In Norway, where Marta had been born, the earth kept secrets the way old women kept bread recipes. Underground rooms held steady temperatures, protected from wind and sudden cruelty. Her grandmother had called it the earth’s breath.
Marta didn’t have the luxury of choosing between sense and madness. She only had the luxury of choosing which kind of madness might keep Britta alive.
On the fourth day, they found it.
The slope faced the sun, as if even in abandonment the place still wanted warmth. A sagging well frame leaned at an angle, its rope long gone. The remains of a sod hut lay slumped like a broken shoulder. And there, cut into the hillside, was a door half-buried by dirt and leaves.
The roof timbers had caved in. The entrance was cluttered with debris. But the hole was there, dark and waiting.
Britta stood close, her breath puffing out in small white clouds.
“Mama,” she asked, almost reverent, “will we sleep here?”
Marta didn’t answer immediately. She stepped closer, brushed leaves away with the edge of her boot, and leaned down. Cold air rose from inside, but it wasn’t the sharp, biting cold of the open prairie. It was steadier. Softer. Like the difference between a slap and a hand held too long in icy water.
The calendar said mid-August. Frost should have been weeks away. But Montana didn’t read calendars. It read weakness.
Marta looked at Britta’s face, too pale, too serious for nine.
