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about. Then she says that now you have learnt something
you will never forget.
From that day on Ingrid cards much faster than Barbro,
who is thereby relieved of this drudgery and can be in the
barn or the boathouse repairing fishing nets like a man.
•
WINTER BEGINS WITH A STORM. It is called The First
Winter Storm. There have been storms here before, for
example in August and September, bringing sudden and
merciless turbulence to their lives.
But as a rule these storms are short-lived. It is during one of
them that the trees lose their leaves. As mentioned before,
there are not many trees on the island but there are enough
fruit bushes and dwarf birches and sallows - whose leaves in
the course of late summer turn yellow, which then turn
brown and red at varying rates - to make the island on
some days in September resemble a rainbow on earth. And
that is how it looks until a sudden storm is unleashed upon
them, sweeping the colours into the sea, transforming
Barrøy into a squealing, brown-furred animal, which it will
remain until the next spring, unless it resembles a white-
haired corpse beneath heaps of snow and slush, and the
shifting snow comes and goes and comes once more, lying
in drifts as though trying to imitate the sea on land. But