Read Online The Mansions of Idumea (Book 3 Forest at the Edge series) by Trish Mercer - Free Book Online Page B

Paradise.
    “Right!” Mahrree announced to her house. She
put her hands on her hips and turned to her children who still sat
terrified on the ground. Several neighbors were rushing to her
rocky front garden.
    “Jaytsy, Peto. Get changed, do NOT go
upstairs, grab the bread from the larder, and bring me lots of
parchment and charcoal. Now!”
    The teens startled at her command, then
scrambled to their feet and cautiously approached the house.
    “Move quickly—we don’t know how long it’ll
remain stable,” Mahrree called after them.
    Jaytsy looked back. “But Father said not to—”
She stopped when she saw the determined look on her mother’s
face.
    “You’ll be fine,” said Mahrree. Didn’t her
father tell her that they should change and get breakfast? Since
there was no lying in Paradise, she knew her house was stable. At
least the main floor. “There’s no danger right now,” she assured
her daughter. “But let’s hurry, just the same.”
    Jaytsy rushed in after her brother. Mahrree
heard a noise behind her and turned around.
    “Mrs. Shin! Where’s the lieutenant colonel?”
Mr. Hersh asked as he opened the front gate.
    Mahrree looked into the face of her next-door
neighbor, who seemed more like a distressed porcupine than a
fifty-year-old weaver. “He’s gone to the fort. He’ll start
organizing and get us help when he can.”
    “How could he go?” cried Mrs. Pail, who lived
down the road and was still shaking even though the ground had
stopped. “What will we do without the soldiers?”
    “They’re coming, but we can take care of
ourselves,” Mahrree assured them. “We don’t need the soldiers right
now.”
    Several more neighbors were now clustering
around her yard like lost toddlers in the market place. Big eyes,
trembling chins, and not a clue in the world as to how to help
themselves.
    Mahrree decided to save her internal
commentary about the progressiveness of Nicko Mal’s “Trust the army
and Administrators to take care of everything for you” measures for
another time, when she could mentally rant undisturbed. The
measures were working exceptionally well. No one could think for
themselves.
    No one could think at all .
    “So what do we do?” pleaded another neighbor,
panic growing in his voice.
    If it weren’t for her suppressed rage with
the Administrators, Mahrree wouldn’t have had any strength left
herself. Obviously those twenty-three ridiculously stuffed frilly
white shirts and red coat tails were good for something: making her
furious that not even the men of the world dared make a move
without governmental approval. If they lived closer to Idumea, they
likely would have been drafting requests to Chairman Mal in
triplicate at this very moment, asking for permission to relieve
themselves by their trees.
    But telling people what to do had always been
one of Mahrree Peto Shin’s gifts. “We calm down and start surveying
the damage, Mr. Mang!” She had practiced that official tone for
years on her children, the same one Perrin used on her when they
were first married and he tried to pull rank. Mahrree’s version had
come out quite well, and Mr. Mang was visibly surprised.
    “Now,” Mahrree continued, and paused when she
saw Peto come out of the house with a stack of paper and sharpened
charcoal. He handed them to his mother.
    “We’ll begin right here,” she said in her
best Mrs. Lieutenant Colonel voice, writing on the first page. “We
need to go house to house looking for anyone injured or not
responding to our calls. If anyone’s missing, we’ll begin a search,
but don’t enter the houses immediately. We don’t know how stable
they are, so we’ll need to record the level of damage to each
house, evaluate if there are safe ways into them, and also check
the surrounding land for new fissures or steam vents. If you must
enter a house to help someone, first push on the standing walls to
see if they’ll hold, then move in and out quickly. If the walls
don’t