Aliss at the Fire

and then Old Aliss bends her head and a shudder goes through her shoulders and then she just stands there, she just stands, the way Kristoffer and Brita are just standing there too, and Brita with Asle in her arms. It gets darker and darker, and they are just standing there. They just stand there, they just don’t move, she thinks. They stand there, they stand there as though they had been standing there since time immemorial, she thinks. And she stands there. She stands there and looks at Asle, at Brita, Kristoffer, Old Aliss. And then she turns around and far away, up on the ridge, where the farmsteads end before it slopes down to the river on the other side, the river that follows the back of the ridge all the way from the waterfall farther back, there, up on the very top of the ridge, she sees a boy standing there, he stands there completely calm, just stands, and he looks down at the old house where they live, and isn’t that a stick in his hand? yes, it is, a long stick cut from a branch is resting on his shoulder, and maybe he’s been fishing in the river with the stick? she thinks and then she sees the boy, and could it be him as a boy? doesn’t it look like him? but how could she even tell from such a great distance that it’s him? she thinks, but she can because he is both very far away and right up close, and because it is as if it’s totally dark and totally light at the same time, she thinks, and she can’t understand it, because she can see a boy far away standing up at the top of the ridge, and she can also see his face perfectly clearly as though he was right next to her, and now she sees so so clearly that it’s him and she sees him start to run toward her, and then suddenly it’s a different face, a totally different face, but still with black hair, like his black hair, and doesn’t it look like the Asle that Brita is standing and holding in her arms now? she thinks, yes it really does, she thinks and she sees the boy run toward her, but isn’t it him as a boy? yes now it’s him again, and not the Asle that Brita is standing with in her arms, now she can see it so clearly, and then, it wasn’t him before, it was someone else, a boy the same age, but a different boy, and this boy is probably the Asle that Brita is standing and holding in her arms, and now the boy comes almost right up to the yard and she turns around and she looks at the old house where they live and there, in the yard, she sees Brita still standing with Asle in her arms and Kristoffer stands there with the fish on the string and Old Aliss stands on the front step and now she sees it, now she sees it, now she sees that the boy who is coming running toward her is the Asle that Brita is standing with in her arms and she sees the boy drop the stick and then it is as if he disappears into the boy Brita is standing and holding in her arms. And then Old Aliss straightens up, standing there on the front step, and she slowly turns around and goes into the old house. Into her house, Old Aliss goes into her house, she thinks. And in the yard in front of the old house where they live Brita stands holding Asle in her arms. And then Kristoffer goes over to Brita and then he takes Asle into his own arms and then he hugs Asle to his body, and the string with the fish hangs and swings down toward the ground, and then Kristoffer starts to rock himself and Asle back and forth, and the fish on the string swing back and forth

No he can’t be dead, Brita says

and Kristoffer doesn’t answer

My good little boy can’t have left us, she says

My son, my darling son, she says

My dearest son, she says

But where is Olaf, she says

Do you know where Olaf is, Kristoffer, she says