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

  Prologue ~ “Oh, I remember Idumea.”

  “Never in the history of the world has someone taken so long to eat a piece of pie,” the thirteen-year-old boy complained as he watched the old woman seated in the middle of the pumpkin patch regarding her dessert with too much fascination.

  She was now dissecting a raspberry with her fork, trying to catch each tiny bump on the tines.

  “Oh, why did you just say that?” the boy’s cousin whined. “She’s not going to take that as a reprimand, but as a challenge!”

  The old woman pretended not to hear the conversation taking place in front of her, but examined a bit of berry closely. “Truly remarkable—it holds together, yet easily falls apart . . .”

  The cousins rolled their eyes at each other.

  A distance behind them, leaning against a fence and under the shade of a peach tree stood a tall, burly, graying man. His arms were folded, his face was concealed by the shadows, but his broad shoulders shook with quiet laughter.

  “Good crop this year,” the old woman continued analytically, a tiny berry bit held up impossibly close to her eye.

  She knew the man was behind her, watching. He always was.

  “Need to appreciate each berry,” she said. “I’m getting so old—just don’t know how many more years left I have to enjoy these.”

  The boy sighed in aggravation, and the girl let her head drop on the large pumpkin before her with a dull thunk.

  “She’s doing this on purpose, Vid,” the girl told her cousin, or rather, the pumpkin. “Because of what you said.”

  “I don’t think so, Hycy,” he told her. “I think she just can’t remember the rest of the story. So old, you see . . . Muggah? Can you still hear us?” he called loudly.

  Muggah looked past the bit of berry and focused on the obnoxious boy. “Oh, I hear you all right, Vid. I just love raspberries.”

  Vid growled under his breath while Muggah slipped the last bite of pie into her mouth.

  “She doesn’t remember,” Vid announced, hoping to nudge the woman to prove him otherwise. “She doesn’t remember about the forest incidents, or the world changing, or even Idumea—”

  His cousin’s head popped up, and she tried to send a warning with her eyes.

  But it was too late.

  Muggah was already glaring at him. “Oh, I remember Idumea, Viddrow. I remember far too much.”

  For once the teenage boy squirmed. Had he noticed the older man watching them, he would have seen that he, too, had stopped chuckling.

  “So tell us?” Hycy squeaked, hoping to take some of the glare away from her cousin.

  Muggah’s expression softened as she looked at the girl, then she sent a mollifying wink to the boy. “Thirteen-year-olds always find the parts about Idumea most interesting, probably because Peto was the same age. But a lot happened before—”

  “No, no, no,” Hycy begged. “Just . . . shorten some of that. There’s not enough pie in the world to cover all of that time.”

  Muggah smiled slyly. “But we don’t get any pie from the world.”

  The teenagers sighed. “You know what I mean,” Hycy said.

  “All right, then,” Muggah said. “I’ll get to the good parts as fast as I can.”

  Behind her, the man settled in more comfortably against the fence. After all, it was his story, too.

  Chapter 1 ~ “Change isn’t all bad, Perrin.”