Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson Read Free Book Online

the door. Then she went over to the window and looked out. She went from one window to another. Sea everywhere, nothing but
sea and the cries of swallows. The mainland wasn’t visible at all.
    In the last window she found an indelible pencil, some bits of string and a needle for mending fishing-nets. She stood playing with the pencil. Absent-mindedly, she started to draw a little flower on the window-sill, shading in the leaves nicely, but not thinking about anything in particular.
    *
    Moominpappa stood in the fireplace with his head up the chimney. ‘There’s a bird’s nest here,’ he shouted. ‘That’s why it won’t burn.’
    ‘Are there any birds in it?’ Moominmamma asked.
    Moominpappa was quite black when he emerged from the chimney. ‘Some poor little bald coot, I expect,’ he said. ‘But she isn’t at home. She’s probably flown south.’
    ‘But she’ll be back in the spring!’ exclaimed Moomintroll. ‘She must be able to find her nest when she comes home. We can cook outdoors!’
    ‘What? For the rest of our lives?’ asked Little My.
    ‘Well, we could move the nest after a while,’ Moomintroll muttered.

    ‘Huh! Typical!’ said Little My. ‘Do you think the bald coot will know whether her nest has been moved immediately or only after a little while? You only say that so you can chuck her out with a clear conscience.’
    ‘Shall we really eat outdoors for the rest of our lives?’ Moominpappa asked in amazement. They all looked at Moominmamma.
    ‘Take it down,’ she said. ‘We can hang it out of the window. Sometimes trolls are more important than bald coots.’
    *
    Moominmamma pushed the dirty dishes under the bed to make the room tidier, and then she went out to look for soil.
    She stopped by the lighthouse steps to throw a little sea-water on the rose-bush. It was still waiting in its box with the earth from home. The garden must be made on the leeward side and it must be as near the lighthouse as possible, where it would get the sun most of the day. But above all, it should have plenty of deep, rich soil.
    Moominmamma looked and looked. She searched along the rock where the lighthouse stood, through the heather down towards the moss, she went into the aspen thicket, she wandered over the warm peaty ground, but there was still no soil anywhere.
    She had never seen so many stones before. Behind the clump of aspen trees there was nothing but stones, a desert of round grey stones. In the middle of them someone had lifted some up, making a hole.
Moominmamma went and looked into the hole, but there was nothing but more stones in it, just as grey and just as round. She wondered what the lighthouse-keeper had been looking for. Nothing in particular, perhaps. Maybe he had done it just to amuse himself. He had picked up one stone after another, but they had rolled back and he had got tired of the whole thing and walked away.
    Moominmamma went on towards the sandy beach. Down there she found soil at last. A dark belt of rich soil lay along the line of the beach under the alders. Tough green plants were growing between the stones, opening in bursts of gold and violet, a sudden jungle of richness.
    Moominmamma dug her paws in the ground. She could feel that it was full of millions of growing roots that mustn’t be disturbed. But it didn’t matter, there was soil after all. Now for the first time she felt that the island was real.

    She called to Moominpappa, who was collecting pieces of wood in the seaweed, ran towards him with her apron waving in the wind, and shouted: ‘I’ve found soil! I’ve found soil!’
    Moominpappa looked up. ‘Hallo there!’ he said. ‘What do you think of my island?’
    ‘It’s not like anything else in the world!’ Moominmamma assured him enthusiastically. ‘The soil’s down on the beach instead of somewhere in the middle of the island!’
    ‘I’ll explain it for you,’ said Moominpappa. ‘You must always ask me if there’s anything you don’t