But he was wrong, although Raina couldn’t tell him just how.
“Yes, Miss Olsen. About half a mile southwest of here.”
Southwest—that was good, they wouldn’t be walking directly into the teeth of the snarling demon outside. “So if we walk outside the door, we head at a diagonal, to our right?”
He nodded.
“Are there any landmarks—barns or fences or trees, maybe even a haystack, that might help us stay in the right direction?”
The boy pondered, his heavy eyebrows drawing together in a sharp “V” on his forehead. “There’s a small creek right outside our barn, with some planks we use as a footbridge.”
“But nothing before then?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“All right.”
The wind screamed louder, and the top piece of the stove blew off its mooring to the ceiling; the children cried, tried to run from it but got tangled up, each going in a different direction. Raina rushed to sort it out, and knew she couldn’t put off their departure another minute. They would freeze to death here.
They would freeze to death outside, too, but please, God in heaven, she would get them to the Halvorsans’ before they did. They would have to move quickly; she shook her head at the little girls.
“Tor, you might have to carry Sofia. I’ll take Enid up front with me.” She untied Enid, smiled into her wide grey eyes, lips that trembled from cold, excitement, or fear, who could tell? She smoothed the little girl’s copper braids. “Those are very pretty ribbons, Enid.”
“Th-Thank you, Miss Olsen,” she said, and braved a tiny smile, which pierced Raina’s heart. The trust, the innocence, placed right into her very hands. The bravery of these sons and daughters of immigrants.
“All right, children! We’re going now, but we’re together. Nothing bad can happen to us if we’re together. We’re going to Tor’s house, and when we get there I bet there will be some cookies and warm milk, and we’ll play games until your parents come to get you. That will be fun, won’t it?”
There were a few excited yelps but, for the most part, the children were silent. Trusting. Lifting Enid up, she nodded at Tor, who held on to Rosa Larsen, Sofia already on his back.
“Let’s go,” she cried, bending her head against the wind as she led them all through the doorway of the schoolhouse. She paused for a moment to get her bearing, then she faced the southwest, feeling the pull of the ten children and Tor behind her, all of them in her wake, but attached to her. The children were too stunned by the storm to do more than gasp.
Then she stepped into the howling void.
CHAPTER 15
?????
THE BIRDS AND BEASTS OF the prairie took shelter where they could.
They had sensed it first, long before the humans; they felt the change in the atmosphere, the wind moving like the hands of a clock from the south to the northwest. They smelled it, the subtle yet acrid whiff of electricity. Snow smelled different from rain; drier, less mossy. They felt the coming cold even before the temperature started to plummet.
The rattlesnakes and the toads and the salamanders didn’t sense any of this; they were sleeping their winter sleep, burrowed deep beneath the ground, their hearts barely beating, only just enough to keep them alive until spring. They were unaware of the storm raging on top of them.
Prairie dogs, too, with their extra layer of winter fat, were lazing about in the subterranean burrows of their prairie towns; they may have noticed some changes in the air above them, but they didn’t care. They would wait the storm out, families cuddling together in little nests made of grass. Once the storm was over, these curious critters would venture out to see what was what, but for now, dozing was the plan.