The vole ventures timidly outside its little door into a morning that smells of rain and new grass. It finds a beetle, carries it to a patch of sun, and crunches it there, turning the pretty-coloured carapace in its tiny paws.

The hare rises from its form and feels the wind full of clover. It noses into a patch of fuzzy flowers and eats them standing up, the way hares do, tasting the wind between mouthfuls.

The grouse steps from the heather and finds the bilberries ripe. It pecks one, then another, then surveys the moor with its chest out, because this is the grouse’s table.

The stoat ventures outside its den into the same morning. It finds a vole in a patch of sun, still turning something in its paws, and seizes it by the neck and carries it home and eats the vole, whole, in one gulp.

The fox feels the wind full of hare. It crosses the field low and fast and catches the hare standing up, the way foxes do, and eats it in the grass, ripping its flesh across the fresh clover.

The harrier lifts from the bracken into an enormous sky. It spots the grouse’s table and pulls up a seat, tearing open its bilberry-filled belly. It rises again, above the moor, searching for more grouse, and fewer bilberries.

The old woman opens her shutters of marzipan and her door of bread and cake and stands in her doorway of spun sugar, breathing the lane. The morning smells of rain and new grass. And children. The kindly Kinderfresser goes back inside and lights her stove. (ap·ldt)