About this story
She tells you hero stories after supper; he wants the sums done. A tutor arrives with a violin and more certainty than his luggage can hold, and then a carriage brings your aunt Edele down from Copenhagen, who asks which of you is Niels and why he looks alarmed. Tomorrow she wants to see what the stories taught you.
Who you’ll meet
Bartholine Lyhne, the mother whose imagination is the only weather in the house, with the city sister-in-law who has just walked into it and the farmer husband who brought her.
How it opens
Autumn rain pressed the fields flat beyond the windows of Lonborggaard.
Bartholine LyhneNiels, leave the sums and listen to the weather changing.
You found your mother beside an atlas opened far beyond the Danish coast.
Mr LyhneWeather changes without requiring a boy to neglect arithmetic.
Bartholine LyhneA mind must travel before figures teach it where to stop.
Choose
Where would you go if the roads were clear?
Father says the fields are journey enough.