The Believer (15 page)

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 from 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"

"Rules. I hate rules:" Hannah gave up the pretense of being an acorn.

"How about promises? Do you hate promises, and that is why you didn't keep the one you made to me that you would abide by the Shakers' rules until spring?"

Hannah didn't make an answer, but she began to climb down slowly. When she reached the lowest branch, she swung out in front of Elizabeth. Her cap was gone and her hair was in wild disarray around her small face, but her shoes were tied to her waist by their strings. She stared at Elizabeth with a mixture of rebellion and regret in her pale blue eyes. "I did make that promise:'

"So you did:"

"But I didn't know it would be so hard to keep. You didn't tell me they were going to keep me caged like the canaries our father spoke of that are taken into the dark mines to see if there's air for the miners to breathe:" Hannah's lips quivered before she went on. "There was no air to breathe, so the canary pushed open the cage door and flew free"

"There is surely air." Elizabeth worked to keep a stern look on her face.

"Not free air. Only Shaker air"

She yearned to reach out and pull Hannah close. She wanted to say they wouldn't go back, but better to have less free air and more food. "It is air we can breathe for a few months."

"Do we have to?"

"I fear that we do:" Elizabeth could not keep the regret out of her voice.

"Can't you find another man besides Mr. Linley to marry?" Hannah looked up at her with hope in her eyes.

"Suitors don't grow on trees like acorns" Elizabeth held out her arms and Hannah walked into her embrace. "If they did, I'd have many to choose from on this day."

Hannah leaned against her. She didn't cry. "Do we have to go back right away?"

"They may be searching for us:"

"But there's water to the east. I saw it from my perch high in the oak. Can't we go put our feet in it?" Hannah leaned back and stared up at Elizabeth with pleading eyes. "Please. There could be a spring to get a drink of water. I'm very thirsty."

She shouldn't have given in to her. She knew that, but she felt the same pull to the sound of the water as Hannah. And she'd heard the Shakers speak of a road to the river. If she could find that road, it might be a faster way back to the village. She pushed aside the memory of her father saying a person could rationalize any course of action, right or wrong, if he or she wanted to. Hannah was thirsty. Therefore they should go find water.

"We will go;' she said and was rewarded with a squeeze from Hannah's arms around her waist before the child turned loose to spin away from her.

"Look, I'm doing a Shaker dance:" She whirled around again.

It was all Elizabeth could do to keep from smiling. She managed to keep her voice stern as she said, "Their dances are holy to them. You mustn't ridicule them:"

Hannah stopped and looked surprised at Elizabeth's words. "Sister Nola said I could do it. I like whirling. She says it's how we can let everything but the spirit of love fly off us. Have you tried it?"

"Not yet"

"Then you should:" Hannah looked at her seriously for a moment before she whirled around again, then stopped and waited for Elizabeth to join in.

"I'll bump into a tree;' Elizabeth said.

"There is room" Hannah grabbed Elizabeth's hand and gave it a quick jerk the way one might pull the string on a top.

Elizabeth gave in and turned in a circle once, twice. The spinning did seem to let a childish joy rise up in her. Perhaps that was what the Shakers were trying to find when they came under operations and were visited with what they called the whirling gift. Spin free from all their worries. But didn't Sister Melva say a true Believer had no worries? True Believers simply trusted Mother Ann to send down balls of love to them from heaven and keep away worldly problems.

Her shoulder brushed against a tree and she put out a hand to steady herself on its trunk. She was far from free of worldly problems and spinning was not likely to make her so for more than the space of time she was too dizzy to think.

She touched Hannah's arm to stop her spinning. "If we want to find the water, we must get started. Once we get a drink we have to go back to Harmony Hill where I will expect you to keep your promise better."

"It will be a promise easier to keep when the sun isn't shining so brightly;" Hannah said. "And when Sister Ruth doesn't tell the rules into my ears so loudly the way she did yesterday." Hannah put her hands over her ears.

"School will start after the harvest. That will be good. You have much you can learn:"

"So Sister Ruth tells me:" Hannah grimaced. "Over and over.

Elizabeth let her smile come out. "She tells me much the same.

Hannah took Elizabeth's hand and held it to her cheek a moment. "I'm glad my true sister found me:" Then she turned and started off down the path, tugging Elizabeth after her. "This way."

It wasn't the river they found, but rather a steep cliff with a stream of water flowing out of the rocks and into a pool at the bottom and then into a creek that wound away through the trees. A beautiful place. The kind of place one might imagine God putting in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve, except he would have surely carved steps for them into the stone to make the water easier to reach.

"It's not so steep. We can climb down. There are places we can hold to the rocks:" Hannah pointed to the rocky cliff.

"No. We might fall"

"I won't fall:' And before Elizabeth could stop her, Hannah stepped from the rock where they were standing to a ledge a few feet lower down and then scrambled down the face of the cliff, loosing dirt and rocks to fall in front of her.

"Hannah, come back"

Hannah stopped and looked up at Elizabeth. "It's easier to go down than up. Once at the bottom we can follow the creek and find a way back:" She found a new toehold and dropped down lower. In minutes she was at the bottom lifting water in her hands out of the pool to drink and splash on her face. "Come on, Elizabeth," she called up from the pool. "The water's good"

"I'm not the monkey you are;' Elizabeth called back. She stood on the rock and considered her first step. It didn't look like one she wished to take. One slip and she might be delivered from all her earthly worries. She preferred to cling to them a bit longer. She'd have to find another way down to the pool.