darted toward her parents’ bedroom, which was noticeably brighter
and airier. One of their blankets flapped in the breeze like a
volunteer emergency banner.

That blanket was too scratchy anyway, Mahrree
thought dismissively as she inspected her house. A narrow fissure
ran parallel to her house but didn’t turn to intersect the large
flat stone that served as part of her foundation. She tentatively
approached the back of her house, her children tiptoeing behind
her.