about days of looking for rocks to pile, or of hands too frozen to light the smallest of fires.
In the end I laid my motherâs body near the roadside, propping her head up gently with a mound of snow until it seemed she was at last peaceful in her eternal sleep. I remembered Garinâs toy bear and retrieved it from the sleigh, placing it in my motherâs arms as a reminder of the children she had planted along the road. I prayed that in time her body would be discovered and given a more fitting burial, which I could not do alone.
Eventually I realized that we had to move on and that I had decided to live.
Chapter 2
Rebuilding
G alloping horses broke the peaceful solitude of the fresh
winterâs morning. A wagon filled with wooden furniture and other wares passed me, bucking and bouncing on the rough trail. Its boisterous passengers, a group of three boys, kept the older driver from noticing me as they moved past. Thankfully Gerda and the sleigh were well hidden in the trees beyond the roadside.
Behind the old, rugged driver, in the overloaded wagon bed, the three young men about my age were cavorting, poking and smacking at each other as the wagon rumbled past.
A storm was beginning to build in the distance, its dark clouds and steadily growing winds heralding the approaching blizzard. I decided I would secretly follow this group to wherever it was destined, in hopes of stealing some form of shelter.
In a short time the wagon approached a modest cottage on a ridge above the road and skittered to a halt. I left Gerda behind the last bend in the trail and moved closer so I could watch and listen without making myself known.
The old man, Josef, a salt-of-the-earth grandfather whom the boys called by name, jumped from the driverâs seat of the wagon and walked toward the cottage.
âJonas!â he yelled. âPaddock them horses. Markus, you and Noel grab them chairs. We need to beat this weather.â
He paused there for a moment and turned back to the boys. Unaware, the boys started to roughhouse. Josef barked at them again, âNo horsing, hear? Thatâs a blizzard brewing.â
Then the door opened, and he entered the cottage, leaving the boys to their work.
Jonas, perhaps thirteen and the smallest of the group, seemed somewhat shy and timid in his manners. He nearly fell as he awkwardly dismounted the wagon and hit the ground. Regaining his balance, Jonas gathered several large pieces of wood that he wrestled over to the wagon wheels where he wedged them to hold the wagon in place. As he stood, a mound of snow hit him on the back of the head with a THWACK. He yelped.
Markus, a fresh-faced and powerfully athletic boy, along with Noel, a thin and sneering lad, both about fourteen, jeered at Jonas and continued their snowy assault from the protection of the wagon bed. Jonas couldnât find cover. Every time he blocked one assault, another would find the opening it left. Sputtering and jerking, he moved in first one direction and then the other, until finally he dove with desperate courage at his attackers, crawling beneath the wagon in an effort to avoid being pelted.
Markus turned his attention to one of the tarps covering the chairs in the wagon bed. He grabbed it firmly by one side and yanked on it, flipping it off the chairs and onto Noel, who screamed in entangled self-defense, âHey! Get this off.â
Markus laughed as Noel stood in the wagon, squirming beneath the tarp. In his struggle to escape, Noel tripped over the side and landed with a great thud in the snow beside the wagon. Markus, a laugh now half-caught in his throat, flopped onto his belly and looked down at Noel with concern.
âNoel, you hurt?â Markus asked in a worried voice.
Noel frantically popped his head out. âI did that just to make you laugh,â he said with false bravado as he struggled to catch his breath.
Markus threw another tarp over him.
While Noel continued to thrash about