Chapter 10: Little Corner of Earth

The three didn't want to be scouts.

And, when they were alone, Jamie commented that they didn't seem to want to be anything at all.

Two weeks after the letter had arrived, a trader stopped his wagon at the head of their drive. Out jumped three children, who began the long trek to the door. Jamie and Edie had been on the porch, picking dried wheat off stalks, when the shadows came into view. Jamie jumped up immediately and ran inside, calling for his parents with more energy than the sun. His sister stayed, picking carefully, eyes trained on the newcomers. The tallest one had a mop of black hair, and a shorter, stouter had red hair in short spikes. The girl, by no means a great beauty, looked like she had smelly cheese stuck in her nose. Auburn hair fell in spirals toward her waist, which might've been tied up or brushed every so often; instead, it fizzed and flailed, looking like it hadn't been washed in two years.

When he burst through the front door again, dancing around Edie's legs, Jamie got a closer look at the two. He stopped suddenly, tilted his head, and hid behind her torso. Given his recent birthday, he wasn't so hidden by her anymore. His head peeped over her shoulders, so he ducked his head.

"They don't look fun," he mumbled.

"They're not here to please you," she reminded him, turning to put an arm over his shoulder. "They're refugees."

"Sure, but at least you looked decent."

"You saw me after I got clothes in the market. They might've come straight from a war zone."

"Titans aren't a war zone," Jamie remarked, "just a tragedy. Sure, it's bad, but they weren't on a battlefield, or soldiers. They could've showered."

Thankfully, they were far enough to not hear. Larmie and Hajule met them first, welcoming and hugging them. Edie took Jamie's hand firmly and pulled him toward the group, whose noses were still wrinkled and whose eyes were narrowed.

"…might've brought you to the front door. The path isn't nice to walk on, especially in your good shoes. Although, the rainy season is coming. We'll all wear boots then."

"I'll never wear boots," the girl snipped, turning up her chin. "They make my dresses look nasty."

"It's not like you're trying to impress anyone," the tallest boy answered, but his chin was also in the air. He was only a few inches shorter than Larmie and dwarfed the rest of them. He pushed his friend's shoulder and laughed. "Dani thinks she's a princess."

"I outrank you two."

"Whatever."

Larmie looked between the three of them. "And you must be Kikoi," he said to the tallest.

"That's right. And here's Melo."

Edie and Jamie exchanged a look. She cleared her throat. "I'm Edie, and this is Jamie."

Kikoi's eyebrows raised, and he looked at Larmie. "Lord Callum didn't mention you had a daughter, just a younger son."

"Yes, Edie joined us nearly six months ago. She's been invaluable to our work here, and is as good as family."

"She lost her memory in the mountains," Jamie said, still clutching her hand.

"Oh," the tallest mentioned. "Well, we're tired. Where are we staying?"

"Right this way."

The three piled into Edie's old room, barely big enough for three full-sized people. Edie and Jamie lugged their bags up the porch, prepared tea, set the table, and swept dirt from their shoes. They kept their heads down, listening carefully, but the three had nothing interesting to say through thin walls. Hajule and Larmie stayed with them most of the evening, and Edie and Jamie soon went to their now-shared room and readied for bed.

"You're the lady," Jamie began, "so you get the bed."

"Thanks, but we'll switch once a week."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks. Didn't really want to sleep on the floor."

"You'll have to sleep in odd places once you're in the cadets."

"Who told you that? Private Dreamy-Eyes?"

Edie threw a pillow at his face. "His name is Amile, and no. It's just a wager. If you're fighting titans, chances are you'll be stuck in strange places overnight. They might make you sleep on the floor through all your training."

"What I really need is to meet a scout who'll tell me what it's really like. Ooh!" Jamie jumped on the bed. "Maybe you could pretend to lose your memory, then go by Wall Rose! The scouts in the district would be chivalrous enough to bring you home, and I'd get to meet them."

"Faking amnesia isn't really…what I want to be doing right now."

"Alright, alright, fine. I'll settle for the privateer." He lowered his voice. "What do you think of these guys?"

"Jamie," she scolded. "I already told you. They're both here to be best friends. They're recovering."

Recover, they did. A week later, the three still slumbered till noon and wandered around the house, opening books and never reading them. Dani never went outside, complaining that the heat and sun messed with her complexion, that it was much hotter here than in Shiganshina. She lounged in her room, day in, day out, snoozing and passing time with Hajule's romance novels. She came out of her room for meals and for tea, but only when the water already bubbled.

Jamie mentioned after a few days that he wished they were all alike. Kikoi and Melo managed to be wherever he was: in the barn, with the animals, in the field, always out of Edie's earshot and Larmie's sight. Edie saw him get smacked on the back of the head, stumble into puddles, and jump over ditches to get away from the larger boys, who laughed and chased him with mud pies in hand.

She tried to stay close, working side by side, but Melo often found a reason for her to come away. One day, he didn't know where the open bad of tea leaves were. Another, the horses were angry with him on a day he wanted to go to town. The week Larmie was called into town to get seed from the Military Police, Melo kept her on the field's edge, claiming he'd seen an infestation growing, one of gray leaves with purple streaks. They'd spent all the morning and some of the afternoon searching, before going home for the evening meal. That night, getting ready for bed, Edie noticed Jamie's arms covered in red bumps.

"What, did you fall in poison ivy?"

"Oak." He winced. "It's nothing."

"Hajule should—"

"Don't tell mother," he interrupted, tone low. "It'll pass in a few days. I don't need to be babied."

When the season rolled to a start, Larmie printed seeding assignments for his house and workers. Most of the seasonal workers went to smaller plots, with Edie and Jamie supervising Melo and Kikoi, respectively. After the others milled away, with the trio disappearing in their room, Edie asked Larmie on the porch.

"Kikoi and Jamie?"

"Yes. The boy's mentioned he likes hanging out with him. And Jamie's one of my most experienced workers, aside from you and Corini."

"That's not what I mean. I think Kikoi has been…I don't know. But Jamie doesn't seem happy when he's around."

"He's a troubled boy, that's for certain, but…" Larmie hummed and looked to the ground. "There's not much to be done. Even if you supervise Kikoi, do you think he'll stay in your group?"

"I'll make him," Edie said in an even tone.

"He might not want your defense. Has he said anything?"

"No."

"It might not be wise. He's becoming a man, with stubborn pride."

"Either way, he's still…he's still my friend."

"He's your brother," Larmie said softly, "and you're looking out for him."

Edie nodded, her lips pressed together. "I don't like when people I love get hurt. If he doesn't want me to stand up for him outright, that's fine, but if he's with me, it'll be a bit easier on Jamie. At least for a while. I know it's your duty to watch these kids, but they're miserable creatures. And Jamie's smaller than they are."

"So are you."

"…sure."

"They'll all be in school in a few weeks. You won't be able to protect him, then."

She frowned. "Let's hope Mr. Emerson does his job."

So, at seven the next morning, with the sun hardly cresting the horizon, Edie lugged bags of seed on her shoulders and crossed the field with a boy twice her size, empty handed, in tow.

He had an incessant squeaking voice, a huge wagon with untreated hinges. Edie could feel it tearing at her patience, shaving it like soap. "This field air is nothing like the city. Here, it's full of this awful, stinking smell, reeking terribly. Did you notice it when you first came? It's like a bathroom, but whenever you take a step, it's made fresh. That's terrible, not to mention the house is in the middle. Why would you build your house in the middle of the whole thing? At least the street was lined with trees, but there nearest forest is half an hour's ride away. That's terrible."

Edie rolled her eyes, then turned and handed him a sack. "Have you seeded before?"

"Have you?"

"So, you haven't. Be careful where it lands, and don't clump too much. We'll start on a row each, with two feet between us. Typically, four or six feet is healthy, but the Military Police are asking us to make exceptions until food lines are stable."

"And everything the Military Police says is perfect," Kikoi said sarcastically, smirking. She stared until his smile fell. "I thought—you were—"

"We stop when the whole field is seeded. When we get to the end of a row, we switch. So, I'll start with the first, you the second, then you the fourth, and I the third. But if I get ahead of you, I'll keep going with my odd rows, and you'll catch up with your even."

"But if we work at the same speed, we'll be side by side the whole time?"

Edie remembered the last month, when she and Jamie had followed that pattern to scatter minerals. They'd created stories about mythical creatures with wings and fur, that could eat titans with a single gulp (even the huge one). They were silly, but he had fun. "Yeah."

"Excellent." He stood beside her and began tossing seed. "That's what you wanted."

She tried to move a little faster. "Excuse me?"

Unfortunately, Kikoi could work well when he wanted. "Don't get me wrong. Avoiding me at dinner, taking work on the far side of the field, going into town during my off time. It's pretty obvious."

"You hardly work. Any time is your off time."

"Yeah, well, it's hard, with all this stuff on my mind." He brushed his hair back and stared toward the sun. She took the time to speed up. "When the titans broke through the wall, I couldn't believe my eyes. Did you know the biggest titan's head was over the wall?"

"We've heard the stories, yeah," she tossed over her shoulder.

"What they don't say is that he stared, watched the damage for quite some time. He didn't cross the wall, even though that heat would've burned the houses immediately. He kicked in the door and watched, let the armored one do all the heavy lifting. It broke through and stared, like some sadistic monster."

Edie scowled. He didn't have a way with words, and she didn't like the ones that managed to escape. "You don't know anything about the titans."

"Sure I do. I've seen them. One of them ate my mother—"

"A lot of people had their mothers eaten by titans. And their brothers, and sisters, and fathers and uncles and aunts. Not to mention all the people that were sent back to be eaten, too. It's not excuse to wimp around and stop working."

"You must've grown up in a rural area before you lost your memory, which is why you fit in so well here," Kikoi excused. "But in Shiganshina, we're very forgiving and think about trauma in terms of the handicap it is, instead of ignoring it."

"Oh, I'm not ignoring that something bad happened to you, and I'm very sorry it did, but throwing a pity party doesn't change anything.

"You've clearly never gone through anything serious. Titans invading your home isn't something you can understand vicariously."

Edie tilted her head. "Do you know what that word means?"

"Sure. You can't imagine it. It's horrifying."

Not what vicariously means. But she shook her head and went on.

"It's a tragedy, and awful. Those titans are monsters, but they're unstoppable. You can't reason with them. You can't stop them, unless you're an idiot with a death wish. They came, and there was nothing to be done. We did the best with the cards we were dealt."

"And now?"

"Now, we recover. The battle is done with."

"I suppose you think you're some kind of hero."

"No, just someone looking to benefit humanity." He tossed his hair sideways. "But you clearly do."

"Excuse me?"

"Like I said, you're pretty obvious. Convincing that old man to get us on the same field was a work of genius, I'll say. You must have him wrapped around your finger, adjusting the schedule so I wasn't working with that little twerp. Now, we have weeks and weeks to work, days of alone time. Admit it. You're infatuated."

Edie felt a gut reaction, like when you unknowingly swallowed poison berries. "You're a narcissist."

"I don't know what—"

"Of course you don't. You're ridiculous."

"Am I?" He rushed forward, tossing the seed recklessly. He left entire patches bare and thick patches in others. He laughed and never broke eye contact. "Am I really so ridiculous? Come and stop me, then."

"You're clumping it! Quit!"

"Oh, please, farmer girl, you're so much smarter than me. I need you to help—"

She grabbed his wrist, stopping his swing, but as her head bent down, he went in for a kiss. Reflexively, Edie swung her free hand and punched him square in the jaw. He fell between the rows, legs hanging over the humps.

"What was that—"

"You do know there's a food shortage going on?" She yelled. "Thousands of people will die of starvation already, not to mention if there's diseased crops or population upturn. Do you think we have time or resources to waste seed? Or are you really so out of touch with life that you're willing to sacrifice lives for a silly joke?"

"You led me on!"

Edie towered over him, likely the first time in her life. "Let me be perfectly clear for your birdbrain, then. First, you're either sympathetic and actually miss your family, or you're an aloof moron. If you're the former, you'd care about people here and others that we support. If you're the later, then you need constant supervision. Leading me to my next point, I think you're absolutely incapable of getting any work done and didn't trust you to anything but my own eyes. People like you think they can jerk off and get other people to work for them, then blame whatever and whoever for their problems. Well, not here, you can't. And third, I am not interested in you, and I never will be. Try something like that again, and it'll be more than your jaw that falls off."

"But—"

"Am I clear?"

Kikoi jumped up and adjusted his hair, then his sack. "You feel that way now, but when we're in school, you'll feel awful when all the girls are swarming me. Just know, I gave you the chance first."

Edie took great care not to hit him again. "How old do you think I am?"

"I—uh—fifteen?"

"I'm twenty-six.."

"But—you're—you're short!"

"Because of idiots like you who create food shortages all over the world, with their stupidity and egos and pride. So kindly just do your job and leave my brother and I alone."

Kikoi's expression changed, but he held his tone even. "Oh. So that's what this is really about. Your silly little brother."

"Be honest, and maybe you'll walk away without a limp. Did you push him in a bed of poison oak?"

"He was asking for it."

"How exactly?"

"Just was."

Edie stuck her hand in her sack and reseeded the areas he'd missed, then kept going. She furiously tossed, sending seed nearly a quarter of an inch into the dirt. "Jamie is one of the most energetic, loving kids out there. I'd like to know why you insist on making him miserable."

"Kid's annoying, simple as that. He won't shut up about the Survey Corps and how he's going to be a scout. Real mature for a kid who's never even seen a titan."

She held her tongue. At least the brat was working.

"Alright, fine, my mother didn't really care about me. In her eyes, I was the reason she couldn't live in Wall Sina anymore. Shiganshina was a close second for culture and parties. Guess that got her killed. But just because we didn't like each other doesn't mean I wanted her to die, or anybody else. So pardon me if your brother's dreams of grandeur don't seem too realistic with the world."

"They're not grand. He wants to help people."

"Yeah, he sort of shut up about it after the first day. But his face pisses me off."

"Whatever. Leave him alone. You and Melo, and Dani, if she ever gets out of bed."

Kikoi looked like he might argue, and even took a breath in to construct the sentence, but at the last minute, he stopped and went back to work, slowing down until there was a hundred feet between the two of them. Fine by her. She'd rather be alone.