Believing the Dream (22 page)

“Astrid.” Ingeborg’s voice gained strength. “Little one, what is wrong?”

“Mor, you wouldn’t wake up, and I heard you crying.” Astrid burrowed closer, like a baby animal seeking milk from a reluctant mother.

Ingeborg blinked once and then again, stroking her daughter’s braids with a trembling hand.
Where have I been? What happened?
She shivered. Was the door open to the outside? Why was it so cold in her room? She sat up, looking around. They were in the parlor, her knitting in a heap on the floor by the foot of the sofa.

“Hush, Astrid, it is all right now.”

“B-but Mor, you were . . . you sounded like one of Tante Kaaren’s puppies when they are hungry. What is wrong?”

Ingeborg shook her head.
What is wrong?
She glanced out of the corner of her eye, trying to catch a glimpse of what had gripped her with such deadly talons. A shadow slithered away before she could truly see it.

She clutched Astrid to her chest, raining kisses on her daughter’s hair, her forehead, and her wet cheeks. “A bad dream, I think.” A horrible dream, but dreams did not live on after awakening, did they? And if not a dream, then what?

She sucked in a deep cleansing breath and wiped the tears she’d not known were there with the back of one hand.

“Why are you home from school so soon?” But glancing out the window, Ingeborg knew by the shadows that some time had passed. The children were home from school, supper should be started, and here she’d been . . . She leaned forward and picked up her knitting, new wool socks for Thorliff, now a mass of knots, dropped stitches, and tangled wool.

Astrid stared from the knitting to her mother. “What happened?”

“I don’t know, but I shall set it to rights later. How would you like a cup of hot cocoa? I think we both need one.” She rose and brushed off her apron as if to brush off the vestiges of the dream. “Where is Andrew?”

“He stopped at the barn. Far called him.”

Ingeborg dumped the rat’s nest of yarn into the hand-woven basket Metiz had given her for Christmas and took her daughter’s hand. “Perhaps you would peel apples for me, and we shall bake a pie for supper.”

“After our cocoa?”

“After our cocoa.” She checked the logs in the stove in the parlor, now chunks of shimmering coals. Where had the time gone? Attacked by shivers that stung like a hoard of angry bees, she took a chunk of wood from the woodbox and added it, along with two more, to the coals, then closed the glass-centered door and adjusted the damper. No wonder she’d been shivering. The fire had nearly gone out.
Lord,
what happened to me?

Walking to the kitchen felt like pulling her feet out of the swamp that formed near the river in the springtime, gumbo heavy on her boots. When wet, the black soil of the Red River Valley could bring horses, wagons, and machinery to a stop, let alone a human foot.

Ingeborg shivered again.
Lord, I feel cold from the inside out
. She rubbed her hands over the cookstove in the kitchen and checked the firebox to see coals there winking in a pile of gray ash. Opening the damper full wide, she took a piece of pitch pine and, with the heavy knife she kept on the warming shelf, shaved some curls onto the coals to start the fire more quickly, then added several small sticks. Smoke rose before the flames licked the curls, stinging her eyes, the pain feeling almost welcome, the heat a cause for rejoicing.

“You almost let the fire go out?” Astrid handed her mother the pot they always used for cocoa, her voice and face wearing matching question marks.

“I know.” Ingeborg hugged her daughter around the shoulders. But she couldn’t answer the questions unasked. Or wouldn’t as she watched the red and orange flames eat the wood, turning it black.

Black like the pit.
Oh, God, please, not again. I cannot be trapped
by that
. She closed her eyes for a moment.
You promised. Where were
you? I called for you . . . to help me . . . to save me
.

She opened her eyes to see Astrid’s face.

“Mor.” Panic colored her words like the flames devouring the wood.

“Get the cocoa. Thanks be to God, he sent me an angel.”

Astrid clamped her arms around her mother’s waist, and the two of them stared at the fire a moment longer. “So pretty, aren’t they? The flames, I mean?”

“Ja, that they are.” Ingeborg laid her cheek on the top of Astrid’s head, the hair, in the morning so tightly bound in braids, now tickling her nose. Then she set her daughter off with a gentle push and added more wood to the blaze. She set the iron lids back in place, first the divider, then the back lid, and finally the front, the clatter of them settling in place a welcome barrier to the now heating fire. “Bring the sugar with you too.”

Together they spooned out the precious cocoa powder and sugar, added water to mix the two, and when that bubbled, added a stream of milk, Astrid stirring all the while.

The cat rose from its box behind the stove, arched and stretched, then wound itself around their ankles, a plaintive cry to be picked up.

“You silly thing,” Astrid murmured as she snuggled the cat under her chin. The resulting purr made Ingeborg and Astrid share a smile and warm giggle.

That night when Haakan and Ingeborg cuddled spoon fashion, waiting for their body heat to warm the bed, he ran his fingers through hair he’d asked her not to braid. “What happened this afternoon?”

Ingeborg scooted her back more tightly against his front. She sighed, wishing she could just say nothing. “Astrid told you?”

“Ja.” His breath tickled her ear.

“I . . . I’m not sure.” She could feel him waiting. “I . . . guess it was a dream, but I don’t remember falling asleep. I was sitting on the sofa, knitting Thorliff ’s stocking, and then I don’t remember.” She closed her eyes to see only black on her eyelids. “Oh.” She could hear whimpering, feel the cold as if someone threw back the covers and she were in a snowbank. She pushed herself into Haakan’s warmth. “The . . . the pit. It came back. I was falling. I screamed for God to help. But nothing. No one! He promised m-me. He said He would never leave me nor forsake me but . . .” She swallowed a scream.

“Ingeborg, dear heart, you are safe. Here, with me, with us, you are safe. The pit did not get you. God answered. Astrid came. She found you.” All the while he stroked her shoulders and arms, comforting her. “Shh, easy, you are safe. God did not fail you. Shh.”

“Those years ago when . . . when Roald disappeared, I hardly remember how terrible that time was, but I do know that black pit nearly devoured me. Thanks be to God for Kaaren and Agnes. They prayed so and brought me back.”

“They said you almost worked yourself into an early grave.” He continued stroking her shoulder, relieving the tension so the muscles no longer quivered.

“I know, but I could not let the land go. I could not. We had worked too hard, dreamed of our own homes in this new land.” Her words grew further apart.

Bit by bit the warmth seeped into her skin, her muscles, her very soul. His voice, his hands soothing. Her eyes drifted closed, and she relaxed against him, her even breathing broken only by a slight shiver and later a hiccup.

“Ah, my Inge, how I love you.” Haakan sighed and whispered his own prayer for Godly protection before he joined her in sleep.

“Mor, are you really all right?” Astrid looked over the rim of her cup the next morning.

“Why? What are you talking about?” Andrew stared from his sister to his mother and back again. “Is Mor sick?”

“Now don’t you worry. I am fine. Just had a fearsome nightmare yesterday.”

“Yes, but it was in the daytime.” Wrinkles covered Astrid’s forehead.

“You never sleep during the day, only when—”

“I am not sick. You are not to worry.” Ingeborg crossed the room and stood between her two children, a hand on each shoulder. She squeezed gently but firmly. “You understand?”
Lord, how terrible to
scare Astrid like that. What Happened to me?

Later, on the sleigh ride to town for her weekly quilting session, Ingeborg leaned close to Kaaren and told her what had transpired.

“It’s from the blizzard, I expect,” Kaaren said. “That winter we had such terrible blizzards, and with that flu, it is only through the grace of God that more people didn’t die. And I was no help. Only you kept me alive.”

“God gave us each other, that is all. And His Word that at times you had to shove down my throat.” Ingeborg flicked the reins for the horse to pick up a trot, setting the harness bells to jingling a new tune.

Seventeen-year-old Ilse leaned forward from the backseat, resting her crossed arms on the back of the front seat. “None of you talk much about those first couple of years.”

“There aren’t many of us to talk about it.” Ingeborg glanced at the young woman. “Metiz reminded me of Wolf ’s protection one day.”

“What happened?” Ilse leaned closer.

“Wolf wasn’t a pet really, but when he was half grown, Metiz had saved his life from a trap, so he adopted her and then the rest of us when we became her friends. We were his pack, I guess you’d say. Anyway, we kept the sheep in a corral by the sod barn, and about lambing time one year, we had a wolf attack. Wolf killed one of the attackers and chased off the others. We most likely would have lost the entire flock but for him.”

“And then that summer he rescued Andrew when he got lost in the tall grass.” Kaaren turned slightly so she could see Ilse’s face. “Both were true miracles.”

“Did Wolf die?”

“No, a couple of years ago he brought his mate and their pups back, as if to show us he was all right.”

“We haven’t seen him since.” Ingeborg turned toward the store. “I have to drop off these eggs. Do we need anything?”

“Is Bridget coming? We could give her a ride.”

“Ilse, why don’t you run over and ask her.” Ingeborg looped the reins around the whipstock. Since they now had a real sleigh instead of only a wagon bed on runners, she didn’t have a brake handle. Ilse jumped from the backseat and trotted down the newly built boardwalk that ran in front of the store, the furniture warehouse, and the grain elevator.

“No stops at Onkel Olaf ’s now,” Ingeborg teased, knowing that George McBride was there learning woodworking under Uncle Olaf.

Ilse just flapped her hand, sending both Ingeborg and Kaaren into a fit of chuckles.

“Her face must be red as a beet.” Ingeborg hoisted the wooden egg crate from under the robe on the backseat and climbed down. “You shouldn’t tease her like that.”

“You’re just jealous because I did so before you could.”

“Indeed.” Still grinning, Ingeborg mounted the steps to the store and opened the door, setting the bell above to tinkling.

“Who’s there?” Anner Valders called from the banking room.

“Ingeborg. I’ve brought eggs.” She inhaled the shop smells, from woodsmoke to leather, spices to tobacco, coffee, and the bite of vinegar from the pickle barrel to the right of the counter. Penny stocked whatever the folks of Blessing and those on the railroad needed. Saddles, hay rakes, and harnesses hung from the overhead beams, and back in the corner, clustered around the Singer sewing machine, fabrics of all design and color, along with threads and ribbons, beckoned every woman who came through the door. On a slow day Penny could be found there, her foot dancing on the clunking treadle, turning out whatever clothing her family needed. In the months prior to Gustaf’s birth, the Singer had hemmed flannel diapers, blankets, and gowns. People coming through Blessing heading west were always amazed at the variety of goods sold in her store.

“Be there in a minute.” Besides working in the store, Mr. Valders took care of the bank work, which due to the drought had not been overwhelming lately.

“Don’t bother. I’ll just set the crate on the counter. Has Penny already left?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Takk.” Ingeborg left the eggs and headed back outside, ignoring the part of her that wanted to see if Penny had gotten in a new shipment of sewing goods.

“He caught her.” Kaaren waved to the sight of two people talking with their hands in front of Olaf ’s furniture shop. It was only through Ilse’s painful patience that George was finally learning to sign with some dexterity.