Soldier at the Door(226)

Mahrree’s chest tightened with possibilities. What if . . . what if there was even more than she ever dreamed about?

Her chest tightened even more, but now with dread.

Dreams could be very frightful things. Did she really want to know? Deeply, desperately? Or was it all just a silly romantic notion? True, she went into the forest, but she was so frightened of it she nearly wet her drawers like a two-year-old. Would she really have gone with that woman if circumstances were different?

Maybe it was because the woman had an air about her that told Mahrree she wouldn’t be leaving Edge that Mahrree felt courageous enough to proclaim she would. It’s so easy to be brave when everyone knows you can’t prove it.

And that woman’s words . . .

Despite Mahrree trying to forget what happened that night, her words still bounced in her head.

“All I do is save lives.”

So was it the women that preserved and hid other women, while the men killed? What if Mahrree had run into a man instead of a woman that night?

She also finally recalled the words of that gray old man: “May the Creator always bless and preserve this family.”

Mahrree cringed. How arrogant she had been, assuming that nothing would happen to her because of an old man’s wish. Of course she could have been killed! What had she been thinking that night?! She knew, always, that she was merely a loud coward.

But her husband? Perrin truly was a brave man. And so was his father.

She tried to stop looking at the mountains and boulders and forest where she learned the truth that she was nothing more than a steam vent, pouring out so much heat and stench, yet accomplishing nothing. But still the north continued to captivate her. For some odd reason right then, it was all just so appealing.

And it was all far too confusing. There was simply too much she didn’t know, and that nagged at her. She hated knowing she didn’t know.

She was missing something, very important.



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Dormin struggled to move, but instead he crumpled to his knees. He wasn’t the first one to do so at that spot. He continued to stare, his mouth slowly dropping open, and his eyes filling with tears.

The Yungs winked at each other.

Dormin tried lamely to gesture, but his arms couldn’t even obey him. He just gaped.

Eventually words stumbled out of his stunned mouth as he stared at the scene in front of him.

“Oh . . . my . . . I . . . just . . . didn’t . . .”

The Yungs laughed.



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Mahrree felt, for the briefest of moments, a thrust of heat and energy and amazement. It came out of nowhere, filled her completely, and then, just as swiftly as the feeling came, it slipped away.

She hadn’t imagined it; it had been real—so painfully, acutely real. It stopped her in her back garden, as if an invisible hand had slipped into her and yanked her soul. She still felt it, even though it was now only a fast memory.

And the loss of that moment—of that wonder, that fear, that knowledge that so quickly rushed into, and then out again—panged her heart. Something extraordinary was, at that moment, happening somewhere in those mountains.

And she was missing it.

She had to miss it.

She could never leave her husband or her children. They were a family. Without her family, she was merely a fraction of what she should be.

There would come a time for her, the woman had told her. That notion both fascinated and terrified her. When that time would be, she had no idea. For now it was just easier to push aside the worrying yet captivating thought. So until that time . . .

Until then, there was nothing more she could do.

Except . . . the laundry.

She sighed loudly, turned back to the basket on the ground, and forced her arms to go through the motions of hanging her daughter’s dress on the line. Tears of frustration leaked from her eyes, and embarrassed, she brushed them away.

There was nothing more to see, or to know, or to imagine.

Except a strange little thought that floated like a tiny puff of cotton through her mind, so quietly that she nearly missed it, but she caught it at the last moment.

It said, Where—exactly—is your family?



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“I can’t help it, that story always puts me in the mood for berry pie.”

The two thirteen-year-olds stared at the old woman as she looked thoughtfully into the sky. Pulling weeds in the pumpkin patch had been forgotten hours ago.

“Aren’t either of you hungry?” she asked the teens. “I’m starving. And look—the raspberries are ripe. Surely someone’s mother somewhere has a raspberry pie?” she hinted.

The girl scoffed. “Muggah, you can’t be serious—”

Her cousin Vid jumped in. “Oh Hycy, yes she is. Look at her eyes. Pie eyes.”