Coracle, Chapter 5 (Patreon)

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CHAPTER FIVE

A LACK OF TRUMPETS

Waking up after praying for something you want is almost as exciting as waking up on your birthday, or so it seemed to Marda. She cracked her eyes open and shot upright, shedding her blankets and afghans and sending a pillow skidding to the floor. She was awake! Surely she’d dreamed, and the dream had provided her answer? But she couldn’t remember dreaming anything! But that was okay, because if the stories of the saints were any guide, God’s answers sometimes just appeared in your head—Marda always wondered how that worked, exactly, but she was expecting to find out, so she waited.

And nothing popped into her head. Except possibly that she was hungry, and that she wished she could eat cake for breakfast.

One of the pearly crows called a friendly summons, the little trilling noise they made only for people they knew. It was another morning, just like every other morning, and she still didn’t know what to do. “Really?” she asked Him. “That’s it? I go outside and feed the crows and eat breakfast and You don’t tell me what to do at all?”

On her way out the door with the leftover bread, Marda thought, with some disgust, that maybe this was another situation just like Mama’s, where she was now old enough that God thought she should be making her own decisions. Unlike God, though, she didn’t know everything already. And besides, almost all those saints had been older than her when they’d claimed they’d heard a call, or heeded a command. So why did they get the easy answer while she had to wonder?

“I think it’s because I’m afraid,” she told the crows with a sigh. They were staring at her from the boughs over her head. She looked up at them and said, “What if I make the wrong choice? And then there will be no going back! Will there?” One of them, the biggest, tilted his iridescent head as if listening. “Do crows make mistakes?” she asked. “Like ‘where should I dig for bugs today’ or ‘should I fly over the hill or stay near the farm.’ Do those decisions ever explode and hurt everyone and change everything?”

The crow kawed and glided down to the edge of the glade, where it plucked up one of the crusts of bread. No crow had ever done that before; they always waited until she was gone. “Maybe it’s a sign!” she breathed. And then exhaled noisily, annoyed. Except as signs went, it was pretty opaque. Did it mean ‘stay home,’ because the crow came closer to the house? Or ‘do something different,’ because the crow had chosen to approach her?

“Not helping,” she muttered, wondering if He was listening. She trudged through her other chores and into the kitchen, where Mama was humming as she oversaw the coffee.

“How’d you sleep, my love?”

“Really well,” Marda grumbled.

Mama’s brows lifted. “That’s... usually a good thing?”

“I asked God for advice, but I didn’t have any dreams, like out of the stories. And I didn’t wake up knowing what to do, like in the saint tales.” Marda put down her basket. “I thought that was what prayer was for!”

“To ask God for advice?” Mama said, examining the eggs the chickens had deigned to give them today. “That’s not a bad reason to pray.”

“But I can’t even tell what advice He gave!” Marda threw up her hands. “Aren’t I supposed to just... know?”

“Sometimes it works that way. Sometimes it doesn’t.” Mama grinned at her. “I know. Not a helpful answer.”

“How am I supposed to decide, then?” Marda said. “I don’t know what to do!”

“What you should do,” Mama said serenely, “is wake your brother and sister for breakfast, the way you usually do. And eat a good breakfast. Talk to your father, if he’s awake. See to Patches.”

“That’s all the stuff I usually do!”

Mama nodded. “I’ve always found you might as well keep busy while you’re waiting for divine inspiration. God works on His schedule, not yours... but the pony still needs brushing, and your siblings still need breakfast.”

Marda left the kitchen, trying not to sulk. Patric had told her once that she looked like a sad old dog when she sulked and she’d felt self-conscious about it ever since. But oh, how she wanted to sink into a nice, good sulk right then! She was fourteen years old—and one day—and contemplating the most important choice of her life and she wanted to make it with... with ceremony! With certainty! Someone should be able to tell the story one day of how she’d decided to become an Outremer by saying how all the signs pointed to it, and how she’d known, deep in her heart, that this was her destiny!

Instead, she felt painfully ordinary. It didn’t help when Patric, yawning, squinted up at her and giggled. “Your hair is sticking out behind your ear, Mar-mar.”

“Great,” Marda said with a sigh. “Thanks.”

So not only was she starting off without a trumpet fanfare, she was doing it with stupid hair.

***

Father was awake, so she brought his breakfast on a tray: just a little old toast and small coffee. He often joked he ate like the crows, and could cheer her up by pretending to be one, canting his head so he could stare at her out of one eye. He didn’t try that today, though. He took one look at her and said, “How now, my sweetling? You look out of sorts.”

“I’m disappointed,” she admitted.

“Already!” He stopped, butter knife in hand, to look at her. “Don’t tell me fourteen is already boring you when it’s only one day old! Or is it the lack of cake?”

“Lack of cake is always disappointing,” Marda said, perching on the stool. “But it’s not that, and it’s not being fourteen. It’s that I asked God for advice and He hasn’t said anything and now I wonder what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Father said. He resumed buttering his toast, but slowly. “And God is talking to you right now.”

She looked up, frowning.

“He’s always talking to you,” Father continued. “In the people you love. In the places you live. In the wind in the trees. In your secret heart. He talks to you through little coincidences that you think can’t possibly have any meaning, and through dramatic events you’re sure can’t possibly mean what you want them to because they’re so obvious and you want them so badly.” He set the knife down and bit into the toast, munched it, swallowed. “But, you know, this is to be expected.”

“What is?” Marda asked.

“Well, fourteen is a grand old age for a young girl,” Father said. “But it’s barely a heartbeat for someone eternal like God. The two of you haven’t had a lot of time to talk to each other, so you might still be figuring out how best to communicate.”

“I don’t understand,” Marda admitted, fisting her hands in her gown and squishing the fabric in her fingers. “What does that mean?”

“Well, do you talk to Patric the same way you do to Susen?”

“Of course not!”

“How long did it take you to figure out that the things that work on Susen don’t work on Patric?”

“Oh, that didn’t take long at all,” Marda said, and stopped. “For most things anyway. Somethings took longer. Like how Susen doesn’t like to feel embarrassed.”

“Susen can be motivated by pride,” Father agreed. “What about Patric?”

“By excitement,” Marda replied promptly. “He’s never embarrassed... I don’t think he cares what other people think of him.”

“But Susen does.”

Marda nodded. “And she’s more likely to be upset when other people are unhappy.” She frowned. “So, you’re telling me that God and I don’t know how to talk to one another yet. That He’s still figuring out what makes me work? But I thought He knew everything.”

“He does,” Father said. “But you don’t, yet. And He has to wait for you to catch up. He could tell you, but then, would you learn as well if He did?”

“Probably not,” Marda said, chagrined. And sighed. “I just....”

“Wished things were simpler?”

She looked up, startled.

“So do we all, my dearling. But if they were, well... we’d probably get bored.” His eyes twinkled.

“Father!” she exclaimed, and then she laughed too. And then, calming down a little, she said, hesitant, “So... what do I do?”

“You have some time to yourself now, before you help your mother with dinner. Why don’t you take a walk? Sometimes, when you want an answer, you need to make a space in your heart to listen first.”

“I thought praying was listening.”

“Praying,” Father said, “is talking. After that, it’s His turn.”

***

So Marda went for a walk. She took her shawl, wrapped tightly around her shoulders, because the wind was brisk enough to give her goosebumps. She heard Mama singing to the trees to make them bloom as she trudged uphill through the orchard, but her mother’s voice was faraway and sounded like something out of a dream. Now and then a crow croaked, or a mockingbird chattered; mostly, she heard the wind in the trees. Was that the voice of God, she wondered? They called the currents that pushed coracles among the islands the Savior’s Breath. Maybe He was everywhere.

Maybe He wasn’t the only thing either. The shawl... it had been her mother’s, and Susen had embroidered its edges as one of her first projects. Her hair, firmly rebraided... that was Patric, coming with her, too. And it was Father who had given her the idea to take the walk, so how was he not here, just a little? She was carrying them all with her. She thought of Mama, talking about how wonderful it was to know that your children were growing, would continue on without you. But that wasn’t quite right, was it? Because Mama was a part of her. Marda would never continue on without her, because she was a part of Marda, and Patric and Susen. She was a part of Father too, because they’d made a life together.

Marda stopped at the edge of the orchard. At the base of the hill was a trickling stream, glittering golden in the sunlight, so brightly it made her eyes water. The smell of the wind was wild and sweet, like flowers.

“Is this the answer?” she asked. The breeze ruffled the grass on the hill so it shone like satin. “That I’m not alone?”

Nothing. But she sat on the hill’s crest and stared at the distant plains, and it was beautiful, and made her wonder what life was like beyond it. And she thought, maybe, that no matter what choice she made, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.