Maybe she was leading Fredrik farther and farther away from home, maybe he was foolish to trust her, but he had given up. She could see that—feel it, as his hand was so limp in hers. He was only moving because he was linked to her. And she was too stupid to give up.
Maybe it was a good thing, then, that she was so dumb. She almost laughed.
But then she was falling, falling, Fredrik tumbling against her, knocking what little breath she still had out of her. They plunged through an ocean of snow, she was on her back looking up at churning clouds of snow that dumped their contents on top of her. Then they both stopped moving; they had reached the bottom.
Of the ravine, she realized, too stunned, too immobilized by panic to cry out. They’d found the ravine, after all. She had been right; she had been going in the right direction—but it was a hollow victory now.
Fredrik, next to her, began to moan as he pushed himself onto his elbow. He looked up—it was impossible to tell what was sky and what was earth, everything was one color, one substance—icy grey mixed with swirls of white. He pulled her into a sitting position, and they brushed the snow off their shoulders, their faces, their heads. Then he rose, looked around, tried to find a handhold to pull himself up the steep bank, but everything was coated in snow and ice. Not a blade of grass, not a stick, not a tree root showed itself. They couldn’t be at the very bottom of the ravine, with its tiny, snake-sized rivulet of creek; it was filled with the snow of all the previous storms. But they still must be a long way down. Far enough that they would be hidden from the sight of anyone looking out a window or stumbling across the prairie.
Pushing herself up, she stood next to Fredrik. She tried to crawl back up the slope, but her hands were too numb, she had no strength; she slid backward, and still she tried. So did Fredrik; they were on their hands and knees together, two babies unable to balance on their feet, and they made it a few more inches before once again, they slid backward. There was no more strength in her, in him; she felt weak as a rag doll, and now she couldn’t feel her feet anymore as she realized she was standing in a slushy pile of icy snow up to her thighs. The snow on the prairie had been hard-packed, and they hadn’t stood still long enough to have it drift around them, but down here, protected from the wind and the stinging bullets of ice, the snowfall was more treacherous. Anette cried out, shouted for help, so did Fredrik, but their voices were hoarse and weak. The frustration that they might only be fifty yards from shelter, from the Pedersens’ house or barn, almost flattened Anette; finally, wrung out, gasping for air but shivering too violently to get a good breath in, she fell backward into the snow. Her legs refused to propel her back up.
Fredrik fell down, too.
But he sidled next to her, and put his arm around her, pulling her in close. And despite the cold, the dark—twilight seemed to have come in the middle of day, the clouds were so thick between earth and sun—Anette felt, in that moment, happy.
She wasn’t alone anymore.
The storm raged above; she could hear the howling wind but it was muffled. Down here in this snow cave, the cold wasn’t quite as shocking; it crept over her slowly, almost soothingly. Fredrik murmured something as his arm tightened around her. Anette couldn’t muster the strength to ask him what he said, and then she didn’t care. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that he was there.
Anette sank a little into his embrace, closing her eyes. And then she slept.
CHAPTER 18
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THE SHOCK OF THAT FRIGID mix of ice and snow reaching up to gobble her ankles and knees made Raina cry out loud and made her limbs shudder even more violently. But at least she hadn’t landed on Rosa, who she could hear sobbing piteously, though each sob was fainter than the one before. Raina reached out, blindly pawing through the slush. It seemed to take an eternity, eating up her precious last reserves of sentient thoughts, a beating heart, and working lungs, but finally she felt the little girl’s quivering shoulders. She sloshed over to her—down here the ice wasn’t solid—and pulled the girl up; as she did, Rosa cried out weakly.