The Believer (The Shakers 2)

by Ann H. Gabhart

  "Yea, so I am trying to remember." Elizabeth used the Shaker word for yes in hopes it would make Sister Melva think she was turning to the Shaker way. Perhaps even to attempt to convince herself that she might be settling into the peace Sister Melva promised would be hers if she would only accept the Shaker life.

  "I find no pleasure in taking you to task, my sister. I see your effort to learn our ways. But both Brother Martin and I have seen many of the young sisters and brothers be tempted by ways of the world. And Brother Ethan is pleasing in appear- ance:'Sister Melva sounded as if that was reason for concern as she sighed before continuing. "While we don't worry with the outward appearance of our bodies except, of course, to stay clean and neat, we aren't blind. We're aware that Brother Ethan's handsome look might be an enticement to one newly from the world who has not yet replaced her more temporal thoughts with proper spiritual ones:"

  "I will work to have pure thoughts, Sister Melva;' Elizabeth answered meekly as she kept her head bowed in seeming submission. That was the surest way to hide the color in her cheeks and the doubt in her eyes that she could ever fully accept the Shaker way or remember the many rules.

  But even as Elizabeth chafed under the Shaker rules, she was amazed afresh each day at the village. The house where they had given her a bed was three stories of brick that Sister Melva said was built entirely by the brothers from lumber they harvested from their woods and brick they fired themselves. And the beautiful, almost white stone of the Centre Family House had been quarried out of the palisades that rose up from the river to the east of the village.

  Elizabeth hadn't seen the river as yet, but that one time she had talked with Payton, he told her he had. Perhaps that was the reason for his change of attitude. He seemed glad to be at the village instead of resentful as he'd been on the road there. He said the river was wide and Brother Issachar, who had taken him to see it, told him it flowed into the Ohio that flowed into the Mississippi, and that river flowed all the way to the Gulf of Mexico and into the ocean. It was as if Payton could imagine traveling with the water on an endless journey of discovery.

  Perhaps that was how she should look on her life with the Shakers. As a journey of discovery for however long she was there. The people were like none she'd ever met. Everyone worked; no one watched. And through their dedicated industry, they seemed to accomplish wonders. They made their own potions and bottled row after row of jars of jams and jellies. They packed thousands of envelopes of seeds. They wove the cloth for their clothes and made silk from the cocoons of worms. They positioned windows in their houses to invite the light of the sun into the darkest corners, even the cupboards. Pipes carried their water to the houses and their laundry house where there were machines to aid in the washing of their clothing.

  Each time Elizabeth saw the water flow out of the pipe into the kitchen basin at the Gathering Family house, she felt as if she had entered a different world than the one she'd always known. A world where one didn't have to draw water from a well or fetch it from a spring. A world where dances were holy. A world where everything she'd been taught was natural between a man and a woman was considered sin and denied.

  Elizabeth told herself she could accept that. The avoidance of matrimony was one reason she had come to the Shaker village. While she had difficulty accepting that all matrimony was a sin and the bearing of children was not part of God's plan, she didn't have to tell Sister Melva that. Instead she could listen to Sister Melva and pretend to be turning from the world. She could be glad Payton was taking to their new life.

  Hannah was a different matter. She was sad through and through, even though Sister Nola was being extra kind to her. Elizabeth could see the child's sorrow in the droop of her shoulders. Hannah hungered after her old ways. She missed her freedom. She missed her trees. She missed Elizabeth as Elizabeth missed her, but it was the decision of Elder Homer and Eldress Rosellen, who were the leaders over the Gathering Family, that Elizabeth and Hannah should not be allowed to be together.

  More rules. Rules that Elizabeth wasn't sure Hannah would be able to abide for long, even if she had promised to do so. Sometimes at night when sleep eluded Elizabeth, she would stare into the darkness above her narrow bed in the sleeping room she shared with eleven other women and worry about how she would keep her own promise to Hannah. Elizabeth had no real hope the Shaker rules would be any less odious to Hannah come spring than they were now.

  She prayed then. Not to the God of the Shakers, but to the Lord her mother had taught her about as a child. The Lord who knew every fiber of her being and loved her in spite of her failings. A Lord whose love was not dependent on how well she kept a list of rules. And she'd hear an answer out of the night. Not spoken, but in her heart, to take each day as it came and somehow there would be a way. Just as the Shakers' seed package had shown her a way to keep from having to give herself to Colton Linley.

  They'd been at the Shaker village three weeks when Hannah ran away. The early days of November had been dreary with a fine mist of rain, but five days into the month, the sun pushed back the clouds and afforded them a gift of Indian summer weather. That morning when the bell tolled for breakfast, Elizabeth and Sister Melva left off their early morning chore of gathering soiled clothing for the laundry to take their morning meal. Sister Nola met them at the bottom of the stairs. Elizabeth knew at once something was wrong.

  "Is Hannah all right?" she asked.

  "Then you haven't seen her." Sister Nola sighed. "When she wasn't in her bed this morn, I thought that perhaps she had come to you"

  Elizabeth's heart felt heavy in her chest. "You don't know where she is?"

  "Nay, I fear she may have run away:" Sister Nola looked reluctant to say the words.

  Elizabeth couldn't imagine what Hannah could be thinking. She had no place to run away to. And while Hannah knew the woods around their cabin like the back of her hand, the forest around the village would be strange with unknown dangers. She could get lost. They might never find her. Elizabeth pulled in a deep breath and closed her eyes a moment to hold away the panic that wanted to grab her.

  "Worry not, my sister," Sister Nola said. "After the morning meal, if she hasn't come back, we'll gather some brethren to search for her. She can't have gone far."

  Sister Ruth came up to them, her angular face stiff with disapproval. "You know it's not proper to have so much conversation before our morning meal"

  "Yea, Sister Ruth, I beg your forgiveness for breaking the silence of the morning, but little Sister Hannah is missing and I thought perhaps she had come to seek Sister Elizabeth;' Sister Nola said.

  "The child needs more discipline:" Sister Ruth's frown deepened. Then she looked at the sisters and Elizabeth. "We could all use more discipline, it appears:"

  "Yea, it is true. Let us pull silence over us as we go in to our meal," Sister Melva said, looking pointedly at Elizabeth as she moved past her to lead the way to the biting room.

  Elizabeth stood rooted to her spot at the bottom of the stairs. She didn't want to stay silent. She wanted to scream at them. Shake them away from the peace they pulled around them like a cloak. How could they expect her to proceed calmly to her morning meal not knowing where Hannah was or if she was safe? Sister Ruth's eyes were burning into Elizabeth waiting for her to move. To obey. To be a good Shaker worthy of her place at the table.

  Sister Nola put her hand under Elizabeth's elbow and, without looking toward Elizabeth, whispered very quietly, "Come, Sister. Give our little sister time to return. She has told me of her love for the woods. She has no doubt run off to the trees. She will be safe with Mother Ann watching over her."

  What else could she do but let Sister Nola tow her into the biting room? After they knelt for prayer, Elizabeth put only a small biscuit on her plate, for there was no way she could swallow the fried potatoes and eggs. Sister Melva watched Elizabeth with concern, but she didn't break the silence with speech. Sister Nola had gone to sit in her assigned spot at another table. The only noise
was the clatter of the bowls and the scraping of forks against the plates. Now and again one of the benches would creak when a sister moved to get more comfortable. The brothers were on the other side of the room, eating as silently and intently as the sisters. A Shaker must feed his body to better enable him to do his work in a way pleasing to the Lord. A horse needed its feed to pull its load and so did a Shaker.

  Elizabeth forced herself to swallow the biscuit, crumb by crumb. At last all were finished eating, and after kneeling once more for prayer, they were allowed to leave the biting room. Sister Nola caught Elizabeth's eye across the room and nodded a bit as if to assure Elizabeth she'd take care of finding Hannah, but Elizabeth wasn't ready to leave that up to her. She made the excuse to Sister Melva that she needed to visit the outhouse.

  Sister Melva looked at her with suspicion. "The brethren will search for the child," she said. "She's our little sister now too:"

  "Yea, I believe it so:" Elizabeth used the Shaker talk and looked straight into Sister Melva's eyes as if she didn't have any wrong motives to hide.

  She did go to the outhouse and quietly waited her turn among the many sisters making the same visit before they began their morning chores. Sister Melva had told Elizabeth casual talk was not a part of a Believer's day, although the sisters did exchange greetings and news of one of the sisters who was in the infirmary. They paid little notice to Elizabeth and cared not that when she left the outhouse, she moved not back toward the laundry house where she was to work but headed across the field toward the woods in the distance.

  The woods seemed to welcome Elizabeth as she stepped in under its canopy of branches. In spite of her worry for Hannah, her breath came easier and her spirit calmed. She hadn't realized how much she missed being among the trees. She'd thought she only missed her father and her books, but like Payton, it had been more. Where he had brought the river with him, she had brought the trees. And the freedom to step out among them whenever such thought struck her fancy. Even when she left chores undone at the cabin, she could excuse her time in the woods by gathering herbs.

  She'd told Sister Melva of her knowledge of herbs, but Sister Melva said that novitiates could not pick their duty. That simple obedience was the first thing a good Shaker had need to learn. In time she would be allowed to use her talents for the good of the community.

  Who knew what they might allow her or not allow her to do now? They would deem it wrong that she left the village to search for Hannah. They would expect her to confess the wrong of it to sour-faced Sister Ruth, her appointed confessor. Who knew what else they might expect her to do? Some sort of punishment or show of atonement perhaps. They might even ask her to leave the village, and she'd have no choice except to go. Yet at this moment with the trees around her, the crisp smell of the fallen leaves crunching under her feet, the call of a crow in her ears, she could not be sorry she had walked away to find her sister.

  Ah, Hannah. How much worse it surely was for her to be confined to the village houses and yards. She had never known confinement. All she knew were the woods and the rules of nature. She knew nothing of the rules people were wont to make when they formed communities.

  Before she went too far, Elizabeth stood still among the trees to take stock of where she was. It would do little good for her to wander into the woods without a plan and immediately lose her own way. Then the brethren would be hunting her as well as Hannah. Since many of the trees had dropped their leaves, the sun was shining brightly down through the branches to give her a clear indication of direction. Only the oaks held their dark red leaves in abundance.

  Elizabeth pulled her cap off and stuck it into the waistband of her apron. A breeze chased welcome fingers of cool air through her hair. Elizabeth's mother had covered her head and insisted Elizabeth do the same when they attended church before they moved to the woods. She said it was only respectful to do so, and she had often worn a bonnet to keep the sun from her face. But she hadn't always covered her hair or shaded her face. And Elizabeth had done so even less in spite of her mother's warnings that she would end up with freckles across her nose that no amount of cream could fade.

  The Shakers weren't worried about freckles or the sun. Just modesty and self-denial. A woman should cover her head in church and the Shakers were continually worshiping whether they were actually in a worship meeting or worshiping through the work of their hands. Sister Melva had explained it so. She said that, since the word of God dwelt within each Believer, it was only right to stay holy at all times.

  Elizabeth shut her eyes and shook her head to rid the echo of Sister Melva's voice from her mind. She cared not what the Shakers believed or didn't believe right now. She only cared about finding Hannah. If she could find her and return to Harmony Hill before the brethren formed a search party that would take them away from their harvest duties, perhaps the Shaker leaders would be more forgiving of their lapse of obedience. For even as good as it felt to be in the freedom of the trees, Elizabeth had no illusions of their ability to find a way to survive outside the village.

  She listened intently for some sound that might lead her to Hannah. If only she had Aristotle by her side, but the dog had a new master now. He couldn't help her track Hannah. However, there had been times when Elizabeth thought Hannah somehow read her mind when they were playing their hideand-seek games in the woods around their cabin. Perhaps if she concentrated enough, she could read Hannah's as well.

  "Tell me where you are, little sister," Elizabeth said softly. Then she added a quiet prayer. "Let my feet walk in the right direction, Lord"

  A faint path led off through the trees. A deer trace perhaps. She didn't want to think of other animals that might be in the woods. Bears. Rabid skunks or foxes. Coyotes. At least it was surely too cool for snakes. She started deeper into the woods, stopping now and again to call for Hannah. Squirrels chattered at her from the treetops and a blue jay flew ahead to squawk out a warning to his forest friends. While she neither heard nor saw any sign of Hannah, she kept moving deeper into the woods, sure in some unfathomable way that her desire to find Hannah would lead her in the right direction.

  The sun was halfway to noon when she spotted a blue raveling on a wild rose bush. Elizabeth picked it up. The thread was not caught on a thorn. It curled like a snake on top of the bush waiting to be found. A few steps farther down the path, a branch, then another, looked freshly broken. She moved slowly now, watching for more trail markers. She stopped at a heap of leaves as high as her knees kicked up in the middle of the faint path. From there the trace wandered off in two directions.

  Elizabeth stared first one way through the trees and then the other. Surely after leaving the earlier clues, Hannah had left something to point the way.

  "Which way, Hannah?" she whispered. She could almost see the secretive little smile Hannah always had when she waited for Elizabeth to guess a riddle she'd thought up.

  Elizabeth searched the paths with her eyes for something out of the ordinary. At last she noted three small rocks laid out in a straight line on the path to the right. Down that path were more rocks scattered a few feet apart like Hansel and Gretel's breadcrumbs. Then there were no more rocks. No trail markers of any kind that she could see. She stopped and stood very still to listen once again. All was silent until a breeze tickled through the oak leaves overhead and some small animal scurried away through the leaves on the ground.

  She held her breath and listened deeper. Somewhere in the distance water tumbled over rocks in a creek or river. She heard nothing to make her think Hannah was within sound of her voice, yet she stood and waited. Then something, one acorn perhaps, fell from an oak tree behind her.

  "Hannah, are you here?" Elizabeth asked without raising her voice.

  Another acorn fell behind her. She turned and looked up at the treetops. Nothing there but a squirrel's nest high in the branches of the towering oak. No white-haired dryad. She was about to decide it was only the squirrel cleaning out his nest when there was a giggle fro
m high above her head to the left. Elizabeth pretended not to hear as she continued to gaze up into the wrong tree. She would play Hannah's game. They had played it often in the woods behind the cabin.

  "Oh, squirrel, if you are up there, please tell me if you've seen a child with white curls?"

  "The squirrel has no voice to answer you" Hannah's words drifted down to her.

  Elizabeth smiled and looked toward the oak to her left. Far above her head she spotted a patch of blue. Her breath caught inside her chest to see Hannah up so high, but Hannah had no fear of heights. She said the trees lifted their branches to her feet and held her up because she was their friend.

  Elizabeth supposed she should order Hannah down at once, but whatever harm that might result from her running away had already been done. There was no way to change that with angry words. Better to simply play her game and give her a holiday from rules. A holiday they both needed.

  She smiled as she said, "Then it must be the mighty oak who speaks to me with such a fine voice, although not at all the voice one would expect for a tree so tall. One would think a magnificent tree such as this would boom so loudly the thunder in the clouds would be put to shame:"

  "It is not the tree, but the acorn that speaks. Who is it you seek?"

  I seek Hannah, a girl with squirrel feet and raccoon hands' Elizabeth stepped closer to the tree to peer up through its branches. She could see Hannah's feet but not her face. Her feet were bare and Elizabeth hoped she had not tossed aside her Shaker shoes.

  `And who is it that seeks this Hannah?"

  "Elizabeth, her sister."

  "Her natural sister or one of the Shaker sisters?" Some of the fun went out of Hannah's voice.

  'A sister as natural as the sunshine and as true as the rain' Elizabeth waited a moment for an answer, but when there was none, she went on. "Dear little acorn, please tell my Hannah I have spotted her up in the tree and now she must come down to me. That's the way the game is played. Once found, the hider is no longer hidden and the seeker no longer has reason to seek. Those are the rules"