Everville

It killed many of the travelers quickly, and those it did not kill it tormented with intimations of the state ahead. It slowed the brain and the blood; it made the fingers fumble and the feet numb; it stiffened the sinews; it lined the lungs with a dusting of frost.

Sometimes, even now, with so many people dead and the rest dying, Maeve would hear her father say: "It wasn't supposed to be this way," as though some promise had been made to him that was presently being broken. She did not doubt the identity of the promise-maker. Mr. Buddenbaum. It was he who had filled her father's heart with ambition, who had given him gifts and told him to go West and build. It was he who had first whispered the word Everville. Perhaps, she began to think, Whitney had been right. Perhaps the Devil had come to tempt her father in the form of Mr. Buddenbaum, and filled his trusting heart with dreams for the pleasure of watching that heart broken. The problem vexed her night and day-never more so than when her father, in the midst of the storm-leaned over to her and said: "We must be strong, sweet. We mustn't die, or Everville dies with us!"

Hunger and exhaustion had her teetering on delirium now-sometimes she would imagine herself on the ship coming from Liverpool, clinging to the icy deck with her fingertips; sometimes she was back in Ireland, eating grass and roots to keep her belly from aching@ut in times of lucidity she wondered if perhaps this was some kind of test; Buddenbaum's way of seeing whether the man to whom he' given the dream of Everville was strong enough to survive. The notion seemed so plausible she could not keep it to herself.

"Papa?" she said, grabbing hold of his coat.

Her father looked round at her, his face barely visible beneath his hood. She could only see one of his eyes, but it looked at her as lovingly as ever.

"What, child?" he said.

"I think maybe-maybe it was meant to be this way."

"What are you saying?"

"Maybe Mr. Buddenbaum's watching us, to see if we deserve to build his city. Maybe just when we think we can't go on any longer he'll appear, and tell us it was a test, and show us the way to the valley."

"This isn't a test, child. It's just what happens in the world. Dreams die. The cold comes out of nowhere and kills them." He put his arm around his daughter, and hugged her to him, though there was precious little strength left in him.

"I'm not afraid, Papa," she said.

"Are you not?"

"No I'm not. We've come a long way together."

"That we have."

"Remember how it was back at home? How we thought we'd die of starvation? But we didn't. Then on the ship. Waves washing people overboard to right and left of us, and we thought we'd drown for certain. But the waves passed us by. Didn't they?"

His cracked, white lips managed a tiny smile. "Yes, child, they did."

"Mr. Buddenbaum knew what we'd come through," Maeve said. "He knew there were angels watching over us. And Mama to@'

She felt her father shudder at her side. "I dreamed of her last night-" he said.

"was she beautiful?"

"Always. We were floating, side by side, in this calm, calm sea. And I swear, if I'd not known you were here, child, waiting for me-2'

He didn't finish the thought. A sound like a single blast of a trumpet came out of the blind whiteness ahead; a note of triumph that instantly raised a chorus of shouts from the wagons in front and behind.

"Did ya hear that?"

"There's somebody up here with us!"

Another blast now, and another, and another, each rising from the echo of the last till the whole white world was filled with brazen harmonies. The Sturgis' wagon, which was ahead of the O'Co

"Stratton! Whitney! O'Co

"Guns?" said Maeve. "Papa, why does he want guns?"

"Just climb up into the wagon, child," Harmon said,

"and stay there till I come back." The din of trumpets had died away for a moment, but now it came again, more magnificent than ever. As she climbed up onto the wagon, Maeve's ski

She started out into the snow, suddenly and uncontrollably certain that this was true. Their heavenly guardians had come to save them, and Mama too, more than likely. If she looked hard she would see them soon, gold and blue and purple. She stood up on the seat, clinging to the canvas, to get a better view, sca

The opening in the veil of snow was closing again, but before it did so she jumped down from the wagon and started off in the direction of the trees. Within moments, snow had obliterated the wagons behind her, just as it had covered the forest ahead, and she was following her nose through a blank world, stumbling with every other step. The drifts lay perilously deep in places, and she several times dropped into drifts so deep she was almost buried alive. But just as her frozen limbs threatened to give up on her, the trumpets came again, and the music put life back into her sinews and filled her head with bliss. There was a piece of paradise up ahead. Angels and Mama and her loving father, with whom she would build a city that would be the wonder of the world.

She would not die, of that she was certain. Not today, not for many years to come. She had great work to do, and the angels would not see her perish in the snow, knowing how far she had traveled to perform that labor. And now she saw the trees, pines higher than any house, like a wall of sentinels in front of her. Calling for her father she ran towards them, careless of the cold and the bruises and her spi

borne by invisible hands, she was ushered beneath the canopy of trees and there, where the snow could not come, and the ground was soft with pine needles, she sank down onto her knees and drew a dozen heaving breaths while the sound of trumpets touched her in every part.

It was not music that finally picked her up, nor the hands of the invisible throng. It was a shout, which rose above the trumpet echoes, and filled her with alarm.

"Damn you, O'Co