Recap: A sudden rainstorm burst onto the girls, and they were caught in a frightening flood.
Sabrina was pulling us along. “There’s a farmhouse near here. I remember. It’s just hard to see in all this driving rain.”
The thought of a dry farmhouse gave me hope. I asked Hashem to please help us find it.
Katie squeezed my hand. “I’m frightened. We could drown,” she exclaimed.
“No, no. Sabrina will find the farmhouse,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“This way!” Sabrina tugged at me to follow her lead.
“It should be up here, over that hill. Come on. Quick, climb up here.” She pulled me towards her, and I pulled Katie towards me.
Katie’s hand slipped out of mine, and she screamed. Sabrina jumped back into the raging water and pulled her out.
There were no houses in sight. Muddied and soaked, we scrambled up a hillside which had now become the bank to a swirling sea of angry waves. The water engulfed tree branches and everything in its path, gobbling everything in its path like a hungry monster.
My toes were numb from the cold. Katie was crying softly. I’d always been the fearful one, but now I was the one trying to reassure Katie. “It’ll be fine. Hashem is with us,” I said.
“I want to go home. I don’t want to be here,” she cried softly.
There was no sign of any houses or any living thing. This must be how Noach felt during the flood.
Sabrina strode away from us. “It has to be near here. I remember seeing it once when my family took this road.”
We waited, watching the water and shielding our faces from the icy rain.
“Come. This way!” Sabrina yelled. “Look! There it is.” It was a small house and a barn. “Let’s head to the barn,” she said.
We trudged towards it. Sabrina reached it first. She pulled at the door of the barn, and it creaked open. Inside, there were stacks of hay and an old horse with a white mane that whinnied at us.
We plopped down on the soft hay.
“Shouldn’t we knock on the door of the house and ask permission?” I asked.
“Miri, we don’t know who lives here. It could be a house of informers or officers of the Inquisition. We can’t take a chance. We’ll wait here ’til the storm lessens and then leave. They’ll never know we were here.”
We opened our food basket. My stomach grumbled in anticipation until she held up a soggy sandwich and some unrecognizable pieces of melon. None of the food was salvageable.
My stomach grumbled more. I felt like I could eat anything. “I’m starving!” How many times had I said that and never felt the emptiness I felt now in the hollow of my stomach?
“Me, too,” Katie said. “I wish I was home eating one of my mother’s delicious chicken-and-rice dishes.”
“I could devour a whole pizza,” I said.
“Let’s stop. Talking about food just makes me more hungry,” Katie said.
The rain continued on and on.
I yawned. A wave of sleepiness washed over me. I lay down on the bed of soft hay. Katie and Sabrina followed my lead. “We’ll just rest a short time until the rain stops,” Sabrina said. “We don’t know who lives here, and we don’t want them to find us.”
We must have all three fallen asleep.
The next thing I knew, I was opening my eyes, and a lady wearing a long red skirt and a red head kerchief was bent over, staring at me.
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of 11 popular Jewish books, including her newly released historical fiction novel The Blizzard (Menucha 2026) and recently published novel Captured (Menucha 2025). She is also the current news editor of Binyan Magazine.
