. . .

If you were to go to visit him you would have to find your way past all those things, and past the Weave-wid too, and many other dangers; but when those trials were behind you, you would find yourself in a realm of gentle, rolling hills and growing things and among the houses of the svart-alfar, where certain fairy-tale things survived.

You would walk then their roads and taste possibly of their grapes and marvel at their wonders and the triumphs; and there you would find Hans’ farm, too, with its stone in many colors, its caves and its grottos, its fields and its artificial sky.

Each morning there a sun-bird rises.

It bursts from Hans’ sun-bird eggs. It tears free of its enclosure. It plummets upwards. It strikes its head against the stalactites of the caverns, cracks its head open, bursts into flames, and gives over the roof to glow.

This fades eventually into night.

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