It’s only barely after midnight.

The farmer has just shot me through the heart with his new hunting rifle.  Only it doesn’t seem to hurt.  Perhaps the shot wasn’t real, but just the mischief of a dream. 

So I’m not really dead at all.  Otherwise, I would hardly have woken to mull over these crazy night spooks.  Just to get rid of the slightest doubt, I give myself a sharp pinch.  I feel it, thank God.  I am alive.  Gratefully, I sit up on my straw mattress and blow the last of the dirty dream air from my lungs. 

What causes a dream like that?  If only I knew!  No one thinks up these sort of things by himself, not in the daytime.  What would possess the farer to shoot me, his farmhand, through the heart?  Stupidity? Desire to kill?  Irritation? Not possible!  Least of all, my farmer.  He has to think a thing through at least twice before he does it even once.  Three years ago now, he took me on as his youngest farmhand.  I’m not especially big and strong, but I work hard, and already I understand a thing or two about farming.  There’s really no reason to shoot me.

Stuff!  I was just a dream.  I turn onto my front and draw up my knee against my belly. 

But I can’t relax completely.  Leftover scraps of the old dream feed a new one.  And once again, the farmer is involved.  This time, he doesn’t shoot me, he shakes and shakes me.  He’s so merciless about it that my bones rattle and my muscles twitch.  I don’t stir.  What am I going to do against the farmer, anyway?  Am I supposed to fight him off?  Of course I’m not allowed to do that, not under any circumstances.  Not even in my dreams.  The farmer comes just after God and king.  He gives me one or two more shakes, then he seizes me by the shoulders and pull me bodily upright.

“Farmer,” I groan.  “What’s the matter?  What do I have to do?”

No more sleep.  I rub my eyes awake.  This dream is different from the last one.  The farmer refuses to vanish, he stays there.  He’s hunkering down by my sack of straw, as large as life, and he’s shaking me vigorously awake.

“Get up!” he commands me.

It’s pitch-black, and the other farmhands are snoring away.  Why am I the only one who has to get up?

“Has something happened?”  I ask, half awake.  “Is Olga calving already?”  But then I think, this can’t be about Olga.  She’s not due for another four or five weeks. 

And even if she were calving now, it wouldn’t be me but the oldest farmhand that the farmer would have come for.

“Splash some water on yourself, and put on your Sunday best,” the farmer commands.  “We’re going into town.”

“Into town?”

Did I hear correctly?  Really – into town?

Into town.  My heart starts to thump with happiness.  What could be so important that the farmer drives into town with me?

Then it comes to me.  Right!  Could it be my birthday?  It must be today or tomorrow, or perhaps it was yesterday or the day before.  On one of those four days I must have turned or be turning sixteen.  But that can’t really be the reason.

“But who’s to muck out the cow shed?”  I ask back cautiously. 

“Never you mind!  I’ll see to that.”

He’s right.  The farmer’s always right.  He can get the cow shed mucked out by anyone he says and anytime he wants it done.  Or if he decides he likes it better that way, he can leave it with the muck in it. 

The farmer’s wife is banging around in the kitchen.  With a sour old face.  She often looks like that.  Especially in the morning.  Of course, she hasn’t heard about my birthday, and so she doesn’t offer me her congratulations.  Not that she would congratulate me if she did know.  There isn’t much congratulating on this farm.  No one in the whole village knows one jot about my birthday.  Why would they?  A person gets born, whether he wants to or not.

The pan with milk is already on the table.  I wait obediently for the farmer to cut the bread.  As usual.

“Cut you own,” the farmer’s wife says to me quietly. 

The world is about to end, I think.  Or is the violation of the bread rule something to do with my birthday, after all?

Something’s amiss.  Of course, I cut myself a big thick doorstop of a slice.  I’m even allowed to put butter on it myself.  Which I do equally lavishly.  The farmer’s wife makes big round eyes when she sees me, but she doesn’t fuss, and she doesn’t stop me. 

“You eat!” she says.  “Lord knows when you’ll have something in your belly again.”

“Will we be staying so long in town?”  I venture to ask back.  But no one gives me an answer.  It’s not fit for an apprentice to ask a cheeky question like that.

The farmer’s wife never had to give anyone a second invitation to eat.  She’s more likely to put on the brakes.  The farmhands always eat as much as possible.  If there is anything to eat.  They had better be quick about it, too. 

It’s a matter of survival. 

“Harness up the sleigh,” orders the farmer. 

“The sleigh?”

“You heard me, the sleigh!”

The horses are sleepy and lazy.  They don’t want to go out in the cold, and I have to push them in front of the sleigh.