Touchstone

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “I know what you mean,” said Erica. “I thought my mother would be gentler with me because I’m her own daughter. But she’s not. I’m sure I unstitch twice as much as I stitch, and my hands are raw from it. Whenever a boy comes by, I have to put them behind my back because I’m so ashamed.”

  I couldn’t see Erica’s hands from the distance, but I hadn’t noticed them when she was at the restaurant. Most likely, she was exaggerating. My hands got plenty sore from washing dishes for Mama and cutting and peeling vegetables. But if it were my calling, what would I care?

  And if I had boys coming around for me—

  Well, maybe that would never happen, even if I did get a calling. Mama said she was glad I had Daddy’s dark hair and eyes, so that she could look at my face and see him looking back at her. But it was strange coloring in Zicker. Jessie and Erica had beautiful blonde hair that went almost white in the summer. Mama had the red hair that was less common, but still seemed to belong. And they all had blue or blue-green eyes so that mine looked like night staring back at them.

  I did remember Daddy looking at me with those eyes, and I couldn’t regret having the same ones stare back at me when I looked in a mirror. But it would have been nice to fit in, too.

  And in more than just my face.

  Susan put her hands on her hips and stared at the buckets, as if she could make them move with her eyes. “How is Jessie?” she asked.

  Erica hesitated a moment, then said, “I suppose she’s happy. Daddy already has her started in the fields this morning.”

  “Does she understand what it means if there isn’t any new land?” asked Susan.

  I felt numb on one side, but I didn’t dare move. This was what Mama had wondered about last night, only she’d stopped just short of saying it out loud.

  “I’m not sure,” said Erica. “If she does, she’s not thinking about it too much yet. I’m glad I never had that problem.”

  “Mrs. Tierny died before you were even called,” said Susan. “I remember because I was so close to rags I nearly wished I was the one called to be a seamstress.”

  Erica snorted. “I can just imagine the dresses you would have sewn.”

  The two laughed together.

  My throat twisted and I wished again I wasn’t stuck in this spot. I should have moved earlier, but now if I did anything they would think I was spying on them. They could take me to judgment for that, if they were in a bad mood. But it would be even worse if they didn’t, if they felt sorry for me instead.

  “I’m glad for Jessie, though, that she wasn’t the very last of her age to be called. I remember what my brother was like when that happened to him. He moped around for months.”

  There was a small pause, and I tried to remember Erica’s brother, but it must have been before I thought much about callings.

  Then Erica put in, “Like Lissa.”

  And suddenly, my head was so hot I thought it would rise up off the rest of me and start floating away. But the rest of me was cold as ice, still tied to the ground.

  “Poor Lissa,” said Susan, shaking her head.

  “But what can you expect?” said Erica, lowering her voice and looking over towards the restaurant and then around the well. “With a father from the outside?”

  What?

  What was she talking about?

  I was confused for a moment. Then my head and shoulders bounced back together so fast I could hardly see straight.

  “I didn’t know he was from the outside,” whispered Susan.

  “A singer?” asked Erica.

  “Well.” Susan shrugged.

  I wanted to hold on to this and shout at them that they had to be wrong. It was a calling! It was Daddy’s calling! And how could he have been from the outside if he had a calling?

  “No one’s ever been called to be a singer. Not before him. Not after. What do you think of that?”

  “It’s not a calling,” said Susan.

  “Not the way the touchstone calls,” said Erica.

  My ears rang with her words. I put my hands to them and pushed as hard as I could, but still the sound would not go away.

  It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true. I chanted the words at myself.

  Then I remembered—Mama had said she hadn’t known being a cook was a calling, either, before.

  Besides, Mama would have told me if Daddy had been an outsider.

  Wouldn’t she?

  I could feel the tears starting down my face. Mama wouldn’t have lied to me. Mama had never lied to me, not about anything.

  Frantically, I put my memories through a sieve, trying to catch one clear image of Mama telling me Daddy was from Zicker, anything about when he was a little boy. I didn’t find anything. Even last night, when I’d asked her straight out about Daddy’s touchstone day, she’d said she didn’t remember. Was that a lie, too?

  Sick and empty, I kept listening to the two older girls.

  “She’s the spitting image of him, or at least that’s what my mama says,” said Erica. “The touchstone probably doesn’t even think of her as one of us.”

  I didn’t think about what I did next. It just happened.

  The next thing I knew, I was by Erica’s side and there was a quick, startled expression on her face the moment before my fists slammed into it. Then it was flowing blood, ruining the perfect lines of her yellow gingham dress.

  But I didn’t have a chance against a blacksmith, even one not fully grown. She pushed me back with one hand and kicked me hard in the stomach with the other. I could hardly see through the cloud of pain over my eyes.

  The anger drained out of me as the humiliation grew.

  “Come on, Erica. I’ll walk you home,” said Susan, offering a hand to her friend.

  “I’m going to tell her mama,” said Erica. “She’ll be sorry she ever touched me.”

  Another time I might have been worried about what Mama’s punishment would be. But compared to what I’d just found out, it didn’t matter a bit.

  “You think the touchstone hasn’t punished her enough?” Susan’s voice carried from the other side of the path. Maybe she meant it to.

  But I don’t think she meant for me to do what I did next.

  It was the touchstone that was at the root of all of this. The touchstone that hadn’t called me, for its own reasons. Well, the time had passed for me to wait for it. I’d waited plenty long. I wasn’t waiting any longer. I was going up to that touchstone myself and demand a calling.

  It had to give me one. It just had to.

  I didn’t go back home to change out of my nightdress and I didn’t go back for a jar to fill at the well. As much as I could, I followed the rules of being called.

  The way up the mountain I knew best was over on the other side of Jacob Wright’s farm. And I knew he wouldn’t mind it if I cut through his new-turned fields. My feet would be filthy, but who would think about that on my touchstone day?

  “Lissa? Is that you?”

  Startled, I turned around and saw Jacob Wright himself, staring deep into the soil with a handful of seeds held close to his chest.

  Though he was a grown man, I considered him a good friend. Maybe my only friend these days. He always spoke to me as an equal.

  “It’s me,” I said, my shoulders falling. I should have known he would be here. This time of year, this time of day—a farmer would have to be out. But I didn’t want to talk to him.

  Not yet.

  “What are you doing out here? Did you come looking for me?” he asked, tilting up his straw hat and climbing to his feet. His face was brown as the soil he tilled, but his eyes were bright and his smile as big as a watermelon.

  “I came to ask if you’d heard about Jessie Martin,” I said, surprised at how easy the lie came.

  “No,” said Jacob. “I haven’t.” He waited, showing no sign of impatience, though I wasn’t sure he had any idea who Jessie Martin was.

  “She’s been called to be a farmer,” I said.

/>   The smile on Jacob’s face slipped off and I had a glimpse of brown skin gone pale under the dirt. Then the smile got pasted back on, but it didn’t seem to fit quite.

  “Is her daddy going to give up farming already?” asked Jacob.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So where will she make her farm—when she’s done working out her years for her daddy? The land is supposed to lie fallow for a few years between farmers.” He looked worried. I thought maybe he was worried about the land. Or maybe he just felt sorry that Jessie had to work for her daddy.

  “Mr. Martin says he thinks the touchstone is going to give her a new plot of land. You know, expand the boundaries of Zicker. What do you think? Could that happen?” It seemed better to think that then that someone I knew was about to die, and soon.

  Jacob looked up to the mountain. “We never know what the touchstone will do, do we? It’s a grand mystery.”

  That was true. No one knew where the touchstone had come from or why it only worked here in Zicker. It just did.

  Jacob leaned on his shovel and his face seemed to change. Not sad or happy now—it was in a different place entirely. “You ever think about the outside, Lissa? About what the people there do, without a calling? You think about whether it’s good or bad for them?”

  How could it be good to have no calling?

  “You think about the different choices they have there, with so many people around? Not just farmers and furriers, seamstresses and hunters and–” His eye caught mine. “And well, cooks.”

  “What else is there?” I asked quietly. To myself, I thought—what else that matters?

  Then he grabbed hold of my arm and his eyes were so bright they scared me. I’d never been scared of Jacob before. But this person looking out at me from his eyes seemed like a stranger. An outsider, and one who hadn’t come for Mama’s cooking.

  “Do you want to know a secret, Lissa?” he demanded, pinching my arm tighter and tighter. “A very important, deep secret? One you could never tell anyone, ever—not even your own mama?”

  But before I could answer, he had let me go. He turned his back to me, began muttering to himself and paced back and forth, ruining the nice long seed trough he’d likely spent all morning making. And the seeds in his hands were long strewn to the winds.

  I was afraid to walk away from him. Afraid to walk any closer to him. I stayed where I was, and spoke softly. “Jacob, you said you had a secret.” He was my friend, I thought. If he had a secret, I should let him tell it to me.

  “Hmm?” He stopped pacing. “Oh, yes.” His mouth trembled on one side as he tried to hold a grin. “The secret is that I think you’re the most beautiful girl in Zicker.” He reached with a hand to tweak my cheek, but he only brushed against it.

  A moment longer, and he simply turned back to his work.

  I didn’t press him. Maybe I didn’t really want to know. I had my own secret, after all. You don’t always want to share.

  I walked down the field, the mountain shadow cooling me as it darkened all else around me. I kept on walking until I hit the first little rocky hill. Then I had to get down on my hands and knees and crawl across it. The stones were damp with dew, and I slipped and cut my knees, then my lip.

  Soon I was over the top and headed up the long, slow slope.

  I tried not to think of Daddy, not to spoil my memories of him. It didn’t matter what Erica and Susan had said. I could still hear his songs. And that was proof that he had been called.

  I took a rest after the clover meadows were past, before I went into the pine trees. Those trees were so thick you couldn’t see more than an inch or two ahead until you came out on the other side, at the bluff. And that was where the touchstone was.

  Letting my breath come easy, I looked back to Jacob’s field. It seemed as small as an anthill from this height. Unimportant. But maybe everything looked that way from up here. It might explain some things about the touchstone. Compared to the mountain, we were all no more than seeds to be put in the ground.

  I went on. It was a long, dark journey through the trees. When I came out at the other end, I expected it would be midnight or later, but the sun was high in the sky and I guessed it was close to noon.

  Down the mountain would be faster, I thought. So when I had my calling, I’d be home at much the same time as anyone who claimed to have heard the touchstone’s voice at night.

  With that in mind, I looked for the touchstone. It had be somewhere close.

  Thinking carefully, I began to walk in ever-growing half-circles around the cliff edge. The first time I passed the thorn bush I only thought about the scrape it left on my arm. The second time I nearly went around it.

  Then Jessie’s voice came back to me.

  The thorn bush.

  Mama’s voice.

  The thorn bush.

  I stopped. It was huge. Could I see the touchstone if it was hidden behind it? No, the cover was too thick. If it had called to me, maybe I’d have some idea. But since it hadn’t, I started in the middle and worked my way to one side.

  Of course, I didn’t find it until I’d searched twice and started a third time, pushing myself through the thorn bush so that I couldn’t move an inch without giving myself another cut. I wished I’d thought to wear something sturdier. My long johns would have helped. And since I wasn’t following the rules anyway . . .

  But I found it. The flat, black rock had to be the touchstone.

  I pushed the branches away. They twanged back at me. I yanked one off, but I couldn’t force myself to do another. My hands were the worst, hardly an inch that wasn’t bleeding. So I let the bush crowd around me, ignored the pain in my back and neck, and I wiped the right one off on my gown.

  I leaned forward, hesitating. The touchstone seemed to glare up at me, as if it had a face, eyes winking at me, taunting me.

  “I want my calling,” I said boldly. Then I closed my eyes and put my hand out.

  The stone caught it. It was cold and smooth, but there was nothing more than that. I waited for a long moment. Still nothing.

  I tried again, with both hands.

  I counted to one thousand.

  There was no response.

  “Say something!” I shouted at it. “Give me my calling!”

  But it was just a stone.

  A stupid stone that didn’t have any more power than the sun or the rain. And people thought they got their callings from it? They let their whole lives depend on what they thought it said to them?

  I pounded my hand on the stone until it was bruised and bleeding.

  I hated it.

  All my life, I’d thought the day I looked on the touchstone would be a magical day, that I’d be able to see myself better than ever before. Because the touchstone knew me.

  But it didn’t.

  And I didn’t know it.

  We were strangers.

  Maybe I didn’t belong in Zicker, after all.

  I couldn’t bear the thought, but it wouldn’t go out of my head.

  I stood up from the touchstone, crying, shaking, and half-blind with fury.

  And then I ran. Ran and ran and ran.

  I thought I’d never see again, never take an easy breath again, but then my foot caught on a tree root and I fell forward to the ground.

  For a moment, the world went black.

  Then when it came back to color, I leaned back and let myself rest.

  No calling today.

  What was the rush of getting back home, then? Might as well go as slow as I could, so I didn’t have to face the look on Mama’s face again.

  The sympathetic, sad look.

  I’d have disappointed her again, and she’d try to tell me it wasn’t so.

  Once past the trees, I stopped at the vantage place once more. The sun was still high in the sky, but it felt cold to me. I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself, then took a moment to stare down at Zicker below. It did not seem insignificant now. It seemed the whole world. Everythi
ng I’d ever known.

  But I didn’t belong. I never would.

  So I forced myself to keep moving. Down. Down. Down again.

  Straight into Jacob.

  He caught me and stared back at the mounds of dirt I’d trampled through.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  But that’s not what I really felt. I was angry. At everyone in Zicker, because they all had callings, and I didn’t.

  I never would.

  “So, you went to the touchstone.” He guessed—somehow.

  Too numb to care anymore, I nodded.

  “You weren’t called.”

  “No.” My head hung low. I couldn’t even bear to look at him.

  Now what would happen? Would he tell what I’d done? Would he call a judgment for me? I didn’t know what the penalty would be for trying to force the touchstone, but if they banished me, what did I care? Maybe it would be better to be away from here.

  “Lissa?” he asked again.

  When I didn’t look up at him, he came and held me by the shoulders.

  “Let me go. Please, please, let me go,” I begged.

  “Lissa, listen to me,” said Jacob in a low voice.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because you trust me. Don’t you, Lissa? As much as I trust you?”

  I thought.

  And I thought.

  Finally, I said, “I trust you.” It seemed to take all my strength. I slipped out of his hands and down to the ground. All that wonderful, terrible strength that had led me up to the touchstone and then back down again in anger—it was all gone now.

  Jacob bent down, lifted my face to his. “Lissa, let me ask you this. What do you want most to be? If you had your choice of callings, what would it be? Think hard!”

  I didn’t want to think of that. I didn’t want to think of anything to do with the touchstone.

  But his eyes would not let me turn away. “What is it, Lissa? You want to raise cattle? Chickens? Build houses? Bridges?”

  “I—I—” I stuttered. What did I want to be?

  “I don’t know,” I finished lamely. “What does it matter, anyway? I’ll never be called. Never.” I held in my breath for fear I would cry. And once I started with that, I’d never be able to stop.