by Tove Jansson
‘She’s looking for me,’ thought Moomintroll. ‘But she might as well take it easy. I’m not going to light the lamp, it takes too much paraffin.’
He stood still for a moment, watching her wander forlornly over the island.
‘She can dance tomorrow night,’ he said to himself with a feeling of kindly indulgence. ‘But not just now. I feel like staying at home tonight.’
So he turned his back on the Groke and took a round-about route back to his glade.
*
Moomintroll woke at dawn with a feeling of panic. He was shut in. He was suffocating inside his sleeping-bag. Something was holding him down and he couldn’t get his paws out. Everything felt upside down and he was surrounded by a curious brown light and a strange smell, as though he was deep down in the earth.
At last he managed to loosen the zip of his sleeping-bag. A cloud of soil and pine-needles was whirling round him, the whole world seemed changed, and he felt utterly lost. Everywhere, brown roots were creeping along the ground and right over his sleeping bag. The trees weren’t actually moving now, but in the darkness they had moved away from above his head. The whole forest had pulled up its roots and stepped over him just as though he was a stone. There was the match-box just where it always was and next to it the bottle of blackcurrant juice. But the glade had gone – it just wasn’t there any more. The tunnels he had made had all grown over again. He seemed to be in a primeval forest, fleeing with the trees, creeping along the ground, dragging his sleeping-bag. He had to hold on to it because it was a very fine sleeping-bag, and, besides, it had been given to him as a present.
He caught sight of the hurricane lamp. It was hanging in the tree where he had put it, but the tree had moved.
Moomintroll sat down and screamed for Little My at the top of his voice. She answered immediately. She gave a long series of signals in a voice that sounded like the clarion calls of a very small trumpet, or a buoy far out at sea. Moomintroll started to crawl in the direction of the sound.
He came out into the daylight and the wind blew right in his face. He got up, his legs shaking, and looked at Little My with a feeling of intense relief. He thought that for once she was almost pretty.
A few of the smaller bushes which had pulled their roots out of the ground without any difficulty were already lying tangled and confused in the heather some way off. The swampy patch had sunk right into the ground and looked like a deep green ravine.
‘What’s happening?’ Moomintroll cried. ‘Why are they pulling up their roots like that? I don’t understand it.’
‘They’re scared stiff,’ said Little My, looking at him right between the eyes. ‘They’re so scared that every little pine-needle is standing on end. They’re even more scared than you are! If I didn’t know that in fact it’s the other way round, I should think that the Groke had been here. Eh?’
Moomintroll felt a sinking feeling in his tummy and sat down in the heather. The heather was just the same as ever, thank goodness! It was flowering just as usual, and had decided to stay just where it was.
‘The Groke,’ continued Little My thoughtfully. ‘Big, and cold, and wandering around, sitting down all over the place. And do you know what happens when she sits down?’ Of course he knew. Nothing would grow. Nothing would ever grow where she had sat.
‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ Moomintroll exclaimed.
‘Was I staring at you?’ asked Little My innocently. ‘Why should I? Perhaps I was staring at something behind you…’
Moomintroll jumped up and looked round, terrified.
‘Ha, ha! I was only pulling your leg!’ cried Little My, delighted. ‘Isn’t it funny how a whole island can go off its rocker and start moving? I think it’s jolly interesting.’
But Moomintroll didn’t think it was funny. The thicket was moving towards the lighthouse, right across the island towards the lighthouse steps. It would get a little nearer every night until the first low-lying branch was pushing against the door and trying to get in.
‘We won’t open the door!’ he said. Suddenly he looked at Little My right between the eyes. They were jolly eyes and they seemed to be laughing at him, as if to say: ‘I know all your secrets.’
Somehow, this made him feel a lot better.
*
Immediately after breakfast, Moominpappa went out and sat on the lighthouse-keeper’s ledge in the cliff. He was soon deep in all sorts of speculations.
The exercise-book was almost full of them. Speculations about the sea. The last heading he had added was: ‘The Way the Sea Changes at Night’. He had underlined it. Now he sat there staring at the empty page below it as the wind tried to snatch it from between his paws. He sighed and turned the pages over until he came to page 5, of which he was particularly fond. On this page he had worked out that the black pool was connected to the sea by an unbelievably deep tunnel (shown on the map) and that it was through the tunnel that the treasure, the crates of whisky and the skeletons had unfortunately sunk to the bottom of the sea. The rusty canister had just happened to get stuck at the edge at the spot marked A. And if something or someone, for the sake of argument called X, had been at the point B and blown the water through the tunnel and then sucked it back again, it would naturally rise and fall so that it seemed to be breathing. But who or what was X? A sea-monster? This couldn’t be proved. He had transferred the whole question of the sea to the chapter entitled ‘Assumptions’, now getting longer and longer.
In the chapter ‘Facts’, Moominpappa maintained that water gets colder the deeper it is. He had known this before he had started, of course; he had only had to put his leg in the water to be aware of it. But with an ingeniously constructed bottle he had proved it conclusively. He also maintained that water was both heavy and salty. The deeper the water the heavier it was, and close to the surface it was much saltier. Proof: the shallow pools of salt water. They were very salty. And you could feel the weight of the water when you dived.
Seaweed is thrown up to leeward and not to windward. If you throw a plank into the wind from the lighthouse-rock, it doesn’t come ashore but floats round the island a little way from the beach. If you hold a plank up against the horizon, the sky-line looks like the arc of a circle and not a straight line. In bad weather the water rises, but sometimes it does the opposite thing. Every seventh wave is enormous, but sometimes it is the ninth, and sometimes there doesn’t appear to be any regular system.
And the long lines of foam that appear from nowhere just before a storm. Where did they come from, and where did they go to? Moominpappa tried to find an answer to these questions and lots of others, but it was very difficult. He began to feel very tired and unscientific, and wrote: ‘An island has no bridges and no fences, so it’s impossible to be let out or to be shut in. This means that one feels…’ No, it was no good. He crossed it out, and turned to the scanty chapter called ‘Facts’.
The confusing thought that the sea obeyed no rules at all returned. He tried to dismiss it from his mind quickly. He was determined to understand, to solve the mystery of the sea so that he would learn to like it and be able to keep his self-respect.
*
While Moominpappa sat puzzling over these things, Moominmamma was getting more and more absorbed with her garden. She had discovered that a lot of things must be painted again. Gradually she became bolder and bolder and didn’t hide behind one of the tree-trunks when she heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Because she had noticed that she became no bigger than a coffee-pot when she hid herself among the trees on the wall, she painted lots of little Moominmammas all over the garden. Just in case one of the others caught sight of her – she had only to keep perfectly still and they couldn’t tell which was the real Moominmamma.
‘Well, that really is the last word in madness,’ said Little My. ‘Couldn’t you paint some of us and not just yourself?’
‘But you’re outside on the island,’ said Moominmamma.
She had asked Moomintroll about ha
ving a party in his glade, but he had only muttered something and gone out.
‘It’s the sea-horse,’ Moominmamma said to herself. ‘Ah! Well, that’s how it is!’ and she painted yet another Moominmamma, this time sitting under the lilac bush and enjoying herself.
Moomintroll went slowly down the stairs and out on to the lighthouse-rock. The glade had disappeared and there were no sea-horses any longer.
He stood looking at Moominmamma’s garden at the bottom of the rock. The rose-bushes had all withered because they had been moved to such a soft spot and no longer had the sand and the stones to lean on. Moominmamma had put up a little fence in the middle of the flower-bed which was supposed to enclose something. Quite what it was, Moomintroll couldn’t think. Something she was trying to grow there.
Little My came rushing up to him. ‘Hallo,’ she said. ‘Do you know what? Give you three guesses.’
‘No, tell me,’ said Moomintroll.
‘It’s an apple,’ announced Little My. ‘She’s planted an apple that floated ashore. She says that the seeds will grow into an apple tree.’
‘An apple!’ repeated Moomintroll in surprise. ‘But it takes years and years for an apple tree to grow!’
‘You bet it does!’ said Little My, and rushed off.
Moomintroll remained where he was and studied the fence. It had been very well made and looked remotely like the railings of the veranda at home. He began to chuckle to himself. It was a nice feeling, it felt good to laugh. No one was quite as stubborn as Moominmamma. He wondered whether she would get her apple tree after all. She deserved to. And from one thing to another, it would actually be much more fun to have a tiny little cottage than a glade. A tiny little cottage one had built with one’s own paws. One could put pretty little pebbles in the window.
*
Moominpappa and Moominmamma didn’t notice that the forest was moving decidedly closer to the lighthouse until some time during the afternoon. The alders seemed to have been in more of a hurry than the other trees, and they had crept halfway up the island. Only the alder to which the Adventure was tied remained, although it had nearly strangled itself by straining at the rope. The aspens had lost all their leaves and could no longer rustle with fright. Instead they had flung themselves into the heather in terrified little groups.
The trees all looked like insects, trying to tie their roots in knots round the stones and gripping the heather in a desperate attempt to hold on against the south-west wind.
‘But what does it mean?’ whispered Moominmamma, looking at Moominpappa. ‘Why do they do it?’
Moominpappa bit his pipe and desperately tried to find some sort of explanation. It was awful to be forced to say: ‘I don’t know.’ He was fed up with not understanding anything.
Finally he said: ‘It’s the sort of thing that happens at night. Things can change during the night, you know.’
Moominmamma stared at him.
‘It’s just possible that,’ continued Moominpappa nervously, ‘that… er… some sort of secret transformation in the darkness, I mean… if we were to go outside and… er… add to the confusion, it would be so great… the confusion I mean… er… that when we woke up in the morning everything would be just as it was…’
‘What are you talking about, dearest?’ asked Moominmamma anxiously.
Moominpappa blushed scarlet.
After an embarrassed pause, Moomintroll murmured: ‘They’re scared.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Moominpappa gratefully. ‘Yes, I think you’ve got something there…’ He looked round at the scarred ground. Every single tree had moved away from the sea.
‘At last I understand!’ exclaimed Moominpappa. ‘They’re scared of the sea. The sea frightened them. I felt something going on when I was out last night…’ He opened his exercise-book and fumbled with the pages. ‘This is what I wrote down this morning… just a minute. I must think about this very carefully…’
‘Will it take long?’ Moominmamma asked.
But Moominpappa was already on his way to the lighthouse-rock with his nose deep in his notes. He tripped over a bush, and then disappeared among the trees.
‘Mamma,’ said Moomintroll. ‘I don’t think this is anything to worry about. The trees just go a little way and then take root again and grow in the usual way.’
‘Do you think so?’ said Moominmamma in a hushed voice.
‘Perhaps they’ll make a little arbour round your garden,’ said Moomintroll. ‘It would look nice, wouldn’t it? Lots of little birch trees with pale-green leaves…’
Moominmamma shook her head and started to walk towards the lighthouse. ‘It’s nice of you to say so,’ she said. ‘But I just don’t think it’s a natural way of behaving. The trees at home never did anything like that.’
She decided to go and sit in her garden for a while and calm down.
Moomintroll released the alder from the rope of the Adventure. The south-west wind was much stronger now and the sky was bright and clear and the breakers over by the western end of the island were higher and whiter than he had ever seen them. Moomintroll went and lay in the heather. He felt quite peaceful, almost cheerful. What a relief it was that Moominpappa and Moominmamma had at last noticed what had happened!
A solitary bee buzzed gently from blossom to blossom in the heather. The heather didn’t seem to be afraid of anything. It just went on growing in the same place. ‘What if I should build my tiny cottage just here!’ thought Moomintroll. ‘Very close to the ground, and with flat stones in front of the door.’
He woke up as something cast its shadow over him. Moominpappa was standing beside him looking very worried.
‘Well?’ asked Moomintroll.
‘It’s no good,’ answered Moominpappa. ‘This business of the trees spoils everything. I understand the sea less than ever. There’s no system or order in things at all.’ He took off the lighthouse-keeper’s hat and began to crumple it up, twist it and then smooth it out again.
‘You see,’ said Moominpappa, ‘my idea is to discover what secret rules the sea obeys. I must if I’m going to learn to like it. I shall never be happy on this island until I’ve learned to like the sea.’
‘It’s exactly the same with people,’ said Moomintroll eagerly, sitting up: ‘Liking them, I mean.’
‘The sea is all the time changing the way it behaves,’ continued Moominpappa. ‘It seems to do just what it likes. Last night it terrified the whole island. Why? What happened? There’s just no rhyme or reason in it. And if there is, it’s more than I can understand.’
He looked inquiringly at Moomintroll.
‘I’m sure you’d understand if there was,’ said Moomintroll. He was very flattered to think that Moominpappa should discuss such terribly important things with him, and made a tremendous effort to understand what it was all about.
‘Do you really think so?’ Moominpappa said. ‘You mean you don’t think there’s any rhyme or reason in it all?’
‘I’m sure there isn’t,’ replied his son, desperately hoping he had said the right thing.
Some gulls rose from the point, and began to circle over the island. They could feel the breakers underneath them, like someone breathing in the ground.
‘But the sea must be a living thing, then,’ mused Moominpappa. ‘It can think. It behaves exactly as it feels inclined… it’s impossible to understand it… If the forest is afraid of the sea it must mean that the sea is alive, surely?’
Moomintroll nodded. His throat felt quite parched he was so excited.
Moominpappa was silent for a moment. Then he got up and said: ‘Then it’s the sea that’s breathing in the black pool. It’s the sea that tugs at the plumb-line. Everything’s quite clear. It went off with my breakwater, it filled my nets with seaweed and tried to upset the boat…’
He stood staring at the ground, his nose all wrinkled with a frown. Then suddenly his face cleared and he said with a feeling of great relief: ‘Then I don’t need to understand! The sea’s
just a weak character you can’t rely on…’
Moomintroll thought that Moominpappa was just talking to himself, so he said nothing. He watched him walk towards the lighthouse, leaving his exercise-book behind him in the heather.
There were lots more birds in the sky now, and they screamed as if possessed. Moomintroll had never seen so many birds all at once. The sky was almost black with them, little ones too, and they whirled round overhead wildly, more and more of them coming in from over the sea. Moomintroll gazed at them. He knew that they, too, were fleeing from the Groke and her dreadful coldness. But there was nothing he could do about it. But what did it matter, anyway? Pappa had talked to him in quite a new way, and he felt tremendously proud.
The others were standing outside the lighthouse, staring at the birds that seemed to fill the sky with their terrified cries. Then in a flash they flew off over the sea. The birds had gone, right out to sea, leaving nothing behind but the sound of the breakers.
The sea thundered in over the island, flinging the spray so high that it seemed to be snowing. Over at the western end of the island the waves looked like white dragons with gaping jaws.
‘I bet the fisherman’s pleased,’ Moomintroll thought.
Just at that moment it happened. He saw the fisherman’s little house of cement topple over, and the next wave washed away the walls.
The fisherman had managed to open the door in time, and dashed out like greased lightning through the foam. He crept under his boat, which was lying upside down on the rock. Nothing remained of the little house now except the iron clamps, sticking out of the rock like left-over teeth.
‘Well, bless my tail!’ Moomintroll thought. ‘Pappa was right. The sea is really bad-tempered!’
*
‘But he must be soaked to the skin!’ exclaimed Moominmamma. ‘And he may well be full of splinters of glass from the window… WE must look after him, now that he’s got nowhere to live!’
