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“Jeremiah! The barn’s on fire!” she
yelled to nowhere, taking the stairs two and three at a time.
Her brother’s footsteps fell in behind
her. “Let’s go!”
The pair hit the door at the same time,
flinging it wide open. It cracked against the strain of its hinges. Not
bothering to turn around and close it, they raced for the barn. Rebekah hadn’t
grabbed a covering and her wet hair streamed out behind her like yellow ribbons
from a maypole. It slapped her in the face when the wind whipped from a
different direction.
Grinding to a halt at the water pump,
Rebekah grabbed Jeremiah by his shoulders.
“You help Pa! I’m going in for the
animals!”
Jeremiah ferociously began pumping for
Samuel who, before that moment hadn’t even noticed that his two eldest children
had joined him.
“Blitzschlag!” Samuel yelled in German. “Lightning
struck the barn!”
The inside of their cozy barn was
ablaze. Piles of the sweet-smelling hay, where Rebekah had hidden from her
brothers on lazy fall afternoons, were engulfed by the roaring, ravenous
flames. The yoke her father had hewn by hand as a boy was charred, hanging on a
blackened beam. A rafter collapsed, shocking her back to her senses.
Cream and Butter were tied up in their
stalls, pulling and rearing at the ropes that had become their enemy. Tiny
Buttermilk bleated and mooed helplessly from behind her mother.
Rebekah yanked free the knots that held
Cream and Butter at bay. The eyes of her normally-docile cows were wild and
terrifying, but Rebekah grasped the lead ropes in her hands anyway and turned
to lead them out.
She looked back at the tiny calf, frozen
in fear. Their eyes met. “I’ll be back for you,” Rebekah swore.
Turning, she sang the flapjack
ingredients song loudly, so as to be heard over the roaring flame, in a futile
attempt to keep both her and the frightened cattle calm.
Another flaming beam snapped and fell
behind them, spooking Butter. The milk cow bellowed and reared, dancing on her
hind legs before jerking free from Rebekah and tearing off into the heart of
the storm.
Rebekah stumbled and fell with the force
of Butter’s yank, sending her sprawling in the mud. Pushing herself up, she
managed to miss being trampled by Cream’s frightened hooves that stomped around
her.
“Cream!” she yelled, her voice deep and
foreign in her own ears, “Come on!”
Ever obedient, Cream, though skittish, walked on to the house with Rebekah.
Tying the nervous cow to the front door,
a strong pair of hands fell upon Rebekah’s shoulders, turning her around.
“It’s over,” her Pa yelled, pulling her
to his chest in a tight hug. “It’s over, girl. It’s over.” It sounded as though
he were trying to convince himself of that fact more than convince her. Over
his shoulder, she saw that the fierce fire had overtaken the barn. Angry flames
licked skyward from the loft.
Stiffening, a scream tore from her lips.
“Buttermilk!”
“The baby’s gone,” her father yelled.
“No!” Struggling against his iron grasp
was futile, but after a moment she managed to wean her way from under his
elbow.
“Rebekah, stop!” Samuel bellowed.
“Stillgestanden!”
Ignoring him, Rebekah dodged Jeremiah’s
clutches easily, her eyes and heart already set on the glowing barn.
“Buttermilk, I’m coming,” she screamed
again. Her father rasped behind her. Thankfully, he was all tired out from
fighting the fire. She sped ahead, leaving him wheezing in the mud outside the
barn.
“Rebekah, don’t baby, please.” His weak
words sounded as far away as Germany as she raced into the barn.
Excerpt 2
“Ma?”
Rebekah slid her legs over the side of
her bed, easing them down until her feet met the hardwood floor. Her father had
laid this floor expertly in just a few days’ time, or so she’d heard tale.
Shards of pain sparked up her leg from
her bad foot, making her stomach turn over. She choked on the yell that
strangled in her throat as the rest of her body joined her feet on the floor.
Tears blurred her wobbly vision.
A strained groan came from the direction
of her parent’s room.
Rebekah shook the foggy stars from her
head.
“Standing up isn’t really an option,” she
reasoned as she sat on the chilled floor that had moments before been her ally.
She flexed her multi-hued ankle. “Nope, certainly not an option.”
A series of pants echoed in the dark
hallway.
“I’m coming, Ma.”
Ignoring the seeping dankness, she
stretched out on the floor in her thin nightgown, Rebekah pulling herself along
the smooth boards with her hands. She slithered to the doorway like a snake
through the grass.
Rebekah managed to navigate around the
doorframe only to knock her head on something stationary that shouldn’t be
there. “Ow!”
Her mother’s labored breathing drew
Rebekah’s attention from her own sudden pain.
“Rebekah,” she rasped. She seemed
completely oblivious to the fact that Rebekah’s head just met her nose. Hard.
“Ma, are you okay?” The absurdity of that
question filled the air. Of course her pregnant mother, lying here alone in the
early morning darkness, was not okay.
“The baby,” she started.
Rebekah didn’t wait for her to finish.
She scurried to her mother’s feet and paled at what she saw.
By muted moonlight, it was obvious that
the dark pool beneath her mother was blood.
“Mrs. Yoder said the baby wouldn’t be
coming for a while,” Rebekah stammered. She chewed the inside of her lip as the
sea of churning thoughts attempted to push a coherent solution to this
predicament into the forefront of her mind. It wasn’t working.
Clear fluid puddled around her mother in
stark contrast to the crimson stains. “Ahh,” Elnora gasped.
“Something’s wrong,” Elnora said, the
tension causing her words to break in unnatural places. “With the baby,
something’s wrong.”
The tears sprang up in Rebekah’s eyes
without warning. “What Ma, tell me what’s wrong.” Rebekah swiped at her face
with the back of her hand. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it!”
A grunt from Elnora gave her pause. “I
have to push!”
Fumbling with her mother’s nightgown,
she sucked in a hard breath. “Ma, I see feet.”
Elnora stopped panting. “Feet?” She
began to shake her head in tiny little shakes. “Oh Rebekah, no. No!”
“What do I do?” The hysteria was rising
in her throat, pinging the ends of her words.
“Turn him. Turn the baby.”
The sea of thoughts began to churn again
in Rebekah’s mind, this time vicious and wild.
“Ma,” she began. The icy fingers of fear
clenched tight her throat. A very real pain seared there, just beneath her
chin. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Dear Father,” Elnora prayed, oblivious
to Rebekah’s plight, “Please turn the baby or he’ll die.”
Rebekah placed her hands alongside the
tense bulge on Elnora’s stomach. “Please Father; help me save my little brother
or sister.”
