The Forest at the Edge of the World(12)

“Miss Mahrree! Come decide this,” one officious eleven-year-old called.

“Sorry—I’m off duty tonight.”

“But you’re always a teacher, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not always a mediator. And that’s what you need right now. One of your friends can take on that role.”

The children looked at each, considered the possibility, then promptly went back to quarreling.

Mahrree chuckled and waved to the rest of the children who stood impatiently waiting for a resolution. She walked to the large clump of trees that stood before the theater’s doors. When the children became teenagers, the girls stopped playing and started watching the boys. Now leaning against the trees stood a gaggle of girls preening themselves.

Even as a teenager Mahrree hadn’t understood that behavior. Her friends had sat and giggled while she sat and thought about books from her father’s collection, especially after he died. She knew her lack of attention to young men was why she was single at the overripe age of twenty-eight. The last in her group had married several years ago, and many of her ten morning students were the children of her childhood friends.

But none of the young men in Edge had intrigued her as much as accounts from explorers to the ruins or speculations about the world beyond them. She was fascinated by places and occurrences no one in Edge had witnessed. But when she mentioned such things to her friends, they looked at her as if she were a hairy insect. Studying history, then becoming a teacher, was far more satisfying than learning about the art of flirting.

Mahrree paused to take in the scene before her. Several girls, three of whom were her afternoon students, were clustered a few paces away from a group of older boys who clearly didn’t notice their admirers. They had already divided into two teams for Track the Stray Bull and were deep in planning. The young men never seemed to have a hard time deciding who was the bull, but could spend most the evening trying to agree on strategy that would take three more days to carry out. In the meantime the girls fluffed their hair, straightened their skirts, and eventually sat down to weave grasses together.

Mahrree strolled up behind three of her students and startled them with, “It will be much more interesting inside tonight. We have a new debater before the concert begins. Although this could be intriguing. It seems as though our ‘bulls’ have become more disoriented.”

One group of young men seemed to be constructing a model trebuchet out of sticks while their friends pulled off large branches from a dead tree. The other group several paces away was pointing to various heights in the trees and postulating about the strength of the branches.

“Miss Mahrree!” the girls exclaimed in hushed embarrassment, as if the boys had heard her analysis.

“You may find debating exciting, but . . . well, this is far more, umm,” faltered fifteen-year-old Hitty. She looked at Teeria, who was a wise sixteen-year-old.

“Educational,” Teeria said sagely.

Sareen, also fifteen, nodded in agreement and let escape a giggle.

“Of course,” Mahrree said. “Tomorrow afternoon you must explain to me Nature’s Laws involved in retrieving livestock lost high in the pines.”

The girls blushed.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind? I’m sure the boys won’t be doing anything important in the next half hour.”

The girls rolled their eyes. “Sorry, Miss Mahrree,” said Hitty, reciting her students’ favorite rhyme, “but that is so . . .” She rolled her eyes again.

Mahrree chuckled as she entered the amphitheater doors and went up the stone stairs to the wide rows of wooden benches filling with people. In inclement weather, the evening entertainments moved to the largest Congregation Hall usually reserved for weekly Holy Day services. But as the weather warmed, the diversions multiplied and the outdoor facility was necessary. Now the written, developed, composed and practiced pieces which kept the citizens of Edge occupied during the long wet nights of the past season could be properly performed.

Mahrree usually skipped those entertainments in favor of reading in her gathering room. She loved to lay out her father’s collection of writings across her eating table and spend hours thinking. She filled her mind with arguments and theories in preparation for her debates. And her students, of course. Mahrree had engaged in debates in her higher education at the woman’s university in Mountseen, much larger than Edge and only half a day’s walk away, so she could still visit her mother during those two years.

But what passed for debates in Edge would never stand up to the rigors of a formal university argument. Edge’s debates were a sharing-arguing-complaining of ideas, disagreements, and occasionally utter nonsense. And that’s what made the debates so interesting. Mahrree made her way up to the raised timber-worked platform, feeling the thrill of the unknown argument. Over four thousand people could be seated on the long lines of wooden benches for large events, which was all of the adults in Edge and a few hundred of their children—far too many people for Mahrree to comfortably face. But on planting evenings like this, only about five hundred people would be there at the beginning. Once the sun set, many more would trickle in to catch the end of a concert or see the last act of a play.