Woman in the Trees

Theoni Bell

Description

Set within the expanses of the American frontier, this story follows Slainie, an inquisitive pioneer girl, whose life is forever transformed when a mysterious seer shows up at her door. Amidst the backdrop of the Civil War, family tragedy, and the nation's most destructive wildfire, Slainie must navigate her rugged pioneer life as she encounters love and loss, and comes face to face with the story of America's first approved Marian apparition.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: St. Benedict Press LLC
• Date de parution: 14 décembre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505123807
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE
WOMAN
IN THE
TREES

THEONI BELL
TAN Books Gastonia, North Carolina
Copyright © Theoni Bell, 2020
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, or otherwise—including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Disclaimer: This story is loosely based on actual events. Some characters and timelines have been changed for dramatic purposes. Certain characters may be composites or entirely fictitious. The roles played in this narrative by Adele Brise, Xavier Martin, Reverend Peter Pernin, and Reverend Edward Daems are entirely fictional. Their conversations, letters or thoughts have no factual basis. My imagined Brise, Martin, Pernin, and Daems do, however, abide by the generally known facts of their real lives.
The story of the kabouters is a Dutch fairy tale that was taken from the book “Dutch Fairy Tales,” by William E. Griffis, 1918.
Editing by Kathryn Hnatiuk and Carolyn Astfalk. We gratefully acknowledge the following institutions for permission to reproduce the photographs in this book: photograph of Adele Brise from the archives of the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Holy Cross in Green Bay, WI, and photograph of stained glass window at St. Stanislaus Church, Milwaukee, WI, from its creators at Conrad Schmitt Studios.
ISBN: 978-1-5051-2378-4 Kindle ISBN: 978-1-5051-2379-1 ePUB ISBN: 978-1-5051-2380-7
Cover Design by Chris Lewis ( www.barituscatholic.com )
Visit www.TheoniBell.com
Published in the United States by TAN Books PO Box 269 Gastonia, NC 28053 www.TANBooks.com
To Mary, for whom I tried to write well.
For my oldest daughter, MRB. This novel wasn’t ready until you read it.
To my whole family, sorry I’m a bit of Mrs. Lafont at times. I love you.
CONTENTS

Fire
Knock, Knock
The Teacher
Across Sea
Across Land
Cecilia
Allard Family
The Chapel
Acorns and Pigweed
Papa’s Confession
Barn Dance
Death Conquered
The Wars
Finally, A Teacher
Carrying Crosses
Final Warnings
Fire
Downpour
Aid and Blessings
New Life
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Decree
THE
WOMAN
IN THE
TREES
CHAPTER ONE
Fire
1871
SLAINIE LAFONT SHOT up in her bed. She blinked until the dark came into focus. Outside, a goat brayed wildly. She could identify all the animals in a tumult. Chickens squawked and growled. The guttural lowing of cows rang out. Hogs squealed.
Throwing off her quilt, she rushed to the cabin’s kitchen window. Smoke! In the distance, flames rose above the shadowy peaks of pines, glowing orange. Plumes of smoke spread as if engines were barreling through the woods, sending up mountains of steam as they chugged toward her. It wouldn’t be long before that smoke, and its fire, reached her little log cabin. Slainie shook her husband Joseph awake and yelled across the house to rouse their daughters. Odile shuffled down from the loft. In dim candlelight, she watched her mother with tired eyes.
Slainie threw open the bread bin. She grabbed at provisions from several cabinets, unconsciously muttering the name of each as she jammed them into a sack. “Venison … butter mold … the last of the loaf.” Suddenly, she swung around. “Odile!” The little girl jolted out of her midnight stupor. “Go grab some clothes!”
Darting frantically around the cabin, Slainie thrashed drawers and baskets, whittling her belongings down to a list of bare necessities. “Blankets … coats … lantern … baby clothes.” When she was done, she scrambled across the wood floor, throwing her sack by the front door.
Slainie noticed her five-year-old daughter still watching from the hallway. “Odile, I told you to go! Gather some smocks. Bring them to me.”
Odile didn’t flinch. With a blank stare, she stood frozen.
Thrusting an arm toward Odile’s room, Slainie shattered her daughter’s bewilderment. “Odile, go now!”
“Mama, what are you doing?” Odile’s voice was low and shaky.
“I’m packing … please do as I say.” There was no time for Slainie to explain to Odile why they were packing and then answer questions about it. She didn’t want to terrify her daughter either.
Odile took her one-year-old sister by the hand. They shuffled halfway across the parlor. Slainie called out, “Leave Sophie with me. You hear? You must move quickly. Now! Quickly!”
As Odile climbed to the loft, Slainie stretched her arms under couches and tables searching for shoes: hers, her husband’s, Odile’s, and little knitted booties for Sophie. She caught sight of the smoke billowing outside the window.
Slainie’s husband, Joseph, came limping in from the hallway. “Here’s our clothing.” Slainie plucked the bundle from his arm and jammed them into her sack. Grimacing, Joseph hurried off again, his permanent war disabilities threatening to slow him down.
Slainie ran toward the loft.
“Odile? Just throw some clothes down—we must leave.”
Baby Sophie crawled into Slainie’s sack by the door. Candlelight flickered on her soft, round face as she pulled at the buttons of a sweater. Noticing Sophie there, Slainie stopped abruptly.
Where are we going to take you?
Suddenly, Joseph drew Slainie into a corner, turned his back to Odile and lowered his voice. “We need to get to water, Slay. We don’t have long before the fire’s here.”
“I know. I am trying to place any streams or ponds near us. Even a well would do. Certainly, we can’t reach the bay. The fire is coming from that direction.”
“Yes, then, a well or a stream. We need it to be close.”
Outside, something popped in the distance, and Joseph hurried to the door, flinging it open. They coughed as smoke invaded the room. A cloud of gnats fluttered in, propelled by a gale.
Joseph swiped the bugs from his face. “What do you make of that?”
Slainie listened intently. A loud crack, crack, crack echoed in the forest.
“I don’t know.”
She had never before heard the sound of trees crackling—as if screaming—while flames consumed them, or the sound of a fire creating tornadoes as it sucked up all the air, or the force of scorching whirlwinds thrashing hundreds of trees at a time. But she knew it immediately.
“It’s coming, Joseph. We must go.”
“We need to get my parents and Henri. Then we run.” As Joseph spoke, Sophie climbed into his good arm and clung to his shirt with her little fists.
“Yes, by all means.” Slainie pulled Odile to the door, sharing a horrified look with Joseph. The smoke unfurled across the sky above them.
Joseph nudged Slainie to hurry down the porch steps. Her mind raced to all the places she knew on that little arm of Wisconsin—the mills, the villages, the streams, the port, and the churches. Where can we go? Lake Michigan was on the other side of the peninsula, but it was too far away to be a refuge for them. It would take all night to get there, if the fire didn’t overrun them first. Suddenly, her thoughts slowed to a single image. A woman with flowing black robes stood at the door of a chapel. She recognized the figure at once—Adele Brise, that mysterious and revered teacher. In the image, flames danced around Adele, but she stood serenely, paying no attention to the fires that threatened to consume her. What does this mean?
Joseph jostled past, trying to carry Sophie and move Odile along with his knees. Snapping out of her daze, Slainie followed. A wagon charged by. Though barely visible in the dark, the crack of a whip on horseflesh resounded above the fire’s roar. Something large, like a barrel, bounced off the back, and cries cut through the acrid air—the neighbors’ children wailing.
“That’s Emma, Josephine and baby Nicolas.” Odile grabbed Slainie’s hand, pulling her toward the road. “Look, Mama, someone is burning trees again. Look at the sky.”
Without responding, Slainie tugged Odile backward and started running with Joseph as fast as she could. She turned her head to catch one final glimpse of her home. Then, she made for the home of Joseph’s parents, who lived on the other side of the wheat field. Slainie prayed that they were awake. She prayed they’d be right there, at the door, ready to flee. Then her mind came back to the question, where are we going to go?
CHAPTER TWO
Knock, Knock
1859 / 12 years before the fire
THE CABIN WHERE Slainie lived as a child sat in the center of a hard-won clearing. For thousands of years, a forest of conifers and broad-leaved trees had grown unhindered in that spot. Some of those trees were as thick as four feet across. Only Indians had traversed there. In 1853, the Belgian settlers arrived, and with them, Slainie Lafont.
In those early pioneering years, the settlers hacked and sawed unceasingly at the forest. They had no use for the amount of trees they felled, so each day smoke from mountainous piles of burning logs permeated the sky. Now, stumps studded the ground where trees once stood. Some of those stumps still squatted near the Lafont family cabin, while the rest had been wrestled from the earth. In their place, the now-plowed soil was home to a few hogs and a garden of squash, herbs and spindly flax plants.
Twelve-year-old Slainie foraged a ten-minute walk from her cabin. She zigzagged over a burbling stream, a quicker route than the trails, with a basket swaying in the crook of each arm. Skirts wet in the autumn breeze, she raced home shivering.
Something else tugged at her mind, hastening her steps; the new edition of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper awaited her. A giant coal-powered ship was splashed across the cover. Detailed hordes of people amassed on the wharf beside it. Slainie couldn’t read, but Leslie’s covers—wood engravings painted with ink and stamped on the page—always thrilled her. They usually depicted tragedies. The last edition of the newspaper to circulate among the settlers featured a rioting crowd. The one before that, an etching of a factory fire. But, prior to that, a poised, proper-looking couple peered out a