Her Own Devices, a steampunk adventure novel

by Shelley Adina

  Well, the heads of all the girls in my circle, anyway. I never would have believed it would be so hard to keep one’s gaze facing front and not let it slide to the men’s side of the meetinghouse during worship. To ignore those long-lashed eyes and beautiful cheekbones turned up toward the preaching. To pretend not to see the sunlight make its way through a curtain or a window and light up that skin. A blemish would never dare appear on his face. What an awful thought.

  Some of the boys—cornfed nobodies who had the mistaken idea they were somebody—had tried to pick a fight with him when he first came last winter, calling him “Gabrielle” and telling people he wrote poetry. That had lasted about five minutes. The boys said that Adam Berger had broken his collarbone falling out of the haymow, but his sister Katrine (who, as her best friend, I call Katie), told me the truth. After that no one accused anyone of writing poetry. Those boys kept their mouths shut and tried to look friendly when Jean-Baptiste hired Gabriel out to their fathers’ farms.

  “There’s no competition that I know of.” My mother gave me a look. “A hard worker he might be, but he’s still an Outsider, and no daughter of ours will be thinking thoughts about him.”

  She’d brought him up, not me. “I’m not thinking thoughts.” Was that a lie? Just in case, I sent up a breath of a prayer for forgiveness. “I just wondered if he planned to become a Brother. Have you heard anything?”

  “I haven’t heard a word about his plans, nor do I want to,” Maman said with disregard for the life of any Outsider, which from her tone of voice, had nothing to do with hers, now or in the hereafter. Even though the alfalfa Gabriel had put in our fields would go to feed our cows and make the milk we sold to the cooperative every week. “Plans are nothing. When he actually kneels in front of the elders and gives his life to God, then his plans will have some substance. In the meantime, you’re not to behave as if he’s a Brother. No talking with him among les jeunes after chanson, no accepting a ride on a rainy day, nothing. Understood?”

  “Can I say bonjour if I pass him on the road?”

  Narrow eyes examined my face to see if I was talking back. Maybe I was. Or maybe I honestly wanted to know. The words had just popped out and it was too late to unsay them.

  “Just good day,” Maman said at last, evidently not finding what she was looking for. “Nothing more than you would say to any Outsider in town. A Sister is always modest and polite, especially to people outside the church.”

  I don’t think my lips moved in unison with hers, but they could have. I’d heard those words approximately ten thousand, five hundred and eighty times during the course of my life.

  “And why are we discussing Gabriel Langford anyway?” Maman asked. “I wanted to talk about something else.”

  Thank goodness. “What?”

  “After meeting on Sunday, David Martin asked your father for permission to walk out with you. What do you think about that?”

  I dropped an egg into the soapy water and heard the sickening sound of a crack. “Me?!”

  “Sophie Dupont, watch yourself!”

  “Sorry.” I pulled the plug and let the broken yolk wash down the drain, then picked the shell fragments out of the trap. “Are you sure? David Martin? This isn’t Papa’s idea of a joke, is it? Who asks the parents’ permission anymore?”

  Maman allowed herself a smile. “When it comes to the subject of courtship, your father does not make jokes. Just ask me. And there’s nothing wrong with asking his permission. I think it was a fine way to show respect and have everything above board. After all, it’s David. Why should that surprise you?”

  My mouth opened and closed like a fish on a riverbank. Surprised didn’t even begin to cover it. Astonished might be a start. Me and David? That was crazy. We’d known each other since we were babies and I thought of him as another of my brothers—when I thought of him at all. There was no room in my brain for David when Gabriel haunted it. Oh, if only he were a Brother! Every girl in Minuit over the age of twelve would give her eyeteeth to walk out with him.

  “Gabriel has to be planning to join the Brethren,” Katie had said after that very same meeting. No wonder I hadn’t seen David, if he’d been lying in wait for Papa by the hitching rail in the Moulins’ lane. “No one would devote so much of himself to work and worship if he didn’t.”

  I couldn’t think of any other reason, either. Converts were rare in Minuit, and good-looking single male converts were . . . well, there had never been one in my lifetime. But even if that was God’s will for Gabriel, I didn’t dare let hope blossom in my chest and warm me with possibility. The simple fact was that there were lots more girls in our district than ordinary brown-haired, gray-eyed me. Girls like merry, laughing Katie or Ellie Duvalle, whose parents had left her a bed-and-breakfast when they died, even though her aunt ran it. Or Valerie LeBrun, who was tall, beautiful, and eighteen and lived right there where Gabriel was boarding. The fact that she had run through every boy under twenty-one within a twelve-mile radius just made it seem more inevitable that she’d settle on him . . . when he joined our church.

  “Sophie? I asked you what you thought of David Martin.”

  What did I think? With Gabriel in the neighborhood, did anyone think about David? “I . . . I don’t know.”

  “Well, if he offered you a ride home from chanson, would you go?”

  I stopped pretending to clean the sink and turned away to dry my hands on a dishtowel. “I don’t know.”

  “Sophie.”

  “I’m telling true, Maman. I don’t know what I’d say. I—I’ve never thought of David like that. He may as well be my brother.”

  “He is your Brother in God.” She took the towel from me and dried her own hands. “He’s worth ten of Gabriel Langford.”

  How fair was this? “You just finished saying what a hard worker Gabriel is. You don’t really know him.”

  “My point exactly. None of us know him, except maybe Jean-Baptiste LeBrun. Oui, he is a hard worker and seems to be committed to the church, but I’ve seen it before. People get romantical notions about living as we do—until they actually have to do it. Then they’re running for their modern cars and electrical appliances and radios.”

  “He’s been here since November and hasn’t run yet.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Meantime, aren’t you going to ask me what else your father said to David?”

  I could see where this was going. “What did he say?”

  “He said it was up to you. That you were old enough to make up your own mind.” Again the narrow look, but it held no displeasure this time. Instead, I saw concern in my mother’s face. “Is it too soon, cherie? Would you rather Papa told the boys to go away and come again in a year?”

  I had to smile at that. “You know no one would listen to him. All of us see each other all the time. It was nice of David to ask, though. Even though it embarrasses me.”

  “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Maman said firmly, and lifted the stove lid to check the coals. “Your father asked my Papa if he could court me, and he never regretted it.” The smile fought its way free again, and I had to laugh at how she didn’t say which he she meant. My parents adored each other, though it would take an educated family eye to see it. The way Maman always gave him the choicest piece of the roast, or made dumplings fried in bacon and onions just because he loved them. The way he always handed her out of the jalopy as if she were a queen.

  A tiny bit of a wonder about whether David would put his jalopy or his girl first whisked through my brain before I chased it away. I was going to have a hard enough time treating him the way I’d always treated him—as a friend, a brother, someone who sang parts in meeting—now that he’d made his feelings public.

  Papa was as closed-mouthed as a rat trap, but if there were any guarantees in this world, it would be that a private matter between men would get out sooner rather than later.

  When I didn’t speak, Maman finally said, “Ah well. You g
o and weed those front beds and think about it. There’s no rush. But I won’t ask your brother to wait for you Sunday after chanson.”

  Smiling as if this was hugely funny, Maman got out the frying pan and I escaped into the muddy, bare garden, where the weeds were the first things to sprout.

  Sunday after chanson. When I would see Gabriel again.

  *

  Eternal life.

  Isn’t this what every Christian longs for? And yet, having attained it, I am still a little confused. When the gift was given to me at the age of nineteen, I was filled with joy. Endless ages in which to praise my Creator! To worship Him while the stars wheeled overhead and the seasons turned. The fact that I was not doing so in front of a throne, or in the company of beings made of spirit and light, puzzled me at first, but then, like any creature, I adapted. Not that I would ever intimate that the Bible was mistaken. But reality being different from prophecy, and I being a realist, I simply got on with what I was given.

  Eternal life.

  I’m still finding it strange, even after two centuries.

  * * *

  For reviews, quotes, and excerpts, visit www.shelleyadina.com.

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  To learn about Shelley’s Amish women’s fiction written as Adina Senft, visit www.adinasenft.com, and don’t miss her blog, A City Girl's Guide to Plain Living.