My father, Harold Dahl, was a Norwegian who came from a small town near Oslo, called Sarpsborg. His own father, my grandfather, was a fairly prosperous merchant who owned a store in Sarpsborg and traded in just about everything from cheese to chicken-wire. My father had lost an arm when he was fourteen, but had become a successful shipbroker. A shipbroker is a person who supplies the ship with everything it needs when it comes into port…

In 1918, when I was two, we all moved into an imposing country mansion beside the village of Radyr, about eight miles north of Cardiff. I remember it as a mighty house with turrets on its roof and with majestic lawns and terraces all around it.

Elara lived in a small cottage at the edge of a quiet village. Every night, she would sit by her window and watch the stars. She loved the sky. She often wondered where the stars went during the day. “Perhaps they are like lost children,” she thought, “and the sun is their mother looking for them.” One night, a bright star seemed to fall from the sky. It landed in the forest nearby. Elara, being a brave and curious girl, decided to find it. She took a lantern and walked into the dark woods, her heart beating with a mix of fear and excitement. She searched for hours but found nothing. Disappointed, she returned home, only to see the brightest star of all twinkling right above her cottage, as if it was winking at her.