Marianne specially likes my mama’s yeast dumplings. When my mama bakes those dumplings I always take one to school for Marianne, or to church if it’s a Sunday. I took her one that Sunday, but then I had to eat it myself because she wasn’t at church.

What do we do together? Well, we play games, like cops and robbers, catch, hide and seek. In summer we sometimes play shops at my house. We make ourselves a little stall by the kitchen garden fence. Mama always lets me have a tablecloth and we can put things out on it: apples, nuts, flowers, colored paper, anything we can find.

Once we even had chewing gum, my auntie brought it. It tastes lovely, like cinnamon. My auntie says the children in America eat it all the time. My auntie works for the Yanks, you see. And now and then she brings us chewing gum and chocolate and peanut butter. Or bread in funny green cans. Once last summer there was even ice cream.

My mama doesn’t like that so much, because Auntie Lisbeth’s boyfriend comes from America, too, and he’s all black.

Marianne’s always saying her papa is in America as well, and he’s going to come fetch her very soon; she’s sure he is. But I don’t believe it. Because Marianne does tell fibs sometimes. Mama says you shouldn’t tell fibs, and when Marianne tells another of her stories we quarrel. Then we usually each take our things away from the shop and we can’t go on playing and Marianne goes home.

The Christ Child brought me a dolly for Christmas, and Marianne was very envious. She only has a really old one; it’s a wooden dolly and it used to be her mama’s. So then Marianne started telling stories again. How her papa is coming soon to take her away to America. I told her I wouldn’t go on being her friend if she kept telling so many fibs. After that she didn’t say anymore about it.

Sometimes we go tobogganing in the meadow behind our farm. There’s a hill that is great for tobogganing; everyone in the village always goes there. If you don’t brake in time you shoot right down into the hedge. Then there’s usually trouble at home. Marianne has to bring her little brother along sometimes, when she’s looking after him. He clings to your skirts all the time. I don’t have a little brother, just a big sister, but that’s not always much fun either. She often makes me really mad.

When Marianne’s little brother fell over in the snow he started crying and he’d wet his pants, too, and then Marianne had to go home and there was bad trouble. Because she hadn’t looked after him properly and he’d wet his pants again and so on. Then she was very sad in school next day and told me she wanted to go away because her grandpa is so strict and so is her mama.

A few days ago she told me the magician was back. She’d seen him in the woods, she said, and she knows he’ll take her to her papa. Yes, she said, she saw the magician. She told me that story once before, last autumn, right after school began and I didn’t believe her, there’s no such thing as magicians, and you bet your life there’s no such thing as magicians who can magic you a papa who’s supposed to be in America. So then I quarreled with her again and she cried and said there is so a magician, and he has all colored bottles in his backpack and other colored things and sometimes he just sits there humming to himself. So he must be a magician, just like in our reading book at school. Then I shouted, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” and she cried and ran home. And because she wasn’t in school on Saturday and she loves my mama’s yeast dumplings so much, I took one to church for her on Sunday. But she wasn’t there either. Mama said because none of them were there maybe they’d gone to visit family. Over in Einhausen where her grandpa’s brother lives. So I just ate the dumpling myself.

Marianne lies in bed awake. She can’t get to sleep. She hears the wind howling. It sweeps over the farm like the Wild Hunt. Grandma’s often told her stories about the Wild Hunt and the Trud, an evil spirit in female form. She always tells them on the long, dark, frosty nights between Christmas and New Year.

“The Wild Hunt races on before the wind, fast as the storm clouds or even faster. The huntsmen are mounted on horses as black as the Devil,” Grandma had told her. “Wrapped in black cloaks. Hoods drawn right down over their faces. Eyes glowing red, they race on. If anyone’s rash enough to go out and about on such a night, the Wild Hunt will pick him up. At the gallop,” said Grandma. “Just like that—got ’im!”

And she made a snatching movement with her hand, as if seizing something to extinguish it.

“Got ’im! And they take the poor fellow high up in the air and sweep him away with them. Up, up, and away to the clouds, they sweep him right up into the sky. He has to go with the stormy wind. The hunt never lets him go again, the hunt howls and laughs with scorn. Ho, ho, ho,” laughed Grandma in a deep voice.

Marianne could almost see the Wild Hunt picking a man up and laughing as it carried him away.

“And what happens then, Grandma?” Marianne asked. “Doesn’t he ever come down again?”

“Oh yes, oh yes,” replied Grandma. “Sometimes he comes down again, sometimes not. The Wild Hunt drags the poor devil on with it as long as it likes. Sometimes it puts him down again quite gently once it’s had its fun. Sometimes. But mostly the poor man’s found somewhere the next morning with all his bones broken. His whole body all scratched and bruised, smashed to pieces. Many a man’s never been seen again. The Wild Hunt has taken him straight to the Devil.”

Marianne keeps thinking about the story of the Wild Hunt. She’d never leave the house in a storm like this. The Wild Hunt isn’t going to get her. Not likely!

She lies awake for a long time. How long she doesn’t know. Her little brother sleeps in the same room. The beds are arranged so that they lie almost side by side. She in her bed; he in his small cot.

She hears his calm, regular breathing, they’re lying so close. He breathes in and out. Sometimes, when she can’t sleep, she listens to that sound in the night, tries to match her own breathing to his, breathes in when he breathes in, breathes out when he breathes out.

That sometimes helps, and then she gets tired, too, and falls asleep herself. But it doesn’t work tonight. She’s lying there awake.

Should she leave her bed? Grandpa will be terribly cross again. He doesn’t like it when she gets up in the night and calls for her mother or her grandmother.

“You’re old enough to sleep alone now,” he says, and sends her back to bed.

There’s a line of light shining under the door. Only faintly, but she sees a narrow strip of light.

So there’s still somebody awake. Her mother, maybe? Or Grandma?

Marianne plucks up all her courage and puts her bare feet out of bed. It’s cold in the room. She pushes the covers aside. Very quietly, so as not to wake her little brother, she tiptoes to the door. Cautiously, in case the floorboards creak.

Slowly, carefully, she pushes the door handle down and quietly opens the door. She steals down the passage and into the kitchen.

There’s still a light on in the kitchen. She sits at the window and looks out into the night. It gives her the creeps, and she starts shivering in her thin nightie.

Then she notices that the door to the next room is ajar.

Her mother must have gone to the cowshed, Marianne thinks. She opens the door to the next room wide. Another door opens out of that room into the passage leading to the cowshed and the barn.

She calls for her mother. For her grandmother. But there is no answer.

The little girl goes down a long, dark feed alley. She hesitates, stops. Calls for her mother again, for her grandmother. Rather louder this time. Still no answer.