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.