Ransacker

by Emmy Laybourne

  “Dear God, you made it!” James said as he slid off his horse. Sissel and her giant brother looked dazed and exhausted. Sissel’s face was stained with soot, streaked with tears. He clasped her hands in his.

  “I thought … I worried you’d all been lost.”

  “We are all right,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

  Owen came from behind the house. He looked grieved and somber, as he set down blackened parts of stovepipe near a pile of their belongings. Clearly he was rummaging for anything that might be saved from the smoking husk of their home.

  James shook his hand. “Did the fire reach town?” Owen asked.

  “No, no. The river stopped it.”

  Owen motioned to Knut, and the two went to the back of the house, to leave James and Sissel alone for a moment.

  James cast his eyes around the farm. “Hanne and Stieg?” he asked Sissel.

  “Alive. Safe,” Sissel said. Using her voice clearly pained her.

  “I can’t believe you are all right.” He felt foolish. After the mad rush to get there, he hardly knew what to do with himself.

  “Do you have any fresh water?” Sissel asked.

  James shook his head.

  “How stupid of me!” he said. “I was worried. I didn’t know what I’d find.”

  Sissel coughed again. James walked toward the small pile of possessions that Owen and Knut had gathered and saw a bucket there.

  “I’m going to go refill this bucket,” he told her. “And then I’ll go to town and bring back supplies—”

  James was interrupted by the jangling of a wagon. It carried what must be a crew of volunteers and was driven by Isaiah McKray,

  Isaiah was the son of the famous gold miner Jerome McKray. Isaiah was a stout, muscly fellow with sandy-brown hair and a beard, only twenty years old but already given charge of a hotel in town and several mining outfits in the hills nearby.

  He was thick in body, built like a barrel. He was notably blunt, always spoke his mind, and was uncannily shrewd in business. James didn’t like how smart he was, or how successful.

  Now McKray hailed them from the wagon, as did the other volunteers. There was Mr. Campbell, from the mill, and Mr. Trowley, one of the carpenters who was building the new town hall, along with some other workers from that site.

  Hanne came out from the stable, and Owen and Knut walked out from the smoking shell of the house. The volunteers began exclaiming and thanking the heavens when they saw the Hemstads were alive.

  McKray climbed down, his fine suit straining at the seams to accommodate his powerful build. He was what they’d call in Chicago a bruiser. No fine suit could hide it.

  McKray shook Owen’s hand. “We’ve been making a circuit of the area, looking for survivors.”

  “Is the teacher all right?” Mr. Campbell said, craning his neck to search for Stieg.

  “He’s resting in the barn,” Hanne said.

  “Thank God!”

  “We’ve got fresh water and some blankets,” Mr. Trowley said.

  “We have food as well,” McKray added.

  Mr. Trowley started unloading supplies from the wagon.

  “Are the Hensleys all right?” Hanne asked McKray. “Did you come that way?”

  McKray shook his head. “Mrs. Hensley was in town, selling eggs, but Mr. Hensley…”

  “No!” Hanne said.

  Owen pulled her into a hug.

  “What of the Baylors?” Hanne asked, her face anxious.

  “We’ll visit them next,” McKray answered.

  Hanne rested her forehead against Owen’s chest.

  One of the workers had a flour sack bulging with food. He reached in and handed Knut a red apple and a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper. Knut took a bite of the apple, and the crunch of it made everyone look at him. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “What a blessing it is you all made it safely,” Mr. Campbell said. “How did you survive? Did you hide in the stream?”

  “We took to the barn,” Owen said. “Being sod, it didn’t burn.”

  “You got lucky,” Mr. Campbell said. “The Hensleys’ house and barn burned, and they were both sod.”

  “Listen,” Mr. Trowley said. “I think we should take you back to town. We need to stock up on more supplies, anyway, and folks will be so glad to know you all are safe.”

  Owen scratched his head, looking around the ruined farm. “Hanne, maybe we should—” he began.

  “I don’t think so,” Hanne said. “Stieg shouldn’t be moved.”

  “You can have room and board at my hotel,” McKray offered.

  “You’re also welcome to stay at the store,” James said. He was irritated with himself for not offering it first. He didn’t want to be outdone in hospitality by the jackass McKray.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Hanne said abruptly. Owen put a hand on her arm to steady her. “But if you have it, we would take some coffee. Oh, and you don’t have any headache powders, do you?”

  “We have them at the store,” James said. “I can ride back to town and get them for you.”

  “That would be very helpful,” Hanne said.

  “What else needs doing?” Mr. Campbell asked.

  “We are just tired. Thank you so much for your help,” Hanne said. “We just need to rest now.”

  “We’ll let people in town know you’re all right,” McKray said. “And do let me know if you want to come to the hotel. I would never turn away a neighbor in need.”

  James wanted to snort at that. So McKray wanted to be seen as a model citizen, did he? What a clod.

  After another round of hand shaking and promises to return in the morning, the men climbed back onto the wagon and rode off.

  James watched them go. He decided to mention McKray in his report. Maybe the boys back east could dig up something on the ambitious young man and his infamous father.

  Then James set about making a list of provisions to gather from the store. Owen worried aloud about the cost. Of course he’d worry, James realized—they’d just lost their whole crop.

  James assured Owen that they could have an unlimited extension on their line of credit.

  The siblings were grateful. He looked around at their grim, tired faces and suddenly wished he could tell them, You have a secret benefactor. The Baron Fjelstad is looking out for you. He’s the one who owns the store. You can have anything you want.

  But he would never do such a thing. He’d be fired, and Peavy would surely beat the pulp out of him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Twilight settled over the blackened fields. Lingering smoke magnified the sunset—the sky was shot through with dusty apricot and brilliant orange, the colors so intense they seemed nearly lewd to Hanne.

  Their supper was bread and cured sausage that the men from town had left. Hanne had also built a fire—a fire, of all things, in order to make coffee for Stieg.

  Hanne crouched next to the small blaze, feeding it just enough so that she could boil water. Their coffeepot survived the wildfire, though the wooden handle had burned away. Hanne settled it into the embers, using the iron poker that Owen had also plucked from the wreckage.

  Sissel was in the barn with Stieg now. She had the assignment to force him to drink water every time he woke.

  It was too early to know if Stieg’s vision was intact. The headaches Stieg suffered when he used his Nytte would someday take his sight, or at least this is what their aunty Aud had told them to expect.

  Aud was a Storm-Rend, like Stieg. Before they had met Rolf, their aunt had been the source of almost all their knowledge about the Nytte. The little else they had learned had come from their bitter drunkard of a father.

  Each Nytte had a curse that accompanied it. Storm-Rends would eventually go blind; Oar-Breakers would grow so large their hearts would give out. Shipwrights, which is what their father had been, gradually lost their fingers and toes, like lepers. Berserkers, when they killed to protect their loved ones or themselves, became intense
ly hungry and would die if they did not eat. There were other types of Nytte mentioned in the ancient poems, Shield-Skinneds and Ransackers, but there had been no sign of them in generations.

  Hanne had eaten more than her share of the goods left behind by the volunteers, but then, the hunger had not been too powerful today. She had not killed anyone.

  “I found another cup,” Owen said, approaching. He sat down, collapsing onto the bare earth. He reached forward and set a dented tin cup on a rock near the fire. He had scrubbed it in the stream, and it was nearly clean.

  “I’m so sorry about Pal—” Hanne began.

  “We can’t stay here—” Owen said at the same time.

  They stopped speaking. Hanne reached out her hand, and Owen took it in his. She noticed there was char under his nails and embedded in the lines of his knuckles.

  His hand, no matter how grimy, was so dear to her.

  “It’s hard to say what we should do,” Hanne said.

  “We can stay here until Stieg recovers, but then … I don’t know.”

  Daisy padded out from the barn and flopped herself down at Owen’s side. She offered up her belly for scratching.

  “At least Daisy is all right,” Owen said.

  Hanne burst into tears, her first of the long, awful day.

  “Oh, Owen, I’m so sorry for Pal. You never wanted to farm, anyway. If you had been off on Pal, doing the work of a cowboy or training cow dogs the way you wanted to—”

  “Shhh,” Owen said, drawing her close.

  “This was never your idea to farm, and now all your work was for nothing!” She choked on a sob. “And poor Pal!”

  Hanne pressed her head against Owen’s chest. His shirt reeked of sweat and smoke.

  “Shhh,” Owen said. “Hanne, animals die. That’s a fact of working on a ranch or a farm. We made it, and it’s a miracle we did. We’re all safe and alive, and that’s what matters.”

  Daisy, not liking to be left out, came over and nosed into their embrace, licking faces.

  “Off,” Owen told her, not unkindly. “Down stay.” Daisy sank immediately to her haunches and set her face on her paws. “Good girl.”

  “Do you wish you had never met us?” Hanne said quietly.

  “Hanne, meeting you and your brothers and sister is the best thing that ever happened to me. Please don’t doubt that even for a second.”

  Hanne closed her eyes and allowed herself to be truly comforted, body and heart, by the solidity of the man she loved.

  There was a sound behind them, and they turned to see Stieg emerging from the barn, leaning on Sissel.

  Hanne wiped her face and rose quickly to help them. Anxiety flared up—Sissel was too weak for him to lean on, and Hanne didn’t want either of them to fall.

  “Why are you up?” Hanne said. “You should be resting. Both of you.”

  “Not so loud,” Stieg said, his eyes squinting against the small brightness of the fire. “I smelled coffee.”

  Owen had retrieved their single surviving chair from over by the house and offered it to Stieg. Hanne and Sissel helped ease him down onto it.

  “How is your vision, Brother?” Hanne asked in a low voice.

  Stieg shrugged. “It’s a bit blurry, but I can make out the fire. And the sunset. And your face. It’s scowling at me.”

  Owen chuckled.

  “I’ll be all right,” Stieg said.

  Hanne put her hand on her brother’s shoulder.

  “You saved us all today,” she said.

  Stieg squinted into the fire. He was shivering a bit.

  “The Gods saved us,” he said. “Once again, we must be thankful for the Nytte.”

  Hanne saw Sissel look away. She knew Sissel wished she had a Nytte. Hanne saw it on her sister’s face sometimes.

  Hanne wished she could tell Sissel how lucky she was to be free of it. It was hard on one’s body and one’s mind, and Sissel was frail to begin with.

  She could escape their history altogether, Hanne thought. She could marry James Peavy, take his name, and move back to Chicago with him.

  James planned to go to college and become a lawyer. Sissel could make a new life with him, free forever from the fear that the Baron Fjelstad would one day track down her family and send more Berserkers after them.

  There came a sudden crash from the back of the house, where Knut was still working at extracting items that might be of use.

  Though Hanne felt no inner alarm, she crossed anyway, to make sure Knut was all right.

  He came around the side of the house just as she approached. In his hands he held the straw tick from her bed. The fire had not taken the small bedroom she and Sissel had shared. Their precious trunk had survived, and so, it seemed, had this straw tick.

  “Look what I got for Stieg!” Knut said. “It smells smoky, but it’s still better than sleeping on the ground, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Hanne said. A smile came to her lips. Her strong brother, holding up a mattress, and grinning as if he’d just caught a fat fish.

  As bad as the fire had been, Owen was right. They survived, each of them—a miracle of their own contrivance.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Church service in town that Sunday was crowded. Every family from miles around wanted to give thanks for their deliverance from the fire, and to mourn neighbors and acquaintances who had not been spared.

  Sissel had walked to town for the service with Hanne and Owen while Knut looked after Stieg back on their farm. The Hemstads attended services, but they were barely Christian. They had been baptized Lutherans, back in Norway, but the presence of the Old Gods in their lives made worship of Christ feel false and disloyal. Nevertheless, the church was the town’s social and moral center. Their absence would certainly have been noted by the townsfolk, so they attended services regularly.

  The service was somber, a fitting memorial to the seven souls the town had lost in the fire. The minister himself seemed deeply humbled by the magnitude of the disaster.

  “In the face of such destruction, we see signs of God’s great mercy everywhere,” Reverend Neville preached to the congregation.

  Sissel sighed. She wished her friend Alice Oswald could sit with her, but Alice was with her parents, toward the back of the church. Sissel was, in fact, wearing one of Alice’s dresses. She and her mother had brought clothes out to the farm on Saturday, the day before.

  It was a lovely dress of tan-colored calico patterned with little white bouquets. It had a row of mother-of-pearl buttons all the way up the front and a ruffled collar. Alice’s parents operated the Dry Goods Emporium. This meant Alice had her pick of fabrics and lace. She gave the dress to Sissel, claiming she’d made a mistake with the pattern and it didn’t fit her well. This couldn’t be true, not only because Alice was a talented seamstress but because the girls’ figures were nothing alike. Though of the same height, Alice was fashionably plump—Sissel was a string bean compared to her.

  Alice and her mother had also brought a dress for Hanne, and new shifts, corsets, and undergarments for them both. Hanne’s dress was a hand-me-down from Alice’s mother, a striking blue color, not as fancy a fabric as Sissel’s or as well-decorated, but still beautifully made.

  When they arrived at the church, many townspeople wished them well; and Sissel, Hanne, and Owen had many thanks to give to them. In the days since the fire, the Ladies’ Aid Society had sprung into ferocious activity. Wagons arrived to the Hemstads’ farm morning and noon with food—fresh-baked bread, fried chicken dinners, jars of pickles and preserves, even a whole new set of dishware, much finer than the dishes that had shattered in the fire.

  The minister gave the final benediction, and the service was, at last, over. It was hot in the church, and Sissel was ready to be out of the crowded, mournful congregation.

  The weight of the lives lost was settling on her. Real people had died—people she knew.

  Her mind kept circling to their neighbors’ possessions. She thought of their wooden sp
oons, their Sunday clothes, their butter churns. All burned to ash now, along with their owners.

  Hanne turned and peered into Sissel’s eyes, frowning. She put her hand on Sissel’s forehead.

  Sissel batted it away.

  “Honestly, Hanne,” Sissel said.

  “You don’t look well.”

  “I’m not a child,” Sissel replied, keeping her voice low. “Don’t handle me like one.”

  “Good morning, ladies,” James said. He leaned into the pew toward the sisters.

  “Let’s go outside,” Sissel said, and she rose.

  “All right,” James said. He took her hand as she stepped into the aisle.

  Sissel knew she’d probably hurt Hanne’s feelings by leaving so abruptly, but Sissel felt she’d go mad if she had to tolerate any more of Hanne’s hovering.

  They walked up the aisle, greeting schoolmates and their families.

  “Sad stuff,” James said to her.

  Sissel gave a sigh of agreement. He took her arm, and the thrill it gave her made her feel remorseful. How could her body respond in such a way when the circumstances were so sad?

  Outside, the air was still warm, but not nearly as stifling as inside. Alice came over to them.

  “Sissel!” she said. “You look lovely!”

  “I’m so glad to see you!” Sissel said. And she was. Alice was smiling, as always. Her brown curls were heaped on her head, and she wore a new dress of polished green poplin. Alice had snappy brown eyes and perfect dimples that made her seem pleased at everything.

  “I’m so glad I made a mistake cutting that dress,” Alice said. “It’s perfect for you, and I think the color would be horrid on me, now that I see how well it looks on you.”

  “You know, the fiction that you of all people made a mistake will not stand up to much scrutiny,” Sissel said. “Perhaps we’d better just call the dress a gift and have it out with.”

  Alice’s cheeks glowed rosy.

  “See,” Sissel said to James, “she’s blushing.”

  “Nevertheless,” James said, “Alice has the right of it. The color is very becoming on you.”