A Clearing in the Wild Read Free Page A

leader’s emissary most recently into Kentucky and the Carolinas. His name was Christian Giesy, and it was him I hoped to marry, though I wasn’t sure if he even knew my name.
    Christian Giesy
. I prayed I’d aged enough that he might see me this Christmas morning as a young woman and not just a snippet of thread tethered to the weaving of my parents.
    He did not look my way but instead stared off as though he saw a glorious place somewhere far beyond this room, his eyes as shining as the lantern light flashed against the
Schellenbaum
. I swallowed. Perhaps he too believed as our leader did, that the finest way to honor God meant remaining celibate and unmarried.
    I pitched away that disappointing thought.
    Our leader raised his voice, large before us. Even errant thoughts of mine were pulled into the cymbal clang of his call to worship. His eyeswere deep pools of churning water that nearly frothed with intensity and yet a kind of joy. We young women stopped shuffling our slippers. Men muffled their coughs. Mothers whispered quietly to their children, “Be silent, now.” His oldest son, Willie, gazed up at his father as though he were a saint. Only the sizzle of candle wax and the fire’s roar and the occasional tinkle of the
Schellenbaum
bells moved by the fire’s draft interrupted our leader’s words as he drew our faces toward him, toward the words my parents first heard in Pennsylvania, words that took us all in and changed our very lives. The fire waned in the brick church. I felt a chill. We remained awake in the cold and with
his
words. When he raised his voice, a mesmerizing sound echoed words I’d heard so often as a child from him and then from my own father, too, who preached, though without the fervor of our leader. I didn’t need to pay attention now. But I willed myself to keep staring at him, to not let my eyes wander onto Christian Giesy.
    A tinsmith, Christian, who also served as one of the missionaries our leader sent south to bring in new communal members, was a man one year younger than our leader but wiser and more handsome than our leader had ever been, though Christian’s build was leaner, a sturdy pine beside Father Keil’s squat oak. The recruits, whom we hoped would eventually convert, were usually people who could advance the colony: wagon makers, farmers, coopers. I wondered if we were contributing to their souls by making them colonists as much as they contributed to our coffers.
Sacrilege, such thoughts
.
    My eyes ached from staying open. I refused to blink for fear the lids would overtake me and embarrass me with sleep. Maybe just for a second I could close them.
    My head dropped onto my mother’s shoulder. “Emma,” she whispered. “Sit straight!”
    Catherine pursed her lips as I wiped my drooling mouth with theback of my hand, hoping no one else had seen my lapse. Catherine was “too good” and would never sleep in church. Some unseen force moved my eyes to Christian’s. I willed my face to heat no crimson blotches on my cheeks as I looked boldly at him. He stared, his dark hair as silky as a beaver pelt, no part, combed back. Long sideburns rolled up into a mustache thick and trimmed. Dark hair acted as a picture frame for a strong face, straight nose, and eyes as blue as the feathers of a blue-winged teal and just as soft. I sighed despite myself and my mother elbowed me. Had he seen me fall asleep? I hiccupped. My mother frowned. When I saw that Christian let his eyes rest on mine before he eased them toward our leader, I couldn’t control the racing of my heart.

    “Ve never neglect the children,” our leader said when his sermon about Christmas joy ended and the children swarmed around him. My father said we American children were spoiled now, no longer having to fear the arrival of
Peltz Nickel
, the frightening, chain-dragging, bell-ringing companion of
Belsnickel
and
Christkind
. The former frequented the old country, prepared to punish us for wrongdoing through