This godforsaken place. It killed these poor bastards, then refused to receive their bodies with any kind of dignity.
The horse continued plodding. Gavin realized he’d been traveling north, so he’d picked the wrong goddamn train track to follow, since the girl and her family seemed to have gone due west; typical Gavin, he cursed himself. Finally, up ahead, he saw a cluster of buildings, spreading out on either side of the track for about a city block both ways.
There were people in those buildings. His people, he was starting to think of them.
Maybe they would know where she was.
CHAPTER 25
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RAINA WANTED TO RUN FROM the stifling room that smelled of fresh blood and decaying flesh; she tried not to look at the bucket where the tiny, blackened hand now lay. She pressed a handkerchief to her mouth and Doc Eriksen, busily sewing jagged flesh to flesh, gave her a look. In response, she stiffened her spine and transferred that handkerchief to Anette’s clammy brow. The poor thing moaned, but didn’t move or open her eyes.
Anna Pedersen was perspiring, too, but hadn’t strayed from Doc’s side as she handed him the instruments of torture he’d required—bone saw, clamps, needles. This was hell, Raina decided. To maim a young child in order to save her life—this was hell on earth.
How long had it been since the blizzard? Three or four days? An eternity ago. Yet there were still so many missing in the community—bodies hidden in snowdrifts, waiting silently for spring. It was actually a miracle they’d found Fredrik’s father that morning—
That awful morning was the worst moment of Raina’s life. She was ripped apart by it all—the grief; the desire to comfort Tor and his mother; the guilt she felt at being the cause of everything; the relief, quickly doused by bitter disappointment, when she saw Gunner; the desperation when he didn’t know where Anette and Fredrik were. She grew up that morning, Raina did. Grew up, grew out of childhood and uncertainty and pretty notions and romantic foolishness. She felt herself stand taller, her muscles harden, and a bitter taste invade her mouth. It was life in all its terrible beauty and terrible tragedy—that was what she tasted that morning. She might know softness again, love, hope, happiness. But she would also never know a world where Mama and Papa—and especially Gerda—could make everything all right.
It was this grown-up Raina who had steered the sleigh away from the Halvorsans’， Gunner mute beside her, over snow that looked so fetching now that it was the morning after; she briefly noted the beauty, the sun dogs—one on either side of the sun—showing off in the sky, one lone hawk swooping low over the ground.
She aimed the sleigh toward the Pedersen homestead, skirting past the schoolhouse—it seemed only moments away from the Halvorsans’ and she closed her eyes, remembering the hours it had taken them to get there. If they’d had a sleigh—if he’d come for them—
But he hadn’t. She’d done her best. She’d tried.
Despite her earlier vow that she’d never go back to the Pedersen house, it seemed the logical path to follow; Anette had headed out that way in the storm. Raina held the horse to a walk as they searched for signs of the two children’s progress; Gunner had most likely been in too much of a hurry this morning to see anything and besides, he wouldn’t have known to look. Raina was relieved that it was too cold to carry on a conversation; their mouths and noses were muffled. Gunner seemed so strange to her now, shy, perhaps? There was something that made him not able to look her in the eye: an acknowledgment of failure, or of shame. Something had happened to him during that long, stormy night. She could only guess what, until she realized she didn’t care at all, and the realization was both a thudding end of a dream and a soaring release. She didn’t care anymore what happened to Gunner Pedersen.
The horse picked its way slowly across the prairie, struggling through drifts up to its knees, but sometimes finding its footing easier where the snow had been swept by wind. It plodded toward the homestead south of the school, the house growing bigger and bigger, but Raina was concentrating on the land they were gliding over, searching for anything—a mitten, a shawl, a slate. She didn’t see any footprints in the snow, but that wasn’t unusual, given the sweeping winds of the night before. But then, as they grew closer to the homestead, she did see something—she saw a pail, a lunch pail, sticking out of the snow, beckoning them.