What is Mine Read Online Free PDF Page A

willows showed the beginnings of shoots, and on south-facing slopes, coltsfoot flowers stretched up on long stems. Otherwise, it could as easily have been the fourteenth of October as the fourteenth of May. A six-year-old in red overalls and yellow winter boots pulled off her hat.
    “No, Kristiane. Don’t go in the water.”
    “Just let her wade a bit. She’s got her boots on.”
    “Jesus, Isak, it’s not shallow enough! Kristiane! No!”
    The girl didn’t want to listen. She was humming a monotonous tune and standing with water over the top of her boots already. They filled up with a gurgling sound. The girl stared ahead with a blank expression, repeating the four notes to herself over and over.
    “You’re soaking,” complained Johanne Vik as she hauled the girl ashore.
    The child smiled happily at her feet and stopped singing.
    Her mother took her by the arm and led her over to a bench a few yards away. She pulled some dry tights, a pair of thick socks, and heavy sneakers out of the backpack. Kristiane did not want to put them on. She sat stiffly and clenched her legs together, staring into space again, the same four notes vibrating at the back of her throat: dam-di-rum-ram. Dam-di-rum-ram.
    “You’ll get ill,” said Johanne. “You’ll catch a cold.”
    “Cold,” smiled Kristiane, and caught her mother’s eye fleetingly, suddenly alert.
    “Yes, ill.”
    Johanne tried to keep hold of the look, keep their eyes locked.
    “Dam-di-rum-ram,” hummed Kristiane as she stiffened again.
    “Here, let me.”
    Isak took his daughter under the arms and threw her up into the air.
    “Daddy,” shrieked Kristiane, catching her breath. “More!”
    “More there will be,” shouted Isak, letting the child drag her soaking wet boots along the ground before throwing her up into the mist again. “Kristiane is a plane!”
    “Plane! Fly plane! Flyman!”
    Johanne had no idea where she got it from. The child put together words that neither she nor Isak used, nor anyone else for that matter. But there was also some kind of logic to them, a relevance that might be hard to grasp in the moment, but that implied a sense of linguistic understanding that contrasted sharply with the short, simple words that she otherwise used—and she only did it when she wanted to.
    “Dam-di-rum-ram.”
    The flight was over. The song had returned. But Kristiane sat quietly on her father’s knee and let him change her.
    “Freezing bum,” said Isak, and tapped her lightly before pulling the dry tights on over her feet, her toes curling abnormally into the soles of her feet.
    “Kristiane is freezing all over.”
    “Kristianecold. Hungry.”
    “There. Shall we go?”
    He put the girl down in front of him. Then he stuffed the wet clothes into the backpack. He pulled a banana from one of the side pockets, peeled it, and gave it to Kristiane.
    “Where were we?”
    He ran his hand through his hair. The damp air made it stick together. He looked up. He had always seemed so young, even though he was really only one month younger than she was. Irresponsible and eternally young; his hair always slightly too long, his clothes just a little too loose, too baggy for his age. Johanne tried to swallow the familiar sense of defeat, the perpetual experience of being the one who was least good with Kristiane.
    “Right, now tell me the rest of the story.”
    He smiled encouragingly and made a small movement with his head. Kristiane was already ten yards in front of them, with her characteristic toddling walk that she should have grown out of long ago. Isak put his hand on Johanne’s shoulder for a moment before starting to walk too—slowly, as if uncertain that Johanne could follow at all.
    “When Alvhild Sofienberg decided to look more closely at the case,” Johanne began, her eyes following the small figure that was once again heading for the water, “she met unexpected resistance. Aksel Seier didn’t want to talk to her.”
    “Oh, why not? He’d