The shrieking kept up, got louder, came closer. Then the door burst open and two adults, their arms around two limp bundles of clothing, were inside, kicking Gerda away from the stove so they could kneel before it, frantically rubbing the bundles, calling their names—Ingrid! Minna!
But the bundles didn’t move, didn’t stir.
Gerda pushed herself up on her elbows, confused; she, too, called the girls’ names. But no answer came, and she caught a glimpse of Minna’s deathly white face, blue lips, doll-like blue hands. The stillness that Gerda had seen earlier but not been able to recognize in one so young, the stillness of a body ready for the grave.
Gerda fell back, shutting her eyes before she could see the Nillssens’ faces. She couldn’t bear it, not now; not with the still-fresh memory of Minna on her back as she took each grueling step, thinking that as she did, she was one step closer to getting her and Ingrid to shelter. Thinking that Minna was still alive—and now she had to wonder. When did the girl die? Was it before they even got in the haystack, that tunnel she’d dug with her own numb hands?
Had she been carrying a corpse on her back the entire time? The effigy of a child—of all the children—she’d been in charge of keeping safe?
Where were they? Where were all the others? Feverishly, she began to chant the names of all her pupils out loud, as she did every day when she took the roll: “Minna, Ingrid, Hardus, Johnny, Johannes, Karl, Walter, Sebastian, Lydia.
“Minna, Ingrid, Hardus, Johnny, Johannes, Karl, Walter, Sebastian, Lydia—”
“Shut up, shut up!” Someone was shaking her shoulders, forcing her to wake up, to see—
New grief, etching its way into weathered skin, in the faces of the girls’ parents. Mrs. Nillssen would turn hard in her sorrow, Gerda thought, oddly, as she tried to make sense of the tragedy. Hard, silent, but she would endure. Mr. Nillssen would be plowed under it, just like the fields he worked every day. Maybe that was what truly did make this land yield up its meager harvest: the weight of unbearable sadness pressing down upon it.
Gerda shut her eyes, pushed Mrs. Nillssen away, desperate for sleep to overtake her. Instead, her feet began to awaken. First they throbbed, then they burned, then they itched, and finally it was as if angry ants were swarming over her flesh, tearing it away with their pincers; she gasped, she moaned, she sat up and screamed, tearing at her boots to get them off, begging for Mrs. Nillssen to cut off her boots because the laces had shrunk as they’d thawed out, anything to relieve the searing pain.
And when finally the boots were cut off—and some of her flesh seemed to be sheared off with them—she saw skin that was purplish black, dying. Her very flesh was dying, and the metaphor seemed so apt she wanted to laugh.
But then the ants began their attack again, and all she could do was bite down on the towel Mrs. Nillssen shoved in her mouth to shut her up.
“Shhh, shhh. You mustn’t disturb the girls,” the woman whispered in Gerda’s ear as she writhed in pain.
CHAPTER 23
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THIS MORNING AT FIRST LIGHT, Anna had watched as her husband harnessed the horse, strapped the blanket around its girth, then climbed up in the sleigh and rode off, fast as lightning, over the log bridge straddling the ravine, toward the tundra of the prairie. She couldn’t watch him for long; the rising sun was already too fierce, little glints of ice reflecting it everywhere. Something blinding did catch her eye out by the ravine, but she had to cover her eyes with her hands, the glare actually hurt.
What a fool her husband was, going out there in this cold. But he thought himself a paragon of the community, so he had to ride to the rescue of the Schoolteacher, the girl, all the children who must have spent the night in the schoolhouse. The Great Gunner Pedersen, Hero of the Storm. Ha! What an idiot, a preening idiot, he was. At least now the storm was over; he wouldn’t get lost, he wouldn’t perish. Although she wished he would, at least five times a day, practicality had won out last night. She couldn’t risk losing him in the middle of winter; she couldn’t deal with the horses, the house, the children all by herself. In the spring, she could leave him—she knew that now. But until they were through the winter, she needed him.