A young, white forehead boring through the darkness. An eleven-year-old girl. Siss.

It was really only afternoon, but already dark. A hard frost in late autumn. Stars, but no moon, and no snow to give a glimmer of light – so the darkness was thick, in spite of the stars. On each side was the forest, deathly still, with everything that might be alive and shivering in there at that moment.

Siss thought about many things as she walked, bundled up against the frost. She was on her way to Unn, a girl she scarcely knew, for the first time; on her way to something unfamiliar, which was why it was exciting.

She gave a start. A loud noise had interrupted her thoughts, her expectancy; a noise like a long-drawn-out crack, moving further and further off, while the sound died away. It was from the ice on the big lake down below. And it was nothing dangerous, in fact it was good news: the noise meant that the ice was a little bit stronger. It thundered like gunshot, blasting long fissures, narrow as a knife-blade, from the surface down into the depths – yet the ice was stronger and safer each morning. There had been an unusually long period of severe frost this autumn.

Biting cold. But Siss was not afraid of the cold. It wasn’t that. She had started at the noise in the dark, but then she stepped out steadily along the road.

The way to Unn was not long. Siss was familiar with it, it was almost the same as the way she went to school, only with the addition of a side path. That was why she had been allowed to go alone, even though it was no longer light. Father and Mother were not nervous about things like that. It’s the main road, they had said when she left this evening. She let them say it. She was afraid of the dark herself.

The main road. All the same it was no fun to be walking down it alone now. Her forehead was boldly erect because of it. Her heart thumped slightly against the warm lining of her coat. Her ears were alert – because it was much too quiet along the roadsides, and because she knew that even more alert ears were there, listening to her.

That was why she had to step out firmly and steadily on the stone-hard road: the clatter of her footsteps had to be heard. If she gave way to the temptation to go on tiptoe, she was finished, let alone if she foolishly began to run. Then she would soon be running in panic.

Siss had to go to see Unn this evening. And she should have plenty of time, considering how long the evenings were. The darkness came so early that Siss could stay with Unn for a good while and still be home by her usual bedtime.

Wonder what I shall find out at Unn’s. I’m sure to find out something. I’ve been waiting for it all the autumn, ever since the first day Unn came new to school. I don’t know why.

The idea of meeting each other was so completely new it had only come about that very day. After long preparation they had dived in head first.

On her way to Unn, quivering with expectancy. Her smooth forehead breached an ice-cold stream.