She counted them going through the door. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Seven. She counted again, turning to look behind her into the white. Seven, she said. She said it louder, called her.
Seven. She heard him already going back, already moving into the lane again. She started to follow and he said she heard it clearly even through the wind. Stay with them. She stayed.
She stood at the barn door and she counted the seven animals already inside and she waited and the cold was working through her systematically the way cold does when you stop moving and she flexed her hands and her feet and kept her eyes on the white outside the door. EMTT appeared, horse and rider materializing from the storm. One more, she said. I know, he said. He dismounted inside the barn and handed her the reigns without looking at her and went back out on foot.
She held the horse. The horse was shaking, not frightened, just cold, the way everything living was cold right now. And she kept her hand on its neck, and she waited, and she counted seconds as the way she'd learned to count seconds in difficult situations, because counting gives the mind something to do that isn't panic. She reached 147. Then Calder came through the barn door with the eighth animal, the grace steer from the back corner that Calder had told her was stronger than he looked, moving him with his body from behind, and EMTT came through behind both of them and pulled the barn door shut against the wind.
Eight animals. Eight. She let out a breath that she had apparently been holding for 2 and 1/2 minutes, and her whole chest achd with the release of it. Calder leaned against the barn wall with his hands on his knees for a moment. He was breathing hard.
His face was raw from the wind, red and white in patches, and his hat had ice on the brim. He stayed like that for a count of five, catching himself, and then he straightened up. He looked at the eight animals in the barn. Then he looked at Tessa. "Your hands," he said.
She looked at them. She was still holding the horse's reins, and she hadn't noticed that her grip had gone wrong, the fingers not closing the way they should. "Come here," he said. She let EMTT take the horse, and she went to Calder, and he took both of her hands in his, and held them against his own chest, which was the warmest available surface. And he held them there without speaking for a full minute, while the circulation fought its way back, and the pain arrived, which was excruciating and welcome at the same time, because pain meant the feeling was returning.
She didn't make a sound. She breathed through it. "Can you move them? " he said. She moved them, all of them, this time with the full range of motion. It hurt every degree of movement, but they moved.