Independent People by Halldor Laxness

THEN there came great rainstorms that seemed to fill the whole world, and a hundred seasonal rills, rushing down the sides of the mountain, washed winter's snow away to the sea. When next the sun was seen, there was no snow in the valley, the hills green, buttercups in the home-field, blissful breezes. The brook in the home-field had swelled to full spate and dwindled again without the crofter's youngest son having noticed it. Only one year had passed, and he was standing no longer by the home brook. He was standing in the enclosure with his rake, spreading manure in perfect aimlessness, like an idiot, he to whom the elves had promised better lands in a dream. The lands that his winter's books had brought so near to him had drifted away with the spring and vanished over horizons even more remote than before. He had only to look at Asta Sollilja to realize how inaccessible were the countries that once had mirrored themselves in the skies because of the white landlessness of winter. Yet the soul refuses to give up the struggle. Spring, its birds from beyond the blue mountains, its breezes, its sky-spring called and called. Each time that he came out of the low door and halted on the paving it called to him. And went on calling. He listened. The melancholy longing, the sad sympathy with life, awoke in his breast. He had listened to her silence all through the spring, ever since the teacher left at Easter-time. But he had not known that she wept, until one day. It was a Sunday. From where he was standing in the home-field he saw her lying in a green hollow. He went to her. She did not move, for she did not hear his approach. But when he came up to her he saw that her shoulders were shaking. She was weeping, her face buried in the grass. He was well aware that though she was their big sister she was really a more insignificant being than he and his brother, and he was struck with immediate pity. He himself wept more and more seldom now, he had hardly wept at all since last summer, he would soon be a big boy. Finally he spoke her name. She gave a start and, sitting up, wiped her tears away with the hem of her dress. But the only result was that the tears flowed faster and faster.

"What are you crying for? " he asked.