“I don’t know how we’ll tell her,” a voice said. So she wasn’t dead, after all. She tried to open one eye, to see who was talking, but it took too much effort, so she lay quietly, her old trick of not being noticeable so she couldn’t offend.
“Maybe she knows already, somehow,” another voice whispered, and Anette couldn’t help it, her eyes wrenched open—painfully—because the voices belonged to Mother Pedersen and Teacher, and they sounded like they were…well, not exactly friends, but united in something.
The light—feeble as it was in whatever unfamiliar room she was in—stung her eyes. Then she realized she was lying in a brass bed and so, astonishingly, must be in the Pedersens’ bedroom. Her lashes felt heavy, then instant tears obscured her vision. She wondered how long she’d been lying in the Pedersens’ bed, and what had happened to her own. Shouldn’t she be upstairs? She started to shiver, her teeth rattled and she moaned, and that silenced the voices.
“She’s awake!” Mother Pedersen looked at Teacher with what might have been joy, except that Anette had never before seen joy in Mother Pedersen’s eyes. Blinking, trying to clear her vision, she struggled to recall the last thing she had seen before falling asleep.
Fredrik! Where was he? Where—they’d been outside, in the storm, the storm—oh, the storm! The howling and the swirling, gritty ice-snow, the cold—she was shivering more violently, again as if she was outside and not inside. They’d fallen, she remembered that—they’d fallen into the ravine.
But that was all she remembered.
Anette pressed her hands against the mattress to raise herself up to a sitting position, but there was a bolt of pain in her left hand when she did and she fell over on her left side as if her hand had simply given out; she couldn’t get the leverage she needed. So she rolled over on her back, blinked some more, and stared at the ceiling.
“Don’t move, Anette, you’re not strong enough. Stay quiet, kjaereste,” Teacher whispered, and Anette’s head spun again. No one had ever called her that before. She realized she was being talked to in her native tongue, and she relaxed a little.
“But Fredrik…” Anette mumbled. She turned her head to gaze at Teacher, who was right next to the bed. Mother Pedersen was hovering over Teacher, clasping and unclasping her hands. Both of them looked tired—even Mother Pedersen’s lively hair looked limp. Teacher was thinner than before, and paler, and the tip of her nose was blistered, like she’d had a sunburn.
At the mention of Fredrik, both of them looked away.
“I don’t think…” Teacher whispered to Mother Pedersen. But Mother Pedersen shook her head.
“We have to tell the truth, she deserves that.” Then Mother Pedersen came to the other side of the bed, and she knelt down; she took Anette’s right hand in hers, and Anette marveled at how callused Mother Pedersen’s hands were, just like Mama’s hands had been. But Mother Pedersen’s nails were so pretty and pink and buffed; Anette had never suspected the palms were rough from work.
“Where is Fredrik?” Anette whispered; her throat was parched, she longed for water.
“Fredrik died, Anette,” Mother Pedersen said, her voice matter-of-fact but not cruel. “He died, in the storm. I found you both, together, the morning after—over a week ago, now. You were in the ravine. He had—” Mother Pedersen had to look away for a moment, and Anette—despite the deepening misery reaching out to draw her back into the nightmare she’d only just left—was astonished to see that she had tears running down her cheeks.
Mother Pedersen took a breath and forced herself to look at Anette. “He had taken his clothes off, Anette. He covered you with them. He saved your life.”
And Anette, in that moment before she lost consciousness again, was filled with bitter anger; she wanted to slap Fredrik in the face and call him a stupid, careless boy.