"You're ice," he said. "You're ice, bud, you're — inside. Inside, right now."
"She didn't — "
"I don't care. Inside."
And Gudrun was there too, on Dell's other side, with her arm under his arm, and between the two of them they got him through the storm door and the wooden door and into the living room, where the stove was roaring because Pekka had just loaded it, and the lantern was on the floor, and Pekka was standing in the middle of the room with an armful of blankets and his mouth open.
They put him on the floor in front of the stove. Gudrun pulled the clips off the hoodie, one, two, three, and they skittered across the floor, and she pulled the hoodie over his head and the fleece under it, which caught on his ears, and the flannel. She did it fast, without wasting anything. She put the backs of her fingers against his neck and held them there and counted something under her breath.
"He's okay," she said. "He's cold. He's not — he's okay. Pekka, the blankets. The wool one first. Rasmus, take his socks off. Take his boots off and his socks and put his feet against your stomach. Under your shirt."
His father did it. He unlaced Dell's boots with his cold fingers and pulled them off and pulled off the socks, and then he unzipped the tan coat and pulled up his thermal shirt and put Dell's two bare white feet flat against his belly, and Dell felt him flinch at the cold and then hold them there, both hands over them, pressing.
"Not by the stove," Gudrun said. "Not too close. You warm them too fast, it hurts like hell. Slow."
"I know," his father said.
"I know you know."
Nobody said anything for a long time after that. Pekka put the wool blanket around Dell's shoulders, and then the afghan over that, and then went and stood by the window with his arms crossed, looking at nothing. Gudrun sat back on her heels. His father sat on the floor with Dell's feet against his skin. The stove ticked. The ice ticked outside. Little by little the pain came into Dell's feet, a deep burning ache like they had been slammed in a door, and he cried a little from it, not because of anything else, and his father said, "I know, I know, I know," and did not let go.
When Dell could talk properly again, he said, "I did throw it in the river."