Excerpt from Bolla by Pajtim Statovci, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Very well," she said. "But don't go just yet. Do you want to play with me first?"

"Play?"

"Yesss!"

After giving this a moment's thought, it agreed to the girl's suggestion, and the two of them chased each other across the fields and meadows, taking turns hiding in the thickets and the boughs of trees, and as evening fell they were both exhausted and had told each other everything— the girl about her family, who had thrown her out of their home, because what could they do with a blind child, and it had told her about the cave where it had lived its life and all the different names it had been given.

The girl's name was Drita, which meant light, and it thought the name was amusing because the girl had never seen the light.

Before saying goodbye, they agreed to meet again in a year's time, and from that moment on they met every year, always in the bloom of spring, in the same forest where they first encountered each other, on the same path where the girl almost lost her arm.

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Over the years, it taught the girl to hunt, to stake out prey, and to throw a spear. It bit off one of the girl's breasts too, the better for her to shoot a bow and arrow, and proudly followed her development into an adult, a woman every bit as strong as a man.

One spring, it plucked up the courage to ask, timid and bashful, if Drita would become its wife, if she could imagine them living together, spending time together every day of the year.

Drita began to weep, and for a moment she was unable to answer, so overcome she was with emotion.

And does it matter that I was once ... a girl, too?" it asked.

"No," Drita answered, catching her breath and raising her hands to its cheeks. "It doesn't matter at all," she continued and pressed her lips against its mouth, which was as rough as bark. "I will be your wife, of course I will. I have seen it now."

"What have you seen?" it asked.

"The light."

And it is said that there they remain to this day, just the two of them, curtsied statuesque in front of each other, in a cave on the side of the mountain where night never retreats.

Excerpted from Bolla by Pajtim Statovci. Copyright © 2021 by Pajtim Statovci. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.