The Children's Blizzard - Melanie Benjamin Page 0,1

had jumped the firebreak with all her might. Just beyond the hastily plowed ditch, the emerging bluestem grasses hissed; some exploded, but the fire did not look as if it was going to cross the break.

“Save some of that for the others, Raina,” her father called, and even from that distance—he was at the head of the west break—and through the sooty air, she recognized the twinkle in his eyes. Then he turned and pointed south. “Gerda! Go!”

Raina watched her older sister leap toward another vaulting flame, beating it out before it had a chance. It was almost a game, really, a game of chicken. Who would win, the flames or the Olsens? So far, in ten years of homesteading, the Olsens had come out victorious every time.

Gerda smiled triumphantly, waving back at Raina, the outside row of vulnerable wheat, only a few inches tall, between them. At times like this, when the air was so stifling and smoky, Raina didn’t feel quite so small, quite so inconsequential as when the air was clear. On a cool, still early summer morning, the prairie could make her feel like the smallest of insects, trapped in a great dome of endless pale blue sky, the waving grasses undulating, just like the sea, against an unbroken horizon. But Gerda, Raina knew, never felt this way. Gerda was stronger, bigger. Gerda was untouchable, even from the prairie fires that flared up regularly in Nebraska, spring and fall. Gerda would know what to do in the face of fire, or ice. Or men. Gerda—

Gerda wasn’t here.

Raina blinked, gaped at the McGuffey Reader in her hand. She wasn’t on the prairie; she was in a schoolhouse. Her schoolhouse. The second class was droning the lesson:

God made the little birds to sing,

And flit from tree to tree;

’Tis He who sends them in the spring

To sing for you and me.

Raina sat straighter, tried to stretch her neck but it was no use; she was smaller than the biggest boy sitting in the last row of benches. Her pupils—precious minds that were hers to form, or so she’d been told in the letter accompanying her certificate. But the oldest one was fifteen, only a year younger than she. And the way he looked at her made her shiver, made her think of a well that was so deep, the bottom would always remain a mystery.

No, it wasn’t this boy’s eyes that made her think that; this boy’s eyes were blue, his gaze was measured, and if there was a wildness in them—only at times, for he was a well-brought-up lad—it was a wildness she believed she could tame.

His eyes were chocolate brown and soft with an understanding Raina had never before felt she needed. Until she first beheld that fathomless gaze.

Gerda would not feel so silly. Gerda would not allow herself to be so—understandable. But Gerda was teaching in her own school across the border into Dakota Territory, three days’ travel away, and boarding with a family there. A family not at all like the Pedersens, with whom Raina found herself sharing a roof, food, and air that was becoming too polluted with glances, sighs, and tears. And beds, beds upstairs, beds downstairs. Beds without borders, without walls, too exposed to those glances and sighs.

Her mother should have prepared her for this, Raina sometimes thought. Her mother should have taught her, warned her as she used to warn Raina not to wander into the tallgrass prairie when she was little, not to touch a hot stove, not to eat the pokeweed berries that flowered late in summer; her mother should have prevented her—

From what? From going out into the world? That was the dream her mother most cherished: that Raina and Gerda would never have to homestead, that they could go to college, then live and teach in a city someday. But life in this new country was hard and expensive and they had no relatives to act as a cushion. First, the two girls had to teach and save their wages.

Her mother couldn’t have prevented this, and Raina knew it. Her mother had met her father when they were barely out of childhood. Her mother was soft and childlike, in the best way—she loved to sing songs and make up games as she went about her work. Her mother wasn’t meant for homesteading, for harsh environments and cruel blows; the entire family, Raina and Gerda included, tried to protect her as best they could