Until We Reach Home (6 page)

“Remember the stories we read in school about water
nacks
?” Kirsten asked as rain drummed on the eaves above them.

“No. What are
nacks
?”

“Come on, don’t you remember? They’re mysterious creatures who live in the sea and lure people to watery deaths in their kingdoms. They—”

“Stop it, Kirsten,” Elin said. She had joined them in time to hear what Kirsten was saying. “You’re not helping matters.”

“All I’m saying is that if there is such a thing as a water
nack,
then the one in Gothenburg’s harbor seems very angry this morning. I think he’s determined to drown us all.”

“Stop it.”

“When are you going to realize what a mistake this stupid trip was,” Sofia asked, “and take us home?”

“See what you’ve done, Kirsten? You’ve scared her.”

“Well, I’m scared, too, in case you can’t tell. You’d have to be crazy to get into a boat on a day like today.”

“I’m sure the sailors know what they’re doing.”

“Right . . .” Kirsten mumbled under her breath, “but you sure don’t.”

The gangway onto the ship bobbed up and down, making it treacherous to board. Thrashing waves splattered Kirsten’s skirt and soaked her shoes. The ship rocked from side to side and slammed against the dock as waves surged into the harbor. The motion made Kirsten feel dizzy as she tried to walk, as if she had a high fever. All three of them staggered and lurched across the deck like a village drunkard, hanging on to anything they could find along their path. Kirsten sank onto the first empty bench she came to. Sofia tumbled onto her lap.

“This ferry is going to sink before it ever leaves the harbor!” Sofia said.

Elin gave her a reassuring pat. “I’m sure the captain will wait for better weather before venturing from port.”

But he didn’t. The horn shrieked, the hull groaned, and the engines thrummed to life. The ship sailed out of the harbor and straight into the storm.

Sofia vomited three times in one of the buckets the sailors passed around. She cried inconsolably.

“Please, Elin, please. Can’t we go home?” Of course the answer was no, but Elin stopped saying it.

“You won’t want to go back home once you see America,” Kirsten told her. She was sorry that she had frightened Sofia by mentioning the water
nacks
and wanted to make amends. “It will be so wonderful there that we’ll wish we had moved there sooner. Just look at all of these other travelers. I’m sure many of them will be continuing on to America, as we are. Do you think they would be going all the way to America if it wasn’t a paradise?”

Sofia swiped at her tears. “What will it be like there?” she asked.

Kirsten didn’t know how to describe a place she’d never seen, but the least she could do was make up tales to soothe her sister. “We’ll all marry rich husbands and sit in the warm sunshine all day and eat strawberries and cream.”

“Don’t even talk about food!” Sofia begged. She hung her head over the bucket again.

Kirsten felt queasy at the mention of food, too. And she’d had an unexpected stab of pain the moment she’d mentioned husbands. She silently vowed never to give her heart away again after the way Tor had tossed it aside. Besides, Kirsten didn’t think she could ever love anyone as much as she’d loved him.

“Take deep breaths,” Elin told Sofia as she went through the dry heaves. Elin reminded Kirsten of their mother. Mama always used to tell them to take deep breaths whenever one of them felt sick. Kirsten missed her mother. She missed Papa and Nils, too, even though they both had abandoned them. Mama had had no choice whether she lived or died, but Papa and Nils had deliberately chosen to leave. They had rejected her as heartlessly as Tor had.

“Think of all the money we’ll save on food if we’re too sick to eat,” Elin said. “Our bread and cheese will last much longer this way.”

Sofia gripped the bucket like a life preserver and moaned. “I’m going to die. If the boat to America bounces and rolls like this, I will surely die of seasickness—unless we drown first.”

Elin rubbed Sofia’s back and smoothed her hair off her forehead. “Don’t worry,” she told her. “The ocean will be much calmer than the North Sea. Besides, we’ll be sailing on a huge steamship, not a skimpy little boat like this one. The ocean liner will ride the waves much better. You’ll see.”

Kirsten caught Elin’s eye above Sofia’s bent head and mouthed the question,
“Is that true?
” Elin gave a helpless shrug.

A few hours after they set sail, Kirsten was as sick as Sofia, vomiting her breakfast into a bucket. When the bout ended, she lay down across the row of scarred wooden seats like Sofia was doing. Kirsten hadn’t slept very well last night. Or the night before, for that matter.

Most of the other passengers became sick, too, as the ferry rolled and swayed, tossed like a toy on the towering waves. Kirsten watched one of the sailors cleaning the deck with a mop and thought of Tor, sweeping the sidewalk in front of his father’s store. He had stopped sweeping as if surprised to see her, but after she’d said good-bye and had turned to walk away, she’d heard the shushing sound of his broom behind her as he’d resumed his work. She drew her knees up to her chest to ease the ache inside.

She and Tor and Nils had been friends for as long as Kirsten could remember. Then Nils had run away to Stockholm, leaving her and Tor behind. She had missed her brother every bit as much as she’d missed her mother and father—and that’s how she’d found herself wrapped in Tor’s arms one afternoon, weeping for everyone she had lost. He had comforted her, murmuring softly in her ear.
“I miss him, too, Kirsten.”

The next thing she knew, Tor’s lips had found hers and they were kissing. A host of powerful sensations had surged through Kirsten as if she’d walked through a forbidden door and discovered a new land. She hadn’t wanted Tor to stop kissing her. Even now the memory made her feel warm inside. Kissing him had been like tasting chocolate for the first time and longing for more.

Had he only pretended to love her in return?

Kirsten rolled over on the unyielding bench and hid her face in her folded arms. How was it possible to hate someone and still love him at the same time?

Chapter Six

W
HEN
S
OFIA AWOKE
, she knew they had been sailing for many hours. Someone had dimmed the gaslights in the ship’s salon and people lay sleeping all around her, sprawled across benches and slouched in their seats. Rain no longer drummed against the cabin roof and the sea seemed much calmer, which was a good thing. Sofia’s stomach felt like a herd of cattle had trampled it, but she dared to believe that she might not die after all.

She sat up and looked out of a window. The view outside had changed from dense gray storm clouds and churning seas to a blackness so complete it was as if the ship had sunk to the bottom of the ocean, where no light could reach it. The only thing visible in the darkened window frame was her own pale reflection.

Kirsten was asleep on the bench across from her, her knees drawn up to her chest. She had been sick all afternoon, too, and her cheeks, which usually glowed from the sun, looked milky white. Her lips were as colorless as a dead person’s.

Elin had fallen asleep sitting up, and her face wore a worried expression, even at rest. Sofia knew she had caused some of that worry by arguing with her. She had wanted to punish Elin for ripping them away from their home, but now she was sorry, especially when she saw how pale and weary Elin looked.

Sofia pulled her satchel closer, careful not to disturb Elin. She dug through it until she found her mother’s Bible, wrapped in one of Mama’s nicest aprons for protection. The Bible was small enough for Sofia to hold in one hand and had a black velvet cover framed in brass, with a brass clasp to hold it closed. The swirling print was old-fashioned and very tiny. Papa had given it to Mama as a wedding present.

Their mother had read aloud from her Bible every evening when she was alive, and it seemed as though thrilling words and promises had leaped off the pages like spawning fish, landing right in Sofia’s heart. But when Sofia tried to read the Bible herself, the words never seemed to make any sense. She couldn’t find any comforting promises, only big words and alarming warnings like
every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Ever since Mama died, whenever Sofia had tried to pray in church or in her bed at night, her prayers seemed to fly around aimlessly like trapped pigeons beating their wings against the ceiling, unable to fly any higher. The only prayers that soared weightlessly toward heaven were the ones she murmured outside in the cemetery beside her mother’s grave. Now, thanks to Elin, Sofia could no longer go there to pray.

The cabin gradually grew lighter as dawn approached. After sitting motionless for a very long time, Sofia made up her mind to close her eyes and open the little Bible at random and read whatever passage she pointed to first. She would not stop reading until she found words of comfort and assurance. She pried open the little book near the back, recalling that all of the stories about Jesus were near the end of the Bible. But when she opened her eyes, the alarming heading at the top of the page read
Paul Suffers Shipwreck.
She read the first sentence:
When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved.

Sofia slapped the Bible shut. Where was the comfort in that?

Gradually, the view out of the porthole changed from black to gray. The other passengers began to stir. Sofia was still sitting with the closed Bible on her lap when Elin and Kirsten woke up.

“What a night!” Kirsten said as she stretched and yawned. “It’s a miracle we didn’t sink to the bottom of the North Sea in that storm.”

Elin moved over to sit beside Sofia. “How are you feeling?” she asked, smoothing Sofia’s hair off her forehead.

“Still a little queasy.” She rubbed her aching stomach.

“
Ja
, me too,” Kirsten said. “But look at the bright side. At least the food we packed for the trip will last longer this way.”

“Maybe the worst is behind us now,” Elin said. “And at least one thing is certain: We’ll never have to cross the North Sea again.”

Sofia bit her lip. She would gladly recross that wind-ravaged sea and endure the storm all over again if it meant she could go home. But she didn’t speak her thoughts; Elin was trying so hard to cheer her.

The three of them took turns washing and tidying themselves in the ladies’ comfort room. Nearly all of the other passengers had been ill, and they had left the overused facilities trampled and foul-smelling. Sofia worked as quickly as she could, eager to flee the awful room.

Later that afternoon, she stood outside at the ferry rail with her sisters as their ship neared Hull, England. At first all they could see was a dark smudge on the horizon, but it slowly slid into focus and took shape as land formations and buildings and the masts and hulls of other ships. Piers stretched out like fingers to welcome them into port. The sky was the dull gray color of dead fish, and Sofia thought from the look of it that it was about to rain again. But when the dense cloud that hovered above the city never moved, she realized that it came from the soot and factory smoke that rose from dozens of tall smokestacks. The city’s trees all looked as though someone had dipped their leaves into gray paint to match the water and the sky, and the gritty air stuck in the back of her throat as if she’d just swept out the fireplace back home.

Sofia could hardly wait to get off the rolling deck and step onto dry land again, but it seemed to take forever for the sailors to wrestle with the thick ropes and taut chains and secure the ship in place. “Finally!” she breathed as her feet touched the solid earth at last. “I don’t ever want to get on another boat as long as I live!”

“Then I guess you’ll be living here for the rest of your life,” Kirsten said.

“What do you mean?”

“England is an island, silly. The only way you can get anywhere is to get on another boat. You don’t want to live here instead of America, do you?”

“I want to go home,” Sofia said. Kirsten rolled her eyes.

One of the sailors inspected their tickets and directed them to a row of wagons and carriages sent by the White Star Steamship Company. When their trunk was safely loaded, they rode through the city’s swarming streets, moving so slowly that Sofia was certain she could have jumped off and walked there faster. Carriages and horses jammed the thoroughfares and people crowded into every space in between. Everyone seemed to be yelling. Sofia missed the lilting, musical sound of her own language. English sounded like a flock of fighting crows.

“This city must have been built by trolls,” Kirsten said. “It’s so dirty and loud! It even smells like trolls.”

Sofia smiled in spite of herself, picturing lumpy trolls stumping down the sidewalks with bowler hats and canes.

It took an hour for their carriage to wedge its way through the city to Hull’s train station. When they finally arrived, the confusion and noise unnerved Sofia. Trains rumbled into the station like summer thunderstorms, spilling torrents of passengers into the already flooded station, then rumbling away with shrieking whistles and clanging bells. Bewildering signs hung everywhere and Sofia knew they must be telling her important things, but she couldn’t read any of them. She linked arms with Elin as the three of them scanned the place in confusion.

“How will we ever tell which train is ours?” Kirsten asked.

Elin straightened her shoulders as if drawing upon some inner reserve of courage. “I’ll find out. You and Sofia find someplace to sit down,” she told Kirsten. “And don’t let our trunk out of your sight.”

Sofia longed to be as brave as Elin, but the dogs of fear surrounded her, making her afraid to move. “What are you going to do?” she asked Elin.

“Uncle Lars gave me a letter in case anything went wrong,” she said, digging through her bag. “It’s written in English and explains all our travel arrangements and destinations and things. I’m going to get in line over there and show it to somebody.”