Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson Read Free Book Online

shoulder the whole time and sometimes she stopped behind a tree. Is it better this way? she asked.
    I nodded and squeezed her hand. Then she started picking again. She reached up with her enormous arms so that her dress stretched tight all over and she laughed and broke off the boughs and the flowers rained all over her face and I whispered stop, stop, that’s enough, and I was so beside myself with fright and ecstasy that I almost wet my knickers.
    If you’re going to steal you might as well steal properly, Annie said calmly. Her arms were full of bird-cherry, it lay across her neck and shoulders and she clasped it firmly with her red hands. We climbed back over the fence and went home and there was no sign of a park keeper or a policeman.
    Then they told us that the bush we had picked from wasn’t a bird-cherry at all. It was just white. But Mummy was all right, she didn’t die.
    Sometimes Annie would get mad and shout: I can’t stand the sight of you! Get out! Then I would go down into the yard and sit on the rubbish bin and burn old rolls of film with a magnifying glass.
    I love smells. The smell of burning films, the smell of heat and Annie and the box of clay in the studio and Mummy’s hair and the smell of parties and bird-cherry. I haven’t got a smell yet, at least I don’t think so.
    Annie smelt differently in the summer – of grass and even warmer. She laughed more often and you could see more of her arms and legs.
    Annie could really row. She took a single pull and then rested on the oars in triumph and the boat glided forward over the sound so that there was a splashing round the bows in the still water of evening and then she took another pull and the boat splashed again and Annie showed how strong she was. Then she would laugh loudly and put one oar in the water so that the boat swung round to show that she didn’t want to go in any particular direction but was just amusing herself. In the end she just let the boat drift and lay in the bottom and sang and everybody on the shore heard her singing in the sunset and they knew that there she lay, big and happy and warm and not caring a fig for anything. She was doing just what she wanted to do.
    Then she would stroll up the slope, her whole body swaying to and fro, and now and then she would pause to pick a flower. Annie used to sing when she was baking, too. She kneaded the dough, rolled it out, patted it, shaped it and threw her buns into the oven so that they landed exactly in the right place on the tray and then she slammed the oven door and cried, oh! it’s so hot!
    I love Annie in the summer and never bully her then.
    Sometimes we went to Diamond Valley. It’s a beach where all the pebbles are round andprecious and beautiful colours. They’re prettier under the water but if you rub them with margarine they’re always pretty. We went there once when Mummy and Daddy were working in town and when we had gathered enough diamonds we sat and rested on the hill slope. In the early summer and autumn there are always streams coming down the slope. We made waterfalls and dams.
    There’s gold in the stream, Annie said. See if you can find it. I couldn’t see any gold.
    You have to put it there yourself, said Annie. Gold looks wonderful in brown water. It multiplies. More and more gold. So I went home and fetched all the gold things we possessed and the pearls as well, and put them all in the stream and they looked terribly beautiful.
    Annie and I lay in the grass and listened to the sound of the stream and she sang Full Fathom Five. She stepped into the water and picked up Mummy’s gold bracelet with her toes and dropped it again and laughed. Then she said: I’ve always longed to have things of real gold.
    Next day all the gold had disappeared and the pearls too. I thought it was odd. You never know what streams will do, Annie said. Sometimes the gold grows and grows and sometimes it vanishes under