Touchstone

by Mette Ivie Harrison

  “Lissa, what’s that you’ve got there?”

  It was Jessie.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  She climbed up on the wagon. “Nothing?” she said.

  I moved away from the rolled-up paintings and brushed my hands from the dust. “Did you see the chocolate-marmalade cake?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Had two pieces already. Daddy said I could eat whatever I wanted, now I’ve been called.”

  “Lucky you,” I said. I eased away from the paintings, to the edge of the wagon bed. “Mama will probably make me eat my vegetables first.”

  Jessie climbed off the wagon bed with me.

  I almost thought I’d done it.

  “Those aren’t yours,” said Jessie, pointing to the sack. “They should be Anne Wright’s, you know.”

  “No,” I said. “They’re Jacob’s, and he said I could have them.”

  “He’s been banished,” said Jessie. “Nothing is his no more.”

  I closed my eyes. They really had banished him, then.

  My mouth twisted hard. “You keep quiet about those or else,” I threatened her.

  “Or else what?” asked Jessie, eyes wide.

  I had no idea what I was saying. I spewed out the worst thing I could think of. I wanted to hurt her, because it was her fault this had begun. All her fault, and the touchstone’s. “Or else I’ll tell that you never were called. You just said you were, so you could be a farmer like your daddy. You pretended the touchstone came to you at night, and then you went up the mountain—”

  “No!” shouted Jessie, catapulting towards me, throwing me back in the wagon. She pummeled me. I kicked at her.

  Mama came and pulled us apart. “What’s this all about?” she demanded of me.

  “It’s not hers,” said Jessie, pointing to the sack. “It’s Anne Wright’s. She was trying to take it away.”

  Mama looked to me, giving me a chance to explain. Her own private judgment, but it was no more fair than Jacob’s had been.

  I sagged. “They’re Jacob’s,” I said. “He wanted me to have them.” I hoped she would not ask him personally. I doubted he would confirm my words.

  Somehow things had fallen apart since my story. The power of my words had faded, falling out of my hands like water.

  “If they are, we’ll ask Anne if we may have them,” said Mama, her arm steel on my neck, leading me forward on what seemed the longest walk of my life. At the end, there was Anne Wright with her son at her side.

  “What is it, Lissa?” Mama pinched me for the truth. “What’s in the wagon?”

  I lowered my head, conscious of my defeat. “Paintings,” I said. “Jacob’s paintings.”

  But that wasn’t enough for Anne. She had to go to the wagon and see them. She had to take them out one by one and let everyone view them.

  No wonder Jacob had wanted them destroyed, I thought. Far better that than to let this happen to them.

  Each one was displayed and snickered at. The colors were made fun of, and Jacob’s eyes. Did he see that red in the mountain? No wonder he’d killed his brother then. He was crazy as an outsider who stayed too long in Zicker.

  It was Mama who ended it. I will be forever grateful to her for that much, at least.

  “I think they are lovely,” she said. “They are just like us, in a way. In Jacob’s way.”

  “I thought he was a farmer,” said someone else.

  “What did he waste time on all these for?” asked another.

  But there was no answer for it, no more than the story they’d already heard.

  “They’re mine anyway,” said Anne Wright, taking hold of the burlap sack and dragging it to the end of the wagon so she could jam the paintings back in.

  “What are you going to do with them?” I asked, my stomach churning.

  “That’s not your business,” said Anne, a gleam in her eyes like the fire that I knew she would throw them to.

  “Wait,” said Mama.

  Everyone looked to her. Except for me. I did not imagine she could do more than she already had.

  “You could trade them,” she said.

  “Trade them to who?” asked Anne dismissively.

  Mama lifted an arm out to take us all in. “To the ones in them. We don’t have much chance to get portraits painted, now, do we?” She stared around. “I want mine, at least.”

  “What will you offer for it?” asked Anne.

  “A dozen meals, perhaps?” asked Mama. She clutched my hand and pulled me closer to her. “And a dozen for Lissa’s?”

  “Make it two dozen for each painting,” said Anne, bargaining shrewdly. “Four dozen in all.”

  I did not expect Mama to agree to it.

  Neither, apparently, did Anne Wright.

  “Done,” said Mama.

  And Anne Wright gaped.

  But Mama nodded to me and I bent to pick up those two paintings. How desperately I wanted to touch the others, but my fingers were ice-stiff. I could not even roll the two up that I had. I put them in the wagon open.

  A few others volunteered to take the paintings they recognized, at prices John’s wife agreed to. The rest were bundled up, put back in the burlap sack and handed into her own wagon.

  It was all that could be done.

  “Now I will be on my way,” said Anne Wright angrily. And she left us all behind.

  There was no point in pretending anymore then. I wept bitter tears. I could feel the people shift around me. No one had the heart to remain any longer, not even to finish Mama’s food. It was packed back in the wagon, Mama’s first leftovers, because of me.

  “Get in the wagon,” said Mama then. “I will sit back with you.”

  We waited for the Johnsons to climb in front and then we were off, feeling the jolt of every bump along the way. When we were back at the restaurant once more, Mama took the paintings inside and laid them out on two tables.

  “I don’t know quite what to do with them, Lissa,” she said.

  I didn’t argue with her.

  All I had to do was remember the look on Anne Wright’s face, and the fact that no one else had offered anything for their paintings.

  #

  The next morning, I went back up the mountain the way I had gone the first time, passing through Jacob Wright’s fields, seeing his farmhouse in the distance, now empty and dark. His cattle had been spread out to other herds. His fields would be harvested by another, but not cared for as he would have done.

  I’m doing this for him, I told myself. To make sure that what he went through will never happen again.

  It was a long climb. I thought that it would be easier the second time, but I stumbled more and the rocks seemed steeper than ever. Even the sky seemed to be against me. Instead of a clear blue sky and a sharp sun shining down on me, the sky was dark and moody, the wind gusting up roughly now and again, when I was least expecting it. And despite my sweating, I shivered and wished I had thought to bring my coat.

  Finally, I reached the top. My heart was beating so fast that I nearly fell over with light-headedness. But I stood still for a long while, thinking of the other touchstones I had heard. I couldn’t expect this one to speak to me so clearly. But I would hear something, I was sure of it.

  And yet I trembled as I pushed through the thorns, my hands stretching out to reach the cold black I knew was there. I could not find it—could not find it—half-wondered if somehow Mr. Martin had moved it to a different location, or destroyed it altogether.

  Then it was there, under my fingertips. I breathed, and felt a sudden calm.

  Not my own calm.

  “I came back,” I said out loud. I did not expect to hear an answer, but I did.

  “You need no calling,” said the touchstone. “None of you, and you least of all.”

  My ears seemed to ring.

  “You know already who you are and what you are meant to be.”

  “What are you talking about? I have no idea.”

  “You are the storyte
ller. You have been from the day you were born and you discovered it yesterday”

  I lifted my hand from the stone, trying to gather my swirling thoughts back to myself.

  “You will know what you must do. When the time comes,” said the touchstone.

  “When what time comes? What do you mean—what am I supposed to do?”

  But the touchstone would not answer me.

  I stepped away from the thorns.

  I could still hear a buzzing sound in my head, but it was indistinct. I grasped for the meaning of it, but caught only a hint of a word. It might have been, “Return,” but that could have meant so many things that I did not trust it.

  I went back down the mountain as heavily as I had gone down the first time. My hopes were as crushed as before, and they had been larger hopes.

  #

  At the restaurant that night Mama had more leftovers than she knew what to do with. I felt guilty that it was my fault, for what I’d said about Jacob. Finally, as she looked around at the cooked food, she suggested that I go out and around Zicker and knock on doors, offering the bread she’d baked that day, along with some of the barbecued pork.

  “Please,” she said. “I don’t want it to go to waste.”

  I couldn’t say no to her. I went up past the Wright farms, where things were still and dark, across to the valley where most of the houses lay at the mouth of the river. It felt chilly enough that I wished I’d brought a sweater, but I tried to walk as fast as I could from house to house.

  The first door I went to was Mr. Dour, the blacksmith. Susan opened the door. It was the first time we’d met since she’d hit me by the well, the morning I’d gone to demand a calling from the touchstone. She seemed smaller somehow. Wiry, but not as big as I remembered.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, fists tight. When she saw Tristan, though, she lowered them.

  “I came to bring some of Mama’s food,” I said.

  “I can’t spare anything to trade today.” Susan reached for the door, but I put my foot in to catch the door.

  “There’s no trading for this. It’s a gift from my mama.” I put it down on the porch and walked away, so that if she refused it, she would have to know I wasn’t taking it back.

  She stared at me, then held out her hands and I put the bread and pork into them.

  I went to the next house, and the next, and on down to the river. Only one person took the bread gladly and said thank you. The others were furtive in their acceptance. Mr. Lin, the wheelwright, refused the bread altogether. And when I left it on his doorstep anyway, he kicked it into the dirt, then went out and stamped on it with his foot as well, and spat at me for the trouble when he passed back by me.

  As I turned back home, the sun was falling behind the mountain where the touchstone rested. The sky went from purple to gray to black in a matter of moments. It was the most beautiful thing I could imagine, and I wondered if Jacob had tried to capture that on one of his canvases.

  Then the stars came out one by one, blinking to us.

  Jessie Martin was waiting at the door to the restaurant when I came back.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, because she was shivering and rubbing her shoulders with her hands, up and down, up and down.

  She shook her head and I could see a faint stain of blood on her lower lip, where she’d been biting is so hard. Was she trying not to talk? What was it she didn’t want me to know?

  I ushered her inside and told Mama that she was here, and in a bad way.

  Mama was cleaning in the kitchen, but she came out to see Jessie for herself. Then she glanced at me, her eyes shadowed in worry.

  “Jessie, would you like to come in the kitchen and wait while I make some hot chocolate?” she asked. “After you drink it, maybe you could go to sleep, at least for a little while. And in the morning, we might all be able to think with clearer heads.”

  Jessie nodded and led where Mama gently took her. I followed them and helped with the hot chocolate. It was soothing, though, doing the simple steps that led to hot chocolate. Hot milk on the stove. A spoon of cocoa, a dash of cinnamon and salt, then lots of sugar. Jessie’s face went from cool to a normal shade of pink to almost rosy when she held the cup of steaming cocoa under her nose.

  She tagged after me up to the spared bedroom overhead, but I could hear her tossing and turning all night long. She woke early enough to catch Mama making bread the next morning in the kitchen.

  After Mama turned back to the stove to get out the next batch of bread, I moved to start with the dishes. Jessie stopped me with a touch to the arm.

  “I did pretend to be called,” she said simply to me. “I didn’t know how you knew, and I couldn’t admit it then.” She waited, looking at me.

  I nodded.

  She licked at her lips, then closed her eyes briefly and went on, as if she was forcing herself to do something that she’d thought about many times before. “I was too terrified of what he would do if I wasn’t called to be a farmer. But I didn’t know he would go that far—” she stopped.

  I desperately wanted to hound her to finish. Instead, I held my tongue and bided my time.

  “He was the one who killed John Wright,” she finally got out, half in a whisper, half in a rush.

  I sighed.

  I should have been more surprised, but I wasn’t.

  I knew Jacob Wright hadn’t done it, after all. And Jessie’s family had benefited from it.

  “When did you find out?” I asked.

  “Last night,” said Jessie, swallowing hard. “I told him that you knew the truth, that I hadn’t been called to be a farmer. I said I should wait until my real calling came, that there wasn’t any shame in waiting a few more years.”

  “But he didn’t agree?”

  Jessie shook her head violently. “He asked me how I thought Zicker would get along, now that it was missing two farmers. He said there was no way of knowing if the touchstone would ever call anyone to take over those plots. And then what would become of us? He made it all sound like it was my fault.”

  He would, I thought. He was good at that.

  “But when I wouldn’t promise him to stop talking about the touchstone’s real calling for me, he told me about John Wright. He told me every detail of it. How he planned it, to make sure that Jacob Wright would be blamed for it. How he sent a note to John Wright to ask him to meet there with all the other farmers, to discuss my calling. Only there weren’t any other farmers there. Only him and John. And the knife from the kitchen.”

  It was like she was in a trance, telling a story that had nothing to do with her. Her voice was monotone, but the words were chilling. I could see it all happen in my head.

  “And Jacob?” I got out.

  “Papa made sure he wasn’t there, at the time. But that he’d come back and see his brother on his own kitchen floor, killed with his own knife, surrounded in blood. Papa said he was sure he wouldn’t flee, that he would be too stunned to try to cover up the crime. He said he knew Jacob Wright too well.”

  But he hadn’t known Jacob at all. That was part of what made me so angry, that none of us had. Only the bits and pieces he let us know.

  I tried to get Jessie to come outside with me after that, to play by the river or climb the trees, but she was too afraid.

  Finally, Mama offered to show her some cooking skills and Jessie brightened up immediately. I watched for a little while, but then it was too painful. It seemed that they moved so well together, as though Jessie had been the one at Mama’s side for all these years, instead of me.

  Why had I never guessed that Jessie’s calling ought to have been Mama’s? Jealousy?

  I left them talking about the perfect pie crust shape, kept cool and little-touched, and went outside to gather berries.

  There was no sign that Mr. Martin knew where Jessie had gone or even cared. No one came to the restaurant asking after her. No one came at all, to get even a glimpse of her.

  Jessie seemed calmer the
next day, or perhaps she was only distracted by her happiness to be working with Mama. She woke up, hands stained with berry juice and went straight to the kitchen without a word. There was even a smile on her face and she did not touch the purpling marks on her neck as she had constantly at first.

  It was the next morning, just before dawn, when they came, Mr. Martin and the others.

  I could hear the noise of them from some distance away, and sat upright in the room that Jessie and I were sharing, wondering if I should wake her or let her sleep. Was there any hope that Mr. Martin would go away without her?

  “Lissa?” Jessie was awake, after all.

  “Shhh,” I said, straining my ears to hear any hint of what would come next.

  “He’s come for me, hasn’t he?” Jessie whimpered, hugging her knees to her chest. The little girl again. She seemed to have lost years since her touchstone day.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said immediately. “He’s not going to hurt you. I promise you that.”

  There was a sudden cracking sound downstairs, and Tristan’s voice crying out. They’d forced open the door. We had to get away!

  Then Mama came in, closing the door behind her.

  I got up and Mama came in, closing the door behind her.

  “Can you go out the window?” she asked.

  “And then where?” Was there no place in all of Zicker where Jessie would be safe?

  “Outside,” said Mama. “You go with her, Lissa. Make sure she gets across the river safe. Then stay with her.”

  I didn’t take Jessie across the river, though I had promised Mama I would. I took her to the cover of trees nearby, helped her climb to the top and made sure no one could see her. Then I ran back to the restaurant.

  It was already burning.

  The flames shot up out of the roof like dancers to some song I could not hear. I ran for the door, which was still open. I don’t know if I thought I could save Mama and or if I wanted to die with her, but a strong arm pulled me back.

  I struggled, kicking and scratching, then felt a sharp pain to my head. I blacked out after that, and woke again to the smell of smoldering ruins. I could see the restaurant in the distance, but the silhouette had changed entirely. The roof had fallen in the middle and there was only a skeleton of beams left.