She turned and pulled her arms through the shirt. She didn’t snap the front, but she drew the edges close, covering herself. The fabric swallowed her, coming almost to her knees. Her hair had gotten very long and seemed to double in size from lack of brushing. He looked at her a moment longer, remembering the little girl he had met so long ago up on that hill with her ugly dog and compared her to the young woman he saw now. They were nothing alike, and he hated this animal standing in her place.
Unable to witness anymore, he turned and left. As he neared the end of the corridor, the frantic banging from her cell started again. She was constantly fighting, constantly angry. He shut the door and shut away his sadness at what poor little Cybil had become.
Chapter 32
Dane sat quietly as Larissa carried a tray of corn muffins and a cool glass jar of milk to the table. She seemed to need to mother him at the moment, and that was just fine with him. He couldn’t quite think, let alone do anything for himself at present. Cybil’s blood had matched his own. So why was she deranged?
“We will need to meet with the council. Someone will have to look into the old records to discover if there have ever been similar cases such as this,” Eleazar said to Christian.
“Might I make a suggestion?” Adriel asked, and the men nodded at her. “Rather than involving the council right away, why not see if you can speak to Vashti and Caleb’s great niece?” When everyone in the kitchen gave her a look of confusion, she huffed. “She is unmated and still living at her parents’ home. Does no one recall what happened to her twenty-some years ago? Magdalene?”
The bishop’s mouth opened, and he nodded in sudden understanding. “Excellent, Adriel. An excellent idea. You recall, Christian, Elizabeth was the female who…when her buggy broke down…” The other man nodded understanding.
“What happened when her buggy broke down?” Dane asked.
“She was raped.” They all turned and saw Cain standing inside the kitchen door. His shirt was gone.
“Where is your clothing?” the bishop asked.
“Cybil needed a shirt.”
He nodded. “Larissa, please go find your brother one of my shirts.”
Dane really needed everyone to stay focused. “Who raped her?”
Cain sat down, and Larissa returned, handing him a shirt. He shrugged it over his shoulders. “No one knows. He was English. The council,” he said derisively, “decided it would be best not to press charges.”
“Amish do not involve themselves in English law,” Christian explained.
“They also don’t do a damn thing when one of their females is brutalized,” Cain snapped. “Elizabeth was my friend. She knew nothing of the evils of the world and someone should have been with her that day.”
“She was the one who left without waiting for a chaperone,” Christian defended. “Besides, you know if we would have involved the English law they would have performed medical experiments and we may have risked exposure. She should have never been out on her own.”
“Well, I doubt she will ever make that mistake twice,” Cain remarked, glaring at Adriel’s son.
Dane was confused. He was beginning to think his new brother wasn’t that great either. “Wait, what does this Elizabeth woman have to do with my situation?”
Eleazar folded his hands on the table and faced him. “Elizabeth conceived the day of her accident. Nine months later she gave birth to a female named Magdalene. She is half-mortal.”
Clarity came. If this female was half-mortal, she would be able to give them some information. Dane wondered if she was more like him or them. Since discovering he was half-immortal he realized it really didn’t change much. He guessed that was why he could sometimes see into people’s minds, but other than that, there was nothing remarkable about him.
Warmth bloomed in his chest. Would this change things with Gracie? Would she see him differently now? He suddenly asked, “Is Magdalene married?”
Christian frowned. “No, she is not married.”
Dane settled back in his chair. Big brothers sucked. Cain suddenly barked, “Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?”
A while later, after explaining everything to Cain, who seemed to be the only other person concerned about why this information didn’t alter Cybil’s situation, they all squeezed into a buggy and headed toward the Esch part of the farm. Larissa had remained behind, claiming she needed to get Mariah from Grace.
“She should have transitioned then,” Cain whispered to Dane in the back of the buggy.
He shrugged. “You would think, but clearly that didn’t happen. Maybe there’s something wrong with your blood.”
Cain’s eyes went wide. “Perhaps.”
They rode in silence the rest of the way. The Esch homes were similar to all the rest on the farms, with large wraparound porches, picket fences, laundry blowing on the line, and shutters around the windows.
As Christian directed the horse onto the dirt lot to the left of the house, a woman with a head full of tight blonde curls turned. Her face was youthful, and her cheeks were round. Her eyes widened when she spotted the bishop, and she quickly tugged a bonnet out of her apron pocket and situated it on her head, wedging her springy curls underneath the lace. She folded her hands and waited at the top of the porch as their crew climbed down from the buggy.
“Bishop King,” she greeted in a soft voice.
Eleazar looked to Christian, and the other man nodded. Looking back at the girl, the bishop said, “Good to see you, Magdalene. We have come to visit with you and your mother. Is she about?”
The girl appeared taken off guard by their presence. Dane suspected the bishop didn’t come out this way much. “She is in the house. Would you like me to find her for you?”
“Please.”
The girl nodded and disappeared into the house. A moment later a woman with the same heart-shaped face stepped out. She dusted her hands on her black apron, leaving floury prints of white. “Bishop King?”
“Hello, Elizabeth. We were wondering if we might have a word with you and your daughter.”
The woman looked to Magdalene and back to the bishop. “Is something amiss?”
Cain stepped forward, and Elizabeth started. “Cain?”
He approached her slowly and kissed her cheek. “How are you, Elizabeth?”
She smiled at him nervously. “You tell me. It is not often the bishop visits us.”
Cain’s easy grin seemed to set the woman at ease. “Worry not. We just want to ask you some questions. There is nothing amiss.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Please come in.”
The house was quiet. All the windows were opened, and a soft spring cross breeze traveled through the home. Whatever Elizabeth had been making took up a great deal of space on the counter. Dane felt Magdalene’s eyes on him as she brought a pitcher of lemonade to the table.
When everyone was sitting, Elizabeth gave a shaky sigh. “What did you have to ask us?”
Dane noticed Christian looking anywhere but at Elizabeth. Eleazar sighed. “We need to know about all the ways Magdalene is different from us.”
Both women started. “Wh–what do you mean, Bishop King?”
“I apologize for placing you in this awkward position, but we seem to have stumbled across some information and need to find out anything we can about half-breeds.” When Elizabeth made an offended sound he quickly corrected, “My apologies. Half-immortals.”
Magdalene’s gaze bore into Dane, and he ignored her. Touching on her mind, he saw various images of her in her youth struggling with different situations that required a measure of agility. Her falling from a tree, scraping a knee, cutting her hand. He then saw an image of himself and figured she had guessed why they were making such inquiries.
“Maggie is just like the rest of us,” Elizabeth said. “She heals a little slower and is still aging, but her body doesn’t scar.”
Dane thought about scars. When he was nine he fell off his bike. His palm had slid across the blacktop, and gravel had been embedded in his flesh for days. For months there were black dots under his skin which had taken on a silver pigment from the damage. He looked down at his palms. No scars.
“And what about her diet?” Eleazar asked.
“I couldn’t nurse her if that’s what you are asking. At least not the way your females do. Maggie didn’t start ingesting…” she looked at him for a moment as if considering if she needed to guard her words.
“It is fine to speak truthfully in front of Dane,” the bishop assured her.
Elizabeth nodded. “She didn’t start ingesting blood until sometime around her eighteenth birthday. Maggie had grown lethargic, and her moods were off. The sun bothered her, and she suffered dizzy spells. It took us a while to discover the cause, but once she tried feeding, her body righted itself.”
“Those sound like the symptoms of a calling,” Adriel said. “Perhaps she is being called. Have you ever dreamed, Magdalene?”
Magdalene smirked, and two deep dimples formed in her ivory cheeks. “I dream almost every night.”
Everyone at the table aside from her mother seemed intrigued by this. Eleazar looked at him. “Do you dream, Dane?”
He shrugged. “I guess. I had a lot of nightmares after my mom died. Other than that I just dream normal stuff. Nothing special. Why? Don’t you guys dream?”
“Only when we are being called,” Christian remarked.
“I imagine that will make things difficult for you, Magdalene,” the bishop remarked.
“Oh, I don’t ever expect to be called,” Magdalene admitted, seeming undisturbed by this. “I’m not really all that much like the rest of you. I can’t do anything special. I don’t have any disciplines, and the males on the farm look right past me.” She shrugged. “I am unsure if that is because of my father or because of something I put off.”
The girl seemed very normal. Her mother looked uncomfortable but kind. A while later, when the conversation eased from “half-breeds” to details of the Hartzlers and the bishop’s new family, Dane excused himself and went to wait outside.
As he sat on the front steps, the sound of the screen door whining open and snapping shut sounded behind him. He turned, and Magdalene was coming out with his glass of lemonade.
She sat down beside him, her mauve skirt brushing against the black of his slacks. Her feet were bare, and he thought of Gracie until he noticed polish on her toes. Polish was an Amish no-no. He found her feet all the more amusing for it.
“You forgot your lemonade,” she said, handing him the glass. The cool condensation soothed the inside of his palm.
“Thanks.”
“So you’re like me? A half-breed?”
Dane frowned. He didn’t really care for that term either. “I guess.”
“It’s not that bad. I mean, the blood takes a while to get used to, but I’ve been around it all my life. Everyone’s pretty polite about me being different, but they never forget it, you know?”
Dane knew exactly what it was like to be different. He looked down at the chipped pink of her toes peeking past her gown.
“Did you always know what you were?”
“They told me when I was thirteen. I had never left the farm. My mother’s sort of overprotective and doesn’t like anything English, which is ironic, being that I am half-English. Many of my friends were taking buggies into town on their own at that point or at least with family, but I was never allowed. That was when she explained to me what had happened to her. It’s sad.”
Dane nodded. “Something bad happened to my mom, too.” He wasn’t sure why he just told her that.
Her small hand pressed through the starched fabric of his shirtsleeve. “I’m sorry.” They looked at each other for a moment, no explanation of what had happened to his family necessary. Magdalene had small flecks of green in her blue eyes.
He nodded. “Thanks.”
“Do you think you’ll stay here?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I have a house not too far from here I could live in, but I still have some things here that require me to stay.”
“You seem pretty friendly with Bishop King. Perhaps he would let you build a home here. There is an old barn just down that way that’s been vacant for some time. It would make a nice house if someone put the time into it.”
Dane looked where she pointed. He spied the silhouette of the barn she was referring to in the distance. As much as he appreciated the Hartzlers’ hospitality, he felt the growing need for his own space. “Maybe I’ll ask him about that.”
“If you ever wanted to go see it, I could take you.”
She was a very nice girl. Adriel had said she was in her twenties, but she looked younger than the rest of them. She even looked a little younger than Grace. “Thanks, Magdalene. I’d like that.”
Her dimples showed. “Call me Maggie.”
At the end of the day, he had left the bishop’s and returned to Ezekiel and Faith’s. He was exhausted, too tired to even eat. As he climbed the steps, he heard someone call his name. Turning, he found Gracie running through the gates of her grandparents’ yard, her black skirts fisted in her hands and her booted feet patting into the gravel.
“Dane.” She slowed as she approached the steps. “How are you?”
Her blue eyes shone up at him. “I’m okay.”