"Hildy, Hildy, don’t go away." Carrie tried to put her arm around the cow’s neck. "I need you. I’m so cold. Oh, help me, Hildy. The river is so cold. Hildy! Don’t leave me!"

"Carrie!" Someone called but she couldn’t answer. "Carrie! Wake up!" Fritz shook her.

Carrie opened her eyes. She wasn’t in the river. She wasn’t cold anymore. She was in a bed and her little brother Fritz was next to her.

He shook her again. "Carrie, wake up!"

She looked at him. It was a dream! A dream about the fire and that night in the river.

Pink roses were all around her. Then she realized they were on wallpaper in a beautiful bedroom.

"Carrie, where are we?"

"I don’t know," she whispered, looking at him half-buried in a huge pillow and fluffy covers. She remembered how he was almost swept over the dam that night in the river as fire roared overhead.

Next to the bed, Carrie saw a little table with a towel rack attached to the top of it. Soft white towels filled the rack and a white china water pitcher stood in a wash bowl.

"Where are we?" Fritz asked again, pulling the cover over his head as the door opened quietly and a young woman came to the foot of the bed.

Carrie sat up and looked at her.

"Good morning, children. So you are awake at last. To answer your question, Fritz, this is Bentz Manor. And my name is Trina."

The young woman smiled at the children but there was sadness in her face. She was wearing a maid’s uniform. A long white apron tied around her tiny waist almost covered her gray dress. She pulled back the green velvet drapes. October light fell across the bed.

"Where is Bentz Manor and how did we get here?" asked Carrie. Her face felt puffy and tight when she talked.

"You don’t remember? You were brought here yesterday, two days after the great fire. You are in Oconto, twelve miles from your town of Peshtigo."

Six-year-old Fritz peeked out from under the cover. "I want to go home."

"Yes, dear. I know," Trina said gently, "but that can’t be."

"Go away. Want to go home."

"Fritz!" Carrie scolded. "Be nice."

Fritz scooted back under the covers and curled in a ball. "No! Want to go home!"

"A big boy like you shouldn’t act like that," Trina said quietly.

"He’s not always like this," apologized Carrie, "but he doesn’t always understand. He’s slow. He had a fever when he was three."

Trina nodded. "Also, you’ve both had a terrible scare in that fire." She pulled the covers back. "It will be all right, Fritz. You don’t need to be afraid here."

Carrie put her legs over the edge of the bed and started to stand up. Pain shot through her. Her whole body ached as though she had been run over by Papa’s hay wagon. She sat on the edge of the bed. Her head throbbed and she felt dizzy. She shivered. How she wished she had her quilt, the crazy quilt that she and the cow had taken shelter under in the river as the fire roared overhead.

Then she remembered that Fritz and her friend Lisa had been there, too. They had jumped into the river from the bridge, trying to escape that terrible roaring fire as it swept through Peshtigo like a tornado. She couldn’t have made it without Hans, the school bully. He had been in the river, too. Now she didn’t think of him as a bully at all. She hoped she would see him again.

"Are you all right?" asked Trina, putting her arm around Carrie.

"Yes, I think so." She wondered how she could be wearing a new nightgown and Fritz a nightshirt. Their clothes had been nothing but rags after the fire. That was all she could remember.

Fritz looked around. "Is this your house?"

"Oh, my, no!" replied Trina with a chuckle. "It belongs to Mr. Omar Bentz, the banker. Now get dressed. Breakfast is ready. That is, if you are hungry for pancakes dripping with warm maple syrup." As she talked, a little white cap bobbed up and down on her dark thick braid that sat like a small beehive on the top of her head.

"I’m Caroline Heidenworth and this is my brother, Fritz."

"I know - I know. Poor little orphans," Trina said, making clucking sounds with her tongue.

Tears came to Carrie’s eyes, and a tightness clenched her chest as she remembered Father Pernin, the priest, telling her in his quiet, sad voice that no one was found alive at her family’s homestead. Her parents were gone, disappeared without a trace in the destruction of the firestorm that had swept that day across the dry, drought-stricken countryside around the little town of Peshtigo.

"There, now," soothed Trina. "I know a little of what you are feeling. I wasn’t in a forest fire but I came here six years ago, after my parents died in an epidemic."

"Ep-dem-mac?" asked Fritz. "Like a fire? I was in a fire."

"An epidemic is any terrible sickness where almost everyone gets sick and many die." Trina sighed. "Most of my family died."

"Is Mr. Bentz a relative of yours?" asked Carrie.

"No. He needed a housekeeper. I applied and signed an agreement to work for him for seven years. He paid my passage on the boat from Germany. When I came here to Oconto, in the north woods of Wisconsin, I was like a frightened rabbit." Trina gave a warm smile.

"When that steamer pulled up to the Oconto dock, from Chicago, all I saw was a huge forest and a little town with wooden sidewalks next to an Indian village. Now, there are six sawmills along the river and more new buildings all the time."

"We came from Germany, too," said Carrie. "Papa, Mama, my grandmother, Fritz, and me."

"Yes, many are coming to the new country," said Trina. Soon I will be an American citizen."

"Fritz and I are American citizens but I will always remember our home in Stuttgart, Germany."

Carrie looked around. "How did we get here?"

"Wagons. They brought you in a wagon with others from Peshtigo whose homes burned, too. I put you in this bed myself. You were asleep before your heads touched the pillows. I couldn’t even get you to drink some warm broth."

Carrie thought a minute. "I do remember lanterns and someone touching my head. It hurts." She held her arms out. "Who bandaged my arms?"

"I did." Trina made that little clucking sound again. "Your arms were so burned. And so was your head."

"I remember!" exclaimed Carrie. "I burned my arms throwing water over the back of a cow. The poor thing was burning. Oh, that’s the cow in my dream. I called her Hildy. Like my cow Hildy we had at home."

"I’m hungry," Fritz whined.

"Oh, mercy," said Trina. "I’m sure you both are starved. Let me help you get dressed. Mertie will have your breakfast ready."

Fritz slid off the bed with a thump.

"Mertie?" Fritz asked.

"The cook. The best in Oconto and probably the best in all of Oconto County. And she does like her own cooking. You’ll see! Let’s hurry. Mr. Bentz wants to meet you before he goes to work at the bank."

"We - we don’t have clothes," Carrie stammered, getting out of bed but not sure her legs would hold her up. She had never felt so weak.

"Clothes? Oh, how could I forget?" Trina opened a trunk at the foot of the bed. "This is full of clothes for both of you. Mr. Bentz saw to that. He sent me shopping yesterday as soon as I had the two of you in bed."

Trina took the clothes out of the trunk, putting those for Fritz on a chair. "Here, Fritz, all for you. Pants, shirts, underwear, and shoes." She touched his thin cheeks. "You weren’t burned at all!"

"I was on a boat."

"Not a boat - you were on a door floating in the river," corrected Carrie, holding up a pink velvet dress.

"A door in the river." Fritz nodded. "Klein grabbed me. I drownded."

"Drowned," corrected Carrie. "You didn’t drown but you almost did."

"You are safe now, Fritz," said Trina squeezing his thin shoulders gently. "Who is Klein?" she asked.

"My dog," answered Fritz. "Is Klein here, too?" He looked around the room.

"Hans saved Fritz and me," explained Carrie, "with Klein’s help."

"No, Klein isn’t here. But who is Hans?" Trina handed Carrie a white cotton petticoat, edged with lace.

"He’s my friend. He was with us in the river."

"It seems as though many people were in the river."

"The whole town, all who could get there." Carrie took a deep breath. "Some couldn’t." She thought again about her parents and her knees started to buckle. She sat down on the edge of the bed.

Trina saw Carrie’s distress, and hurried to spread dresses on the bed. "I think everything you need is here."

Four of the most beautiful dresses Carrie had ever seen covered the bed. "Pantaloons and linen handkerchiefs, too," she cried. "And shoes! I’ve never had three new pairs of shoes at one time."

Trina stopped in the doorway. "You had a dirty quilt with you. It was smelly and had holes burned in it, so Mr. Bentz said to throw it out."

"Not my quilt!" cried Carrie.

"You were clutching it so fiercely I couldn’t get it from you until you fell asleep. I knew it was special so I washed it." She smiled. "It’s hanging in the wash shed next to the kitchen."

"Oh, thank you! Yes, it is special. My grandmother and I made it together."

Trina looked at Carrie’s head. "You can wear that nightcap to breakfast. Will you be able to get yourself dressed, children?"

Carrie touched her ruffled cap and realized it covered bandages wrapped all around her head. She nodded at the maid. "Yes, we will get dressed now."

Trina started down the hall. "I’ll tell Mertie you will be down soon."

Carrie stepped behind a three-sided folding screen with blue birds painted on the panels. It was like a little dressing room against one wall.

She pulled the pink dress carefully over her sore head, grateful that the sleeves covered her bandaged arms. Her burns stung but she tried not to think about the pain.

The velvet shimmered in the sunlight that filled the room as the sun climbed higher. The clock on the fireplace mantel struck nine times. Daylight came late in October in northern Wisconsin. By Christmas, the days would be very short.

She stood before a wall mirror. For the first time since the fire, she saw her face. It was all puffy and red. Her eyes were almost swollen shut. Blisters bulged out where eyebrows had been. She almost screamed as she stared at the horrible sight in the mirror. Her lips were twice their normal size. The nightcap, lopsided over the bandages, made her head look like lumpy bread dough. Her salty tears stung as they ran down her blistered face.

Fritz struggled to get into his new pants. He stopped and stared at Carrie. "Why are you crying?"

She just shook her head and helped him with his suspenders. Then she took his hand and started downstairs to meet Mr. Omar Bentz.

[First chapter from CARRIE AND THE APPLE PIE, by Nelda Johnson Liebig, (Midwest Traditions, 1999), © Nelda Johnson Liebig, is used with permission. Further reproduction is prohibited without the written permission of the publisher. For more information, contact Philip Martin, Midwest Traditions, at info@bluehorsebooks.org.]