Each performance began with a debate. It might be two neighbors arguing over a property line, or a discussion about a public nuisance, such as an aggressive dog or a loud neighbor. One debate was begun by a young woman challenging what behaviors parents could dictate. It turned out the girl was angered by her parents’ refusal to allow her to wear a thin black line of charcoal around her eyes to make them “prettier.”
The audience decided she was pretty enough, and didn’t need to look like an animal that raided the trash heaps at night.
But mostly the debates were forums for new ideas to be analyzed in front of a group. Every village in the world argued, sniped, and shouted in this way, occasionally even to a consensus. In Edge, one of the three rectors always moderated the discussion, since men who knew the Creator could better quell anger than the local magistrate who instead inflamed it.
Mahrree prided herself, though she humbly knew she shouldn’t, on her debating skills. She read everything she could find, listened to each idea, and wrote down any novel concept and the arguments for it and against it. She even ran her students through the paces of analyzing an issue, turning the entire front wall of smoothed stone in the schoolhouse into a mass of words written in white chalk and black charcoal to represent the two sides. She interjected ideas from The Writings and found it all great fun.
What students thought of it, that didn’t matter as long as they learned to think.
Tonight a sizable crowd was gathered already, at least six hundred. Word had spread that there was a new debater “Just for Mahrree,” Rector Densal, her father’s old friend, had told everyone that day. Not only did the debater bring ideas from Idumea, he was from there.
“And I’ll warn you now, Miss Mahrree—he’s an officer,” he informed her three days ago when he suggested the debate.
“In the army?” Mahrree asked the obvious to give herself time to think about this man whom no one in the village had been happy to hear had arrived. While he seemed to keep well enough to himself up at the forest edge, it was only a matter of time before he wandered down among them and did something . . . official.
Rector Densal smiled warmly. “Miss Mahrree, the army is not what it once was. A great many changes have occurred since Querul the Third’s reign.”
“I know.” Although the thought of standing face to face with a member of the army filled her with momentary angst.
She still felt unsettled by the news, and now the size of the crowd unsettled her further. As she walked to the front she saw her favorite old rector coming from the front row to meet her.
“I hope you’re ready, Miss Mahrree,” he smiled as he shook her hand.
“I fear no one,” Mahrree told him more confidently than she felt.
“Oh, I know you don’t fear,” Rector Densal said, and something a little bit too lively happening in his eyes put Mahrree on guard. “I invited him to our debate for your entertainment. I hope you will find him engaging. I think he’s precisely what you need!”
Mahrree looked at him, puzzled. “I didn’t know I was in need of anything or anyone.” She had a thought and sighed. “Have you been speaking to my mother again?”
Rector Densal laughed. “Not lately, but I do owe her a visit! Well then, maybe he’s in need of you.” His wrinkled face added new ones as he grinned and slowly climbed the steps to the top of the platform to make general announcements before the debate.
Mahrree chuckled; everyone needed a bit of her.
She walked to the back of the platform and readied to take one of the sets of stairs that led up to it. She stooped to soak the tension out of her hands in the warm bubbling spring that gurgled next to her favorite young oak tree. This spring wasn’t as hot as some of the others that were tapped and pumped into homes to be used as bathing and washing water. She’d heard that in Idumea some of the houses had water that was near boiling. But even though the ground was much more active near Edge, the springs that fed Mahrree’s home were just pleasantly warm.
She went through her pre-debate routine: she stood back up, shook out her hands, rubbed her cheeks with her fingers, tucked her hair behind her ears again, smoothed down her skirt, and waited for the rector to introduce her. When she heard her name called she marched confidently up the steps and on to the platform, to the applause of the crowd. She waved genially to them as she had dozens of times before and waited for the next introduction.
“Today we have a newcomer to our community,” Hogal Densal said to the crowd. “He’s been educated in the university at Idumea, has been a member of the army for six years, and was recently assigned to the new fort being built in our village. I’m sure you’re all just as eager to get to know him as he is to get to know you. He’s heard of our debates and wants a chance at taking on our one of our favorite daughters, Mahrree Peto.”