Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick Page A

your sweet children.”

    The door swung shut behind him, and Einar sank into his office chair once more. He put his head in his hands, and he wept.

26
    The Sound of the Sky
    â€œA re we really leaving?” Anna asked her father one day at bedtime.
    Einar smiled at Anna.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut when? Before it gets cold again?”
    â€œWe’ll leave on the last boat of the year,” Einar said, stroking his daughter’s wavy brown hair. Sig was snuffling away at the foot of his parents’ bed, across the room. Maria was cleaning dishes and singing quietly to herself.
    â€œBut it will be cold by then, won’t it, Pappa? Can’t we leave before it gets cold again?”
    â€œDon’t you like the snow?” Einar asked. “The Northern Lights; the sounds they make?”
    â€œYes, but it just goes on and on and on. And it’s so cold. Too cold. I didn’t like it here last winter.”
    â€œNo. And your mother was ill, but she’s fine now, thanks to God for that. But I have to work as long as
possible, so we need to stay till the last boat comes.”
    Anna considered this for a while, stroking the hair of her little wooden doll just as her father stroked hers. Then a frown crossed her face.
    â€œPappa?”
    â€œWhat is it, little one?”
    â€œI heard some men talking today. They said something funny. They said, ‘Even God leaves on the last boat from Nome.’ What does that mean?”
    Einar’s face stiffened briefly.
    â€œThey just mean things are a bit tough here in the winter,” he said quietly, so Maria wouldn’t hear. “But we know that. That’s why we’re leaving.”
    â€œOh,” said Anna, very sleepily. Her eyelids began to droop, but still she wanted to ask something else.
    â€œPappa? Are you friends with the bear-man?”

27
    Avalanche
    A part from the scene with Wolff, things were going well for the Andersson family, and none of them, not even Einar, sensed the storm that was coming.
    Maria sang every day, and Anna started singing with her. Sig seemed to grow an inch every month, and he loved the town, which seemed to get bigger every day, with new houses and shops going up all the time. Boats would come and go, bringing with them more people, more goods, more equipment, more horses, more dogs for when the winter came.
    The place was a heaving mass, and Sig would run here and there whenever he got the chance, marveling at the sights, though Maria was always telling him not to go off by himself. He’d watch the loading and unloading of boats; the building of houses, shacks, and huts; and above all, the people, each carrying a bundle of stories inside them.

    The brief summer was over, not quite in one day as the saying had it, but not so very much longer than that. There was no autumn. Then winter was back, not hard at first, but with every gust of wind came the smell of the snow to come.
    It wouldn’t be long before the last boat sailed.
    On the day it happened, Einar was at work as usual. It was a filthy cold day, with angry gray skies of low clouds scudding fast across the heavens, so that even God didn’t see what happened in the shack that had become the Anderssons’ home.
    Maria had her hands covered in flour and pastry when she suddenly realized Sig had sneaked out to play by himself again.
    â€œAnna,” she said. “I thought you were watching him. You’ll have to go and find him.”
    Anna looked up from playing with her doll.
    â€œOh, but it’s cold outside.”
    â€œI know it is, but that’s all the more reason why you should have kept an eye on him. Go on, now. By the time you get back, Pappa will be home and supper will be ready.”
    Anna sighed as only a child can sigh and left her doll on the big bed.
    â€œI’ll be back soon,” she said to it, playing mother. “Now, don’t do anything naughty while I’m gone.”

    She