Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

meadows that surrounded it were so much a part of her childhood, a part of her life, that she didn’t often look at them with fresh eyes. But now she did, seeing Ellen’s pleasure. And it was true. They were beautiful.
    The little red-roofed farmhouse was very old, its chimney crooked and even the small, shuttered windows tilted at angles. A bird’s nest, wispy with straw, was half hidden in the corner where the roof met the wall above a bedroom window. Nearby, a gnarled tree was still speckled with a few apples now long past ripe.
    Mama and Kirsti had gone inside, but Annemarie and Ellen ran across the high-grassed meadow, through the late wildflowers. From nowhere, a gray kitten appeared and ran beside them, pouncing here and there upon imagined mice, pausing to lick its paws, and then darting off again. It pretended to ignore the girls, but looked back often to be certain that they were still there, apparently pleased to have playmates.
    The meadow ended at the sea, and the gray water licked there at damp brown grass flattened by the wind and bordered by smooth heavy stones.
    â€œI have never been this close to the sea,” Ellen said.
    â€œOf course you have. You’ve been to the harbor in Copenhagen a million times.”
    Ellen laughed. “I mean the
real
sea, the way it is here. Open like this—a whole world of water.”
    Annemarie shook her head in amazement. To live in Denmark, a country surrounded by water, and never to have stood at its edge?
    â€œYour parents are really city people, aren’t they?”
    Ellen nodded. “My mother is afraid of the ocean,” she said, laughing. “She says it is too big for her. And too cold!”
    The girls sat on a rock and took off their shoes and socks. They tiptoed across the damp stones and let the water touch their feet. It
was
cold. They giggled and stepped back.
    Annemarie leaned down and picked up a brown leaf that floated back and forth with the movement of the water.
    â€œLook,” she said. “This leaf may have come from a tree in Sweden. It could have blown from a tree into the sea, and floated all the way across. See over there?” she said, pointing. “See the land? Way across there? That’s Sweden.”
    Ellen cupped one hand over her eyes and looked across the water at the misty shoreline that was another country. “It’s not so very far,” she said.
    â€œMaybe,” Annemarie suggested, “standing over there are two girls just our age, looking across and saying, ‘That’s Denmark!’”
    They squinted into the hazy distance, as if they might see Swedish children standing there and looking back. But it was too far. They saw only the hazy strip of land and two small boats bobbing up and down in the gray ruffles of separating water.
    â€œI wonder if one of those is your Uncle Henrik’s boat,” Ellen said.
    â€œMaybe. I can’t tell. They’re too far away. Uncle Henrik’s boat is named the
Ingeborg
,” she told Ellen, “for Mama.”
    Ellen looked around. “Does he keep it right here? Does he tie it up so that it won’t float away?”
    Annemarie laughed. “Oh, no. In town, at the harbor, there’s a big dock, and all the fishing boats go and come from there. That’s where they unload their fish. You should smell it! At night they are all there, anchored in the harbor.”
    â€œAnnemarie! Ellen!” Mama’s voice came across the meadow. The girls looked around, and saw her waving to them. They turned, picked up their shoes, and began walking toward the house. The kitten, who had settled comfortably on the stony shore, rose immediately and followed them.
    â€œI took Ellen down to show her the sea,” Annemarie explained when they reached the place where Mama waited. “She’d never been that close before! We started to wade, but it was too cold. I wish we had come in summer so we could