The next day, Shem didn’t come over to talk to Mahrree, as Perrin had ordered. Instead he surreptitiously watched her house as he helped move in furniture for the Briters. Whenever he caught a glimpse of her carrying a crate of something from her house to Jaytsy’s, he ducked in the opposite direction.
She didn’t bother to seek him out, either.
On Holy Day, new Assistant Zenos joined Guide Gleace to visit another congregation, so he avoided the Shins easily that day. At the meeting on the east side of Salem, he sat on the stand in front of the congregation with an unimpeded view of everyone while Guide Gleace spoke. Shem practiced his ability to look at people without appearing to look at them, trying to find women who might be single.
He immediately discovered a problem.
Single women weren’t easily identified.
It would have been thoughtful had they all sat together in one section labeled as “Available Women Who are Interested in Slightly Older Men,” because no one in the audience sat alone. Shem considered how kind of the Creator it would have been to give him a hand in finding her. It wasn’t as if he believed in love at first sight, but certainly the Creator could give him a nudge and say, “Take a walk with this one” or “Invite this one to dinner.” Perhaps something could have happened when he gazed at the right woman, such as a beam of light illuminating her, or a chorus of cosmic voices chiming in his head, “It’s her!”
But by the end of the meeting Shem would have settled for just a fly landing on some woman’s nose to tell him she was a possibility.
But there was nothing.
Oh, plenty of females were smiling in his direction, but the teenagers who giggled shyly were far too young, and some of the mature women who frequently glanced his way were definitely married.
It didn’t help that Guide Gleace introduced him as Salem’s Most Famous Scout and Eligible Bachelor, now his new Assistant, and now home for good. He paused and then said, “So my dear Salemites—we need to get to work on him.”
And after the meeting, they sure tried. Shem was overwhelmed with people welcoming him home, then telling him about a sister who was single, or an aunt, or a niece, or a young widow, or a neighbor, and her name is this, and she lives here, and I’ll have her send you a note, and when’s a good time for you to come over?
Shem pretended he remembered all of the details that were tossed at him from all directions. Interestingly, none of those available women actually came up and introduced themselves, but he saw several hanging back and watching hopefully, as if Shem would know what to do next.
He didn’t.
There was no light or chorus or flies anywhere.
Maybe she wasn’t in this congregation. That was all right, he consoled himself as Gleace finally pulled him away from the crush to visit another congregation. There were one hundred and three more he would speak to in the next few years, and eventually he would have seen every available female in Salem—
And then he’d have to start sorting through them all—
Guide Gleace was apologetic as they rode to the next meeting. “All right, I now see that I should modify my introduction for you. I told you the other night that I wasn’t very good at matchmaking. I think I should leave your love life to you, and I stick to being the guide.”
The next day when Shem was headed over to the Shins to discuss with Perrin the guide’s concerns about securing Salem, he had forgotten about finding the right woman, and found himself preoccupied with avoiding just a specific one.
Shem approached the Shins’ front door hesitantly in the late afternoon and held up his hand to knock. He was relieved the Shins and Briters were the last two houses on the lane and no one would notice him standing there awkwardly, reluctantly.
At least this wasn’t Edge, where people made it a hobby of gawking and where now everyone believed that he and she actually acted out the dreams that woke him abruptly so many nights . . .
He couldn’t bring himself to knock.
Hearing voices in the house, he trudged to the side eating room door. He glanced over at the barn hoping to maybe see Perrin out with Deck, but there was no one. He sighed and raised his hand again. After a moment his fist finally connected with the wood.
“Come in!” he heard Mahrree call.
He cringed and practiced his own Dinner smile as he opened the door. “Just me.” He was about to add, “Where’s Perrin?” but the words wouldn’t come as he hung halfway in the house.
He knew he was staring, but there was nothing else he could think of doing because he couldn’t think. The sight at the table held him completely captivated. There was no unexplained light or music in his head.
There was, however, the faint buzzing of flies.
He had just turned a corner.
He had never been on this road before, but he knew what to do on unfamiliar terrain: evaluate the situation, assess the threats, then proceed with caution.
Except he couldn’t seem to do any of it.
“Shem!” Mahrree said. “Just the person I was hoping to see. This is Miss Calla Trovato. She accompanied me home today after the first lecture I delivered. Professor Kopersee didn’t mention that he invited over one hundred teachers from all over Salem. Anyway, I think the lecture went well. So well that Miss Calla here wanted more information. She’s a teacher in one of the northern communities. I’m sorry, Calla, I forgot what it was called.”
The woman with pure black hair and sparkling blue eyes smiled at her. “Norden,” she said demurely. As she turned to Shem, her smile changed slightly.
Shem noticed. Her smile sucked away his ability to breathe so he did nothing but stare. He desperately wished for some kind of sign on this road to tell him what to do next.
Mahrree fought the corners of her mouth. “Calla is staying at a house near here for the week, but had so many questions that I invited her to come back with me to chat. Seems she’s quite knowledgeable about army maneuvers and strategies in Idumea.”
“Yes,” Calla said, shyly looking down at the table. “My father served briefly as a scout like you when he was young, Mr. Zenos. And I have to admit, I’ve read all your reports that came in. Kind of odd for a woman to be interested in the army, but, well, what can I say?”
She cautiously looked up at Shem with a fragile smile.
He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even blink.
Mahrree rolled her eyes. “She’s being modest. She’s quite the army historian, Shem. I think she would benefit from hearing some of your experiences. Your reports were a little skimpy at times. I got the copies from your sister to see for myself.”
“Uhh,” Shem started, but no other words would come out.
Mahrree sighed and pulled him into the eating room. “Shem, get in here. You’re letting in the flies. Now, sit down. On a chair, Shem.”
He obeyed, still staring at blue eyes across the table from him, a nose with a little bump he immediately labeled as cute, and peach-pink lips he didn’t dare look at more than once.
“Shem!” Perrin boomed as he came into the eating room.
He jumped in his chair, knowing how to react to that voice. “Yes, sir?”
Perrin chuckled. “At ease, man. You look like you’ve seen a Thorne. Oh, hello. I’m sorry I didn’t realize we had company. I’m Perrin,” he said, holding out a hand to Calla.
“I know,” she blushed, sending a pink hue through her cheeks which caused Shem’s heart to swell, then deflate in utter contentment. Later he would remember hearing birds singing a well-harmonized chorus, and maybe he smelled sweet rolls, too. And fireflies. There were definitely fireflies, even though it was hours until dark . . .
“I’m Calla Trovato. It’s wonderful to finally meet you, sir. I’ve read all about you,” she said, shaking his hand.
“Have you, now? I better be on guard, then. And no ‘sir.’ Just call me Perrin.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” She smiled timidly and glanced at Shem before she focused on the page
s in front of her.
Shem kept staring.
He didn’t notice that Perrin gave Mahrree a significant look.
Or that Mahrree rolled her eyes and widened them at Shem.
“So Shem,” Perrin said, sitting next to him. “Ready to get to work? Or am I interrupting something here. I can go give Deck a hand for a while . . .”
“Yes,” Shem said in dazed simplicity.
“Yes you want me to help Deck, or yes you want to get to work?”
Shem smelled flowers now, most definitely flowers, and he was breathing in their intoxicating scent that hung heavily around this vision before him who was called Calla—wasn’t calla the name of a flower?—when he realized there was a grating noise next to him, demanding he pull his attention away from this vision, and so he slowly turned and saw Perrin’s face, as unwelcomed as a skunk’s.
A smirking skunk.
Shem blinked. “What?”
Perrin struggled to keep from laughing. “Yes you want me to help Deck, or yes you want to get to work?”
Shem stared at him blankly. If Perrin wasn’t going to say anything more useful than blah, blah, blah then Shem wasn’t going to waste any more time on him, so instead he turned back to begin memorizing the exact color of this Calla flower’s eyes—
Perrin stood up, grabbed Shem by the shirt collar, and yanked him out of the chair.
“I’m very sorry, ladies. Try again later. This poor man is lost somewhere in . . .” He caught Calla’s eye. “A deep blue sky.”
He winked at her as she blushed, then Perrin dragged a confused Shem up the stairs to the study.
---
Calla looked down at the table and straightened her already tidy stack of notes. “I shocked him, didn’t I?” she murmured.
Mahrree began to chortle. “Yes, you did.”
Calla put her hand to her chest and closed her eyes. “It always happens. Men around here can’t understand why I felt such a concern about the army of Idumea. Ever since I was thirteen I just always needed to know what was going on. No wonder I’m still single at thirty—”
Mahrree took Calla’s arm. “That’s not what shocked him, Calla. I’ve known Shem for years, and I have never seen that look before on his face. I’m not sure he even heard anything anyone said.”
Wretchedly, Calla looked up at Mahrree. “So . . . what was . . . why didn’t he . . .”
Mahrree grinned. “I recently learned that Shem and I are distant cousins, and I’ve been watching for family traits we may share. I think I saw one today. It seems some people in our family have a difficult time forming words when staring into the eyes of someone they find attractive.”
Calla went pink. “Do you really think he found me—?” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
Salemites were so humble, Mahrree decided. “Promise me you’ll come back tomorrow so we can put this theory to the test.”
Calla nodded and rubbed her cheeks with her slender hands. “All right.”
“By the way, Calla,” Mahrree said, watching her closely, “what did you think of Shem? After all these years of reading his reports, you finally get to meet the sergeant major?”
“Actually, I saw him once when he was a younger man delivering a report to Norden,” she admitted nervously. “Several congregations were there to listen to him describe the current conditions of the world.” Calla chewed on her bottom lip and smiled faintly at the memory.
Even a blind woman could see what was happening, Mahrree thought to herself. These people knew nothing of deceit or hiding one’s feelings. Mrs. Gleace had told Mahrree that one of the requirements for becoming a scout to the world was the ability to lie. Shem had been Hew Gleace’s quickest study. But for the rest of the population? Salemites, being what they were, were hopelessly honest.
And Mahrree, being what she was, just had to test that.
“So . . . did you get a good look at him then?”
Calla turned a darker shade of pink. “I sat on the front row,” she confessed with a smile of embarrassment. “I was sixteen, and I intended to take notes. For my personal records, you know.”
“Oh, I think I know.”
Calla couldn’t look her in the eyes. “I didn’t write a word of what he said, though,” she confessed as she straightened yet again the pages in front of her. “I just sat there and watched him.”
There was so much longing in that word watched that Mahrree heard Calla’s pang from fourteen long years ago. For a moment Mahrree felt guilty for making Calla go back there.
But then the moment passed, because Mahrree was just too curious. “Personally, I think a man improves with age,” she said as Calla stared at a stray ink mark on her pages. “A bit of wisdom, a bit of depth, a bit of bulk . . . Maturity can be quite appealing, don’t you think?”
Calla’s study of her pages intensified to a near blistering heat.
Mahrree grinned, just out of range of Calla’s view. “I remember Shem at twenty-four. But now that I consider him thirty-eight? Well, Calla, what did you think of him today?”
When Calla looked up at her, it was with such anguished fervor that she couldn’t speak, so her pink flushed to a rose red.
Mahrree grinned in delight.
---
Upstairs Perrin dropped Shem in a chair in the study. He squatted in front of him to look him in the eyes. “Want to tell me what happened down there?”
Shem shook himself slightly, no longer smelling flowers or sweet rolls, and wondering what happened to the fireflies. “Is she still there?”
“Maybe. But since you didn’t say two words together to her while I was around, I’m not sure she’ll stay long.”
Suddenly Shem felt as if he had woken up, and knew all too well what had happened during that marvelous dream which . . . was wholly embarrassing, now that he considered it.
Shem gripped his head. “Oh Perrin! She’s going to think I’m an idiot. I really didn’t say anything?”
Perrin chuckled. “You don’t know?”
“No, I’m not sure! I mean, I thought of all kinds of things to say, but I guess none of those words came out. I can talk, you know.”
“Don’t tell me, tell her.”
“I can’t. Did you see her, Perrin?”
“Yes, I did. Very pretty—”
Shem leaped to his feet. “Why were you looking at her? You already have a wife!”
“Shem, I look at everyone. I notice everything. But I’m not interested in her.” Perrin choked back a laugh, sensing Shem wasn’t quite himself.
Shem wasn’t entirely sure who he was either, and nothing that came out of his mouth arose from any logical thought.
“Why wouldn’t you be interested in her? Do you think something’s wrong with her?” Shem asked, slightly panicked by, well, everything. “I mean, I think she’s a little older, but so were you and Mahrree . . .”
Perrin took his shoulders. “Shem, breathe. Calm down—”
“Perrin? Shem?” Mahrree called from downstairs. “Calla needs to leave now. Would you like to say goodbye?”
Perrin nodded at Shem.
Shem paled. All words left his mind again, just that quickly.
Perrin turned him to the door and opened it. He pushed Shem down the hall to the stairs, then prodded him down part way.
Shem froze on the stairs when he saw Calla at the bottom of them, biting her lip. Her perfect peachy-pink lip.
Words came to his mind. “I can talk.”
Calla smiled shyly. “Yes, I see you can, Assistant Zenos.”
“And call me Assistant Zenos, not Shem.” He began to feel proud about so many words coming out, until he notice Calla blinking at him a few times, and behind her Mahrree shaking her head sadly.
Perrin coughed a laugh and tried to push Shem the rest of the way down the stairs, but he wouldn’t budge.
“Calla,” Perrin said, “do you need someone to walk you home?” Perrin poked Shem in the back.
&nbs
p; “Uh, well, it’s not dark for quite a while, so,” she hesitated, “I suppose not.”
Perrin sighed. Salemites knew nothing of subterfuge. “Well then, make sure you stay for dinner tomorrow night, Calla, so that it is dark when you walk home. I’m sure I could find you an escort.”
Calla smiled. “Thank you. Um, goodbye Perrin and . . .”
“Shem,” Perrin reminded her, jabbing Shem harder.
Shem slowly pivoted to Perrin. “I thought I was coming for dinner tomorrow.”
Mahrree threw her hands in the air and stormed off to the door.
Perrin patted Shem on the shoulder. “We have a big table now, remember? We can seat a dozen people. There’s room.”
“Oh yeah.” He turned again to Calla. “I can eat, too.” Oh, the words just kept flowing! This was easy!
Calla chanced a grin. “I’m glad to hear it. Until tomorrow, then?”
Shem nodded and kept nodding as Calla left.
When Mahrree closed the door she put her hands on her hips and glared at Shem.
He didn’t understand why she seemed so upset. “That went all right, didn’t it?” he said.
---
The next night Shem proved he could talk.
He practiced all day while at the Guide and Administrators Office. Not everything about Guiding and Assisting was wholly spiritual. There was paperwork as well. So while Shem learned the intricacies of filing storehouse records, and birth and death notices, he mumbled dinner conversations.
At one point he was startled to hear the elderly man training him, Assistant Doyle, say, “Green, mashed potatoes since I’ve lost a few teeth, and to carve animals out of sticks for my great-grandchildren.”
Shem looked up from a stack of files. The old man with beautiful penmanship was writing out a congratulations to a newly appointed rector. “Assistant Doyle, why did you say that?”
“Because,” Doyle said as he added an elegant swoop, “you just asked me my favorite color, my favorite side dish, and what I like to do in my spare time.”
“Oh.”
“Allow me to guess: meeting someone new tonight? Perhaps a female?”
“I’m having dinner with the Shins and a schoolteacher. I think.”
“Well, sounds a little promising, I think,” Doyle said, returning to his work. “But may I offer a suggestion?”
“Yes, please.”
“Come up with some questions that are a little more compelling. You’re supposed to be the most interesting bachelor in Salem, after all. It won’t do at all to carry on a conversation worthy only of fourteen-year-olds. Ask her stories about her life, and share a few of your own.”
By the time Shem arrived at the Shins for dinner, his head was full of so many topics he couldn’t keep any of them straight. But that didn’t matter, because the moment he saw Miss Calla Trovato, all ideas fell out of his ears. It was because of the birds singing. When did Perrin and Mahrree get birds in the house?
In a way, he was almost sorry they’d sent Peto over to Jaytsy’s house for dinner to keep him out of the way. Peto had words. Lots of them.
---
“Why does Shem look so pitiful?” Mahrree murmured to Perrin as they brought out the platters for dinner. “He reminds me of a lost hound dog. If he starts panting, I’m going to have to smack him.”
“Now, now, this is all new to him. At least they’re sitting on the same sofa.”
“And saying nothing!”
“Go easy on the poor man, Mahrree.”
“I’m trying to help him. In fact, I’ve been preparing all day.”
“Oh, no, Mahrree. What are you planning?”
“Nothing, nothing . . . I just have a list of conversation starters in my pocket should Shem come up with absolutely nothing at all. Is he starting to drool?”
“Mahrree, just give the man a chance, all right?” he murmured to her. “DINNER!” he announced, and both Calla and Shem jumped in startled unison.
Shem held out the chair for Calla—only after Perrin gestured urgently that he should—then he sat down across from her and began his mindless staring again.
“Um, I hope you don’t mind,” Calla said as she pulled out a folded page from a pocket, and produced seemingly out of thin air a quill and tiny jar of ink. “May I ask you a few things over dinner?”
Shem blinked, and blinked again as she unfolded the paper to reveal tight and careful words, filling the page.
Perrin whispered to Mahrree, “Don’t think you’ll need your conversation starters.”
Secretly, Mahrree was relieved. Small talk had never been her thing. Her first three questions were, what’s your favorite color, your favorite side dish, and what do you like to do in your spare time. For some reason she felt like a fourteen-year-old coming up with those.
“I know this list seems kind of long,” Calla apologized as Shem’s eyebrows rose. “But I’ve been saving them up for the last seventeen years. Now I certainly don’t expect to get through all of these tonight—”
“No, we need to save something for tomorrow night,” Shem said with the simple tone of an eager yet patient child seeing a giant cake placed in front of him.
Calla smiled as Perrin and Mahrree nodded in agreement.
“And the next night,” Shem said. “And the night after—”
Calla sat a little taller. “So, uh,” her voice grew timorous as nudged behind her ear a lock of sleek black hair which had escaped from her bun.
Shem watched the motion and stared at her ear while she read off her notes.
“So I was wondering, question number one—,” her voice shifted from soft and nervous to an authoritative teacher tone, “—over the years, your training tactics became more aggressive, probably because of the increasingly belligerence of the young men who were recruited. What I was wondering is, do you think that aggression reflected changes in society as a whole, or do you think the army just appealed to men of a more violent nature?”
Shem blinked away from her ear to find her watching him. “What?”
Calla nervously fingered the page she stared at. “Because I’m rather inclined to believe the former instead of the latter, since your recruitment numbers were always so high. High enough to get you promoted more frequently and in a shorter amount of time than any other enlisted man in the history of the army. I have a theory that young men were feeling somewhat lost, and the structure of the army provided some stability, and that the colonel and you may have been seen as the ‘father’ or ‘older brother’ figures that many of the men may have been seeking.” She met his eyes again.
Shem blinked. “I thought you were going to ask me something easy, like how many horses we had.”
“I already know. From your reports. I’ve read them all. Made my own copies of them, too. Um.”
Shem rested his head on his hand and looked into her eyes.
“But . . . I could ask you about the horses.”
“Sure,” Shem sighed airily.
“So how many horses did you have?”
“One.”
Calla pursed her lips.
Now Shem stared at those.
“I meant, the fort. How many horses did the fort have.”
“I have no idea.”
“One-hundred-ten,” Perrin prompted in a whisper from across the table.
Calla pretended not to hear him.
“One-hundred-ten,” Shem repeated dreamily.
“Did that include Thorne’s horse that you mentioned in your reports, or is that just the number of officially attached fort horses?”
“I have no idea.”
“No,” Perrin whispered. “It didn’t include Clark, either.”
“No,” Shem repeated obediently. “It didn’t include Clark, either.”
“Who’s Clark?” Calla asked.
“A horse,” Shem said as if in a trance. “Came with us. He’s in the barn, if you want to see him.”
“A horse named Clark?”
She
m shook his head, still in a captivated stupor. “None of us got it either.”
Perrin started to sit up to defend the name when he felt a kick under the table from his wife.
“So one-hundred-twelve horses?” Calla clarified.
“Yes.”
“Not one-hundred-ten, then?”
“No. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I lied to you.”
Mahrree turned a snort into a believable cough.
Perrin kicked her back.
Calla smiled sweetly at Shem. “You’re forgiven. Any other questions you want me to ask you next?”
“No,” Shem said with a vague smile. “Just read me question number one.”
“Again?”
“Sure.” He watched her lips again and his smile grew.
Perhaps the problem, Mahrree and Perrin decided later when they discussed it over at the Briters, was that each of them was giving Shem, who didn’t notice them anymore, conflicting mental signals. While Perrin was trying to get the message of, “Don’t stare at her lips—look into her eyes!” through to his dense mind, Mahrree was sending the words, “Don’t look into her eyes or you’ll never think clearly. Look at her nose or her forehead.”
But Shem obviously didn’t receive any of it.
Calla sucked in her lips self-consciously before clearing her throat. She pushed aside her list of questions.
The expression on Shem’s face was that of utter devastation that the interview was already over.
Instead, Calla clasped her hands in front of her and leaned forward. “Tell me about . . . Qualipoe Hili. Why did you give him your jacket when he rode to Idumea to deliver the message to the Shins about the collapsed school building in Edge? All you wrote in your report was that your jacket was cut up when he returned, and that you had to buy a new one.”
Shem’s face brightened. Not only could he talk and eat, but he could tell stories. “Well, Poe Hili is an interesting boy. Man, now actually, I suppose. I first met him when he was nine and he was wearing this ridiculous silk shirt to Mahrree’s after school care. Do you know what silk is? I’m not sure you really want to know how it’s made, but there are lots of theories . . .”
Calla rested her head on her hand and looked dreamily into Shem’s eyes.
When Perrin and Mahrree slipped away from the table about twenty minutes later, neither Shem nor Calla noticed.
Chapter 23--“Nothing worked out the way it should.”