Eyja, who had been playing with the sheep to her heart's content, ran up to the open window and peeped into the house. Her mother was standing at the hearth, stirring the fish broth.
    — Mother, mother! — called Eyja.
    — What is it, my little one? — asked her mother.
    — When will the cakes be ready? — Eyja enquired curiously.
    — After the fish broth, — her mother answered patiently.

— Couldn't we have them instead? I'm sick to the back teeth of broth! — said Sigurd.
— But are the cakes ready? Where are they hidden? — asked Eyja.
— Come, look, Mother has still not finished, — remarked Sigurd, indicating the red stalks on the windowsill.
— Mother, but why do you not smile, as usual? Has something happened? — asked Sigurd.

— It's nothing, my son, nothing. I'm just a little tired… — said his mother, wiping beads of sweat from her forehead. Without even understanding why herself, she had suddenly noticed how dreadfully tired she felt. She felt for a stool with her hand and sat down upon it.
    — But let me help! — said Sigurd, running up to her. — It's warm by the fire, go to the fire, there the air is fresher, you'll feel better in an instant!

— Thank you, son! — said his mother, kindly and gently patting him on the shoulder.
— And me, how may I help? — asked Eyja, hopping up and down on one leg. — Shall I clean the rhubarb stalks?
— Goodness, little one, I don't even have a knife which would suit you! — said her mother, at a loss.

— But Sigurd has! — said Eyja, remembering what a good little pocket-knife her brother's father had given him the year before.
— In your dreams! As if I'd give you my knife for some silly stalks! You'll break it again! Or blunt it! — exclaimed Sigurd, jealously guarding his father's gift.

 — No, Eyja, you're still too small to give me help. You could cut yourself, you know the knife is sharp! — said their mother.
Eyja sighed.
— Then… then I simply feel sorry for you! — She sprang up to her mother, threw her arms around her and quietly whispered in her very ear: — Poor Mother! We'll be the death of you!
Their mother laughed quietly, and her anxiety left her for a second.

Лunchtime arrived, and mother poured out the fish broth into clay bowls. The children started to turn up their noses, and she didn’t know how to set a good example, as her appetite had suddenly vanished. She gazed at the broth for a long time, then sighed and reluctantly began to eat.

— Somehow I had my fill while I was standing by the pot breathing in this…hmm, aroma! — said Sigurd, picking at his fish broth.
— Don't invent things, Sigurd. It smells good: it's made with the very fish you caught yesterday evening, and roots, and a sprinkling of dill, and even a couple of black peppercorns, — said his mother, praising the food in habitual intonations. — And don't crumble your bread in vain! You know that everything which is wasted only strengthens the spirits of evil.
— I know, Mother, — said Sigurd with a sigh. — Perhaps then we ought to give the broth to the piglets?
— But Till told me that their piglets also won't eat fish broth! — said Eyja, putting down her spoon.

— What can be done, children? Almost every one of our men is at sea, and our three old hunters have already exhausted themselves in their efforts to feed the village: the forest has been almost hunted out, and you know that it befits us little to kill animals after winter; they've barely survived the cold, and some have only just given birth to young. How could we kill them? Even the predators are going hungry and are struggling to stay alive. And on the neighbouring farmstead the hens have begun to disappear – the foxes are emboldened or simply desperate! Have a little patience, we'll paint a few more pots, the first berries will appear, we'll gather them, take the boat over to old Gustavsson, and he'll take us to the market in town, and there we'll buy all kinds of tasty things: aromatic gingerbread, sugar loaf, flour for bread, maybe even some chocolate. Maybe! — she said, dreamily closing her eyes.

— Chocolate! — exclaimed Eyja. — Mmm, how delicious! If only the first berries would ripen…
— Everything in its own time, — said their mother. — We need not hurry time, for who knows its reasons for passing so slowly? Perhaps somebody is in need of it right now.
— Perhaps, maybe even our father, — remarked Sigurd. — Maybe so many events are taking place around him, that he will hardly make it in time! And if we hurry time, he may not make it at all!

— Oh, but why did you say that… — said his mother in saddened tones. All at once she felt how heavy her heart was becoming with fear and melancholy.
    — Don't fret, Mother, everything will work itself out! — said Sigurd, without a trace of doubt.
— Of course! — she replied, sighing nonetheless. — For many years already he has returned at the appointed time, and this year he will return before the winter storms begin.

Several weeks passed, the first berries began to appear, and all the villagers began to gather at the market to sell what they had managed to produce over the winter and spring, and to buy essential items or luxuries. The sun slowly sank closer and closer to the sea, as if it sought to tell it something, yet still could not make up its mind. A soft light streamed through the pock-marked window panes of the houses, like fresh honey being poured into a cup, and the villagers' hearts were filled with peace and goodness.

Sigurd sat outside, painting a clay pot, looking up now and then to observe how the setting sun magically transfigured everything around. Ordinary things suddenly acquired an extraordinary beauty.

Sigurd admired the fishing boats in the distance; they bobbed up and down lightly on the light waves, knocking against each other. He mixed his paints and began to apply red, yellow and orange in turn to the clay surface. Meanwhile, Eyja was patiently and accurately painting children's whistles.

Their mother took several newly-fired plates out of the oven: on these the glaze had hardened and become bright and extremely shiny, smooth, without a single blemish, like ice on lake water. The glaze sparkled in the rays of the setting sun.

— Mother, but why are all your plates dark blue, like a restless sea? — asked the curious Eyja.
— I don't know myself, — shrugged their mother. — That's the mood I'm in!
— They're still beautiful! — remarked Sigurd. — I think they'll sell like hot cakes!
— I think so too, — said their mother, barely forcing a smile.
— But I wonder, why do they turn out beautiful, no matter whether the soul is happy or sad? — asked Sigurd.

— I think, because when you do that for which you were created, you are guided by the spirits of good. For only they are able to create beauty! And beauty can be neither happy nor sad: beauty is beauty… — said his mother.

Sigurd gazed at her: his mother now seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful, probably more beautiful even than some fairy queen. Her old, blue dress, faded from time, suddenly became as if from velvet, like the dresses worn by those wealthy city ladies whom they saw at the market from time to time. Her eyes, although a little sad, surrounded by a light network of kind wrinkles, were such a piercing blue, like the large icebergs which sometimes drifted into their bay. Her flaxen hair, tied into braids, suddenly glistened, as if made of pure gold.

— So does it mean, — asked Sigurd, — that nature is always full of good, if it is always so beautiful? Even the plains on which the sheep used to graze, which were then scorched by the hot lava? Even the ancient glaciers, where Magnus the Hunter perished last year when he was out hunting an arctic fox?

— You must not think about nature as a good or evil entity, — his mother replied. — She is incapable of being cruel, even if the waves were to rise higher than those hills and sweep the whole village into the sea. Nature cannot be cruel, for only beings of reason can be cruel; beings like humans or trolls. But when you see her beauty, the spirits of good guide you. And when you do something, like your father does, to preserve her, you are also guided by the spirits of good. For if your father does not calm the burning sea, many sea creatures and birds will die, and the sea itself will sicken, and if the sea suffers, people will also suffer!

Sigurd listened keenly to his mother, trying to remember as well as he could what she was saying. It was not easy for him to understand what she meant. How could one consider the ancient glaciers not to be cruel, if Magnus's three children had been left to go hungry, and their father would never again return, would never catch another fox, not even a hare, so as to sell their fur on the market in town? Unable to keep his thoughts to himself, he asked his mother about this.

— Of course, I pity those children, — she replied. — You remember yourself, we and the whole village gave them our help, and then Auntie Agnes took them in, and now everything is well with them. And I pity Magnus, he was a good man, but a poor hunter: he hunted animals only out of necessity, for he always pitied them. He went after that arctic fox only because he was quite desperate, and its fur is highly prized. But it is not the glaciers that are cruel, nor the fox.

 Magnus dared to gamble, to risk a confrontation, so he should have been ready for the possibility that the outcome might not be in his favour. That is the way it always is. If a fight begins, there will always be a victor and a vanquished. For if he had 'won', his children would have been well-fed to the very spring, yet the arctic fox would have paid for that with its life. Who is to know, perhaps it also had young waiting for it in the burrow? And then they also would have perished, nobody would have come to their aid, unlike Magnus's children.

— But they were just fox cubs, not three children! — exclaimed Sigurd.
— We are all created equal. It is just that many many forget this, — his mother said, shaking her head.

Sigurd again fell into deep thought as he began to paint a new pot. He decided to paint it bright yellow, like dandelions or the sun, so that it would shine out against his mother's plates like a torch. Eyja, who seemed not to have heard their conversation, was swinging her legs, sitting on a chair which was too high for her, and puffing as she drew bright patches on snow-white horses.

The sun had already almost slipped beyond the edge of the water, and the evening had turned cold. Sigurd shivered. His mother began to gather the pots, plates and whistles which had cooled after firing, in order to take them into the house and pack them ready for sale. Sigurd set about helping her. Suddenly a piercing north wind began to blow, and Sigurd was forced to close his eyes so that no sand would get into them. At once he heard his mother gasp, and then immediately, before he could even open his eyes to see what had happened, the crash of shattering pottery. Sigurd opened his eyes: his mother was looking at the clay fragments at her feet in bewilderment.

— It has been here again! — said his mother with trembling, pale lips.
— What's been here, what, mother? — asked Sigurd with concern.
Eyja brought a straw broom. Sigurd began to sweep up the multicoloured shards, and as he did so, he noticed among them two blue-black feathers.

Sigurd and Eyja's mother fell sick. Two weeks passed, and with every day her condition worsened. Her strength deserted her, and she became weaker and weaker. Sigurd saw how difficult everyday tasks to which she had long been accustomed became for her. Even Eyja realised that something was wrong, but had absolutely no idea what to do for her. The crimson blush of their mother's cheeks vanished, and her skin became pale, a little grey, like the last winter snows as they melt.

Mother cleaned fish, and the silver scales flew from the knife, fell to the ground, and clung to her skin. Mother gutted the fish, removing the guts and swim bladders, chopping off the heads, throwing away the tails. Mother stirred the fish broth, standing at the hearth and noiselessly repeating: “Fire in the lighthouse, fire in the lighthouse… we need to light the fire in the lighthouse...”

Mother no longer smiled. Mother cried almost without end. Fear, sadness and anxiety weighed so strongly on her heart that she could hardly breathe.

Once, at night, when Sigurd applied cold leaves to her hot forehead, she suddenly seized his hand, and, looking him straight in the eye, said to him:
— Soon I must go to Land's End, in order to light the fire in the lighthouse, for otherwise the ship will break upon the rocks, the ship will break and all will perish. All – all – all – will perish in the waves of the cold sea, those who do not drown will be devoured by sea monsters, and those who are not devoured by sea monsters, those who try to clamber onto the rocks, will fall from the jagged cliffs back into the cold sea. Do you hear, Sigurd? I must go there!

She tried to stand, but she had barely the strength to move, and could only stir in her bed. Suddenly she began to weep.

— Forgive me, Sigurd, my child, I should not have told you; I have frightened you, I have frightened you, son, — she said, the tears now streaming from her eyes.
— Mother, there is no need to cry. Everything will be fine, you just recover your strength all the sooner, — answered Sigurd, squeezing her hand more firmly. — Everything will be fine, mother… — he repeated.
There was such strength and such assuredness in his voice that for some moments his mother improved a little.

— Sigurd Petersson, you are your father's son, — said his mother, regarding him with unconcealed pride. — When you speak in such a fashion, I believe your every word!
For the first time in several nights, his mother fell into a deep slumber, and slept until the very morning.

Barely had the sun risen over the hill upon the island, than their mother awoke. She felt a little better, and Sigurd and Eyja were overjoyed. She set about packing up the plates and pots, so they would be ready to be taken for sale.