CHAPTER VIII
WHERE IS MARTHA-GRETA?
Anna-Lisa quieted and calmed Brita-Carrie with baby talk and a little warm milk. The little one, now youngest, was tucked in solidly on the sled. Maglena, for safety’s sake, now walked behind and pushed. She kept her snow-blinded eyes wide open to watch that this little one too should not roll off and be lost to them. Andy’s warnings were not necessary--they plodded slowly and heavily through the drifts, tired, frightened, hungry. They walked in heavy grief over little Martha-Greta, who, with her funny talk, her comical little ways, had been such a joy to them all. They forgot entirely how tiresome she had been sometimes, too, when she had cried all night, and had needed to be looked after, dressed, and fed, carried and fussed over in every way.
‘I always thought she was a fairy child’ (destined to die young), said Anna-Lisa, with tears in her voice.
‘Yes, it flew over me, too, when she said she wanted to go to mother in heavenly Canaan,’ added Maglena with an old person’s sad, troubled expression.
‘Well, if only the wolf hasn’t taken her,’ remarked Magnus, with the wise air of an old man. ‘He is dangerous in the winter. Up in Barren Bay he’s been away up to the houses.’
‘Oh, please keep still!’ fumed Maglena. ‘Do you want us to go here thinking that the wolf has torn up little Martha-Greta? If Andy doesn’t find her, then she flew up herself to “hennenly Tana” and mother has been here after her, even if we didn’t see it in the snow.’
‘You can’t be so sure of that either,’ objected Per-Erik warily, and spat in front of him. ‘Bostrom at home scared a bear out of his hole, and now he’s running around starving, of course. Maybe old Bruin got her.’
‘Of course,’ Maglena mocked Per-Erik with a whining voice. ‘And all the way from home here, where it’s nearly the end of the world, he came to eat up our little Martha-Greta. I suppose the big pig at Sven Paul’s has come after her too, and the big ram at the school-teacher’s, so he can gore her to death.’
Maglena burst into tears. ‘You’re so horrid to think of such awful things when it’s awful enough, anyway, that I--that I get mad. It’s nicer to think then that mother flew down after little Martha-Greta, her darling. If she only could, she’d have taken Brita-Carrie and me with her too.’
‘Don’t begin to talk as if you were a fairy child too.’ Anna-Lisa interrupted her sister’s angry outburst. ‘I think we’d better not think anything till we hear what Andy says when he comes after us.’
‘Well, I suppose he’ll never find us,’ muttered Magnus.
But he did. He came climbing through the snow when the group were so tired, so exhausted that they had strength neither to talk nor to be ‘mad’ at each other. They couldn’t even feel to see if there were any bits of food left.
If only Anna-Lisa had stopped or sat down to rest in a drift, the whole company would have followed her example, first of all the little boys, in their heavy, troublesome clothes. It was Golden Horn, who, most of all, prevented them from sitting down and going to sleep for always. If one of the children only turned to the side with that purpose, she ran off with a loud bleat. And then they had to follow, so afraid were they of losing her. But they could not follow even her much longer.
Magnus, who long had walked stumblingly, fell forward and snarled angrily when Anna-Lisa wanted to help him to his feet and start him off again.
So it was like a miracle when Andy finally came, for with him new life came into the children again somehow.
_But he came without Martha-Greta!_
He had gone back all the way to the cheese-vat wreath, but had not seen a trace of their little girl.
‘The wolf takes care of what he gets,’ remarked Magnus with a doubtful side-glance at Maglena, who, with a bright look upward, was sure that then she had been right when she said that mother had taken Martha-Greta up to heavenly Canaan. The wolf would surely leave at least some rags, she insisted eagerly.
‘Oh, he probably took her away with him with her clothes on,’ said Magnus stubbornly.
‘What do you think, Andy?’ said Maglena, and crept, trembling with fear, up to her brother.
‘I don’t know. There was only white snow across the road the whole way, Maglena. I can’t bear to think that the wolf has taken little Martha-Greta. It is so awful--as if it were my fault.’
‘You ought to be glad instead, because, you see, mother has taken the little one up to her.’
Maglena stroked her brother’s cheek with her ice-stiffened mitten.
But it did not comfort him. The tears fell and melted together with the lashing, driving snow as he walked on, bent forward dragging the sled, now far too light. He scarcely felt relief when he caught sight of the road up the bank which led from the river to the solid earth again. And now, for the first time, Andy noticed that the storm had passed and the western sky was clearing.