by Leanna Ellis
“Your father isn’t here now.” Levi appeared at the opening of a stall. With his coat off and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, he looked to be hard at work and not a bit chilled. Bits of hay and straw dotted his forearms and neck.
“Oh, he left?”
Levi’s gaze, the intensity of those blue eyes, made her skin tingle.
When he didn’t answer but just continued to watch her, Hannah lifted the thermos toward him. “Would you like some coffee then? Or I could bring something else?”
He nodded, set the rake against the stall door, and walked toward her, his ease of movements only emphasized her nervousness. Unscrewing the thermos cap, her hand trembled, and some of the dark liquid spilled onto the dirt floor. A tiny jab in the back of her leg startled her, and she jumped. Scalding coffee slopped onto the back of her hand, and she sucked in a breath. A gangly kitten, sharp claws now retracted, skittered away.
“Are you all right, Hannah?”
She nodded. The tears that sprang to her eyes were more of embarrassment than pain from the burn. But she knew she was not all right, and it had nothing to do with the rising red welt on the back of her hand.
Levi took the thermos and set it on a hay bale nearby, and his large hands cupped hers. Warmth spread through her, and she couldn’t look up at him but stared at their joined hands. Slowly, he turned hers over and rubbed his thumb around the angry red welt.
“I’m sorry, Levi.”
“You’re the one hurt. Let me get some salve.” When he started to move away, she clutched his hand tighter and met his solid, questioning gaze.
“I am sorry, Levi, about what I said the other night.”
“Ach.” He stepped closer, his hands folding over hers in a comforting way that made her belly quiver. “It is all right, Hannah. It was my fault. I pressed too soon. You are not ready, and maybe you will never be.”
Was that a statement or a question? She searched his solid gaze and wanted to lean her head against his broad shoulder and release the tears that clogged her throat. Did he really understand? Could he?
Then he patted her hand, careful not to touch her burned flesh. “You don’t have to say anything, Hannah. I will wait.”
“And if I’m never ready, Levi?”
He took a long, slow breath, and on its release he cupped her jaw and turned her face toward him when she would have avoided his probing gaze. But she could not. His blue eyes magnetized her gaze. “Grief is for a season, not a lifetime.”
His gaze dipped to her mouth, and her lips parted, stirring a yearning deep inside. Was he thinking of kissing her? Even after her rejection of him? And yet, that was where her thoughts lingered. Her gaze fastened onto his squared chin, solid and sure, his mouth, and the sensuous curve of his lower lip. Her heart fluttered, and her breath sounded shallow.
“Come here.” He tugged on her hand and led her to the hay bale where he had set the thermos, settling her on it like a chair. He poured a cup of coffee then placed it tenderly in her hands. “I’ll get you some salve for that burn.”
She knew in that instant that she would not go to meet Akiva.
Chapter Thirty-one
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
Akiva watched Hannah and Levi, sharing a cup of coffee, and a burning sensation spread through his limbs, firing his blood, until it throbbed in his ears, blocking out the softness of their conversation.
Whirling away, he hid in the dark recesses of the shadows and nursed his wounds—not the physical one in his chest, which had easily healed. No, this one pierced his heart like a stake through the center of his chest.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on her thoughts, but a barrier had risen between them. He gritted his teeth and fought back the anger that surged inside him. Was it love that locked him out of her head…her heart? Or was it the anger throbbing inside him?
It didn’t matter. He had been patient with her. He had waited too long. But no more.
And I water’d it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
William Blake must have loved and lost too, for he knew of what he wrote. Akiva fisted his hands and pressed them against the wall of the barn until he felt the wood begin to give, the fibers popping, the wood pulp pressing into his flesh. But no pain could overtake the sting in his heart at the sound of Hannah’s laughter. She was laughing with him. Levi. For him.
And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld its shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
With a quick, hard thrust, Akiva punched the wall, splintering the wood. The horse behind him shied and whinnied. Akiva heard her laughter die.
“What was that?” Hannah whispered, fear etched in her voice.
“Rusty,” came Levi’s answer. No fear was detectable in his tone, but Akiva would see to it that fear saturated his voice soon enough. Very soon. “He’s been restless all morning,” Levi continued. “I’ll go check on him.”
Akiva moved back into the shadows and crumpled in on himself, fluttering up to the rafters where he peered down at Levi walking down the pathway between the stalls and entering the one where he had been. Levi spoke soothingly to the gelding, rubbed his hands along its flanks and down to its back hoof.
“What have you done?” Levi looked at the back wall and the hole Akiva had made. “That’s a good way to hurt yourself. And end up cold for the winter.”
Akiva tensed, every muscle ready to spring into action. It would be easy, so easy, to swoop down and take a bite. And he would, if Hannah weren’t so close. But soon…. Soon Levi would be dead, and Hannah would be his. Forever.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veil’d the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.
Chapter Thirty-two
The warm scents of ginger and cinnamon swirled about the bakery, stirring a hunger in the customers the way Levi seemed to affect Hannah. She barely listened to Grace yammering away about a movie she’d seen at the picture show in Lancaster, her fingers not moving half as fast as her friend’s mouth as she worked up a new batch of cinnamon rolls.
Grace scooped snickerdoodle batter onto the baking sheets and kept talking. “It was a silly movie really, but the men were hot.”
“Hot?”
“Oh, ja.” Grace’s head bobbed, making the ties of her bonnet dance. “Come with us next time. Please, Hannah.”
She shook her head. “It is of no interest to me.”
“Then come tonight. No movie. Just fun. There will be others from outside our district. It will be fun. I promise.” Her eyes were alight with promise. “Really there’s no harm.”
Hannah turned away and began mixing the pie filling.
“Please come.”
“I will see.” It was a promise she regretted, one she would not live up to. But how could she tell her friend she was afraid? Afraid of going out in the dark? Or afraid of the darkness within herself?
“Hannah,” Marnie Raber called, “Beth Ann needs help at the register.”
She nodded, wiping her hands on her apron, and walked out of the kitchen area and into the store, which seemed crammed with customers already holiday shopping. She wove through the crowd and display cases of Amish crafts and candies toward the front.
A cold blast of air hit her as the door opened once again, but this tourist was different than the ones bundled up, fascinated with sampling Amish treats and buying Amish crafts. This one drew attention like a siren. Heads turned in her direction. The woman wo
re no coat, just a simple outfit that accentuated her large bosom, tiny waist, and slim boyish hips. But something else caught Hannah’s eye: the woman’s sleek, black hair, long and straight, which had a sheen to it that reflected the light and shimmered down the woman’s back like a dark waterfall, her glory on display for all to see. The woman raised her sunglasses to the crown of her head. Her gaze had a worldly quality, and it wasn’t the heavy eye makeup she wore, but something in the depths of those black eyes.
“Welcome,” Beth Ann chirped without looking up as she punched the register keys. She told the customer standing before her the amount and took his credit card. When she finished the transaction, she folded the paper bag and handed the receipt to the man. “Thanks for coming in.” Her gaze shifted to Hannah then. “Can you take over for a minute, Hannah?”
“Sure.” She waited for Beth Ann to scoot around the end of the counter.
Before she could step behind the register, a cool hand touched Hannah’s arm and stopped her. In that instant, the whispers assaulted her, spun her thoughts around, and disoriented her. The whispers she’d heard before, but these were somehow different, indistinguishable in their many voices; they simply called her name, murmured softly in her ears, and yet she could not understand them.
She turned toward the lady with the dark, glistening hair, who stood so close her perfume blotted out the baking scents in the store. Hannah wrinkled her nose and glanced down at the hand on her arm. The woman’s fingers formed a bracelet around Hannah’s wrist, her touch so cold Hannah wanted to pull away, and yet something inside warned her against it. Of course the woman was chilled; she had been out in the freezing weather without a coat. Didn’t the woman have any sense? “May I help you?”
“Hannah?” It was an odd pronunciation of her name, the emphasis on the last instead of the first. But even more odd was how this woman knew her name. “You are Hannah, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me…” This strange woman leaned even closer, her peculiar scent wrapping around Hannah like tiny threads. Not a nose-holding or stomach-writhing smell, this aroma, but light and exotic, something Hannah had never experienced before, teased and lured her closer. “You work here, is this correct?”
“Were you looking for something?”
Those dark and intense eyes studied Hannah, her gaze scanning her features, clothes, and neck. Hannah’s pulse leapt. She took an automatic step back.
Then the woman touched a delicate finger to her red-tinted lips. “Yes, I believe I am. And I may have found it.”
Another blast of frigid air burst through the doorway, knocking the door against the wall. Someone gasped. Someone else squealed.
“Oh my! What was that?”
The shouts swirled around Hannah, like the frigid air, but she felt trapped by the woman, frozen in her gaze, unable and unwilling to move. The woman with the never-blinking eyes didn’t move either, and Hannah lost track of time and space.
She began walking toward the open door, unsure why except she felt a need to go outside. There was something there for her. Something—
“Hannah!” Suddenly Grace was beside her. “Shut the door.”
Hannah blinked and stared at her friend.
Grace brushed past her, their shoulders bumping, as her friend grabbed the door and closed it firmly, making the window next to it rattle in its frame.
Hannah felt the same rattling in her own bones, where a chill settled and made her shiver. She blinked and wrenched her arm free of the woman. “Excuse me.” The wind had knocked a stack of advertisements off the counter and scattered them over the floor, and she bent to pick them up. “What could have caused this?”
“Someone”—Grace stepped past Hannah and behind the register to help the next customer—“must not have closed the door good and tight.”
Hannah replaced the papers next to the register and glanced around for the strange woman. But she was gone. Hannah searched the faces throughout the shop. Maybe the woman had moved behind the turn-around display. She peered this way and that, searching, eager to avoid the woman with the cold hand and even colder eyes, but the tourist must have left.
“What’s wrong?” Grace asked as she finished helping a customer.
“Nothing.” But Hannah’s forehead folded downward like the crimped edges of a piecrust. “Nothing. I thought…” She rubbed her forehead and shook loose the peculiar feelings. “Nothing.”
***
Hannah. The still, quiet voice called to her.
She resisted, rolled over, and buried herself further under the quilt, but she could not block out the whispered invitation.
Come to me.
“No.” Her voice sounded loud in the stillness of the house. She heard the bed downstairs squeak and Dat’s snoring resume. She blinked against the darkness, squeezed her eyes closed, and prayed for sleep. But it didn’t come.
I’m waiting.
She threw back the covers and lit the lamp, no longer fearing if her parents woke. She wanted them to wake up, to ask her what was wrong, to quiet the voice. She put on her prayer kapp, opened her Bible, and started reading: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
By the time she’d read several chapters—from the forming of the world and Adam and then Eve, to the serpent twisting God’s word, to the banishment from the Garden of Eden—she realized her mind had wandered to a place she didn’t even recognize. She couldn’t say what she was pondering as the words lost their meaning and significance. She went back and read again—In the beginning—but the same thing happened. She squeezed her eyes closed and prayed, pleaded with the Lord to help her, show her the way. Only the hum of the lamp filled the room and then…
Hannah.
The voice persisted and caused her hands to shake. She closed her Bible and set it aside on the bedside table. This time when she crawled into bed, she covered even her ears with the quilt—a poor attempt to block the voice that pestered and prodded—until she finally threw off the covers. It wasn’t a conscious decision to obey the voice. It simply called and suddenly her feet were on the floor. As if moving in a dream, she dressed, extinguished the lamp, and left her room.
A three-quarter moon cast pale light over the road, and an icy wind swirled around and bit into her. Clutching her wrap, Hannah buried her hands in the wool and walked toward the farm’s entrance. To her left, a crunch of gravel and dirt alerted her. She stopped, her own shoes scuffing the tiny rocks covering the road. Slowly, she turned in the direction of the noise. Was Levi following her again? She searched the shadows, tried to ignore the way her heart quickened with anticipation, and whispered, “Levi?”
Silence throbbed around her. The stillness of winter hung as brittle as an icicle. Oh, Levi, where are you?
Hope expanded like blown glass, growing thinner until it shattered, shards of disappointment stabbing her. She shouldn’t expect him to follow her. Shouldn’t want him to do so. Shouldn’t want him…shouldn’t want him at all. But she did.
Silence filled her ears with her own heartbeat. She must have imagined the sounds because no one was there. Nothing stirred. She was alone, all alone, with only the whisper of the wind in the dry, dormant grass for companionship. Not even God was here with her anymore—or so it seemed.
A snap of a twig on her other side made her jerk, whip around.
Akiva stood beside her. Close. Close enough to touch. Close enough to smell a sweet scent on his pale skin. In the moonlight, his eyes were shadowed, the angles of his face pronounced.
“Did I startle you?” His voice was silken and soothing to her fatigued nerves.
“A little. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. You said you would meet me here, yet you never came.”
“I…” She cleared her throat. “I have been busy. And then I thought you might have left.”
“Without saying good-bye?” He touched her cheek. “I would not do that to you, sweet Hannah. Not after all you have done for me.”
Her skin warmed beneath his gaze. She shifted her foot, felt the heavy bump of the flashlight against her hip, then looked back toward the dark house. Dat and Mamm were sleeping, as was Katie, and Levi had long since left, leaving her alone—completely alone with this man, a man who was no longer wounded and in need of help, but a man apparently strong and capable and virile. Should she be afraid of him?
He’d known Jacob. Why should she fear him? She squared her shoulders toward the farm road and moved in that direction. Akiva kept in step with her.
“Are you going back to the cemetery? Back to Jacob’s grave?”
His questions pricked her skin like a sharp quilting needle. “What does it matter to you?”
“Does he speak to you?”
His question startled her. How did he know? Did he hear Jacob’s voice too? But she could not confess—not to herself and certainly not to this stranger—how she’d heard a voice on the wind. “Jacob is dead.”
He tilted his head, slanting a questioning gaze at her. “You believe in the spirit world, do you not? That souls move on from this life to another, to heaven? Some people…I’m not saying you…but some…believe spirits can return to the living.”
A quivering began in her heart. “He’s dead.”
But was she trying to convince Akiva or herself?
“And you’re sure of that?”
His question stopped her in the middle of the road where she faced him. Everything about this man drew her to him—his dark, good looks, his calm demeanor, his interest, his probing and prying. And everything about him should send her running. And yet, she stayed. “Are you saying Jacob isn’t dead?”
He shrugged. “Are you open to possibilities, Hannah? Or do you see things only as you have been taught? Only as you are allowed?”
She wrestled with his questions and could not find an answer, so she began walking again. His footsteps stayed even with hers and she wondered why he was here, why he was walking beside her and hounding her with questions she couldn’t answer. “I’m quite fine on my own. You do not need to accompany me.”