She ran until the rain forced her to stop, and the man on the farm gave her a reason to stay. Lærke sprinted down the gravel road, heart pounding, lungs burning, as the unexpected downpour turned the sky dark. She was seven years old, carrying only a worn backpack and some wet documents, fleeing a life that no longer made sense. The first building she spotted was a large farmhouse with a rusted roof, and without hesitating, she dove under the eave, shivering from cold and fear.
That’s when she heard the sound of hooves approaching, and a deep voice cut through the air like thunder. “Get off my property right now. ” Lærke looked up to see a man in his fifties riding a black horse. His flat cap shadowed part of his face, but she could see the gray-flecked beard and eyes as hard as stone.
His dirt-stained work clothes spoke of hard labor, but there was something else in his expression—a deep bitterness that cut sharper than mere fatigue. “Please let me stay just until the rain stops,” Lærke begged, wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm. “I said get out,” Jakob dismounted with sharp movements. “This isn’t a shelter.
Go on your way. ” The rain intensified, and Lærke felt panic overtake her body. Ever since she was little, storms had haunted her, a scar she carried from the day she lost everything in a violent flood when she was only eight. Her parents, her home, her entire sense of safety had vanished in the water within minutes.
“I can’t go out in the rain,” she mumbled, more to herself than to him. “I just can’t. ” Jakob paused for a moment. He caught something different in her voice—not just ordinary fear of getting wet, but genuine terror.
He recognized it because he carried his own demons. It had been three years since Iben left, and since then, he had built thick walls around his heart, rejecting any form of human connection. “Five minutes,” he grumbled, tying his horse to the post. “When it stops, you go.
” Lærke nodded quickly, grateful for the small mercy. She watched the man closely, noticing how his shoulders carried an invisible weight. There was something familiar about that pain, that emptiness. She knew it all too well.
In the past two years, since she started searching for her little brother Mathias, she had met many people like him—broken by life. “What’s your name? ” Jakob asked, more out of politeness than real interest. “Lærke.
Lærke Møller. ” “And what’s a girl like you doing wandering alone on the country roads? ” Lærke hesitated. She didn’t usually tell her story to strangers, but something about his direct way of asking made her want to answer honestly.
“I’m looking for my brother. He disappeared two years ago, and someone told me he might have come to this area. ”
Jakob studied her more carefully. The old backpack, the simple but clean clothes, the determination mixed with desperation shining in her dark eyes.
Something about her made him uneasy. Not because she was young, but because she stirred feelings he had tried to bury. “Mathias Møller,” he repeated slowly, the name settling in the air between them.
Lærke recognized that kind of pain too—the kind that follows betrayal by someone you trusted blindly.