The Wizard and the Cloudberry Moor

Far out on the Nordic moor, where the tussocks stood like small islands and the mist lay softly against the ground, there lived an old wizard named Algot. He dwelled alone in a low stone house whose roof was covered with moss and heather, and in winter his windows glowed like a yellow eye in the darkness.

But the thing Algot loved most of all was cloudberries. Not the yellow, soft cloudberries that lay in baskets at the market. No, Algot knew a secret that few others were aware of. Deep out on the moor, where no ordinary person dared venture at night, grew cloudberries that only ripened by moonlight. They were called moonberries, and they tasted like honey mixed with the fresh scent of a summer shower.

On an August evening when the moon was round as a coin and silver-bright, Algot took his lantern from the hook beside the door. It was a peculiar lantern, it shone not with fire but with a blue-white light that he himself had conjured into it long ago in his youth. He hung the basket on his arm, drew his grey cloak around his shoulders, and stepped out into the night.

The moor at night was not dark like a cellar, it glowed with its own faint light. The moss shimmered green, the water in the small pools mirrored the sky, and now and then a frog called out from deep among the tussocks. Algot knew every path by heart. He knew which tussocks you could step on and which would sink beneath your foot.

Soon he reached the place he sought, an open stretch of moor where the ground resembled a soft red-orange carpet. There stood the moonberries in rows, their golden-yellow fruits filled with moonlight from within, as if each berry carried its own small sun. Algot stopped and drew a deep breath. Every year he felt the same calm when he saw them.

Algot set the lantern down on a dry tussock and laid aside the basket. Then he drew a slow, soft breath and began to hum. It was no melody that one could follow, it was more a sound, a low vibrating murmur, as if he were speaking to the ground itself. The berries that were still a little green answered the humming by slowly turning more golden, ripening, ready.