It is a Catholic place, Villon. Certainly the part that shows.
There is a church in the center of town, a solemn stone thing where everyone goes to save their souls. Adeline’s mother and father kneel there twice a week, cross themselves and say their blessings and speak of God.
Adeline is twelve now, so she does, too. But she prays the way her father turns loaves of bread upright, the way her mother licks her thumb to collect stray flakes of salt.
As a matter of habit, more automatic than faith.
The church in town isn’t new, and neither is God, but Adeline has come to think of Him that way, thanks to Estele, who says the greatest danger in change is letting the new replace the old.
Estele, who belongs to everyone, and no one, and herself.
Estele, who grew like a tree at the heart of the village by the river, and has certainly never been young, who sprang up from the ground itself with gnarled hands and woody skin and roots deep enough to tap into her own hidden well.
Estele, who believes that the new God is a filigreed thing. She thinks that He belongs to cities and kings, and that He sits over Paris on a golden pillow, and has no time for peasants, no place among the wood and stone and river water.
Adeline’s father thinks Estele is mad.
Her mother says that the woman is bound for Hell, and once, when Adeline repeated as much, Estele laughed her dry-leaf laugh and said there was no such place, only the cool dark soil and the promise of sleep.
“And what of Heaven?” asked Adeline.
“Heaven is a nice spot in the shade, a broad tree over my bones.”
At twelve, Adeline wonders which god she should pray to now, to make her father change his mind. He has loaded up his cart with wares bound for Le Mans, has harnessed Maxime, but for the first time in six years, she is not going with him.
He has promised to bring her a fresh pad of parchment, new tools with which to sketch. But they both know she would rather go and have no gifts, would rather see the world outside than have another pad to draw on. She is running out of subjects, has memorized the tired lines of the village, and all the familiar faces in it.
But this year, her mother has decided that it isn’t right for her to go to market, it isn’t fitting, even though Adeline knows she can still fit on that wooden bench beside her father.
Her mother wishes she was more like Isabelle Therault, sweet and kind and utterly incurious, content to keep her eyes down upon her knitting instead of looking up at clouds, instead of wondering what’s around the bend, over the hills.
But Adeline does not know how to be like Isabelle. She does not want to be like Isabelle.
She wants only to go to Le Mans, and once there, to watch the people and see the art all around, and taste the food, and discover things she hasn’t heard of yet.
“Please,” she says, as her father climbs up into the cart. She should have stowed away among the woodworks, hidden safe beneath the tarp. But now it is too late, and when Adeline reaches for the wheel, her mother catches her by the wrist and pulls her back.
“Enough,” she says.
Her father looks at them, and then away. The cart sets out, and when Adeline tries to tear free and run after the cart, her mother’s hand flashes out again, this time finding her cheek.
Tears spring to her eyes, a vivid blush before the rising bruise, and her mother’s voice when it lands is a second blow.
“You are not a child anymore.”
And Adeline understands—and still does not understand at all—feels as if she’s being punished for simply growing up. She is so angry then that she
wants to run away. Wants to fling her mother’s needlework into the hearth and break every half-made sculpture in her father’s shop.
Instead, she watches the cart round the bend, and vanish between trees, with one hand clenched around her father’s ring. Adeline waits for her mother to let her go, and send her on to do her chores.
And then she goes to find Estele. Estele, who still worships the old gods.
Adeline must have been five or six the first time she saw the woman drop her stone cup into the river. It was a pretty thing, with a pattern pressed like lace into its sides, and the old woman just let it fall, admiring the splash. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were moving, and when Adeline ambushed the old woman—she was already old, has always been old—on the path home, Estele said she was praying to the gods.
“What for?”
“Marie’s child isn’t coming as it should,” she said. “I asked the river gods to make things flow smooth. They are good at that.”
“But why did you give them your cup?” “Because, Addie, the gods are greedy.”
Addie. A pet name, one her mother scorned as boyish. A name her father favored, but only when they were alone. A name that rang like a bell in her bones. A name that suited her far more than Adeline.
Now, she finds Estele in her garden, folded in among the wild vines of squash, the thorny spine of a blackberry bush, bent low as a warping branch.
“Addie.” The old woman says her name without looking up.
It is autumn, and the ground is littered with the stones of fruit that didn’t ripen as it should. Addie nudges them with the toe of her shoe. “How do you talk to them?” she asks. “The old gods. Do you call them by name?”
Estele straightens, joints cracking like dry sticks. If she’s surprised by the question, it doesn’t show. “They have no names.”
“Is there a spell?”
Estele gives her a pointed look. “Spells are for witches, and witches are too often burned.”
“Then how do you pray?”
“With gifts, and praise, and even then, the old gods are fickle. They are not bound to answer.”
“What do you do then?” “You carry on.”
She chews on the inside of her cheek. “How many gods are there, Estele?”
“As many gods as you have questions,” answers the old woman, but there is no scorn in her voice, and Addie knows to wait her out, to hold her breath until she sees the telltale sign of Estele’s softening. It is like waiting at a neighbor’s door after you’ve knocked, when you know they are home. She can hear the steps, the low rasp of the lock, and knows that it will give.
Estele sighs open.
“The old gods are everywhere,” she says. “They swim in the river, and grow in the field, and sing in the woods. They are in the sunlight on the wheat, and under the saplings in spring, and in the vines that grow up the side of that stone church. They gather at the edges of the day, at dawn, and at dusk.”
Adeline’s eyes narrow. “Will you teach me? How to call on them?”
The old woman sighs, knowing that Adeline LaRue is not only clever, but also stubborn. She begins wading through the garden to the house, and the girl follows, afraid that if Estele reaches her front door before she answers, she might close it on this conversation. But Estele looks back, eyes keen in her wrinkled face.
“There are rules.”
Adeline hates rules, but she knows that sometimes they are necessary. “Like what?”
“You must humble yourself before them. You must offer them a gift.
Something precious to you. And you must be careful what you ask for.” Adeline considers. “Is that all?”
Estele’s face darkens. “The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
Two days later, when Adeline’s father returns, he comes bearing a fresh pad of parchment, and a bundle of black lead pencils, bound with string, and the first thing she does is pick the best one, and sink it down into the
ground behind their garden, and pray that next time her father leaves, she will be with him.
But if the gods hear, they do not answer. She never goes to market again.
