Emmaline “Emmy” Frost Character Analysis

They walked away, Mose carrying little Emmy, but Brickman lingered a moment and surveyed the destruction. Under his breath he said, “Jesus.”

“You were wrong,” I told him.

He looked at me and squinted. “Wrong?”

“You said God was a shepherd and would take care of us. God’s no shepherd.”

He didn’t respond.

“You know what God is, Mr. Brickman? A goddamn tornado, that’s what he is.”

“Everything’s hard work, Buck. You don’t wrap your thinking around that, life’ll kill you for sure. Me, I love this land, the work. Never was a churchgoer. God all penned up under a roof? I don’t think so. Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful, tender land.”

“This land spawned a tornado that killed Emmy’s mother. You call that tender?”

“Tragic, that’s what I call it. But don’t blame the land. […] The land is what it is. Life is what it is. God is what God is. You and me, we’re what we are. None of it’s perfect. Or hell, maybe it all is and we’re just not wise enough to see it.”

There is a deeper hurt than anything sustained by the body, and it’s the wounding of the soul. It’s the feeling that you’ve been abandoned by everyone, even God. It’s the most alone you’ll ever be. A wounded body heals itself, but there is a scar. Watching Emmy weep in Mose’s strong arms, I thought the same must be true for a soul. There was a thick scar on my heart now, but the wound to Emmy’s heart was still so recent that it hadn’t begun to heal. I watched as Mose signed on her palm again and again, Not alone. Not alone.

The Vagabonds told the woman they were tired of wandering and asked if they could stay with her, but she looked into them, all the way down to their souls, and knew the true reason for their wandering. They were in search of their hearts’ desires, which were different for each of them, and she knew they would never find what they were looking for if they stayed in the safety of her forest.

Instead, she sent them on an odyssey.

“This kid,” I began, “was just like us. He loved the sun on his face, the dew on the morning grass, the song of birds in the trees. He loved to skip stones on the river. At night he liked to lie on the sand and stare up at the stars and dream. Just like us. He had people who loved him. But one day he went away and never came back, and they were heartbroken. They vowed not to speak his name again until the day he returned. That day never came. But every night his mother stood on the riverbank and called his name, and if you listen close at night, you can still hear the wind over the river whisper that name so he will never be forgotten.”

“But when I heard the music from your harmonica, it made me want to sing. When I looked out the window, I saw a change in my people. I saw life returning to their faces. I saw fire in their eyes again. I think if you keep playing and I keep singing, we might save them.”

And that’s what they did. He played his magic harmonica and she sang in her beautiful voice, which came from her deep love for her people, and slowly everyone in the castle, everyone who’d lost their souls, woke up, and new souls grew in them and they were whole and happy again.

Their hands had been tied behind their backs and hoods had been placed over their heads, Mose signed. They couldn’t see one another, so they shouted out their names in order to let the others know they were all there, all together in body and in spirit. They were condemned but not broken. Amdacha was one of these men.

Mose lifted his face, tearstained, to the sky and for a moment could not go on.

We risked a fire that night and sat together, talking quietly around the flames, as we had on many nights since we’d taken to the rivers. It began to feel to me as if what had been broken was coming together again, but I knew it would never be exactly the same. With every turn of the river, we were changing, becoming different people, and for the first time I understood that the journey we were on wasn’t just about getting to Saint Louis.

This was all my doing, all my fault. This was my curse. I saw now that long before the Tornado God descended and killed Cora Frost and decimated Emmy’s world, that vengeful spirit had attached itself to me and had followed me everywhere. My mother had died. My father had been murdered. I was to blame for all the misery in my life and the lives of everyone I’d ever cared about. Only me. I saw with painful clarity that if I stayed with my brother and Mose and Emmy, I would end up destroying them, too. The realization devastated me, and I stood breathless and alone and terribly afraid.

I fell to my knees and tried to pray to the merciful God Sister Eve had urged me to embrace, prayed desperately for release from this curse, prayed for guidance. But all I felt was my own isolation and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

“What I’m going to say may sound impossible. But I’ve seen impossible things before, so here goes. Those fits she suffers? I think they may be her attempt at wrestling with what she sees when she looks into the future. I think she might be trying to alter what she sees there.”

That knocked me over. “She changes the future?”

“Maybe just tweaks it a little. Like a good storyteller rewriting the last sentence.”

In every good tale there is a seed of truth, and from that seed a lovely story grows. Some of what I’ve told you is true and some…well, let’s just call it the bloom on the rosebush. […] Our eyes perceive so dimly, and our brains are so easily confused. Far better, I believe, to be like children and open ourselves to every beautiful possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so.

They walked away, Mose carrying little Emmy, but Brickman lingered a moment and surveyed the destruction. Under his breath he said, “Jesus.”

“You were wrong,” I told him.

He looked at me and squinted. “Wrong?”

“You said God was a shepherd and would take care of us. God’s no shepherd.”

He didn’t respond.

“You know what God is, Mr. Brickman? A goddamn tornado, that’s what he is.”

“Everything’s hard work, Buck. You don’t wrap your thinking around that, life’ll kill you for sure. Me, I love this land, the work. Never was a churchgoer. God all penned up under a roof? I don’t think so. Ask me, God’s right here. In the dirt, the rain, the sky, the trees, the apples, the stars in the cottonwoods. In you and me, too. It’s all connected and it’s all God. Sure this is hard work, but it’s good work because it’s a part of what connects us to this land, Buck. This beautiful, tender land.”

“This land spawned a tornado that killed Emmy’s mother. You call that tender?”

“Tragic, that’s what I call it. But don’t blame the land. […] The land is what it is. Life is what it is. God is what God is. You and me, we’re what we are. None of it’s perfect. Or hell, maybe it all is and we’re just not wise enough to see it.”

There is a deeper hurt than anything sustained by the body, and it’s the wounding of the soul. It’s the feeling that you’ve been abandoned by everyone, even God. It’s the most alone you’ll ever be. A wounded body heals itself, but there is a scar. Watching Emmy weep in Mose’s strong arms, I thought the same must be true for a soul. There was a thick scar on my heart now, but the wound to Emmy’s heart was still so recent that it hadn’t begun to heal. I watched as Mose signed on her palm again and again, Not alone. Not alone.

The Vagabonds told the woman they were tired of wandering and asked if they could stay with her, but she looked into them, all the way down to their souls, and knew the true reason for their wandering. They were in search of their hearts’ desires, which were different for each of them, and she knew they would never find what they were looking for if they stayed in the safety of her forest.

Instead, she sent them on an odyssey.

“This kid,” I began, “was just like us. He loved the sun on his face, the dew on the morning grass, the song of birds in the trees. He loved to skip stones on the river. At night he liked to lie on the sand and stare up at the stars and dream. Just like us. He had people who loved him. But one day he went away and never came back, and they were heartbroken. They vowed not to speak his name again until the day he returned. That day never came. But every night his mother stood on the riverbank and called his name, and if you listen close at night, you can still hear the wind over the river whisper that name so he will never be forgotten.”

“But when I heard the music from your harmonica, it made me want to sing. When I looked out the window, I saw a change in my people. I saw life returning to their faces. I saw fire in their eyes again. I think if you keep playing and I keep singing, we might save them.”

And that’s what they did. He played his magic harmonica and she sang in her beautiful voice, which came from her deep love for her people, and slowly everyone in the castle, everyone who’d lost their souls, woke up, and new souls grew in them and they were whole and happy again.

Their hands had been tied behind their backs and hoods had been placed over their heads, Mose signed. They couldn’t see one another, so they shouted out their names in order to let the others know they were all there, all together in body and in spirit. They were condemned but not broken. Amdacha was one of these men.

Mose lifted his face, tearstained, to the sky and for a moment could not go on.

We risked a fire that night and sat together, talking quietly around the flames, as we had on many nights since we’d taken to the rivers. It began to feel to me as if what had been broken was coming together again, but I knew it would never be exactly the same. With every turn of the river, we were changing, becoming different people, and for the first time I understood that the journey we were on wasn’t just about getting to Saint Louis.

This was all my doing, all my fault. This was my curse. I saw now that long before the Tornado God descended and killed Cora Frost and decimated Emmy’s world, that vengeful spirit had attached itself to me and had followed me everywhere. My mother had died. My father had been murdered. I was to blame for all the misery in my life and the lives of everyone I’d ever cared about. Only me. I saw with painful clarity that if I stayed with my brother and Mose and Emmy, I would end up destroying them, too. The realization devastated me, and I stood breathless and alone and terribly afraid.

I fell to my knees and tried to pray to the merciful God Sister Eve had urged me to embrace, prayed desperately for release from this curse, prayed for guidance. But all I felt was my own isolation and an overwhelming sense of helplessness.

“What I’m going to say may sound impossible. But I’ve seen impossible things before, so here goes. Those fits she suffers? I think they may be her attempt at wrestling with what she sees when she looks into the future. I think she might be trying to alter what she sees there.”

That knocked me over. “She changes the future?”

“Maybe just tweaks it a little. Like a good storyteller rewriting the last sentence.”

In every good tale there is a seed of truth, and from that seed a lovely story grows. Some of what I’ve told you is true and some…well, let’s just call it the bloom on the rosebush. […] Our eyes perceive so dimly, and our brains are so easily confused. Far better, I believe, to be like children and open ourselves to every beautiful possibility, for there is nothing our hearts can imagine that is not so.