The Endless Forest
Page 62

“Surrender gracefully. In time you’ll find it was worth the sacrifice. But it will require time and patience and perhaps most important, a sense of humor.”
Later, when Jennet had gone, Lily felt as if she had been relieved of some great weight.
She wondered if she could do what was required of her. If she could simply give up, and surrender to her fate. The idea didn’t shock or frighten her, which she realized must mean she had already taken the first step.
With that idea drifting around her, she slipped away to the very edge of sleep, and then was suddenly awake again.
A gentle tapping. A fluttering that came and went and came again. The child quickened just now, as though she had passed a test, and earned a reward.
On the way into the village Daniel put the idea of Hakim Ibrahim’s letter out of his head. There were more immediate concerns, and more pleasant ones.
The ice-out party was something he looked forward to every year. There would be music and dancing and food enough to feed the crowd three times over. Friends he hadn’t seen in a good while would be there, and if he handled things right, Martha Kirby might be there too.
But first he’d have to call on her and ask, and the fact was, he had never invited a girl—a woman—to anything before in his life. And another fact: He hadn’t seen her since she moved in to Ivy House, and she might be offended at that, or hurt.
When he thought about it, he realized he would much rather make her mad than unhappy. When Martha was mad her color rose and her eyes flashed and her whole body trembled. He had made her mad a couple times just to see it happen, and he had the idea he’d be doing that again soon.
The truth was, the idea of calling on Martha made him jittery. He didn’t know who he’d come across there, and what conversations he’d get caught up in. There were already rumors running around the village about Martha coming to teach, and that was a subject he wanted to talk to her about alone. There were a lot of things he needed to talk to her about alone.
Why he couldn’t just walk over to see Martha, what exactly was holding him back, that wasn’t so clear. Either she’d be glad to see him and want to see more of him, or she wouldn’t. There wasn’t any way to know until he showed up, and so he only wasted his time worrying over it. It was the reasonable way to think about the issue, and it gave him no peace at all.
Daniel turned onto a deer path that would take him around the village and right to his mother’s door. If he was going to call on Martha, he’d go see Lily first. Sparring with his twin always sharpened his wits. And he owed her a visit too. He hadn’t been to the house since Lily came home and Martha went to stay in the village, as his mother had pointed out so clearly.
Once the decision to move Lily was decided, he had slipped away and stayed away. There was little he could do to help—a one-armed schoolteacher wasn’t much use when it came to carrying trunks and baskets and pregnant sisters up and down hillsides—and he hadn’t yet mastered the art of standing by while other men worked. It raised all kinds of feelings, none of which made him suitable for company.
He came into the clearing just a hundred feet from Curiosity’s front porch, where his nephews had been put to work cleaning shoes and boots. They were deep in an argument that had to do with a bear and they didn’t see him at first, but then they were all flying off the porch yelling his name as if he were deaf.
Dirty faces surrounded him, raised up to his with an expression that made his heart ache.
“Tell us the story about Bump and the bear, will you? Will you?”
There were places for him to be, conversations he must have before the day was much older. But he was an uncle, and uncles had responsibilities, the most important of which was telling of the family stories. Beyond that, it would give him a few more minutes before he saw Lily.
“All right, then,” he said, and sat down on the porch to tell the tale.
Johnny promptly climbed into his lap. He was a sturdy boy of four, no longer Hannah’s youngest but still in need of noodling now and then.
“The porcupine that killed a bear, you want to hear that one again?”
They did indeed.
“From the beginning,” Johnny said, “and this time don’t leave anything out.”
Martha found that she was delighted with the little house, and contrary to those worries she had kept to herself, she wasn’t in the least bit lonely. Being back in the village meant that people came by to visit, which kept her busy answering questions and passing teacups.
The one subject nobody dared to raise was Jemima. She was thankful for that, and for the many kindnesses people showed her. Most folks brought little gifts to welcome her. A few eggs, a cutting from a favorite geranium, a small basket woven from reeds; Becca came with a quart of her best gooseberry preserves.
“A peace offering,” Becca said.
“But why a peace offering? You have been the soul of generosity.”
Becca grunted. “I’m right put out with my girls. Alice most especially. She had no call to talk to you the way she did, and if I know her she ain’t finished yet.”
“No one has done me any harm,” Martha said. “Alice will come around eventually, and if she doesn’t we will keep out of each other’s way.”
Becca seemed to relax. She drank a cup of tea, provided what news there was from the rest of the village, and finally went back to the Red Dog looking determined.
All in all, the move had been a good idea, though Elizabeth seemed to be ill at ease about it. She had come to say good night to Martha the night before the move and apologized for what she called her rude behavior. She wanted to keep Martha at Uphill House, and she needed to have Lily at home, and she could not at first think of a way those two things could exist side by side.