“I’ll take her,” she said, and she picked up the child, who latched her arms about Raina’s neck.
Suddenly Raina was aware of her skirts; heavy with snow and ice, they felt like an anchor about her legs. On the prairie, on solid ground, she’d rejoiced in their protection. But with one foot on the edge of a piece of wood ten inches wide, hovering above a pit of deadly snow and ice, even if it was only about three feet below, she panicked. She wanted to give the girl back to Tor but she had to do her part, she had to pull through with him; he couldn’t do it all.
“Papa, Papa, I need you,” she whispered. Because it was Papa who had always encouraged her to try harder, work harder, run faster, test her muscles to the limit; Mama might say he pushed her, pushed both girls, too hard, and maybe he had. But only out of necessity.
What she would do to have him here now, coaxing her, smiling down at her with his proud eyes, never for a moment entertaining the notion that she might not succeed. She could never let him down. Neither she nor Gerda could; it was a pact they’d made when they were smaller. They could never let their papa down.
So Raina took the first step onto the bridge; she tensed against the onslaught of the wind, the girl in her arms stirred enough to surprise her off her balance, and she tottered for a moment. Her skirts wrapped around her ankles in a sodden, frigid clump. But she fought them, took the next step, eyes open as far as they could be in the punishing wind, desperate to see something, anything, to help her stay balanced, stay on the right path.
Another step. Another. She heard sobbing right in front of her, and she knew the other girls were there, waiting miserably as Tor had told them; she was almost upon them. And then one more step, and she was bending down to deposit Enid when she heard a muffled cry, and a squishy thump, below.
In the creek. Someone had fallen in the creek.
“Enid? Sofia? Rosa?”
“It’s Rosa,” Sofia cried. “She fell down!”
“Tor! Tor?” Raina shouted, but she didn’t know if he could hear her.
“Teacher, Teacher!” Rosa cried weakly, then she sobbed.
“Stay right there, Rosa! Don’t move, I’m coming for you.”
Raina pulled up her skirts, took a breath, and—praying she wouldn’t fall on top of the girl—jumped into the creek.
CHAPTER 17
?????
EACH STEP WAS A VICTORY. Had she really run, free as she had ever been, across this endless prairie? It was impossible to remember now that each tiny step took all her concentration, seemed to deplete her heart and lungs so thoroughly she had to pause and rest before she could take the next step.
Fredrik, still clinging to her, had stopped crying; he could only keep saying, “I’m scared,” but less and less often. Sometimes, he whimpered for his mother.
“I’m scared, too,” Anette admitted, when her brain seemed to spark back up again, just for a quick second, before it was overcome by the cloud of confusion that was growing with each moment. Once she was able to pull her thoughts, which lay like fallen stalks of corn in her mind, together just enough to say, “We just have to find the ravine, the bridge, then we’re home.”
Fredrik, still crying, nodded.
Then they took another step.
At one point she became aware she was humming a song, something long forgotten—from the dugout, from her mama, from her babyhood. It had no words, it was just a simple tune, the notes rose and fell and rose and fell, and it wasn’t pretty at all. It wasn’t melodic. It was the sound a simple-minded person would make to comfort herself. And so maybe her stepfather had been right along: Maybe Anette was stupid. Sometimes she’d thought she wasn’t, really—she was just constantly weary and lonely, trapped in a body so sturdy it fooled people. A girl built for work and nothing more, and her sadness made her not care what they thought, most of the time. It made her not care about much of anything.