Where the green fortress that surrounds Copenhagen is, there is a wide courtyard with red bricks and many windows. In the pots on its balconies grew small balsam and sandalwood. The house looked inside through the windows poor, inhabited by old, poor people. It is Varto!
Drama of life: Look high on the window sill, an old spinster leans, picking withered leaves from the lilac and looking at the green fortress, where children roll with joy. What might she be thinking? An entire drama of life gathers in her mind.
Innocent child: Poor children play happily! They dance on the green fortress. What red cheeks, what blessed eyes, but they don’t wear shoes or socks. The legend says that since ancient times, the earth in that fortress was always sinking there. Once there was an innocent child who was deceived by flowers and playing to enter the open grave, then they closed it with bricks while the little child was playing and eating.
The legend: Since that time, the fortress became stable, gradually covered with beautiful green grass. The children didn’t know the legend, otherwise they would have heard the child still crying underground, and they would have known that the dew on the grass is burning tears. They don’t know the story of the King of Denmark, when the enemy was lurking for him at the fortress. He mounted his horse, passing by the fortress there, and swore he would die in his nest. Women and men came and poured boiling water on the enemies who wore white clothes when they were climbing the snow, ascending to the outer page of the fortress.
Poor children: Poor children play with joy! Play, little girl! Years will soon come. Yes, the blessed years: The baptized stroll hand in hand. You walk in a white suit, which certainly cost your mother enough, yet it was remade from a used suit in a large size!
The green fortress: And you will get a red shawl that hangs long downward, so that one sees how big it is, how much bigger than big! You think of your adornment and the generous God. Walking on the fortress is beautiful, and years pass with many dark days, but with a young thought and spirit, and getting a friend - you don’t know that - you meet and travel on the fortress in early spring, when all church bells ring on the great day of prayer.
You see your story repeated: The time hasn’t come yet to see violet flowers, but outside the flower palace, there was a tree carrying its first green buds. There you two will stand, and the tree will produce green branches every year, which the heart in a human’s chest doesn’t do. Through that, more dark clouds slide, darker than what the north experiences. Poor you, child. Your wife’s wedding room becomes a coffin, and you, little girl, become an elderly woman. From Varto, you see behind the lilac the children playing, you see your story repeated.
Other birds of the sky: It is nothing but the drama of life that revolves in the mind of the elderly lady who looks far at the fortress, where the sun rises, where children with red cheeks rejoice happily without socks and shoes, like all other birds of the sky.