Kivimäki

He came from the north – a young grey eyed man in a worn sweater full of holes. They did not know who he was, and he did not tell them much. He told them his name was Antti and that he wanted to buy a piece of land. Arrogant and naïve, they thought. An honest man would work in the fields first. He will get what he deserves, a lesson, they decided. The piece of land they sold him was a strange one. The small hill at the outskirts of the town, full of stones, always oddly hidden from the sun. Nothing grew there, they knew, but told nothing to the young man from the north.

So the stranger moved on the stony hill. He built a hut and started to remove the stones from the ground. Perhaps he thought he would some day build a lovely stone fence around the lot. It was hard work and every time he thought he had gotten the last stone there was an even bigger rock just beneath his feet. But the young man was stubborn, and slowly he managed to get rid of the stones and make the fields. Something was wrong with the soil, the people in the town had warned him, nothing grows there, even if you plow the land and sow the seed. He should have listened for the harvest was weak. Next year, it will be better, he told himself the man who was not young anymore but not yet old either. Next year it will be better.

It was not better. It did not get better the year after that either. Desperate and tired the man wandered into the woods. He called out to the people of the forest, yelled, demanded, but the woods were quiet. After days he was exhausted and sad, tired and defeated, he promised everything. They could have anything, he sobbed, if they would help him with this farm. This damned thing.
They could have anything.