The Gifted Read online

  Perhaps he could eventually find the purpose in that, but what about love? Was his mother right that he was being a foolish romantic to hope for love? But then she hadn’t stared death in the face only a few months ago the way he had. That had sharpened his vision, made breath more dear, love more to be desired. Life should matter. Life did matter. And what one did with that life had to matter too.

  A bell began to toll on top of the stone house. He’d heard the bells often in the few days he’d been in the village. Early and late. Signals for the beginnings and endings of the day. Times for eating and working according to Sister Lettie. The paths began to fill up with more of the Shaker faithful as, summoned by the bell, they hurried to their next purpose.

  He stood in the shadow of the building and watched them. He tried to guess by their walk if they were young or old. He wondered if the girl who had wanted to speak to him the day before would be back, but when a young Shaker woman stopped on the path to look up toward the garden, it wasn’t the girl from yesterday. It was the beautiful girl from the woods.

  He’d promised Sister Lettie not to bother any of the Shaker sisters. But how could it be wrong for him to thank this girl who had saved his life? He stepped out of the shadows and down to the path before she could turn and hurry away.

  8

  Jessamine had absolutely no reason to be on the pathway leading past the doctor’s garden. It wasn’t on her way from the rose gardens to the Gathering Family House where she was supposed to be going for the time of rest and contemplation before the evening meal. Once she got to her retiring room, she’d have plenty to contemplate, including the way Sister Sophrena’s brow would darken when Jessamine confessed her wrong actions. She would have to confess them. Some sins could be brushed off like lint from her blue dress, but others were more like the beggar’s-lice that clung to her skirt tail after she’d been in the woods. Something that had to be picked off one at a time with meticulous care.

  But Sister Abigail’s words about seeing the stranger in the garden had tempted Jessamine’s feet to step out on this wayward path. Thoughts of the stranger had haunted her all through the day even without Sister Abigail’s teasing comments to bring him to mind. Sister Edna had made sure Jessamine and Sister Abigail filled their baskets in different areas of the rose garden on this day.

  Jessamine should have shut the door on her wrong thoughts as she had promised Sister Sophrena she would do. She should have let her mind dwell on sisterly love and nature’s gifts. But what if that unsettled feeling the man’s touch had awakened in Jessamine was a gift of nature? Her granny had talked of love in her stories, but Sister Sophrena was ever ready to remind Jessamine that those stories were merely fairy tales with no seed of truth in them. Not something that could ever actually happen.

  A thousand kisses could never turn a frog into a prince. Sliding one’s feet into glass slippers didn’t make a charwoman a princess. Such were only silly flights of imagination. Naught but stories. Even her granny had made sure she knew that. But she’d also told her to wait for her prince. That had to mean her granny believed a few princes were out there somewhere and that one might find Jessamine someday. She’d had no way of knowing Jessamine would be taken in by the Believers where the princes were all brothers and any thought of the romance her granny had woven into her stories was a temptation of the devil to be stomped out of one’s thoughts.

  Jessamine had done many stomping exercises since she’d been with the Shakers. Some poor sister or brother was always being bedeviled by this temptation or that and calling out for help to keep evil from his or her heart’s doorstep. Jessamine liked the stomping dances where all the moves were free-spirited even though the noise could be deafening. But that was more exciting than the solemn back and forth shuffling marches and circles where one foot out of the way might throw everybody out of step. Even though she diligently practiced the steps of the dances, she still had to watch for the marking pegs inserted flush with the floorboards to keep from taking a wrong step. The whirling and sweeping and stomping exercises were so much easier. All she had to do was watch and not step on people felled by the spirit.

  That afternoon in the rose garden she’d tried doing a little stomping. Nothing any of the other sisters who worked alongside her might notice. But each time she thought of the stranger from the woods, she stomped her foot down firmly and gave it a twist as if to rid the rose garden of an aphid before it could suck the life out of a rose stem. Her aphid was curiosity about the man and the way memory of his very touch caused her cheeks to warm and heart to leap.

  She mashed down her unsettled feelings, but they kept creeping back into her mind. They were not entirely unpleasant feelings. In fact the more she tried to stomp down on them, the more they seemed to scatter and bring up new reasons for wonder. She remembered once stepping on an anthill and causing a storm of ants to swarm all over her foot. No matter how hard she shook her foot, a few of the ants clung to her shoes and stockings.

  That was the way her wonderings were. She couldn’t seem to promise them away. She couldn’t stomp them away. They kept crawling all through her mind. The touch of his face with the bristle of whiskers under her fingertips. The strength in his grip when he’d grabbed her arm. The odor of his sweat. The way he’d leaned on her as they rode back to the village. The feel of his body against her back. So foreign from her own.

  She had dozens of Shaker brothers. She’d danced beside them in meeting. She’d seen them working and sometimes lifting heavy loads. She’d noted the strength in Brother Samuel’s arms when he was handling a team of horses. She knew her brothers were strong, but she had never imagined how different the muscles in their arms and chests would feel. She had such a curiosity about so many things, but she hadn’t even known to be curious about that.

  Sister Annie said she was an innocent. That Jessamine’s sheltered life made it impossible for her to even imagine how wicked the world was. Sister Sophrena wanted to shield her from that world and preserve her innocence. She claimed such innocence was a gift. Sister Edna said the world was a pit of destruction that would swallow Jessamine whole if she strayed out into it. Sister Abigail longed for that forbidden world and had little use for anything Shaker.

  Jessamine didn’t agree about that. She loved her Shaker sisters. She admired the quiet strength and faith of her brothers. She didn’t have the desire to be part of the world the way Sister Abigail did. She simply wanted to peek across the way at it. To imagine what her life might have been like if her grandmother hadn’t died. To imagine what might have happened if her granny’s promised prince had found her. Even more, she wanted to let her imagination roam free and dream up fanciful stories.

  Sometimes she thought if she could only have a blank journal and a pen, she would be the happiest Shaker sister at Harmony Hill. Words gathered inside her and pushed against her heart. She had to continually fight the desire to write them down the way she had done for her grandmother. As soon as she learned to form her letters, she’d let the words spill out of her on any bit of paper she could find. She’d written whole stories in the margins of other books.

  The first time her grandmother caught her writing on the end pages of one of her books, Jessamine had been sure she was in for a switching. But her grandmother had read aloud Jessamine’s story of a creek stone wishing it could drift out into the world like the sticks and leaves that swirled past it and laughed.

  Then her smile faded as she laid her hand roughened by age and chores on Jessamine’s cheek. She’d looked almost sad as she said, “I suppose it’s in your blood.”

  “What’s in my blood?” Jessamine had looked down at her hands where she could see the faint tracings of blue veins under her skin. Where her blood flowed.

  “Storytelling.” Her granny shook her head a little. “The same as in his.”

  “His?” Jessamine looked around as if expecting to see somebody in the house with them. But no one was there. “Who?”

  The sad lines on her
granny’s face deepened. “The prince who loved your mother.”

  Jessamine hardly dared breathe as she focused on her grandmother’s words. She rarely talked about Jessamine’s mother, who had died when Jessamine was born, and had never once mentioned a father. From the look on her granny’s face, Jessamine was afraid to ask anything more, but her granny was always able to read her thoughts.

  “Oh, my sweet Jessamine.” Old as she was, she lowered herself right down on the floor beside Jessamine and drew her close to her side. “There are times when if it weren’t for the sight of you in front of my eyes, I’d wonder if the prince was any more than a figment of my imagination and I was the storyteller.”

  “But you knew my mother.”

  Granny stroked Jessamine’s arm for a moment before she answered. “I never knew your mother, only the prince who loved her.”

  “But you had to know her.”

  “I do know her now. I see her eyes in your face and hear her song in your voice. He told me what she looked like. He wanted you to look like her, and as best I recollect his description of her, you do. But the storytelling comes from him.” She paused a moment as she looked into Jessamine’s eyes. “And from me.”

  Jessamine stared at the dear face of her grandmother. “But I don’t understand.”

  “It is a long story with much sadness and some joy.”

  “Tell it to me,” Jessamine pleaded.

  “Let me think if you’re old enough. How many years are you?” Her granny didn’t wait for Jessamine to answer. “Seven, if I haven’t misplaced a year.”

  “I’m almost eight. That’s old enough, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, for some stories, but other stories need more years to understand. For now let it be enough for me to tell you that your beautiful mother loved you and would have lived for you if not for the fever that stole her after your birth. And that the prince who loved her, loved you too. So much that he brought you to me where he knew I would love you and fiercely watch over you and teach you. And what I couldn’t teach you, you would learn on your own in this wooded paradise.” Her arms had tightened around Jessamine as her lips brushed against her hair. “Sometimes giving up something shows more love than trying to hold onto it.”

  “But when will I be old enough to know the whole story?”

  “When you’re twelve,” her granny answered without hesitation. “Then you’ll be on the brink of womanhood and better able to understand the mysterious powers of love.”

  “But—”

  “No more questions now.” Her granny put a finger over Jessamine’s lips to stop her words. “When you’re twelve, you can ask every question and I will listen and answer those I can.”

  “But I have to know . . .” Jessamine spoke around the finger pressing against her lips.

  Her granny relented and took her finger away. “All right. One question now. But only one, so think well on what you want to ask.”

  Jessamine didn’t hesitate. She knew what she wanted to know. “Will he ever come back?”

  “You ask the question I cannot answer. Perhaps he will. If he can. And if he can’t, then we will find a way to go to him. When you are twelve.”

  It was a promise Jessamine had clung to. One that she had believed. But one that death had ripped from her heart. Now Jessamine didn’t even know the name of her father or mother. She knew her own name—Jessamine Brady. But her granny’s last name wasn’t Brady. It was Kendall. The name was written on the inside of the front cover of her grandmother’s Bible. Ida Kendall. But there were no other names. No mention of marriage or children. Only that name written in the front. The old preacher had known Jessamine’s name, but he claimed to know nothing more when Jessamine questioned him.

  “She was your grandmother. That I know. Great-grandmother I’m thinking,” the old man said as he waited with her for the men he’d brought with him to finish digging her grandmother’s grave out behind the cabin. “And your name is Brady. Jessamine Brady, but I never heard her say the first word about your parents. I’m sorry, child, but your grandmother didn’t talk about what she didn’t want to talk about. She was a fine woman, but she never entrusted her story to me. Nor yours.”

  “She said my mother died when I was a baby,” Jessamine told the preacher. “But I have a father. I’ll stay here and wait for him to come.” She sat up straight in her grandmother’s favorite chair and crossed her arms over her chest.

  She was ten. It seemed possible to her. She could fish in the stream. She could dig up and plant the garden. She could find fallen branches in the woods for the stove. But the old preacher told her she couldn’t stay at the cabin. That she’d have to go to the Shaker village.

  Now she knew he was right. She had been too young to stay in the woods alone. But at the same time she sometimes wondered if the prince who had loved her mother had come back to her grandmother’s cabin and found her gone. The one who had passed the storytelling blood down to her.

  But made-up stories had no purpose in a Shaker village. Such books were forbidden as a frivolous waste of time. One could read the Bible and books that told Mother Ann’s story. The Millennial laws were read at least once a year and bits of stories from newspapers were read aloud during some meetings in the family houses. How Jessamine longed to have the newspapers in her hands, to let her eyes explore every story on the pages and not only the stories deemed suitable for her ears by the Ministry. She wished for a pen to write her words in the white borders of the pages.

  A couple of years ago, after Jessamine confessed her desire to write down the words of a story, Sister Sophrena instructed her to write songs instead. Songs were a way of letting the words out of her heart that would bless her brethren and sisters. Jessamine took the paper and pen Sister Sophrena gave her with every intention to do as she was told. She planned to sit quietly and allow Mother Ann to gift her with a worship song, but when no song words rose in her mind, the blank page became too big a temptation. Words spilled from her pen, writing about a boy finding a bird with a broken wing. He gathered seeds and berries to feed the plain brown bird and carried it in his pocket to protect the injured bird from the hawks and foxes. At last the bird could fly again and the boy opened his hands to let the bird go.

  Jessamine had paused in her writing to ponder whether to end her story there or to turn the bird into a magical creature ready to grant the boy his fondest wishes. All might have been well if Sister Edna had not come into the retiring room and caught Jessamine.

  When the woman demanded to see what she was doing, Jessamine had handed over the paper with great reluctance. Sister Edna could not have possibly read more than three lines when she squawked like a goose having its feathers plucked for a pillow. Without reading another word, the woman ripped the paper to shreds, taking no care to keep the pieces from falling all over the floor.

  After she dropped the last of the paper bits, she brushed the palms of her hands together as though pleased to be finished with the task. “Thinking on pretend stories is a sinful wasting of one’s time. You need to concentrate on noble things of the spirit. Think on Mother Ann and her precepts.”

  “But we pretend in worship. We fill invisible baskets with pomegranates. We pretend to catch balls of love thrown down from heaven by Mother Ann. We even listen with raptness when one of the brethren claims to be an Indian chief and starts speaking in a language none of us knows.”

  Her words brought forth another squawk from Sister Edna. “You surely can’t mean to compare your scribbled words with those true and perfect gifts of the spirit sent to us from Mother Ann.” The woman’s eyebrows almost met over her eyes as she glowered at Jessamine. “Be careful, Sister Jessamine, that you do not step into a bog of sin that will swallow you up. The gifts of worship are real and true and to be embraced with joy. The spirit will not be mocked.”

  “But—”

  “Not one more word,” Sister Edna said as she turned to leave the room. Her whirling skirt sent the bits of paper flying under t
he beds and all about the room. The woman paused at the doorway to look back at Jessamine. “Pick up every piece and throw each sinful word into the stove where the fire will devour them. Then it would be well for you to be prayerful that your sinful thoughts will not hold your feet too closely to fires of retribution for such wrong behavior.”

  After she was gone, Jessamine looked down at the scraps of paper scattered across the floor like flakes of snow and mourned her lost story. Slowly she picked up every piece, but she didn’t throw them in the fire as ordered. She was alone in the room. There was no one to see her tie her handkerchief around the bits of paper and secrete the story in her apron pocket.

  For days she’d carried the story around, carefully concealing it each time she changed clothes. The story built in her mind until it was almost as if the bird she imagined had come to life and was actually confined within her handkerchief. Then one day while in the woods with a group of sisters in search of ginseng roots, she lagged behind the others until she could only faintly hear their voices. Stepping behind a large oak tree, she pulled the knotted cloth from her apron pocket and gingerly opened it. The bits of paper were crumpled and mashed with hardly any piece large enough to hold a recognizable word, but in her hand they were a bird. She opened her fingers and surrendered the papers to the breeze. They fluttered in the air a moment and then drifted down to the ground. She thought of the rains melting the paper holding her words into the earth and smiled.

  She never confessed her disobedience of Sister Edna’s order to burn the papers. It didn’t seem necessary even though Sister Sophrena claimed confession of even the smallest sin freed one’s spirit and drew one closer to the perfection of the Lord. But Jessamine felt no guilt. The story of the bird by itself wasn’t important, but the way stories boiled up inside her was. The prince who loved her mother had passed that gift down to her.