The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

captured and never knew what was happening until the Övergårds’ boat was on its way to town.
    The new cat’s name was Fluff. It ate fish and liked to be petted. It moved into Sophia’s cottage and slept every night in her arms, and every morning it came in to morning coffee and slept some more in the bed beside the stove. If the sun was shining, it would roll on the warm granite.
    “Not there!” Sophia yelled. “That’s Moppy’s place!” She carried the cat a little farther off, and it licked her on the nose and rolled obediently in the new spot.
    The summer grew prettier and prettier, a long series of calm blue summer days. Every night, Fluff slept against Sophia’s cheek.
    “It’s funny about me,” Sophia said. “I think nice weather gets to be boring.”
    “Do you?” her grandmother said. “Then you’re just like your grandfather, he liked storms too.” But before she could say anything else about Grandfather, Sophia was gone.
    And gradually the wind came up, sometime during the night, and by morning there was a regular southwester spitting foam all over the rocks.
    “Wake up,” Sophia whispered. “Wake up, kitty, precious, there’s a storm.”
    Fluff purred and stretched warm sleepy legs in all directions. The sheet was covered with cat hair.
    “Get up!” Sophia shouted. “It’s a storm!” But the cat just turned over on its broad stomach. And suddenly Sophia was furious. She kicked open the door and threw the cat out in the wind and watched how it laid its ears back, and she screamed, “Hunt! Do something! Be like a cat!” And then she started to cry and ran to the guest room and banged on the door.
    “What’s wrong now?” Grandmother said.
    “I want Moppy back!” Sophia screamed.
    “But you know how it’ll be,” Grandmother said.
    “It’ll be awful,” said Sophia gravely. “But it’s Moppy I love.”
    And so they exchanged cats again.

The Cave
     
     
    T HERE WAS A DEEP BAY ON THE LARGEST of the nearby islands, and at the far end of this bay, the grass grew right in the sand, short and very green. Grass roots are extremely strong, they twist and tie themselves into a knotted mass that can stand up to the heaviest seas. Great ocean waves roll straight in over the sandy bottom, but once inside the bay, they meet the grass and flatten out. They dig away at the sand – they can do that much – but all that happens to the grass is that it sinks or rises, adjusting to new hills and gullies. A person could walk far out in the water and still feel the grass underfoot. Up towards shore, it grew out of the seaweed, and still farther up it made a jungle with the spiraea and the nettles and the vetch and all the other plants that like salt.
    This jungle was very thick and tall and lived mostly on dead seaweed and rotten fish. It grew as high as possible, and where it stopped it was met by sallow, rowan and alder branches that bent down as far as they could reach. Walking between them with your arms outstretched was like swimming. Bird-cherry and rowan, especially rowan, smell like cat piss when they’re in bloom.
    Sophia made a path through this jungle with a pair of shears. She worked at it patiently whenever she was in the mood, and no one else knew about it. First, the path circled the rosebush, which was large and famous and had a name, Rosa Rugosa . When it blossomed, with its huge, wild roses that could take a storm and fell only when they wanted to, people came from the village to look. Its roots were high, washed clean by the waves, and there was seaweed in its branches. Every seven years, Rosa Rugosa died from salt and exposure, but then her children sprang up in the sand all around, so nothing changed. She had only moved a little. The path led on through a nasty patch of nettles, through the spiraea and the currant bushes and the loosestrife under the alder trees, and up to the big bird-cherry at the edge of the woods. On the right day, and with the right wind, you could