Dancing Dead Read online

  Agatha reached a thin hand toward Rose and squeezed her arm. “Yea, Mairin touches my heart. But her strongest connection is with you, you must know that.”

  Rose shook her head. “I thought so. I truly thought I could help her, but perhaps that was hubris. She seems as unreachable now as when I first found her, hiding in a tree in our orchard.”

  “Nay, she is not that same child, and yet she always will be,” Agatha said. “Her soul has ventured into the light. We have both watched it happen, and it will surely happen again. You must have patience and let her come to trust us in her own time. And eventually she will understand that when even we, being mortal, leave her behind, she can always trust her Holy Father and Mother. This will take time. The world has betrayed her far too often for her short years.”

  Agatha sank back in her chair and began to rock gently. Rose endured more than a twinge of guilt at the fear she was exhausting Agatha. Several strokes over the past few years, plus a severe chill last winter, had left the former eldress physically weak and fragile, though her will seemed untouched.

  “You’re tired,” Rose said. “Rest and let us handle this. It isn’t fair to burden you with such problems.”

  “Hush, now, Rose,” said Agatha, with a touch of irritation. “Such problems are the reason I’m still here. When I can no longer help in any way, I pray I’ll be called home. I have no desire to put off that moment by resting any more than I must, so I don’t welcome coddling.”

  “Yea, I understand,” Rose said, with unaccustomed meekness.

  “Good. Now, everyone is off looking for Mairin, so you can stay a few moments and discuss what to do with her when she is found—and she will be found. We cannot force her to trust us before she is able, but we must discourage her from running away.”

  Rose stood and paced to the window. She tried to let herself enjoy the freshness of the spring leaves, their yellow-green tinted with pink by the setting sun. But the sunset reminded her that, if they could not find the girls, Mairin and Nora would be alone in the coming night. Rose turned back to Agatha and sat down. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “When any of the other children misbehave, we keep them home from outings or assign them extra chores. None of that seems to have any effect on Mairin. She simply runs off again. I want so to help her, yet I am angry with her. I try to hide my anger, she ignores me, and I become even angrier. I pray for guidance and none comes. I’m at my wit’s end.”

  Agatha chuckled. “At your wit’s end is a perfect place to start. I remember being there myself once, oh, about thirty-five years ago, when a little four-year-old with a quick temper and a will of iron refused to do anything the sisters told her to do.”

  Rose squirmed. “It’s uncomfortable to remember how impossible I was my first few years here, but surely my situation is different from Mairin’s. I’d been neither starved nor beaten; I was simply willful and spoiled.”

  “Nay, Rose, you were not spoiled. Willful, yea, but not spoiled. You’d been passed about from relative to relative after your mother and father died, and young as you were, you’d learned that nothing lasts. You fully expected we’d pass you along, too.”

  “I don’t remember any of this,” Rose said, “but I do remember that you were quite stern with me on more than one well-deserved occasion.”

  “Indeed, I was. You missed numerous special outings, as I recall.” Agatha’s smile softened her taut, thin features. “It took several years for you to understand that we were going to keep you. You might have to miss a hayride, but we weren’t going to deposit you on a stranger’s doorstep just because your temper got the best of you now and then.”

  “I began to trust you. And then to love you, all of you.” Rose felt her shoulders relax and her hope return. “Though I’m afraid you didn’t cure my temper.”

  “Nay, that we did not.” Agatha sighed with unusual force. “Some things are up to our Holy Mother and Father—and I wish them luck.”

  Rose threw her head back and laughed. Agatha had not teased her in a long time, and it felt delicious. “All right,” Rose said, “I’m beginning to understand. I’m still frightened by Mairin’s running away, though.”

  “Of course you are. I am, too. When you find her, perhaps you should tell her just how frightened we have been. Her heart will hear you. In time.” Agatha leaned her head back against her rocker and closed her eyes. Rose lightly touched her hand in farewell and slipped out of her retiring room, easing the door shut behind her.

  Four

  GENNIE MALONE HAD BEEN MORE THAN HAPPY TO abandon dinner in the hostel to join the search for the missing Mairin. She didn’t think she could have endured many more minutes with her fellow guests, even for pecan pie. She’d never before met so many unpleasant people gathered in one place. After three weeks with them, Grady and his world might seem far more tolerable. Or perhaps she’d just up and leave it all—take a train to somewhere way far away, maybe a big city like Louisville, find a job, and live on her own for a while. Away even from Rose.

  Gennie stopped suddenly and looked around. The sun had nearly set, and she hadn’t been thinking at all about poor Mairin. From long-ago habit, she was heading for the Herb House in the northeast corner of North Homage. She turned around and scanned the rest of the village. Windows glowed with bright lights as Believers searched for the missing girl. Gennie looked toward the Herb House. Perhaps it was because of the memories that still haunted her—memories of a violent death she could never seem to forget—but the Herb House looked dark and foreboding, even to Gennie, who loved it.

  Gennie was never one to let a little foreboding hold her back. She was still dressed for dinner, so to save her new tan kid high heels, she stayed on the path instead of taking the shortcut through the grass. She eased open the Herb House door, hoping not to send any errant children inside deeper into hiding. She needn’t have worried; the hinges were well-oiled. She closed the door behind her.

  Leaving the lights turned off, she stood very still, listening. She shut her eyes and listened harder. She heard something; she was sure of it—a murmuring sound, just above her, as near as she could tell. She opened her eyes. Massive shapes seemed to jump out at her, but she knew they were just machines the brothers used to press herbs into tight packs. The presses wouldn’t be used until later in the season, when large amounts of medicinal and culinary herbs would be dry and crumbly, ready for processing. Then the air would be heavy with sweet and sharp scents, but now it smelled like dusty, dry grass. She saw no movement in the shadows.

  With a guilty lilt of pleasure, Gennie picked her way through the dark room toward the staircase. The drying room was upstairs. It was early in the season, but there would already be some bunches of herbs hanging upside down to dry. Pungent young oregano, surely, and perhaps some sage, newly picked and not yet as musty as when it had fully dried. It all came back to her and reminded her of Rose. If she were running away, this was where she’d come.

  Gennie’s feet still remembered each stair, and which planks squeaked. By the time she was halfway up, she knew her instinct had led her to the right place. She could hear the urgent voice of a child behind the closed drying room door. Unless she missed her guess, the voice belonged to Nora. Gennie ran up the last few steps and flung open the drying room door.

  Two small, startled faces—one pale and blond, the other honey-brown and framed by fluffy hair—snapped toward her. They sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, leaning toward each other. Gennie put her hands on her small hips and raised stern eyebrows at them. In a flash, Mairin was on her feet, darting toward the drying room door. But Gennie was young and quick. As Mairin rushed past, Gennie scooped her up and held her by the waist. Mairin wriggled and kicked, but she was tiny, her growth stunted by malnutrition, and Gennie was determined.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Gennie said, holding the girl tightly against her. “You’ve caused us all a heap of worry, and it’s time you faced the music.”

  Mairin made
a sound between a grunt and a scream, then she kicked Gennie in the shin.

  “Ow! You little . . .” Gennie grabbed the girl’s knees with one arm to avoid another attack, but Mairin squirmed all the harder. Though she was still small for her age, good Shaker food had added pounds and strength to her frame. Gennie was afraid she was about to lose her grip on the child when Nora came over and clutched Mairin’s ankle with both hands.

  “Mairin, please stop that,” Nora said, in a surprisingly adult voice. Gennie suspected Nora had heard those words herself, spoken to her by a desperate sister. “Gennie is a nice person, she only wants to help you. Everybody wants to help you, really and truly. Cross my heart and hope to die and everything.”

  Mairin stopped wriggling. However, Gennie did not loosen her stranglehold. This was one unpredictable child. Mairin twisted her head around and stared at Nora for several moments, then let her body go limp.

  For the first time, she spoke. “Let me down.”

  “Can I trust you not to run away?”

  “Yea.”

  Gennie was startled by Mairin’s use of the Shaker form of “yes.” It seemed to give her promise added weight. Gennie lowered Mairin to the floor, then let her go. Mairin didn’t move. She stood with her body rigid and her face puckered in a defiant frown. It struck Gennie that Mairin expected a beating. Gennie dropped to her knees with no thought for the safety of her light tan dinner dress. The copper flecks in Mairin’s eyes glittered with fear.

  “No one is going to hurt you, Mairin. I promise. It’s just that all of us, and Rose especially, have been terribly, terribly worried about you. When you disappear, we get scared that something awful might have happened to you. Can you understand that?”

  Mairin’s small face relaxed. She nodded. “I don’t mean to make everyone worry about me,” she said, in her low, melodious voice. “Sometimes I just need to be outside.”

  Suddenly Mairin seemed far older than the wiggling child Gennie had so recently restrained. Gennie swung a small, short-backed chair from its wall pegs and moved it next to a larger ladder-back that was standing by a well-worn desk. She gestured for Mairin to sit in the smaller chair.

  “Nora, you run along to the dwelling house and let the village know that Mairin is safe. I’ll bring her back in a few minutes.”

  Nora hesitated and fixed Mairin with a parental look, protective and stern.

  “Run along now,” Gennie said. “Rose is beside herself with worry.”

  “Okay.” Nora spun around and ran out of the room. Gennie closed the door behind her and turned to face Mairin.

  “We need to have a little talk.” As Gennie walked toward her, Mairin flinched. Gennie noticed but said nothing. Words would not convince Mairin she was safe in North Homage—time might do so, and gentle care, but never words.

  “Mairin, would you tell me something?” The child’s small chin jutted out defiantly, but Gennie continued. “Why do you sneak off? It’s more than just wanting to be outside, isn’t it?”

  Mairin shrugged her shoulders.

  “Mairin, I want you to listen very carefully.” Gennie’s voice had dipped to a deeper, less gentle level. Mairin’s eyes flicked toward her, then focused on the floor. “No one here will harm you,” Gennie said, “but that doesn’t mean we aren’t angry. Angry and disappointed. The Shakers have treated you well. Rose and Agatha love you and want only the best for you. Every time you disappear, you hurt them.”

  Mairin was still.

  “So why do you run away, Mairin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Gennie watched the girl’s face for several silent moments. Her simple response had revealed nothing. Gennie had the nagging sense she was keeping something back. Yet maybe she really didn’t know why she ran off. “All right then,” Gennie said, “where do you go?”

  “Nowhere special. Just all around. It’s more fun outside.”

  “What makes it more fun?”

  Mairin grinned, a rare occurrence that transformed her face. “It’s the people,” she said. “They do strange things. I sit in the trees and look down on them.” She giggled softly.

  Gennie had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. “Um, Mairin, what people are you talking about? Shakers?”

  Mairin wrinkled her nose. “Nay, not the ones who live here,” she said. “All they do is work. But there’s been lots of other folks around. I don’t know them. Sometimes they act funny.” She giggled again.

  Gennie was wishing herself just about anywhere else. She feared that young courting couples might be using secluded parts of the village, thinking they were alone. She was glad Grady hadn’t visited her since she’d moved into the hostel. In the past two and a half years, Gennie had grown from an innocent child to a mature and knowledgeable woman, but she was unprepared to explain courting to an eleven-year-old. She cleared her throat nervously. “Can you describe to me what you saw?” she asked.

  “I saw lots of different things. I see folks dance around in a really funny way,” Mairin said. She slid off her chair and began twirling around the drying room. Her malformed bones, the result of untreated rickets, caused her to stumble and bounce off the edge of the worktable, but she just kept going.

  Gennie sank back in her chair with relief. Mairin had seen Shaker dancing, that’s all it was. Dancing was so much easier to explain than a cuddling couple.

  “Come sit down again, Mairin, you’re making me dizzy. I know you’ve seen some dancing worship before. Did Rose or Agatha ever explain it to you?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Well, you see, a long time ago, Shakers used to dance in the Meetinghouse when they had a worship service. Sometimes the sisters and brothers would twirl and twirl until they went into a trance—that’s like a magic place where they talked to Shakers who were already in Heaven. Or they heard angels singing beautiful songs and were shown lovely drawings, which were given to them as gifts.”

  Mairin stopped whirling about and tilted her head like a curious puppy. She really is an endearing child, Gennie thought.

  “I know all about that,” Mairin said. “This was different.” She began spinning again, this time throwing her head back so that she faced the ceiling.

  Make that endearing and irritating. Gennie was about to scold Mairin when the child lost her balance and fell backward, crashing into a table holding several large screen trays used to dry small, delicate herbs, such as chamomile flowers. Mairin tumbled to the floor, the screens cascading on top of her.

  With a cry, Gennie rushed to her. She tossed the screens aside and took Mairin by the shoulders. “Are you all right? Does anything hurt?”

  Mairin sat rigid under Gennie’s grasp. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but instead her lower lip quivered.

  “Oh dear, you’re hurt, aren’t you? Don’t move. I’ll get Sister Josie right away. She’ll know what to do.” Now in her early eighties, North Homage’s Infirmary nurse had handled many a crisis.

  “Nay! Don’t tell anyone, please.” Ignoring the warning to stay still, Mairin clutched at Gennie’s arm. “I’m okay, so nobody needs to know, do they?”

  Gennie laughed. “You didn’t knock down the whole Herb House, Mairin, just a few trays. They were empty, too. See?” She gathered up the screens and revealed the floor underneath, which needed a sweeping but wasn’t littered with ruined herb flowers or crumbled leaves. Mairin stared forlornly at the floor, then lifted her face to Gennie.

  “What are you afraid of?” Gennie asked.

  “Sister Rose is going to leave me again.”

  “What?”

  “She left because I’m bad. I’m bad a lot.”

  Gennie clicked her tongue. “If you’re bad,” she said, “then I’m badder. I used to do more than knock down empty screens, believe me. I always loved the smell of herbs. In the late summer and early fall, when this room was full of herbs hanging upside down in bunches, I used to spin around and fling out my arms and hit them on purpose. That would release their fragrances. Of c
ourse, sometimes I’d knock them clean off their hooks.”

  “Then what happened? Did you get punished?”

  Gennie hesitated. She’d dug herself into a deepening hole, wanting to reassure Mairin. She hadn’t been punished because she’d always managed to rehang the herb bunches before anyone found out. She’d told herself that the floor was kept clean, it didn’t matter that the herbs had fallen on it. But she stopped short of encouraging the same sneaky behavior by Mairin, who was already sneaky enough. So far Mairin hadn’t paid the full price for her transgressions because Rose was being careful with her, trying to keep her from running away from the village.

  “Well,” Gennie said, “whenever I or one of the other children was punished, no one ever spanked us or anything like that. The sisters would just make us stay home when the other children went on an outing, like swimming or sliding in the snow.”

  “I’d just sneak out again,” Mairin said. She was matter-of-fact, merely stating the obvious.

  “Mairin, I think they’re on to you—the sisters, I mean. They’d probably have one of the older girls watch you. There’d be no way out. Believe me, you’d have to stay put and be bored.”

  Mairin stuck out her lower lip in a pout. Gennie reached out her hand to help her off the floor. “Come on, up you go. Time to go see Sister Rose.”

  Reluctantly, Mairin took Gennie’s hand and let herself be pulled to her feet. They headed out the drying room door and down the stairs. Gennie paused in the middle. “Mairin,” she said, “you said you saw a woman dancing. Where was this?”

  “Last time it was in that place where those things are that the sisters sit at—you know, like they’re playing music but they’re really making blankets or something?”

  “Looms? Do you mean the Sisters’ Shop?”

  “I guess so.”

  “The sisters didn’t see the woman, too?”

  “They weren’t there.” Mairin hung her head. “It was night,” she said. “I sneaked out after Nora fell asleep, and I saw a light on at the top of the building. So I watched. That’s when I saw her dancing around.”