“WE HAVE TO LEAVE.”
Raina was surprised to hear her voice—a calm, rational voice—say the words out loud; she’d been sure she was only thinking them. But once she said them, they made sense; her mind, not her heart, was finally in control. Even as the snow kept blowing through the broken window, the temperature dropping with each heartbeat, she was sure of one thing. It was all up to her; no one would come to save her. Not her big sister, not her father. Not Gunner Pedersen.
“Children,” Raina shouted over the wind and the sniffles and the wails—she did a quick headcount, just to make sure. Ten children, plus Tor. Sofia Nyquist was the youngest, only six, sobbing for her mother; her older sister, Enid, barely older, seven. Rosa and Eva Larsen, twins, eight years old; Albert Blickenstaff, nine; Clara Hagen and Tana Berg, ten; Albert’s big brother, Walter, and his best friend, Daniel Hagen, eleven. Tall but painfully thin Arvid Dahl, thirteen; he was the biggest boy next to Tor but so frail from a lifetime of illnesses, and his asthma was already making his breathing squeak and rattle.
Surveying them, Raina found herself unaccountably touched by small things: The crooked part in Daniel’s hair—she imagined him refusing to let his mother part his hair anymore; that was for a baby and he was a big boy, he could do it himself. The way Clara and Tana held hands, as they always did, sitting side by side on the bench or out at recess skipping together. Enid’s lopsided smile; one of her front teeth was missing, and she wasn’t embarrassed about it at all, she smiled boldly, brilliantly, defying anyone to make fun of her. Walter’s way of hitching up his suspenders, just like a man would, an unconscious yet proud little gesture, as if he was constantly surveying a field of bounty, mentally calculating the income from it. Yet he was a small child, finer boned than the other boys, better fitted for a general store than the farm that he’d been destined for since birth out here on the prairie.
Raina realized she’d not really taken the time to get to know her pupils; her mind had been so distracted, first by the excitement of leaving home, then by the oppressive atmosphere at the Pedersens’, her fear of Anna, and then the cyclone of confusion, hope, desire, that Gunner stirred in her. Taunted her with, to be honest. Her pupils had been the least of everything; they had occupied the smallest space in her brain and heart, and she chided herself. Teaching was her job, and these children were her charges. It was only now that she was about to lead them out into the chaos of the storm that she fully realized it. Fully saw them as individuals.
“Miss Olsen, please, before we go—let me just run out for a minute to see if I can find Fredrik and Anette.” Tor dared to take her hand—a big breach in manners, but he was so desperate. He clutched her hand until it hurt. “Please, Fredrik is so little, Mama and Papa have always told me I have to look out for him. Please!”
Raina longed to let him go, because she was thinking of Anette right then. Of all her pupils, Anette was the only one she really knew. Anette, unloved, misused; it was so rare to see any light behind her pale blue eyes, except when she was with Fredrik. Anette, terrified to displease Anna Pedersen; that’s why she left, Raina knew that with certainty. How many times had that awful woman told the girl she couldn’t linger after school, that she would be punished severely if she did? Anna was not the kind of person to threaten punishment if she didn’t have one already in mind. Anette knew that better than anyone. No wonder she’d sprinted off for home.
“Tor, I can’t stop you, you know that. I can only trust you to make the right decision.” Raina had never spoken so honestly as she did in that moment—the moment that Tor Halvorsan shook off the last vestiges of childhood, squared his shoulders, met her gaze evenly, and promised to stay by her side.
Raina was moved to witness this transformation. She turned away, quickly, before he could see the tears in her eyes.
“Now,” she said, going to the children, putting her arms, briefly, around each one, to give them some courage—she herself felt as if she had none, but she must pretend for their sakes. “Girls, untie your aprons, please.”
Looking at her in surprise, they obeyed. Little Clara regarded her apron—a pretty, useless one, different from the other girls’ in that it was of a dainty fabric, embroidered in colorful threads along the hem and the waistband—with a sigh. But she untied it.
“Good.” Raina added her own apron to the bundle, then she told the children to stand in line, from tallest to smallest; Arvid to Sofia. They obeyed, shuddering, stamping their feet, the snow still blasting in from the huge open window and the temperature falling by the second. They were clad in the coats and shawls they’d come to school with, but none of them was adequately dressed; neither was Raina. She thought of her heavy woolen coat, which she’d carelessly left hanging outside to air. But at least she had a long skirt, and a petticoat; the little girls’ skirts only hit their knees. Clara and Sofia had wool hats, and Tana had a scarf wound up to her eyes. So did Arvid. But only half the children wore mittens or gloves.
“Now, we’re going to tie ourselves together, you see? Like a chain, a people chain.” Without realizing it, Raina had started talking in Norwegian, and although Albert and Walter were German, they seemed to understand.
She handed the aprons out to most of the children, and they tied the strings first around their waists, then each new apron to the string of the one before it, so that when they were done, the children resembled one long—oddly gay, with Clara’s festive apron right in the middle—insect with ten heads and twenty pairs of arms and legs. Albert started to giggle, and soon the others did, too, charmed with the novelty of it.
“Shhh!” Raina scolded them; they had to conserve their energy. She beckoned Tor over to where she was standing, shivering, searching outside; the landscape wasn’t merely bleak, it was angry, a roiling, churning ocean. The flat Nebraska land that everyone joked about wasn’t, really. There were still plenty of obstacles waiting to trip you up if you weren’t careful; gopher holes and stubborn grass that didn’t die off in the winter completely, little creeks, ravines, not to mention barbed-wire fencing. And there would be no way to see any of these, with the storm cloud touching the very ground, until you were upon them. Tangled up in them.
“Tor, your house is the nearest, I think?” She wasn’t sure about this; she had been so caught up in her own drama that she’d never really gotten a good read on the land. Her father would be disappointed in her; he had always told her that you get the lay of the land first, then worry about the landscape of emotions. The land was the most cruel, he’d always said.
But he was wrong, although Raina couldn’t tell him just how.
“Yes, Miss Olsen. About half a mile southwest of here.”
Southwest—that was good, they wouldn’t be walking directly into the teeth of the snarling demon outside. “So if we walk outside the door, we head at a diagonal, to our right?”
He nodded.
“Are there any landmarks—barns or fences or trees, maybe even a haystack, that might help us stay in the right direction?”
The boy pondered, his heavy eyebrows drawing together in a sharp “V” on his forehead. “There’s a small creek right outside our barn, with some planks we use as a footbridge.”
“But nothing before then?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“All right.”
The wind screamed louder, and the top piece of the stove blew off its mooring to the ceiling; the children cried, tried to run from it but got tangled up, each going in a different direction. Raina rushed to sort it out, and knew she couldn’t put off their departure another minute. They would freeze to death here.
They would freeze to death outside, too, but please, God in heaven, she would get them to the Halvorsans’ before they did. They would have to move quickly; she shook her head at the little girls.
“Tor, you might have to carry Sofia. I’ll take Enid up front with me.” She untied Enid, smiled into her wide grey eyes, lips that trembled from cold, excitement, or fear, who could tell? She smoothed the little girl’s copper braids. “Those are very pretty ribbons, Enid.”
“Th-Thank you, Miss Olsen,” she said, and braved a tiny smile, which pierced Raina’s heart. The trust, the innocence, placed right into her very hands. The bravery of these sons and daughters of immigrants.
“All right, children! We’re going now, but we’re together. Nothing bad can happen to us if we’re together. We’re going to Tor’s house, and when we get there I bet there will be some cookies and warm milk, and we’ll play games until your parents come to get you. That will be fun, won’t it?”
There were a few excited yelps but, for the most part, the children were silent. Trusting. Lifting Enid up, she nodded at Tor, who held on to Rosa Larsen, Sofia already on his back.
“Let’s go,” she cried, bending her head against the wind as she led them all through the doorway of the schoolhouse. She paused for a moment to get her bearing, then she faced the southwest, feeling the pull of the ten children and Tor behind her, all of them in her wake, but attached to her. The children were too stunned by the storm to do more than gasp.
Then she stepped into the howling void.