Interactive Reading

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But it wasn’t. Everyone loved Ola’s playing now. His family
begged him to take out his fiddle in the evening, after
the day’s work was done. Neighbors invited him to their
farms to play for them. Whenever a joyous occasion arose,
people sent for Ola to play. “You’re a great fiddler, Ola!”
everyone said.
It wasn’t so, and Ola knew it. A vast gulf lay between
what Ola wanted to play and what he could play. He heard
music everywhere: in the wind, in trees, rippling fields of
wheat and rushing streams, in surging ocean waves and
quiet mountain meadows. He tried to capture it with his
fiddle, but the notes slipped away. Ola felt like a fisherman
carried out to sea by a running tide. He sees the land clearly,
but he cannot reach it, no matter how hard he rows.
“I must visit the fosse-grim,” Ola said to himself.
Once more Ola followed the stream. He struggled up
the path, bent double with the weight of a whole side of
beef on his shoulders.
“Grim, come out! I need you!” Ola called to the
waterfall.
The fosse-grim emerged from the pool. “What do you
want, boy?”
“Grim, it is not enough to be a good fiddler. I want to
be a great fiddler. I want to be able to play the music I hear,
the music I love. I will practice night and day. I will do
anything you ask. Look! I have brought you half of a whole
steer. If it is not enough, I will go back down the mountain
for more. Tell me what I must do, Grim, to become the
fiddler I want to be.”
“Put down the beef and take out your fiddle,” the grim
said. He climbed out of the pool to sit beside Ola. “You and
Pause at line 193.
Underline the extended
simile that the writer uses
to help us imagine how Ola
feels about his music.
Pause at line 194. What is it
that Ola wants now? What
will he do to find it?
Have you noticed that the
amount of food Ola brings
the grim gets larger and
larger? What has he brought
the grim now?
Ola and the Grim 325