It was a lovely spot in summer, when the waterfalls went pouring down milk-white into the green fjord, sending up so much spray that they looked as if they were steaming hot; when rainbows hung in the sky; when the small steep meadows were bright with wild flowers, and even the sod roof of the cottage was like a little wild garden of harebells and pansies and strawberries that Goran gathered for breakfast sometimes. He was happy all day then, fishing in the fjord, making a little cart for Nanna, the goat, to pull, trying to teach Gustava, the hen, to sing, putting on his fingers the pink and purple hats that he picked from the tall spires of wild foxglove and monkshood, and making them dance and bow, and listening to the loud music of the waterfalls after rain.
And in the evening after supper Goran’s grandmother would tell him splendid stories while they sat together in the doorway making straw beehives, sewing the rounds of straw together with split blackberry briers. The sun would shine on the straw and make it look so yellow and glistening that Goran would pretend he was making a golden beehive for the Queen Bee’s palace. For where Goran lived the sun never sets at all in the middle of summer, and it is bright daylight not only all day, but all night as well. You and I would never have known when to go to bed, but Goran and his grandmother were used to it, and even Gustava, the hen, knew enough to put her head under her wing and make her own dark night.
But with winter, changes came. The flowers slept under the earth until spring’s call should wake them, and yawning and stretching, s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g, they should stretch up into the air and sunlight. The waterfalls no longer flung up clouds of spray like smoke, but built roofs of ice over themselves. And, strangest of all, the winter darkness came, so that the days were like the nights, and you and I would never have known when to get up.
“I must go to the village for our winter supplies before the snow falls and cuts us off,” his grandmother said to Goran one day. “Neighbor Skylstad has offered me a seat in his rowboat to-morrow, and will bring me back the next day. You won’t be afraid to stay here alone, will you, Goran?”
“No, Grandmother,” said Goran. He pretended to be tremendously interested in poking his finger into the earth in a geranium pot, so that his grandmother shouldn’t see that his eyes were full of tears and his lower lip was trembling. For to tell you the truth he was frightened. The little house was so far from any other house, and then Goran had never spent a night alone. Last year when the winter’s supplies were bought, he had gone to the village with his grandfather, and he had told Nanna and Gustava and Mejau, the cat, all about what a wonderful place it was, a thousand times over; the warm shop, with its great cheeses in wooden boxes painted with bright birds and flowers, and its glowing stove, as tall and slim as a proud lady in a black dress, with a wreath of iron ferns upon her head; the other children who had let him play with them while grandfather exchanged the socks and mittens knitted by grandmother for potatoes and candles. And they had slept at the inn under a feather bed so heavy that you would have thought by morning they would have been pressed as flat as the flowers in grandmother’s big Bible. But they weren’t! They got up just as round as ever, and had a wonderful breakfast of dark grayish-brown goats’-milk cheese, cold herring, and stewed bilberries. Grandfather had gone to Heaven since then, and Goran wondered if he could possibly be finding it as delightful as the village.
How he did want to go this time! But of course he knew that some one must stay behind to feed Nanna and Gustava and Mejau, to tend the fire and water the geraniums and wind the clock. So he said as bravely as he could: “I’ll take care of everything, Grandmother.”
Soon after his grandmother left, the snow began to fall. How that frightened Goran! Suppose it snowed so hard that she could never get back to him! For when winter really began, the little house was often up to its chimney in snow, and they could get to no one, and no one could get to them.
How poor little Goran’s heart began to hammer at the thought! He fell to work to make himself forget the snow. First, seizing a broom made of a bundle of twigs, he swept the hard earth floor, which in summer had so pretty a carpet of green leaves, strewn fresh every day by Goran and his grandmother. Then he poured some water on the geraniums in the window, only spilling a little on himself. Then he stroked Mejau, who was purring loudly in front of the fire; and all this made him feel much better.
“Time for dinner, Goran!” said the old clock on the wall. At least it said:
“Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!” which meant the same thing.