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?”