The Children's Blizzard(40)

Raina shut her eyes as her body trembled even more than it had in the storm; she was still frozen. But not so frozen that her heart didn’t thunder with guilt.

She opened her eyes and caught Tor’s glance; he was looking at her accusingly. No longer were they the team that had brought these children to safety—she could only pray, because Rosa was barely breathing as Mrs. Halvorsan knelt before her, peeling off the icy stockings from her feet. Raina, once again, was the monster who had prevented Tor from following his little brother out into the storm.

“Fredrik went after Anette,” Raina began to explain shakily; her voice was raspy and frail. “Anette Pedersen. She ran out into the storm for home. Fredrik followed her, and Tor was about to go after him, but I wouldn’t let him. It’s my fault. I needed Tor to get these children safely here. I couldn’t have done this without him.”

The Halvorsans exchanged stricken looks; Mrs. Halvorsan hid her face in her hands and began to sob. Mr. Halvorsan, without a word, went to a coatrack and began to pile clothing on—coat, scarf, gloves.

“Papa!” Tor stumbled toward him. “Let me go, it’s my fault, let me—” But the boy was weak, too weak; Raina rushed after him, pulling him back. He turned on her, trying to push her away; he was fighting, still. But like a tired kitten fights, although his words contained venom.

“You!” He hit at Raina, his fist striking her shoulder, his eyes full of fury. “You stopped me! If something happened to him I’ll never, ever forgive you! Papa—don’t go out there! Don’t—let me!”

    He twisted out of Raina’s grip, and flung himself at his father, who picked the strapping lad up as if he were a baby. Tor writhed and struggled and finally began to cry, a jagged, hoarse cry, but his father placed him in a chair with finality—pausing to gently kiss his eldest son on the forehead.

“I hate you. I hate you.” Tor threw the words at Raina, where they landed with surprising force, given his weakened state. “I’ll never forgive you, never.”

“I know,” she whispered, unnoticed by anyone in the room but Tor. The children were crying and Mr. Halvorsan walked over to his wife, who was standing now, feverishly knotting her apron in her hands.

“I’m going after him,” Mr. Halvorsan told his wife, who looked frantically out the window at the still raging storm and bit her lip. She couldn’t tell her husband not to go—and she couldn’t tell him he should, either.

But Raina could.

Weaker than ever, swaying on her own two feet, she stumbled after Fredrik’s father as he went toward the door.

“It’s madness. Look—it’s night already. You’ll never find him in the dark; they must be at the Pedersens’ by now. It’s suicide to go out there!”

“I have to find my son,” Mr. Halvorsan told her. In his eyes, she saw Tor’s determination and honor, and she knew she couldn’t stop this giant of a man—a father; not as she had stopped Tor.

“Peter, I—” Mrs. Halvorsan began to sob as she tended to Tor, who was moaning feverishly in the chair, finally giving in to his exhaustion. “I don’t know, I don’t know. My God, we have the others to think of, if anything happens to— But Fredrik!”

    “Don’t go,” Raina pleaded one last time. “And please, don’t blame Tor—blame me!”

Peter Halvorsan paused as he was winding another scarf about his face, leaving room only for his eyes, which somehow looked down at her, kindly.

“I don’t blame anything but this cursed land and my folly in coming here,” he said. Then he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

Raina turned toward the nightmarish scene before her: children still shivering, some sobbing for their parents, as Mrs. Halvorsan was fetching a pan from a shelf near the stove; she dashed outside to fill the pan with snow, and she started bathing Rosa’s feet in it. Arvid was hunched over by the fire, wheezing, his thin shoulders rising up to his ears. Rosa lay still, so still, and Raina glanced at the little girl’s feet; they were purple. Purple as the sky must be outside, obscured by the still-raging storm that shook the little house and pounded the windows.

Tor was deeply asleep—he must have fainted. Raina crept over to him, picking her way among the children lying, like fallen soldiers, in the crowded room, too exhausted to take any of their frozen outer garments off. For a moment Raina allowed herself a morsel of satisfaction; she had gotten them all here anyway. Who knew what lay ahead—frostbite was a concern, of course, and she glanced again over to little Rosa with her tiny, blackening feet; she knew that once the feet thawed the girl would be in a torment of pain. But still, they were all here, and not lost on the prairie.

    Except for Fredrik and Anette.

Raina knelt down next to Tor, and put her hand on his forehead, clammy with perspiration.

“I’m so sorry. But I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Then she felt light-headed, a fuzzy blackness clouding the outer corners of her vision. Sitting back on her heels, she took one last glimpse at his troubled young face. Her eyelids fluttered, and she felt herself falling, welcoming the exhaustion that overwhelmed her determination.

Finally, Raina slept.





CHAPTER 19


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