Free The Taker by Alma Katsu Page A

that this man was capable of anything. Just then, Nevin appeared in front of us with a blazing torch in hand—and for once, I was glad to see him.
    “Lanore! I was looking for you. I’m ready. Let’s go!” he bellowed.
    “Good night,” I said, breaking away from the preacher, whom I hoped to never see again. His fiery stare bored into my back as Nevin and I left.
    “Satisfied with your little outing?” Nevin grunted at me as we headed down the road.
    “It wasn’t what I expected.”
    “I would say so. The man’s daft, probably made so by the diseases he undoubtedly carries,” Nevin said, meaning syphilis. “Still, I hear he’s had followers down in Saco. Wonder what he’s doing this far north?” It didn’t occur to Nevin that the man might have been driven out by the authorities, that he might be on the run. That in his madness he could be given to visions and grandiose predictions, putting ideas into the heads of gullible young girls and threatening those less than willing to do as he wished.
    I hugged my shawl tightly around my shoulders. “I would appreciate it if you’d not tell Father what the preacher said …”
    Nevin laughed blackly. “I should think not. I can barely bring myself to recall his blasphemous talk, let alone repeat it to Father! Multiple wives! ‘Spiritual wifery’! I don’t know what Father would do—take to me with a whipping rod and lock you in the barn until you were twenty-one for even listening to the heathen’s words.” He shook his head as we walked on. “I tell you what, though—that preacher’s teachings sure would suit your boy Jonathan. He’s made spiritual wives out of half the girls in town already.”
    “Enough about Jonathan,” I said, keeping the preacher’s strange interest in Jonathan to myself so as not to confirm Nevin’s poor opinion of him. “Let us talk no more about it.”
    We fell quiet for the rest of the long walk home. Despite the cool night air, I still tingled from the dark look on the preacher’s face and the glimpse into his true nature. I didn’t know what to make of his interest in Jonathan nor what he meant by my “special sensibility.” Was my longing to experience what went on between a man and a woman so obvious? Surely that mystery was at the heart of the humanexperience; could it truly be unnatural, or especially evil, for a young woman to be curious about it? My parents and Pastor Gilbert would probably think so.
    I walked down the lonesome road agitated inside and titillated by all of this open talk of desire. The thought of knowing Jonathan—of knowing other men in the village the way Magda knew them—left me hot and liquid inside. This evening I had awakened to my true nature, though I was too inexperienced to know it, too innocent to realize I should be alarmed by the ease with which desire could be sparked within me. I should have fought against it more staunchly, but perhaps there was no use, as one’s true nature always wins out.

SEVEN

    Y ears passed in the way they do, with each year seeming no different than its predecessor. But little differences were evident: I was less willing to follow my parents’ rules and longed for a measure of independence, and I’d grown weary of my judgmental neighbors. The charismatic preacher was arrested down in Saco, tried, and imprisoned, then escaped and disappeared mysteriously. But his absence from the scene did little to quell the unrest gurgling just beneath the surface. There was an undercurrent of sedition in the air, even in a town as isolated as St. Andrew; talk of independence from Massachusetts and statehood. If landowners such as Charles St. Andrew were worried that their fortunes would be adversely affected, they made no show of it and kept their concerns to themselves.
    I grew more interested in such important matters, though I still had few opportunities to exercise my curiosity. The only fit topics of interest for a young woman, it seemed, were her domestic