Hearts Awakening (36 page)

Her heart constricted. Poor babes. They were just as petrified as she was.

As dark storm clouds swirled closer and the tree branches swayed in the gusting wind, the wolf stopped pacing and howled its objection. Almost in response, a bolt of lightning cracked the sky, and absolute terror shot straight from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

Both boys promptly burst into tears and tugged at her hands as yet another flash of lightning lit the sky. They tried to edge closer to her, and she had to struggle hard not to lose her grip on them, all while keeping them balanced on the branch. “Shhh. It’s all right. Don’t cry,” she crooned.

“I wanna go home,” Daniel wailed.

Ethan’s cries overwhelmed his brother’s.

“We can’t leave. Not with the wolf right there waiting for us,” she insisted. She let go of their hands and slipped an arm around each of their shoulders, hoping to keep their little bodies from shaking so hard they all lost their balance and fell straight to the ground.

To her horror, just when she felt more confident about holding them all in place, a gust of wind tore a branch off a tree just yards away and sent it flying through the air like an oddly shaped arrow. It landed too far away to scare off the wolf, but it inspired new fears about the danger of remaining in the tree during the storm.

Daniel tried to tug free. “I don’t wanna broked arm like Mr. Brooks,” he insisted, apparently remembering the accident that their stall mate at market had told him about some weeks ago. “I wanna go. I want my pappy.”

Ellie held him tighter. “Don’t be afraid. I’m here,” she promised, although she had to admit that the boy’s fears were well-founded. “Your father must be home by now, which means he’s already found the note I left for him. I’m sure he’s already looking for us. We just need to be patient and wait for him,” she suggested, then quickly offered a silent prayer that God would protect them all until Jackson could rescue them.

“He won’t look for us up in a tree,” Daniel cried. “Pappy! Pappy! Come find us. We’re up here!”

Ellie was about to join her voice to his when another clap of thunder erupted. Within the same heartbeat, she caught a brief glimpse of the wolf turning and disappearing into the brush, apparently more afraid of the thunder than it was hungry.

“Look! The wolf is going home,” she exclaimed, grateful the animal had run off in the opposite direction of the farmhouse.

“I wanna go home, too. Can we go home now? Can we?”

“I think that it’s safe enough to try. Here,” she said, taking his hands, as well as Ethan’s, and pressing them against the branch. “Hold tight while I climb down first so I can help you.”

Daniel was sitting on the branch closest to the trunk. “I’m going first,” he said and promptly edged his way to the trunk before lowering himself to the branch below before she had a thought to stop him.

Apparently Ethan was also too eager to wait for her. Unfortunately, he was just as agile as his brother, if not a bit more daring. Before she knew it, he had simply lowered himself from the branch they were sitting on to the one below.

“When you get to the ground, don’t move another step before I get there,” she warned. She reached the ground just as the rain started, and neither boy argued when she grabbed them. The wind kicked up and whipped at her skirts and the thunder boomed even louder. With the storm about to unleash even greater fury, they were too far from home to get there quickly, but they were even farther from the Grants’.

“We need to find shelter until the storm passes,” Ellie cried as the rain that pelted them changed from a soft drizzle to hard drops. Praying that Jackson was on his way, she braced herself and led them toward home, directly into the wind.

With her heart pounding louder than the thunderous skies overhead, she forged onward. Little Ethan was so petrified he could barely keep up, so she picked him up to carry him. Daniel, meanwhile, clung to her arm as well as her hand, forcing her to drag him along, step by step, using her own strength.

“Help us, Father. Help us,” she murmured against the stinging rain that nearly blinded her.

Seconds later the sky rumbled, followed by a loud boom and an explosion of light and heat that forced her to fall back a few steps. The sound of wood splitting and cracking was so loud and the burning smell so intense, she screamed and yanked Daniel farther back only moments before a giant evergreen started a slow, gentle fall to earth just half a dozen yards ahead of them.

Too terrified to move, she watched in horror as the thick, heavy branches on the tree snapped smaller nearby trees that had already given up their foliage, cutting a wide swath of destruction. Finally, the trunk of the massive tree landed with a thud, shaking the very ground beneath her feet.

Ethan buried his face against her neck and his fingers dug at her flesh. Wailing, Daniel wrapped his arms around her waist, preventing her from taking a single step.

Frantic, she was nearly overcome by the memory of her father’s death, when he had been struck in a similar incident. She could scarcely imagine that having a tree struck by lightning right in front of her was God’s answer to her prayers, until she realized that the tree posed no danger now to her or the boys.

In fact, the tree would provide the very shelter they needed, a blessing indeed.

“Hurry,” she said as she pried Daniel from her waist and the rain soaked clear through her gown to her skin. “We can hide beneath the tree.”

“Where’s Pappy? I wanna go home,” he cried.

“I’m sure Pappy’s coming, but we can’t wait for him here,” she insisted as she tried to convince him to walk a bit faster.

Another boom of thunder added emphasis to her words and he did not resist, even when she urged him to crawl beneath the branches, close to the trunk, as she followed along with his brother. With Ethan’s hands wrapped around her neck now and her skirts constantly getting caught between her legs, she made slow but steady progress.

Finally, when they reached a thick canopy of pine needles on tree branches that overlapped one another to form a fairly decent roof of sorts that blocked the wind and rain, she told Daniel to stop. “If you sit up, you can lean against the trunk. I’ll be right next to you,” she promised as she peeled Ethan’s hands from around her neck.

He did as he was told, but the moment she sat down, Ethan scrambled right onto her lap, grabbed her legs, and held on tight. Daniel sat so close to her, she doubted she could slide a pine needle between them. They were all wet and shivering with cold, and she had so much dirt ground into her hands from crawling to get here, she did not know if she would ever be able to soak it all away.

Otherwise, they were all fine. Frightened to their bones, naturally, but physically unhurt. They were also out of the wind and rain. And most important, they were safe, assuming she could trust the notion that lightning never struck the same object twice.

She wrapped one arm around Ethan’s waist and the other around Daniel’s shoulders. “We’ll be safe here,” she said reassuringly as she inhaled the scent of scorched pine that enveloped them.

Daniel snuggled closer. “I’m real glad Pappy shared you with us today, but I hope he doesn’t take too long to get here. Do you think he’ll find us soon?”

“I hope so.”

“But he won’t see us ’cause we’re hiding under the tree.”

“But we’ll see your father and we’ll let him know right where we are.”

He leaned even closer. “That was a big, big wolf. Do you think it’ll find us here, too?”

“No. That wolf’s too scared to be bothered with us now, thanks to the storm.”

“I’m not scared anymore,” Daniel boasted, even though he found her hand and held on so tight she wondered where he found the strength. “You’re not scared, are you, Ethan?”

His younger brother shook his head, but he did not ease his hold on her legs, either, and his bottom lip was quivering.

Daniel sniffled when a round of thunder erupted, although she thought it sounded a bit farther away than earlier. “Are you scared, Miss Ellie?”

“A little,” she murmured, reluctant to admit that her heart was still beating so fast, she was afraid it might beat her straight into the next world. “Maybe you and Ethan could do something to keep me from thinking about being afraid.”

“Like what?” he asked timidly.

“Well, how about singing a song? I’ll even sing with you,” she added.

When Daniel looked up at her, his bottom lip was quivering. “I don’t think me and Ethan can sing right now. Can you . . . can you just tell us a story?”

And so she did.

Starting with Daniel in the lions’ den and Jacob of ladder fame, she told every Bible story she could think of that would give all of them courage. She was not certain how much her stories helped, since her words were often eclipsed by the sound of branches cracking and falling to earth or thunderclaps that had the boys covering their ears with their hands. She only faltered when the torrential rain started to flood their hiding place, although by then, the thunder and lightning had moved on.

When she ran out of ideas, she simply started over. She was halfway through describing the ladder Jacob had seen in his dream when she thought she heard something that made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

Thirty-Six

“Daniel! Ethan! Ellie!”

Jackson searched from left to right as he traipsed through the woodlands, desperate for some sign of his family. Near frantic with the greatest fear he had ever known, he dropped to his knees and raised his face to the angry heavens. “Please, Father, help me. Please. I need you,” he cried, finally opening his very spirit to reclaim the faith he had once embraced with his whole heart and his whole soul.

As the wind whipped at his body and the rain pelted his face, he remained steadfast and prayed harder than he had ever prayed in his life. For forgiveness. For the strength to forgive others. And for the opportunity to find his boys and raise them to be God-fearing men who loved God and followed His Word as faithfully as Jackson vowed he would do every day for the rest of his life.

Drenched to the bone, he ignored the chills that left him shivering so hard his bones ached until finally, despite the cold and the wind and the rain, he felt the redeeming warmth of God’s all-powerful grace.

After bowing low to the earth to acknowledge his Creator, he stood up, held his rifle high, and plodded forward, confident that God would somehow guide him to his family. Nearly half an hour later, he approached a giant evergreen lying on the ground just ahead and raised his rifle when he detected a sudden movement within its branches.

The instant he saw Daniel and Ethan scramble out from under the protection of the fallen tree, with Ellie climbing out just behind them, he lowered his gun and praised God for His faithfulness and His mercy.

His heart flip-flopped in his chest and relief charged through every pore of his skin. Choking back tears of joy and gratitude, he set his rifle down on the ground and opened his arms as his sons raced toward him.

“Pappy! You found us!” Daniel cried as he charged against him. “You really found us!”

Jackson pulled his oldest son close with one arm and tugged Ethan to him with the other and held them tight against his chest. Ethan, however, struggled free and looked up at him.

“Pappy! Pappy! You saved us, Pappy! There was a bad, bad wolf that wanted to eat us, but Mama Ellie saved us. I climbed a big tree all by myself and Daniel climbed the tree and then Mama Ellie climbed a big tree, too, and we waited and waited, but the bad, bad wolf just wouldn’t go away. And then the storm came and the wolf got scared and ran away and Mama Ellie said . . .”

Overwhelmed by the sound of his youngest son’s voice, Jackson lifted him up into his arms and stared at him, just to make sure it was true. Ethan was talking again. He was talking!

With his gaze blurred by his tears of joy, Jackson kissed his son and looked at Ellie, who was making her way to all of them. Her dark hair was plastered against her head, and that awful brown gown she wore was torn in several places and sagged under the weight of the rain and mud it carried. Her hands and feet were covered with mud and pine needles. Tears were streaming down her face, and he knew she had heard at least two precious words Ethan had spoken, too: Mama Ellie. Ethan had called her Mama Ellie.

When he saw the look of pure joy on her face, his heart pounded in his chest. As impossible as it might be, this utterly plain woman had been transformed, for the briefest of moments, into a woman of great beauty and worth, not because she was fair of face or form, but because her very spirit, her kindness, and her goodness reached out to him in a way that he had never quite experienced before.

Not with Rebecca.

Not even with Dorothea.

Not ever.

He cleared the lump in his throat. “Are you all right, too?” he whispered.

She nodded, but as she swayed on her feet, he pulled her into his arms, too. When she collapsed against him, the wedding ring he still wore on the leather thong around his neck pressed against his chest, and he could feel her heart pounding against his own.