They had to be close to the Pedersen homestead. Didn’t they? They’d been trudging through the snow for hours, it seemed to Anette. And it occurred to her she’d never spent this much time with Fredrik. Their time together, always, was so fleeting: a few minutes before school started, recess, their races home. They were always moving, never sitting still, even when talking—although it was Fredrik who mostly talked. Anette was simply content to listen to someone talking to her, not at her. Anyway, she didn’t have much to share; she couldn’t tell him how it was at the Pedersens’。 She was ashamed to reveal that she was just a hired girl, really, but without pay. Unwanted.
Whereas Fredrik had a large, happy family he was always complaining about. Tor teased him mercilessly, put frogs in his boots, dropped snakes down his shirt. Fredrik, in turn, taunted his little brothers and sister, but Fredrik swore he got punished for it in a way Tor never did; his papa would look at him gravely and say he was disappointed in him before giving him a good whipping. And his mother would kiss away all his tears, but still she would deny him dessert that night.
“You have to be an example, Fredrik,” she would say. But she never, ever punished Tor. Both his papa and his mama thought the sun rose and set on him. And what about the time Fredrik brought home the prize for spelling? Did his mama cry with pride over that, the way she did when Tor revealed that Miss Olsen said she couldn’t teach him much more, that he learned too quickly?
No. Mama did make him his favorite dessert that night, Fredrik admitted—stollen with raisins—and excused him from bringing in the water for the dishes. But she didn’t shed shining tears of joy.
Oh, the trials of poor Fredrik! Anette never betrayed to Fredrik how much she envied him, how silly, really, she thought his trials were. How, in sharing these stories, he was reminding Anette of all that was missing in her own life. A happy family, a mother and father who cared for you enough to punish you and then cry over it, a big brother who thought of you enough to play pranks on you. People who saw you as a person, not as a problem or an unasked-for solution, no better than a workhorse in a plow.
People who loved you.
If only Anette had an older sibling who teased her! A papa who punished her in order to make her a better person, because he loved her that much! But she would never, ever let it slip to Fredrik that she felt this way. Because Fredrik Halvorsan, freckled and naughty yet completely innocent of the bad things that could happen to people, had chosen Anette. He was the only person in the world who looked for her, and her alone, in a crowded room. The only person who fought to sit next to her, not to get away from her. The only person who considered her an ally, not an enemy or a stupid little donkey, plodding along doing all the work nobody else wanted to do.
The only person who said her name with happiness, not reluctance or anger.
“Anette!”
He tugged her arm painfully; she rubbed her eyes, which had crusted shut again, opening them with a thumb that didn’t feel. She was shivering so thoroughly she couldn’t remember what it was like not to; her inadequate shawl, her regular cotton petticoat, could not keep her warm. She could not imagine being warm again. But she still kept moving; those strong legs and heart that launched her toward school with joy kept her upright now. Linked with Fredrik, she proceeded, inch by inch. Head bent down, face stinging from the strange, gritty balls of snow. The two of them all alone in the echoing center of the storm, at once muffling all sound—she couldn’t hear their footsteps, it was difficult to talk to each other—and assaulting her ears with the shrieking wind.
Anette took a deep breath, then shouted at Fredrik, “I think we’re going the wrong way!”
She didn’t know if that was true or not, but they’d been walking for hours without coming to anything that looked familiar.
“No, we’re not,” Fredrik shouted. He was so maddening sometimes, just because he was a boy and Anette was not. He wasn’t shy about bossing her around, and most of the time Anette let him.
But now she found herself arguing back—she was not going to let this boy tell her what to do! “Yes, we are—it is my way home, I know it!”