From early morning, the square began to fill in a way different from the days of the monthly Rite.
There was no imposed silence this time, but a full, human clamor: women’s voices talking faster than usual, children running between the rows, not fully grasping the gravity of the day, and young men standing in small clusters exchanging words that tried to sound more ordinary than they were.
This was the third such draft the village had seen within the year, and that alone was enough for people to know how to behave where the rows began, where the families should stand, and when the actual farewells needed to start so as not to become a burden on those around them.
A woman stood near the edge of the square, placing in her son’s hand a sack of bread far heavier than a single day would need.
“Take it, you’ll need it on the road more than anything else,” she said, as he tried gently to refuse before giving in and taking the sack without further argument.
Nearby, an old man was repeating to his son the name of a distant relative living in one of the cities the army might pass through.
“If you get there, ask for him in the blacksmiths’ quarter.
He’ll know you by your face alone you look just like your father did at your age.” A few steps away, three young men were laughing louder than necessary, one of them imitating the voice of some imagined officer while the other two stood in exaggerated attention, the laughter cutting off quickly whenever a parent passed near them, as though ashamed to be seen with their forced cheer in front of those who couldn’t share it as easily.
Not all the faces were alike.
Some of the young men looked genuinely excited, not merely performing it; one of them, the tavern-keeper’s son, whose shop had reopened only weeks before after a brief closure, was talking loudly about wanting to finally see something other than this village, as though conscription for him were a door rather than a threat.
Others stood entirely silent, their eyes on the ground more than on those around them, their mothers gripping their arms harder than an ordinary farewell required.
Marin stood at the edge of the square, nearly alone, watching the crowd without joining any particular conversation.
She did not know that this day would bring her something that concerned her directly; she had come only, as many in the village did, because the day of receiving conscripts had become an event that concerned everyone, even those with no one among the names.
The soldiers arrived shortly before midday, two plain carts stopping at the entrance to the square, and four men stepped out in dark gray official uniforms, one of them carrying a heavy leather ledger pressed to his chest as he approached a small platform prepared for him beforehand by the local courthouse clerks.
There was no lengthy speech.
The soldier opened the ledger, looked at the crowd for a moment, then began calling the names in a clear, even voice, without eagerness and without harshness, in the same manner one reads any administrative procedure repeated hundreds of times before.
The first stepped forward when his name was called, a tall young man, and stood before the small table while the soldier verified his identity and pointed him toward the right side, where a small group had begun to form.
The second name was called, and another stepped forward.
At the third name, a brief silence fell before a woman spoke from the crowd: “He left for the northern city two weeks ago, to his uncle’s.
His father is ill there.” The soldier wrote a note beside the name without comment, and moved to the next.
At another name, no one answered, and no one stepped forward to explain the absence.
The soldier looked at the crowd for a moment, then wrote another note, and continued reading.
The process went on this way a name followed by a young man stepping forward, or silence followed by an explanation from someone present, or a longer silence no one explained at all.
The absences were more numerous than anyone standing at a distance might have expected three or four names passed without their owners appearing, some with a plausible explanation, some with none at all.
Then Oren’s name was called.
No one stepped forward.
The soldier repeated the name a second time, in the same even tone, as though the repetition were part of the procedure and not an exception requiring particular attention.
Some in the crowd began looking around, searching for a familiar face, and Marin heard her brother’s name echo through the square before she fully grasped what hearing it in this particular context meant.
“Oren?” she said, more to herself than to anyone, then turned to a woman standing beside her.
“Have you seen him today?” The woman shook her head, not knowing, her attention more occupied with the next name on the list than with Marin’s question.
Marin looked in the direction of the Archive, as though some part of her hoped he had been delayed there for some reason accumulated work, or some forgotten task though the day of receiving conscripts was an official holiday for everyone, and he knew this perfectly well.
The soldier wrote a note beside Oren’s name, without further comment, and moved on to the next name on the list.
At that moment, Oren sat in the dusty attic above an old tool storehouse owned by a friend of his father’s for years a place he had known since childhood, having played there many times before the man had stopped using the storehouse at all.
The attic looked out, through a small gap in the wooden wall, onto part of the road leading to the square, far enough to be safe from any passing glance, but close enough to hear echoes of what was happening there when the air was still.
He heard the names being called one after another, a distant sound reaching him carried on the noise of the square, unable to make out every word with full clarity.
Then he heard his name.
The sound was not as clear as if he’d been standing there, but it was entirely enough for him to know that what he’d heard was his own name specifically, not some other name that resembled it.
He sat perfectly still, hands on his knees, and felt something tighten in his chest not fear of the soldiers in any direct sense, but a sudden realization that the moment he had been avoiding for weeks had now become an announced fact before the entire village, spoken aloud, in a place where he himself could do nothing but wait.
He thought of Marin.
He did not know whether she was in the square or not, but he assumed, with a quiet certainty carrying no real doubt, that she was there, as she was for every occasion that concerned the village.
He imagined her hearing the name, looking around her, searching for him among the faces with her eyes, and not finding him.
He did not think through dozens of possibilities, nor of a backup plan, nor of how he might explain things later.
He thought only, directly and simply, that the matter had now become real in a way he had not fully been prepared for, no matter how much he’d believed he had prepared himself in the nights before.
He remained seated, still, listening to the rest of the names being called, some followed by the sound of footsteps advancing, some passing in a silence similar to the one that had followed his own name.
Once the soldier had finished the entire list, he closed his ledger, and spoke for the first time in a sentence longer than simply reading a name.
“Anyone whose name was called and who did not present himself today has three days from now to report to the courthouse office, in accordance with the conscription order he received.
After this period ends, his absence will be considered a refusal of the official order, and the necessary measures will be taken to bring him in, including legal and military accountability.” His tone carried no personal threat, but the tone of someone reading a system already written, familiar to him from having repeated it many times before, in other villages before this one.
He gestured to his colleague, who posted an official sheet on a wooden board fixed near the entrance to the square, bearing, as it appeared from a distance, the list of absent names and the deadline granted to each.
The soldiers departed a short while later, the conscripts who had presented themselves gathering behind the two carts in preparation for departure, final farewells spoken faster than the moment deserved, because the cart did not wait long.
Marin remained standing in place for a while, watching the square gradually empty, people returning to their homes with a mixture of the usual grief and the relief of those whose name, or a relative’s name, had not been on the list this time.
She approached the wooden board where the sheet had been posted, and read the names slowly until she found her brother’s name, written in a clear hand.
She read the deadline: three days.
She did not cry, and did not scream.
She only stood, looking at the paper, then turned and began walking home at a pace faster than usual, not knowing exactly what she would do once she arrived, except that she needed first to make sure he wasn’t there, in his usual place, and that all of this was just some great misunderstanding that could be resolved the moment she found him and asked him herself.
He wasn’t home.
She sat in the kitchen chair, the door open behind her, thinking of the last time they had talked about work and the lists, and how briefly he had answered when she’d asked if he would stay in the village over the coming months.
She remembered now, with an unsettling clarity, that his answer had not been complete, and that she hadn’t pressed him at the time because she’d thought the matter concerned only herself her dream of the capital, and her own hesitance to speak of it more seriously.
She went out again a short while later, heading toward the Archive, despite knowing it was closed today, only to be certain.
She found the door locked as expected, and asked a man passing nearby if he had seen Oren earlier that day.
The man shook his head no, then added, in a tone that meant no harm: “I heard his name today in the square, among the absent.
Wasn’t he with you?” “He was supposed to be,” she answered, in a voice calmer than what she felt inside.
Not far from there, another family was living a similar moment, though Marin knew nothing of its details.
A woman stood before a small house near the edge of the village, asking her neighbor if she had seen her son since morning, her voice carrying a worry deeper than an ordinary question about a young man late in returning.
“Maybe he went to his sister’s, in the neighboring village,” the neighbor said, trying to ease the visible worry on the woman’s face.
“Don’t assume the worst so quickly.” “But he knew today was the day of the summons.
Why wouldn’t he have told me, if he meant to do something like this?” The neighbor had no answer, and settled for staying beside her in silence, while the woman looked at the empty road before her house, in the very same way that Marin, elsewhere in the village, was looking at the open door of her own.
In the attic, Oren stayed until he was certain the sounds in the square had fully died down, and that the two carts had indeed left.
He did not come out at once; he sat an additional while, listening to the village’s silence gradually returning to its usual rhythm, and thought about the deadline the soldier had announced three days, a number that seemed small when spoken aloud in a crowded square, but that had begun to swell in his mind now, sitting alone, trying to decide exactly what to do with it.
He did not yet know whether he would present himself at the end of the deadline, or try to delay things further, or do something else he hadn’t thought of yet.
But one question had begun pressing itself on him with an urgency it had not carried with such clarity before today: If he stayed hidden, Marin would keep searching for him, asking the neighbors, watching the road, imagining the worst possibilities without knowing the simpler truth that he was here, nearby, only hiding, neither lost nor harmed.
He had decided to hide the matter from her to protect her from worry, before anything real had happened.
Now that something real had happened, he realized that his own disappearance had itself become the source of the very worry he had been trying to spare her from the beginning, and that every additional day spent away from home without her knowing exactly where he was would not protect her any more than it would place her in a trouble she didn’t even know existed.
He came down from the attic at last, once he was certain the road was clear, and stood for a moment at the storehouse’s crumbling wooden door, looking toward the direction of the village, and the houses whose chimneys had begun showing thin threads of smoke as evening approached.
He did not yet know what he would say to her when he saw her.
He did not even know whether he would return home tonight, or wait until he found the right words.
All he knew, as he finally walked slowly away from the storehouse, was that the three days that had seemed to him, only an hour ago, a deadline he could decide for himself, had now become something someone else shared with him, whether he wanted that or not.
Your support means everything.”