Slowly she stands and carefully climbs to the crumbling old wall until she can peer over the top. A battered old house stands before her and a valley dips away from the house. In the valley, three little girls play, and in the house, an old, old woman is watching the girls play. Rune is about to climb back down the wall when she hears the old woman speak. “Play little girls, play, the years will pass. Soon you will be fourteen and confirmed; your white dress and gold cross will have cost your mother more than she can spare. You will be thinking about your pretty dress and about God, and what happened in church. It is lovely to walk here in the valley. The years will pass with many unhappy days to darken even a youthful heart. At last you will meet a young man and you’ll walk this valley together. Every year the trees have fresh new leaves but that is not true of the human heart. Through the heart of men, more dark clouds drift than the sky of the north will ever know.”
