Hakon.

His sister Marte is twenty-eight and she leaves in August with her two chicks. She is the one who calls. Always her, and he answers short: yes, no, there are two houses this week. Where he stretches out is when he asks about the chicks — how much they have grown, whether they ate well, how they handled the journey — and there he can go on for a good while. Marte tells him the rest anyway, even if he doesn't ask for it. She has been doing it for years and she no longer expects an answer to everything.

At nine he was on the last boat in August. Once on the water he turned to look back. The village was empty: the colored houses shut up, the gravel with nobody on it. Nobody else turned; the others went looking straight ahead, which is what you do when there is journey left. When he tells it, that is what he tells: that he turned, that the houses were shut and that it was cold for August.