Marri's Points Story: The Loophole

Nino Postulant heard the footsteps coming up the length of the Public Office and stopping before his desk, but didn’t look up. “Excuse me? Father?” said a young voice.

“I’m not a Father yet,” grumbled Nino, keeping his eyes on Pagg’s Book. And I won’t be if people keep interrupting me while I’m studying for the Exam, he added to himself. Nino sighed and rubbed his hands through the short brown shag of his hair, still awaiting its tonsure. Why do they insist we pull Office duty during Exam Week? He carefully marked his place with one finger--losing your place when studying was a constant hazard with a book that size and type that small, and he constantly lost his--and looked up.

Nino saw standing before him a very young man, or perhaps a boy, clutching the hand of a girl about the same suspiciously young age. He stared at them until they both squirmed. “Can I help you?” he finally said.

The girl nearly wilted under his glare, and the boy squeaked, “Are we in the right place to be married?”

“There aren’t any marriages going on right now. You’re either early or late,” said Nino. He returned to his book, and found his finger had unthinkingly moved; he ran it impatiently back down the page to pick up where he’d left off.

“Beg pardon, Father,” said the boy again.

“I’m not a Father yet!” shouted Nino. Heads turned at the other desks in the Public Office, and Nino closed his eyes. Pagg give me patience with clodhoppers. “What?” he said, opening his eyes again.

“We want to be married!” said the boy.

“You two?” Nino sat back on his stool, surprised. “You two.” They gave determined nods. “Can you even shave?” he asked the boy, who blushed.

“Lots of seventeen-year-olds can’t shave yet,” said the girl.

“Seventeen, huh?” said Nino. “You too, I suppose?” She gave him a doubtful look, then nodded again. “What year were you born?”

The boy looked away. “Nine...seventy-three?” he said, scratching his ear.

Nino narrowed his eyes, and turned his attention back to the girl. “What are you, fourteen? Fifteen? Where are your parents?”

The girl burst into tears. “They won’t let us marry! They say we’re too young, and that we’ll change our minds!”

“But we’re sure!” said the boy, putting his arm around the girl’s waist and pulling her tight.

“And!” the girl went on, “His mother hates me!” The boy bobbed his head. “Please, you must be able to bend the rules for love’s sake!”

“Love,” said Nino, “has nothing to do with the Law.” He tapped the thick Father’s Testament in front of him for emphasis. “I’ll ask again before I call over the city guard on duty. Where are your parents?”

The girl put her forehead against the boy’s shoulder; her hair fell over her face. The boy shrank until he looked younger than his probable fifteen years. “We’re from Prunedale.”

“Prunedale? That’s miles away. How did you get here?” said Nino. Should I call the guard over, he thought, or should I call over one of the Mothers on duty instead?

“Walked, mostly,” said the boy. The girl’s shoulders were shaking; the boy absently soothed her, running his hand up and down her arm. “Couple people gave us rides in carts for a mile or two. Took three days. We thought...” he faltered, “we thought getting married here, big city where no one knew us...” Tears slipped down his cheeks before he roughly brushed them away with his coat sleeve.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Pagg-damned lovesick kids-- “Listen,” said Nino. “I can’t do a da--there’s nothing I can do for you.” The girl shook harder; Nino winced, but watching her cry jogged a half-remembered line in the Book into his head. “But!” he added. “If you’re really serious, and you are, right? Serious enough to walk all the way from Prunedale?”

The girl brushed her hair away. Her face was covered in tears, snot, and sincerity. “Should I show you the blisters?” she sniffled.

“All right, then, ” Nino said, looking away. He scrunched his mouth up, trying to remember where in the Book that cite lived. “I think I--” He thumbed through the thick Book on his desk, searching for the right line in the columns of tiny type. There. “This is what you do. Go down the Promenade--we’re at the top of the Promenade, it’s the big boulevard in front of the Temple with the strip of park running down the middle--go down the Promenade to the big pinkish building on the right. That’s the Lovers’ Temple. Ask for asylum. Just walk right up to the first official-looking person you see and ask if they work there. If they don’t, keep asking until you find either a Lover or a Beloved. Not a Postulant or a devotee, or Gods forbid a petitioner.” Nino scribbled something down on a piece of foolscap. He sanded it, poured the sand off into the sandwell, blotted it, and gave it to the dumbstruck boy. “This is the citing in the Law, including the page and verse numbers. If you ask the Lovers for asylum using just this phrase, they have to give it to you. Once you’re there, they can help you figure out what to do. For all I know, they’ll let you stay there until you’re old enough to get married.” He stopped abruptly, thinking about what he’d heard went on in that Temple, and whether it was appropriate for fourteen-year-olds, or however old these two were. “Or they’ll help you stay--somewhere. They’ll figure it out. All right?”

“We seek refuge from the Parents and all of their Laws, page 1032 verse 12 Pagg’s Law?” read the boy.

“Just. Like. That!” said Nino.

“Thank you!” the boy said, his face slack with surprise.

“Now, get out of here before your parents catch up with you! No, don’t run! Just--get out of here!”

He watched them try not to run through the doors of the Public Office. Awfully young. Maybe I should have sent them home to Prunedale. But Exam Week awaited, and he had no more time to think about them. It was time to get back to studying before the next petitioner interrupted him. He scratched his long nose and turned back to the thick book before him--and groaned. “Pagg damn it! I lost my place!”