Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson

sitting in a rowan tree just before dusk, he answered. But I knew that Fanny didn’t really like climbing trees and that he was just trying to impress me. So I didn’t say anything and just let him be. It was nice to have someone’s company. When he noticed that I didn’t feel like talking he played for me a while. It was icy cold in the grotto and I decided to leave as soon as he had finished playing. So after the last verse I said: that was an agreeable visit. But I’m afraid I shall have to leave. How are things at home?

    Fine, he answered. My wife has just had quintuplets. All of them girls.
    I congratulated him and went on my way.
    When the sun rises in the first bay the water is in the shade of the forest but at the entrance to the bay the rocks are red. The seaweed only shines in the evening. You walk and walk and walk and the morning wind begins to get up. The second bay is full of reeds and when the wind blows through them they rustle, and swish and sigh and whisper and whine softly and gently and you go right into the reeds and they brush you on all sides and you go on and on, thinking of nothing at all. The reeds are a jungle that goes on and on right to the end of the earth. The face of the earth is covered by nothing but whispering reeds and all human beings have died and I am the only one left and I just walk on and on through the reeds.
    I walk for such a long time that I become tall and thin like a reed and my hair becomes its soft feathery panicle until in the end I take root andbegin to swish and rush and sigh like all my reed sisters and time becomes endless.
    But in the bay sat a great big pilot who said: ha! ha! ha! ha! The wind is turning westerly I wouldn’t be surprised. He had a red moustache and blue eyes and was wearing pilot’s uniform and had at last noticed me.
    I was trembling with joy and answered: force nine I should think, if not more. Would you like a little snorter?
    Well, no one likes to see good stuff going begging, he answered, and held out his glass.
    I filled it five times.
    And what do you think of the pike? he went on.
    They’ll rise, I said. If this wind holds …
    He nodded thoughtfully and appreciatively. I dare say, he said. They might well.
    We drank six quarts of home-brew and two buckets of strong coffee.
    Then I said: It’s a bad time for pilots, isn’t it?
    Could be, could be, he answered.
    Then I couldn’t keep him there any longer.
    It’s awful when they go all misty and vanish. You say all the right things but they disappear all the same. It’s not worth going on with it then because it seems silly and you begin to feel lonely.
    Now I am in the third bay.
    It was here that Daddy and I found our first canisters. It was a day that neither of us will forget as long as we live.
    Daddy saw at once what it was. He stood rooted to the spot and craned his neck. He balanced himself out on the stones and began to haul it in. It was an old rotten sack but you could hear the canisters rattling inside it and Daddy said: did you hear that? Did you hear the noise it’s making?
    There were four canisters in the sack with two gallons of ninety-six per cent alcohol in each. Oh Daddy, Daddy! And just at that moment the Herberts came round the point. We lay down flat behind the stones very close to one another. I held Daddy’s hand. The Herberts took up their long-lines and didn’t notice a thing. Daddy and I watched them until the danger was over and then we hid the canisters in the seaweed.
    I always sit quite still for a long while in the third bay in memory of the time when Daddy and I came across our great secret.
    The sun is higher in the sky and everything is beginning to look normal. It’ll be more difficult to find company now – they’re only around early in the morning and at dusk. But it doesn’t matter. I can keep my eyes shut and think about the past instead.
    I’m thinking about the time