by Sarah Price
Suddenly, she felt a strange sense of peace overcome her.
She opened her eyes and, to her surprise, saw the six-point buck standing before her, no more than fifteen feet from where she sat. A sparrow flew over the deer’s rack and landed on a tree branch, its head nervously twitching as it stared at her.
The deer’s dark eyes studied her, its nose twitching as it took in her scent. It blinked and then lowered its head to graze on a nearby bush.
Suddenly, as if a voice were whispering in her ear, Sadie felt encouragement from God: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Sadie took a deep breath, reflecting on God’s word. Surely, he was with her in the forest. He had guided her to this place and wrapped his protective arms around her.
Her fear waned as she sat on the log in the company of the deer and the little bird. She stayed there until the sparrow flew away and the deer slowly meandered in another direction.
Rising to her feet, Sadie followed the deer, careful to maintain a safe distance, for she didn’t want to frighten it. The deer wandered deeper into the woods, but Sadie remained courageous. She had nowhere else to go anyway. Moving forward was the only path to take.
Sometime later, the deer stopped walking by a small stream. Sadie wondered if it was the same stream that flowed from her father’s farm, but she doubted it. While she had lost all sense of direction and time, she knew that she had walked many miles into the forest and was most likely too far away for this to be the same one.
She knelt on the bank and dropped her cupped hand into the cool water. Taking a drink, she shut her eyes as it soothed her parched throat.
She hadn’t eaten all day and her stomach began to ache, along with her legs, from having walked so far through the woods.
And she was so very tired.
Shivering, Sadie rubbed her arms. She looked around, amazed at how beautiful the sunset was. Overhead, the sky was darkening and a fine mist was settling on the earth. Birds were beginning their evening songs and several rabbits nibbled on the leaves from a bush nearby as the sky turned darker and darker.
The deer turned to look at her and then began its journey again. Sadie rose to her feet and followed it once more.
* * *
As the sun continued to set and the evening air turned even colder, Sadie walked on, forging new paths. She had no idea where she was going or what she would do. But she knew that she would never marry John Rabor, no matter what her stepmother, her father, or even the bishop thought of her impertinence.
Obedience only went so far, she told herself. Nowhere in the Bible did it say that a grown woman had to marry a man she did not love. Unlike Belle, her family was not in dire straits. Rachel could quote the Book of Ruth all she wanted, but there was no parallel between Sadie’s situation and Ruth’s.
God would forgive her defiance. She could only pray that he would help her learn how to forgive them for pressuring her against her will.
She walked until she rounded a big pricker bush and found herself facing a wall of large rocks. Too large to climb. Frustrated, Sadie began walking around them but grew disheartened when she realized that they were a formation that went on for as far as the eye could see.
Please, God, she prayed, show me the way.
Her stomach grumbled and she felt light-headed. She needed to find shelter to warm herself and food to feed her body.
She stumbled and fell to her knees.
With her eyes closer to the ground, she noticed that some of the leaves ahead of her had been disturbed. Intrigued, she scrambled to her feet and carefully tried to follow the almost-invisible path.
She walked around a large tree and noticed that there was a break in the rocks. And, sure enough, there was a dirt path that led through it.
Curiosity, as well as hope that it might lead to a house with provisions, got the best of her. Throwing caution to the wind, Sadie walked through the break in the rocks and followed the trail.
The trees that lined it seemed to shelter her from the night. It was beautiful, and she found herself staring up into the overhead canopy. She had never been this far into the forest and wondered how many people had traveled through this section. The path indicated that someone knew of this little piece of paradise, but who?
Night had fallen and Sadie needed to find a place to sleep. A sense of panic overtook her. She hadn’t considered that she would be alone in the woods all night.
Exhausted, Sadie stumbled over a vine as she came to a little hollow where pine needles were soft underfoot. She practically fell down, her back to a fallen tree trunk as she burrowed into the leaves. It would have to do.
Shutting her eyes, she felt the magnitude of what had happened. Never in her wildest imagination would she have thought she would run away from home. But she knew she had no other options.
Tears welled in her eyes, but she willed them not to fall. She was too tired to cry anyway.
Taking a deep breath, Sadie felt herself float away, sleep overcoming her as darkness cloaked the forest for the night.
Chapter Twenty
When she awoke on Saturday morning, she felt warm for the first time since she had run away. She nestled under the blankets and imagined that she was at home in her own bed. But as soon as she heard the crackle of a fire, she startled. Her father’s house did not have a fireplace in any of the bedrooms. Suddenly, the events of the day before came rushing back and she remembered what had happened: that she had run away and gotten lost in the woods. And she knew there was no way she was in her own bed.
Sitting up, Sadie yanked the covers to her chin. With wide eyes, she stared around the room.
A fire burned in a stone fireplace and there was a long wooden table that was set for breakfast. And yet, she was alone in the house.
She tried to remember how she had gotten there. The last thing she recalled was hunkering down on a pile of soft pine needles and covering herself with some leaves to stay warm in the biting chill of the night air.
Swallowing her fear, she slid her legs over the side of the cot she lay in and stood up. The house was smaller than any other she had ever been in. Had she been any taller, she would have hit her head on the rough-hewn ceiling beams.
And it was dirty.
Very dirty.
Wrinkling her nose, Sadie wandered over to the fireplace. There were several logs on the hearth, but the fire was dying out. There were just embers that glowed orange from beneath the sooty stone. Sadie bent down to throw another log onto the fire.
Where am I? she wondered as she looked around one more time. She remembered falling asleep in the pile of leaves, but that was the last thing she could dredge up from her memory. Someone must have found her, but who? Had someone carried her into this house?
Curious, she walked to the front door. It was lower than the average door and she had to stoop down to walk through it.
Once outside, she recognized nothing. She wasn’t in a town or even on a farm. When she looked up, she was surprised to see that she stood in a clearing beneath a canopy of trees, their leaves shielding her from the early-morning sun.
Turning around, Sadie caught her breath as she saw the house she had just emerged from. It was the most charming of homes. A cottage, really, made from logs that had most likely been cut from the forest. The bark had been removed and the logs lay upon each other, their ends crisscrossing. In between each of the logs, the gaps were packed with cement and then the walls whitewashed. While it appeared to be only one story high, there were two dormered windows on the shingled roof. Truly, it was one of the smallest houses she had ever seen.
She looked up at the roof again and suspected the shingles had not been purchased in a store but made by hand, as the cedar was heavy and thick. Patches of moss grew along the edges, and there was even a bird’s nest tucked under one of the eaves.
“Hello?” Sadie called out, wonder
ing if someone might be lingering on the other side of the cottage.
There was no response.
The yard had been trampled down so that it was mostly dirt, although there were sections of grass growing here and there. An ax rested in an old tree trunk that sat in the middle of the yard and there was a stack of wood piled in a heap nearby.
But there was no sign of life on the property.
She wandered to the rear of the house, where she spotted a clothesline tied between two large trees, but it was lower to the ground than usual. Several wooden clothespins lay scattered in the dirt, and an old tattered wicker basket lay on its side nearby.
Whoever lives here is not very tidy, she told herself.
Her eyes traveled to the side yard. There was a well with a wooden frame around it. And a platform for someone to step up in order to get the bucket of water. With a wooden pulley and long rope being used to retrieve the water from the depths of the earth, it was a very antiquated system for retrieving water.
The rumbling in her stomach made her return to the house. She was anxious to find something to eat, but she knew that she couldn’t take someone else’s food without an invitation to do so. That would be stealing.
Hopefully the owners would return shortly.
Once inside again, she noticed a narrow ladder in the rear of the room that led to a hole in the ceiling. Curiosity got the best of her and she walked over to it. Because of the low ceilings, she only had to climb one rung before she could peer through the opening.
When she popped her head through it, she saw that it was a large room with a floor of wide planks that were random in size and width. The ceiling was pitched and there were only two small windows in the eaves. But on the rough-hewn floor lay several mattresses with tattered quilts. She counted them. Seven mattresses in total.
Carefully, she stepped off the ladder and assessed the main floor. Just one large room with a sink, table, seven chairs, and the cot where she had slept. Only, upon closer inspection, she realized that it was not a cot at all. Instead, it was made up of several planks that were resting on two large logs. On top of the planks were piles of blankets and quilts.
She couldn’t help but wonder how had she gotten to this strange little house? And where were the occupants?
Whoever lived here certainly had been kind to bring her in out of the cold. They had set up a makeshift bed for her and left a fire burning to keep her warm.
Sadie knew that she had to repay their kindness and thought the best way to do that would be to clean the house. After all, cleanliness was next to godliness, or so her father always told her. And, if truth be told, this was one of the dirtiest homes she had ever seen.
Once she decided, it took her a while to find the cleaning supplies, which consisted of one bucket, several dirty rags, and bar of homemade soap—lavender-scented, at least! The sink was an old hand pump and it took her a while to fill up the bucket. But once she did, Sadie set to work washing the table and chairs, careful to reset the table just the way she had found it, and then washed the walls and floors.
With the sudden burst of lavender overshadowing the previous smell of grime and dust, Sadie felt a little more at ease. Only then did she venture to the little loft and tackle the chore of making the seven beds. She had to kneel down in order to do so, as to keep her head from bumping the ceiling.
“What ho!” a voice called out from downstairs. “What manner of whirlwind hit here?”
Sadie stiffened and crawled over to the ladder.
“Whatever it was, I don’t like it one bit.”
Another voice grumbled, “It doesn’t smell like our house at all!”
“Stop being so grumpy all the time,” a third voice laughed. “That smell you smell is the scent of clean. Remember it?”
“Barely.”
Sadie’s heart began to beat rapidly. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t dare stay on the second floor, but she feared venturing down below.
“Fire’s still burning,” the first voice called out. “But we need more wood. Hey, Sleepy! Stop lollygagging and get more wood from outside.”
The sound of feet shuffling across the floor was followed by the slamming of a door.
Sadie took a deep breath. She had to make her presence known. Despite her fears, she began to back down the ladder.
“What’s that now?”
Sadie waited until she was on the ground before she shut her eyes, said a quick prayer to God to protect her, and slowly turned around.
What faced her was six pairs of large, brown eyes from six rather short, stout men. All of them, except one, wore gray mustache-less beards, typical of the Amish, and their clothing appeared plain, too. But they were unlike any Amish men she had ever met.
For a long moment, she stared at them, bewildered at the sight of the row of men facing her. Not one of them was taller than she was. In fact, she realized that all but one of them were no more than four feet tall.
They, too, stared at her in amazement, as if they had never seen a woman before. Finally, the door opened, and a seventh man entered the room, his arms laden with logs. When he saw Sadie, he stopped walking and dropped the logs onto the floor. Dirt and leaves spilled all around him.
“Oh!” She hurried forward to start gathering them. “I just washed this floor!”
One of the men scowled at her. “So you’re responsible for this dreadful smell?”
Another one nudged him. “Don’t be such a grump!”
With the logs in her arms, Sadie stood up and stared at the men. “I . . . I suppose I must thank you for letting me sleep here last night.”
The tallest of the men pointed his thumb at his own chest. “I found you in the woods.” He gestured toward the others. “But my bruders helped to bring you into the haus.”
Another of the men added, “I covered you with that blanket.” He grinned at her, with a sense of pride on his face that made her smile.
“Then danke for your kindness.” She took a step closer to the heap of logs on the floor, bent down, and neatly stacked them on the hearth by the fireplace.
“What were you doing sleeping in those leaves anyway?” the tallest one asked, removing his glasses and cleaning them with the edge of his untucked shirt. “That’s an odd place to spend the night, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it is,” she admitted as she stood up straight. She wasn’t certain how much she should confide in them. Even though she knew they were Amish, she had no idea who they were.
“Why were you sleeping there, then?” he asked, sliding the glasses back onto his nose.
Sadie frowned. These men were strangers, after all. So, rather than answer, she tried to change the subject. “Perhaps you might tell me where I am?”
He glanced around and gestured with his hands. “At our haus, of course.”
“And who are you?”
The man removed his hat and, immediately, the other six men did the same. “My name is David Grimm. And these are my bruders. Stevie, Samuel, Gideon—but we call him Grumpy because, well, that’s just what he is—”
“Bah!” Gideon waved his hand at David and, after plopping his hat back on his head, crossed his arms over his chest.
“—Ben, Dan, and Hank—we call him Happy, and I bet you can guess why.”
The one named Hank began to laugh, the sound filling the small house with joy. Even Sadie couldn’t help but smile.
“We’re the bruders Grimm.”
As soon as David said that, Sadie immediately sobered. “Of course,” she said under her breath. She had heard of these men, seven unmarried self-proclaimed bachelors who lived deep in the forest to the south of Echo Creek. They never ventured to town, and for good reason, apparently. Born into a family of twelve, the seven brothers had been born with short limbs and, reportedly, two of them had polydactyl hands.
They were distant cousins of Anna Rose’s and Elizabeth’s, which was how Sadie knew about them. But, then again, the Grimm family was so larg
e that Sadie hadn’t met most of their relatives and probably never would. They were spread out across the county and Sadie had heard that a few of them had even moved to other states.
“So you’re the infamous Grimm bruders?”
Hank grinned at her.
David, however, appeared somber. “You’ve heard of us, then.” It wasn’t a question but a statement. “I’m not surprised. Seven old buwes living alone in the woods.”
“Seven old, small buwes,” Stevie added, emphasizing the word “small” before he sneezed and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve.
“Ja, small buwes.” David nodded his head. “I reckon we’re the cause of some tongue wagging.”
Quickly, Sadie shook her head. “Nee, not like that. I know of you because I’m friends with Anna Rose and Elizabeth. They’re your cousins, ja?”
Samuel yawned and Gideon elbowed him.
“What? I’m tired,” he complained.
“Then go nap instead of being so rude!”
David ignored his two brothers. “We don’t see much of Anna Rose or Elizabeth, but ja, they’re distant family. Our parents live farther south of here. Or, rather, they did live there. But they passed long ago.”
Sadie lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Gideon grumbled, “Daed’s youngest bruder inherited the farm. And we’re stuck living here in this old rickety haus!”
David gave him a stern look. “Nee, Gid, we’re stuck nowhere. It was our choice to move out here long before Daed passed on,” he reminded his grumpy brother, and then he turned to Sadie. He wiggled his fingers at her. “Can’t farm much with such short arms and legs, you know.”
She didn’t know, and she also didn’t know how to respond.
“But we sure can live off the land,” Hank said with another big smile. “Me? I love to hunt for wild mushrooms with Dan.”