The Children's Blizzard

by Melanie Benjamin

  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

  •••••

  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.

  “My shoes! My shoes, Mama!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Raina said, as she desperately tried to cover the girl’s wet stockings with her hands; her shoes were gone, and the water was already freezing into ice on her tiny, vulnerable feet. “We have to go.”

  But how? She shouted for Tor, for Arvid, for anybody. As she stood in about two feet of icy slush, there were no words to describe the shocking cold, there was no way to prevent it from racing up her legs, her torso, devouring her heart. She thought she might freeze where she stood, an icy statue with an equally frozen child in her arms, and no one would find them until spring.

  “Hand her up to me!” It was Tor; somehow she could make out that he was on his stomach, leaning over the bank, his arms outstretched.

  “I can’t.” Raina began to sob; she was reaching as high as she could, Rosa now ominously silent and limp in her arms, but she couldn’t quite get the child to Tor. Her arms were like noodles, seemingly without bones to support them as they shook.

  “Try, Raina, try!” And it was like Papa’s voice in her ears, although she knew it was Tor’s; even though she couldn’t see him, she imagined Tor’s encouraging eyes watching her, sure she wouldn’t disappoint him. So she did try. With a strangled cry she heaved herself farther out of the slush, standing on her toes, straining every muscle in her torso and arms to raise up the deadweight of the child, and finally she felt Tor’s arms mingled with hers as he reached down and, with a groan, hauled the girl up to the bank.

  She was so relieved, so exhausted with emotion and exertion, that she was tempted to fall down where she was. Tor would get the others across, get them to the house. She knew this with the certainty that she knew the sun would rise in the morning. So Raina could simply sink into the bank of snow and ice, let the snow cover her up, and close her eyes and sleep. Every nerve, every muscle in her body cried out for this rest. Her eyelids began to flutter; she felt weak, limp—

  Until an arm reached out and grabbed hers, and a fierce voice invaded her torpor.

  “Raina, you have to keep going. I need you, Raina.”

  She shook her head, she tried to quiet the tremor that was rattling her entire body, but she couldn’t. She reached up, and allowed Tor to help her up the bank, her feet stumbling, now feeling like entire blocks of ice, but somehow she made it.

  She flopped like a fish beside an inert Rosa, and Enid and Sofia. She watched, numbly, as Tor made his way—even more unsteadily—across the bridge and returned with Clara in his arms.

  Then she pushed herself up, and crossed the bridge again, too—she barely noticed her skirts this time, her entire lower body was so numb. She grabbed Eva, unceremoniously, into her arms and gingerly crossed the bridge, dropped the girl on the ground, and went back. Somehow. Her mind had stopped working—thank goodness, for that meant it stopped questioning, as well. She was operating on pure instinct now.

  The older children were able to cross on their own, with Raina on one end of the bridge shouting encouragement, and Tor on the other doing the same. And finally, they were all across the creek.

  Rosa wasn’t moving at all, but the other little girls were able to stand; there wasn’t time to tie them all together again. Tor picked Rosa up and he and Raina herded the children in the direction they thought led to the house. With every shuffle, every pitiful mewl, like a weak kitten, from an exhausted child who had come to school that morning happy and well and strong, Raina prayed that they were going in the right direction. But she simply couldn’t tell.

  Until she heard a ringing…faint, then getting stronger. A cowbell. Someone was desperately ringing a cowbell.

  “That’s Mama,” Tor shouted, joyful. “That’s Mama ringing the bell!”

  Raina started to weep, although strangely there were no more tears in her, no more moisture inside; the vortex of ice and frigid air had sucked it all up, dried her out. She urged the children on. They all heard the bell ringing with a frenzy. They stumbled toward a faint light, now veiled, now clearly visible, now veiled again, until they were standing, dumbstruck, in front of a grey farmhouse with kerosene lamps burning in every window. A frantic woman in a big wool cap with earflaps on her head, shivering in a man’s overcoat, was standing with the door open, ringing a cowbell with all her might. When she saw the bedraggled group materialize out of the storm like spirits, she gave a cry of joy, dropped the bell, and rushed out to grab Sofia, who was about to tumble over where she stood.

  “Good God! Good God in heaven! You’re here—Papa, they’re here, they’re here! Tor and Fredrik and all the children, they’re here!”

  Tor handed Rosa, who was deathly still, to his father who was towering and strong and so like her own papa, Raina wanted to weep again. After the others were all inside, Raina allowed Mrs. Halvorsan to grab her by the arms and pull her into the blessed protection of the house.

  Raina stood, numb, while all around her was chaos. Mr. and Mrs. Halvorsan rushed about, crying out as they peeled icy layers off of their sons’ schoolmates. Raina could only slump against a wall, steeling herself for what was about to come.

  “But—Fredrik? Where is Fredrik?” Mrs. Halvorsan’s voice rose higher and higher with panic.

  “Tor, where is your brother?” Mr. Halvorsan’s booming voice almost shattered the windows. “Tell me, son, where is Fredrik?”

  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 s
houlder, 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

  •••••

  THE BLIZZARD, CREATED WHEN AN enormous trough of cold air rushing in from the Arctic had met up with an equally enormous influx of warm, wet air from the gulf, gobbled up everything in its path. The collision generated a force of energy no one could remember seeing in their lifetimes, but that all would talk about with wonder until the day they died. With so much energy, the storm kept on pulsating over the land, eventually reaching down all the way to Texas as it marched eastward.

  And as it marched, something took its place: a high-pressure system of air so frigidly punishing, it froze exposed flesh within minutes.

  * * *

  —

  AT SOME POINT, ANETTE SENSED something that brought her out of the deepest sleep she’d ever known. It wasn’t a sound, but an absence of it—the wind had stopped howling. Her ears still rang from the memory of that noise but were trying, desperately, to understand the eerie silence that had replaced it.

  She couldn’t move, though, to see what had happened; something heavy was pressing on her chest, keeping her pinned to the ground. Her entire torso was covered, save for her left hand, which she tried to move but couldn’t; she couldn’t feel for what was on top of her.

  All she knew was that the storm was over, but it was still very dark. Nighttime.

  And it was unbearably cold, but her eyes closed anyway; she was too exhausted, too thoroughly frigid, to register more. She gave up; she wanted to say Fredrik’s name, but then she didn’t care.

  She fell back asleep.

  * * *

  —

  GERDA, TOO, WAS DIMLY AWARE when the wind stopped roaring. She didn’t wake up, but she’d been dreaming of Tiny riding his horse out on the prairie, the two of them racing a screaming locomotive. In her dream, the train abruptly stopped, as if it had run out of steam, and Tiny waved his cowboy hat in triumph, whooping and yelling; he pulled on the reins of little Poco, stood up in his saddle, and winked at Gerda. Then he dug his heels into the horse’s sides and galloped away from her; she watched until he was a speck on the horizon.

  She shivered in her sleep and thought that someone had left a door open somewhere because her feet were cold. She flung out an arm and it hit something, something covered in clothing, but the something didn’t move or flinch, so she withdrew her arm, pulled it over her torso for warmth.

  She murmured Tiny’s name, although she didn’t know it. She fell back asleep so she could resume her dream, so she could run after him, before he disappeared forever.

  * * *

  —

  AT SOME POINT, Raina opened her eyes; her clothes were thawing, damp now. The fireplace was roaring, and she turned her head. Mrs. Halvorsan was sitting on a chair next to it, watching the flames. The room was too cold to be cozy, but it was reassuring, with all the children sleeping soundly. But then Raina heard a tiny moaning—like a mouse crying—and she pushed herself up on her elbows.

  Little Rosa was thrashing about, asleep but obviously in pain.

  “How is she?” Raina asked, and Mrs. Halvorsan turned to her in surprise. She was a tall, lanky woman, with soft brown hair that, despite all her exertions, remained in a determined bun at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were the same blue as Tor’s, but they were anxious; even when she smiled at Raina, there was a worried “V” between them.

  “The poor thing, she’ll lose her feet. There’s no saving them, and I’ve got nothing for her pain save for some whiskey we keep for medicine. I need to give her more.”

  “Is Mr. Halvorsan back?” Raina rose on shaking limbs; she was still shivering out all the cold. But it wasn’t as violent as before, so she could walk into the kitchen, over to the table where Mrs. Halvorsan was pouring the whiskey into a tin cup.

  “No” was all Mrs. Halvorsan said. She was not inviting speculation.

  “The storm stopped,” Raina said with wonder, realizing, for the first time, that the house wasn’t rattling with the wind.

  “Yes, and the temperature has dropped. It must be twenty below.”

  The implication of this silenced Raina. Anyone caught o
ut on the prairie—

  No, she couldn’t think of it. Besides Fredrik and Anette and now Mr. Halvorsan, she wondered, for the first time, about her family. Mama and Papa—had they had the good sense to stay inside? Or had they, too, been caught out, doing the usual chores—tending to the livestock, letting the horses have some time outside the barn, when the weather had seemed so innocent? Just this morning—no, yesterday. For it was three A.M. now, she saw from the mantel clock.

  And Gerda, what had she done? She would have been with a schoolhouse full of students, too, up in Dakota Territory. There was a chance the storm had missed her, but Raina, having been out in the infinite wilderness of it, thought that chance was slim. Raina didn’t know what kind of schoolhouse it was; Gerda had never said whether it was a soddie, or a small cabin, or a bigger house with wood but no insulation, like Raina’s school. But Gerda was so sensible, so strong. Surely she had managed to stay out of the storm, keep her children safe, too. Unless, of course, something had happened beyond her control, like had happened to Raina.

  She found herself yawning repeatedly and couldn’t help herself; she knew she should stay up and keep Mrs. Halvorsan company until her husband came back. She should take her turn tending to Rosa. But she was still so exhausted, it was like she was walking through quicksand as she sheepishly crept back to the room full of children, and curled back up among them, next to Clara and Enid. She reached out a hand to pat both children, satisfied they were sleeping; alive.

  The one person she didn’t think about was Gunner Pedersen.

  Then she fell back into a sleep with arms—arms that enfolded her, kept her still and warm, pinning her down against her will.

  JANUARY 13, 1888, 12:15 A.M.

  SIGNAL OFFICE