Free Resurrection by Linda Lael Miller

Gabriel’s own, a stream of wagons, horses, and pedestrians spilled out of Plentiful and onto the road leading to the open field where Brother Joy would conduct the preaching. Emmeline and Izannah, riding in the surrey with a picnic basket and blankets on the floor behind the seat, were among the pilgrims.
    “I don’t see why we can’t camp out for the duration, like everybody else,” Izannah complained, folding her arms. “We’ll miss all the fun if we go home every night. How am I supposed to get saved, if I’m not even here when Brother Joy calls forth all the repentant souls?”
    Emmeline wore simple clothes, fit for sitting on the grass, and a broad-brimmed hat, chosen to protect her delicate skin from the ravages of the late-day sunshine.
    She did not deign to give her cousin so much as a sidelong glance. “You were saved last year,” she said. “And the year before that. Surely it is as much a sin to bore the Lord as to ignore Him.”
    Izannah was determined, as always. “I feel the need,” she said, “to be washed in the blood of the lamb.”
    “By all means, do so,” Emmeline responded. “Just be back at ten o’clock so that we can go home.”
    “You are a pagan,” Izannah accused.
    “I must be,” Emmeline replied, drawing the surrey to a stop at the edge of the field among a bevy of wagons and buggies. “Because just now, I have an intense longing to sacrifice you to the moon goddess. Ten o’clock, Izannah.”
    Izannah scrambled down from the surrey with a lack of grace meant to irritate. “Ten o’clock,” she confirmed, herlower lip protruding slightly. “You won’t be able to treat me like this, once I’m married. Then who will you persecute?”
    Emmeline scanned the gathering from the shadows of her hat brim, looking for Gil. “I shall have to find another victim, I suppose,” she answered in a distracted tone.
    Izannah spotted a friend on the horizon and fled in high dudgeon, and Emmeline watched the girl’s retreat with a smile. She hoped she wasn’t being too arbitrary with Izannah, insisting on a curfew, but the fact was that people got caught up in the fervor of these events and sometimes did things that were unwise. There were always more than a few babies conceived in the tall grass and the little copse of birch trees down by the creek.
    Emmeline had lifted the picnic basket from the back of the surrey and was busy hobbling Lysandra, who sometimes took it into her head to roam, when his shadow fell over her.
    “Come to get yourself saved, Miss Emmeline?” Gil asked as she looked back at him over one calico-clad shoulder. Rising, she held her hat in place with one hand, and hoped he couldn’t see that she was quivering inside like the jellied fruit tucked away in her basket.
    She shook her head, smiling a little. “Once,” she answered, “ought to be enough. And you, Mr. Hartwell? Are you here to be, as Izannah puts it, ‘washed in the blood’?”
    He shuddered at the thought, although he was smiling too. “I came for the spectacle of it,” he said. “According to Jake Fleming down at the general store, Brother Joy plans to celebrate three days of bringing in the sheaves by setting off a fireworks display.”
    Not wanting to be petty, Emmeline refrained from pointing out that there was only one Jake Fleming in town, and one general store, thereby eliminating the need to clarify the matter. “And since you want to see the fireworks, you feel honor-bound to listen to the preaching first?”
    Gil was wearing wool trousers, a white shirt, and suspenders, and he pushed his hands into his pockets and shrugged, regarding Emmeline with his head tilted slightly to one side. “I’d better tell the truth,” he said, “lest God strike me down for a liar. I was hoping to find you here.”
    Emmeline felt a blush climb her neck to pulse in her cheeks, but she was pretty certain that the brim of her hat hid her face. She made a business of reaching for the picnic basket,