by Kelly Long
“Gefeliciteerd! Happy Birthday!” Tabitha cried when her friend turned back to her.
Abigail nodded. “Danki.”
“And”—Tabitha reached into her apron pocket—“this is for you!”
Tabitha slid a small, exquisitely carved duck into Abigail’s hands. “Ach, Tabby, it is truly beautiful. The cedarwood has such a pretty grain. Danki!” She gave Tabitha a brief hug, then turned to place the duck on the mantel, where several other small, carved animals resided.
Then Christi, Big Jim’s dochder, brought some firewood from the back of the shop and exclaimed in a loud voice, “Ach, you have a new carving!” Her wide, blue eyes grew even wider. “Frau King, did you—did you make it?”
Tabitha’s eyes rested briefly on the young maedel, then flicked to Abigail, who shrugged.
“Jah, Christi, I did.”
“Jah? But you—we ain’t allowed.”
Tabitha shrugged. “There are many things a person can and cannot do. It’s Abigail’s birthday and I gave her a gift from my heart, as I’ve done before.”
“You could be shunned,” Christi said. “But I won’t tell yer secret ta nobody.”
“Danki, Christi. I appreciate that.”
“Do ya think ya could teach me how to carve?”
Tabitha laughed ruefully. “I don’t know how I can resist, but if we’re ever caught, you must give me your solemn promise that you will let me take the blame.”
“Ach . . . I couldn’t let ya—”
“Then I won’t teach you,” Tabitha said firmly.
Christi considered, then spoke solemnly. “I give you my promise.”
Tabitha nodded. “Then we have a deal.”
Chapter Fifteen
After supper that evening Matthew picked up his wood and was grateful to head to Tabitha’s room. He was exhausted emotionally and was lying beneath a quilt on the floor, his wood by his head, before Tabitha even came upstairs.
He was half asleep when she came in but roused enough to blink at her in the gentle light from the lantern he’d left glowing on her bedside table. She sat down on the floor next to him and reached out to tap the piece of red oak.
“Smells lovely.” She smiled.
“I know.” He reached up to gently cup her cheek in his hand. She was so delicately made, yet so strong inside.
“Did Da tell you to carry the wood around until it became something?”
“Have you heard that speech before?”
“Only from him to Abner, never to me.”
Matthew frowned. “Do you wish he’d said it to you? I mean, the other day with Christi, you seemed—”
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she said, her easy manner disappearing as she got to her feet.
“All right,” he said levelly. He was too tired to figure out why she reacted the way she did whenever he tried to get too close. But maybe that’s it, he thought. She barely knows me and I’m expecting her to be completely honest. . . . I certainly haven’t been, especially about the reason I answered her ad. . . .
“It’s a dough bowl,” she said from above him. She was leaning her head over the edge of the mattress.
“What?” He laughed as her hair tickled his face.
“Your wood. I see a dough bowl.”
“Then a dough bowl it is, my sweet! Just for you.”
“For us,” she reminded him.
“Jah, for us.”
* * *
The next day dawned clear and bright—the perfect weather for the blackberry frolic the community had planned. Her fater had declared a Friday holiday from the mill and she felt excited to spend the day in her husband’s company. Tabitha dressed quickly in a lavender dress and spotless apron and kapp. She couldn’t resist stooping down and brushing her lips across Matthew’s while he still slept.
She was surprised when he opened his green eyes and toppled her over onto his bare chest.
“I dreamed that a beautiful maedel was kissing me awake, and I see that my dream is real.” His voice was full of sleep and desire and heat, and she struggled to get up. “Ach, not so fast, my beauty. The price of your release is one more kiss.”
She wiggled against him. “We have to get up.”
“One kiss,” he whispered.
She bent to brush his lips with her own.
“Nee,” he smiled. “That’s hardly a kiss.”
She couldn’t resist pouting at him, but she knew her eyes sparkled.
“Maybe that was the best you can do.” He sighed.
Tabitha knew he was teasing, but something in her rose to the challenge, and she let herself lie full against him, then bent her head until there was but a breath between them.
She blew on his lips as if to awaken them to what was coming, then closed her eyes and ran the tip of her tongue over his bottom lip, again and again, until she felt his breathing and body change. She pressed her mouth to his and squeaked aloud when he suddenly rolled over and she found herself pinned beneath him.
She gazed up into the emerald eyes bent so warmly upon her and saw that his pupils were enormous. His clever fingers found the hairpins that held her kapp in place and gently pulled it free, spilling her long hair between them.
“I’ve changed my price,” he said with a faintly wicked smile. “I want—”
“Tabitha! Be ya comin’?” It was Anke, knocking loudly on the door. “We’ll be late!”
Matthew buried his head in Tabitha’s neck. “I’d like to be late,” he muttered. But then he lifted his head and carefully got to his feet, pulling her up to stand next to him.
“Jah, Anke!” Tabitha called. “I must fix my hair. That’s all.”
“Well, hurry on!”
Tabitha looked up into his handsome face. “We must hurry on,” she whispered, leaning against him.
He bent to kiss her once more.
And she smiled.
* * *
Anke was glad once Tabitha and Matthew had clambered into the back of the hay-filled wagon. John and Abner were up front driving, and she situated herself comfortably on a hay pile.
“Well, Matthew,” Anke said, feeling the spirit of the day, “what do ya know about black caps?”
“Black caps . . . you mean blackberries?”
“Ach, so ya do know a bit!”
Matthew smiled at her. “Jah, a bit, but I bet you could tell me more. I’ve heard that during the Civil War, men from opposing sides would declare temporary truces so they could both forage for the berries and make tea out of them to ward off disease.”
“Ach, I don’t know much about war, except that our people helped with the Underground Railroad in various places, but I bet ya didn’t know that Blackberry Falls was a sacred place for the Native Americans hereabout.”
“They used the berries for special teas as a sign of hospitality from one tribe to another,” Tabitha chimed in.
“Jah, kind, right ya are, and we must be respectful as we take the berries for our use.” Anke nodded.
Then she noticed that Abner was glancing back her way from his seat up front, and she felt self-conscious. She reached up a hand to touch the top of her kapp, then quickly looked away from his blue eyes when she noticed him smiling at her. It was a strange thing to feel such excitement in her chest, a bubbling stream of expectation. But what if he knew? What if he knew. . . .
She arranged her features in an expression she thought suitable for an auld maid and did not look his way again....
Chapter Sixteen
Matthew was surprised at the sheer number of kinner present at the frolic. His own home in the river valley far away had seemed to be made up mostly of young adults and aulder folks. “I can see we have a lot of catching up to do,” he teased his wife softly as two twin buwes ran giggling past with a pail of blackberries held between them.
“Do you mean the berries or the kinner?”
“Both.” He bent to kiss her on the cheek, then pulled away when Big Jim and Rose approached.
�
�Ach, hiya, Matt. Want ta take a shot at the thorny berries at the top of the falls?” Big Jim asked with a smile.
“Don’t fall,” Rose said anxiously.
“Jah,” Tabitha joined in. “The rocks can be slippery.”
“We’ll be right as rain,” Big Jim promised, and Matthew nodded as his friend led him off to where the sound of rushing water grew much louder.
High in the uplands of the Endless Mountains, pure water bubbles up through rifts in ancient rock. These are the headwaters of Blackberry Creek, which angles down a good mile to drop over the edge of a fifty-foot cliff—creating Blackberry Falls, with its deep pool at the bottom. Here, wildflowers, ferns, mosses, and thorny blackberries form an embankment that seems almost enchanted with mist from the falls.
Matthew could see, as they hiked to the top, that there was indeed a smooth rock nook behind the falls themselves. “Have you and Rose heard the faeries sing, Big Jim?”
To his surprise, his friend flushed red. “Jah . . . though I suppose it was just an echo of the water itself.”
“Uh-huh.” Matthew laughed. He looked down at the mossy ground spread out below and automatically sought the trim form of his wife in her lavender dress. Tabitha was talking to Christi, and the girl seemed, even from this distance, to be highly excited about something.
“Hey, Jim?”
“Jah?”
“Why is it that no women are allowed to do woodworking in Blackberry Falls?”
Big Jim stopped abruptly on the trail and turned around to face him. “I’m sorry, Matt. That’s not my story to tell.”
Matthew squinted into the sun. “I should ask Bishop Kore, then?”
“You might . . .”
“But it’s not his to tell either?”
Big Jim turned back around and stretched out a long arm to carefully pick some of the ripe blackberries. He handed a few back to Matthew.
“Can’t say, Matt.”
“I understand.” But I don’t really, and I wish I did for mei frau’s sake. . . .
* * *
Abner strolled about with a mug of blackberry mead in his hand. John always put up a few gallons of the sweet drink, and today it had Abner feeling festive and relaxed—so much so that he sought out Anke.
She was cutting huge slices of frosty watermelon and barely glanced up when he approached.
“I’m busy,” she muttered.
“So I see, but perhaps you might walk with me to see the kinner in the creek, and to pick a few blackberries?”
She looked up at him then, and it was all he could do not to lose himself in the gentle depths of her soulful brown eyes. Instead, he reached out his free hand and gently ran a finger down her hot cheek.
She seemed frozen by his simple touch, and he knew a headier sensation than even drinking a gallon of blackberry mead would give him. He watched her wet her lips, and then she carefully put the watermelon piece she held and the knife back into the tub. She rose to her full height, which was little more than to his shoulder, and he offered his hand, palm up. Her fingers had just brushed the pads of his fingertips when a loud voice broke the spell of the moment.
“Aha! So we are serving chocolate cake with peanut butter icing today! Marvelous monkeys and pollywog poop!”
Abner turned in irritation to see Bishop Kore standing five feet away and longed to wring the auld man’s neck, no matter how irreverent the act might be.
“Bishop,” Abner muttered in greeting.
When he turned back around he discovered that Anke had gone. He saw her with a group of other women who were setting out food on a long picnic table. She’s hiding. . . . Abner blinked and peered suspiciously into his mug. It didn’t seem to be his thought, but he knew it was the truth—Anke was hiding! The realization gave him a sudden perspective about her that he’d lacked before. He knew then that it would take patience and time for Anke to trust him and to reveal her true self—a woman he’d only caught glimpses of, a woman who left him yearning for more.
* * *
“What were you and Christi talking about? I noticed that she seemed quite excited,” Matthew asked as he and Tabitha went to look at their wedding gifts.
“Nothing much. She probably looked upset because of the heat. I think she gets very red,” Tabitha murmured, then quickly caught his hand in hers. “Ach, look Matthew, a new saddle!”
She knew that she was lying but couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth, and she hoped that the distraction of the wedding gifts would turn his attention.
“Here, then,” Oncle Nutter said, coming over to them. “Here’s another gift for ya both.”
He handed them a brown paper bag, and Tabitha shook it playfully. “Nuts?”
“Black walnuts, and mind that ya remember ta wear gloves when ye’re takin’ off the hulls. Nuthin’ stains like black walnuts.”
He cracked a nut from his own, smaller bag on his forehead and wandered off, leaving Elam Smucker and his mother to approach with their gift.
“Ah.” Matthew bent low to whisper in her ear. “Your would-be defender.”
Tabitha smiled up at him briefly, then lightly slapped his arm.
“I hope all is well, Tabitha,” Elam said, giving Matthew a disdainful look.
“Why, jah, of course,” she murmured, sliding her arm through her husband’s.
“Elam, gut fellow.” Matthew nodded to the other man. “You would have defended the honor of my wife, even from me. I appreciate that.”
Elam sniffed and his mamm bristled. “What’s this about?”
“Nothing.” Tabitha smiled with gut grace. “I’d like you to meet my husband, Frau Smucker. Matthew King.”
“Jah, I’ve heard. Here is your gift. I’ll tell you now that it’s a set of pink doilies—hand-crocheted of course.”
“I like pink,” Matthew said succinctly. “Danki.”
* * *
Anke carried around a tray of blackberry crisp for folks to try. Everyone’s recipe was just a bit different, and Anke was grateful for the murmurs of appreciation she got after the first bite. But she couldn’t put from her mind the moment that she very nearly took Abner’s outstretched hand. What is wrong with me? I am too auld to be even thinkin’ of holdin’ a man’s hand—and in public too....
She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she failed to notice the first plops of rain hitting her metal tray. Then she heard the noise of the kinner’s joyful screams as they danced in the rapidly falling rain. She was turning to run to the shelter of the nearby trees when Abner caught her arm and tugged her toward the falls.
In seconds, it seemed, they were across the wet stones and had entered the relatively dry space behind the falls. Anke drew in deep breaths and reached with one hand to wipe her wet face while balancing her tray against her belly.
Then she looked up into Abner’s face, and the intensity of his blue eyes in the filtered light seemed to hold her spellbound. She swallowed hard and felt a thrill of some unknown sensation race down her back. “Wo—would ya like some blackberry crisp?”
Abner smiled and shook his head. “Nee.”
She watched in fascination as he bent his long back and tilted his head down close to her.
“Nee, but I’ll take a sweet just the same.”
And then he kissed her, his mouth firm, intent. She hesitantly kissed him back and felt his lean fingers grip her shoulders, the wet tray between them. Somewhere, from the back of her mind, the sound of singing seemed to mix with a bridal veil of mist around them, and she longed to stand there forever with him.
But then, fear and anxiety rose up like a wellspring within her and she backed away from him. She heard the low groan that was wrung from him and wanted to geh back and soothe his mouth with hers once more, but she couldn’t . . .
“Anke?” he whispered as he lowered his hands from her shoulders.
She shook her head and drew in a sobbing breath. “Abner . . . sei se gut, ya can’t—we can’t ever do such a thing again.”
> “But . . . why?”
“We can’t,” she said. “We never can.” She pushed past him with her tray and went back out into the rain.
Chapter Seventeen
As the heavy rain continued, the blackberry frolic was moved to the Stolfus cabin. The large place easily accommodated those of the community who chose to attend, and the wedding gifts were dried and put on display in the comfortable living room.
Matthew had gone upstairs to Tabitha’s room to change his soaked shirt. He went to the bottom drawer of the large maple dresser where Tabitha had put away the few shirts he’d brought in his backpack. When he’d searched through a handful of Tabitha’s shifts, he decided that he had the wrong drawer. He decided to try the next one up and found one of his shirts, but something at the side of the drawer caught his eye. He reached down and pulled out a magnificently hand-carved ladle of hardwood.
Obviously tooled by a master craftsman, the bowl of the ladle and the handle were all of one piece. He turned it slowly in his hands, feeling its balance and admiring the waxed grain of the wood. He’d just put it back, wondering who’d made it for Tabitha, when the creak of the door opening made him look up.
A girl stood there with a smile playing about her pretty mouth. She looked about nineteen, and Matthew didn’t like the predatory glare of her green eyes.
“Uh, I think you have the wrong room,” he said, rising to hastily pull on his shirt.
“Ach, I don’t think so. I’m Amy Dienner. And you look very much like the right . . . room.”
Matthew sighed. If there was one thing he understood, it was being young and having the expectation that you could have whatever you wanted, if you tried hard enough....
He automatically sought the hook-and-eye closures on his shirt and discovered they weren’t there. Tabitha must have taken them off... where are the pins anyway?
The seconds he hesitated gave Amy Dienner enough time to cross the room and lay her hands flush against his chest.
“Look, Amy . . . this is mei frau’s room and . . .”
