The Reaper's Song by Lauraine Snelling Read Free Book Online Page A

winter. The long winters in Norway had never caused the darkness of her soul that the winters in the soddy had brought upon her after her first husband, Roald, died. Sometimes now, even with Haakan and the children, she felt herself being sucked back down into the pit.
    She shook the specter away and returned to the letter.
I hope this will not be an extra burden for you, but Sarah Neswig desires to come also. She is the daughter of my second cousin and a good worker. When her parents heard we were leaving, they made a special trip clear from Oslo to ask if she might go along. How could we say no? Her fiancé was drowned in the same storm that took Hamre’s far to his watery grave. Onkel Hamre still blames himself, believing that if he had been along, the boat would not have gone down.
    “There’s a mite too much snow on his mountain for him to be fishing the north seas any longer, isn’t there?” Olaf shook his head, the smoke from his pipe circling around them.
    “Ja, that is why his son Jacob had taken over. He, too, is—was a fine fisherman. Young Hamre will miss the sea here.”
    “He could pretend that wheat is the sea. Bending in the breeze like that, it looks like gentle sea swells, although a mite gold in color.”
    Ingeborg smiled at his sally. Olaf had never been addicted to the sea like Onkel Hamre. Fishing was all the old man could talk about or wanted to talk about.
    Goodie returned with a now sweet-smelling child. “You want her back, or shall I put her down on the quilt?”
    Ingeborg nodded toward the quilt they had spread in the shaded and fenced plot. They had put up the fence so Astrid could not crawl away. Now that she was walking, the fence was even more important. Goodie set the child down and handed her a hunk of bacon skin to chew on. Two days earlier a second lower tooth had cut through, and the nub beside it would soon sparkle white. With her four sparkling teeth, Andrew dubbed her “rabbit.”
    Ingeborg finished reading the letter and returned it to its envelope to be read again at the dinner table. “So, we will have four new lives here with us.”
    “Good thing these you already got are moving on.” Goodie stoodbeside Olaf, close but not touching. She glanced up at the two laughing children emerging from the cow barn. “But those two will be lost without each other.”
    Andrew slammed the door shut and yelled, “Race you to the well.”
    Even from the distance, the adults could tell that he hung back and let Ellie win.
    “That Andrew, he will be a fine man someday, the way he cares for others, both human and animal.” Olaf puffed on his pipe, nodding as the smoke wreathed his head.
    Ingeborg sniffed in appreciation. “You use the same tobacco as my far did. I always liked the smell of pipe smoke.”
    “How about cigars? I saw a new box of them over at the store. Penny says they are selling good.” He chuckled at Ingeborg’s wrinkled nose.
    “Ishda to both that and those awful cigarettes some of the men are rolling. Mark my words, those are dangerous in this dry weather.”
    “You must be carrying water to your garden. Some others are looking pretty wilted by now.”
    “Thank God for the good well we have. At church on Sunday some were saying their wells are going dry.” Her hands busy with the snapping beans and her eyes on the child jabbering to the rag doll on the quilt, Ingeborg enjoyed the conversation.
    “Ja. I been coopering barrels for hauling water,” Olaf said. Goodie glanced from the chair to his face. “Besides making me a new chair? Olaf, do you never sleep?”
    “Sure, and I will be sleeping better soon.”
    At his sly comment, Goodie’s face flamed again. “Ach,” she muttered under her breath, her hands furiously snapping beans.
    Ingeborg hid her smile. These two were so good for each other. When Goodie and her children arrived, nearly starved and the boy sick unto death, there hadn’t been much laughter for a long time. When spring finally thawed the