Free Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson

was them. The sea-horses,
his
sea-horses. Now he understood everything. The silver shoe he had found in the sand, the calendar with the moon dipping its feet in the mounting wave, the call he had heard while he
was asleep. Moomintroll stood in the trees and watched the sea-horses dance.

    They leapt up and down the beach with their heads high, their hair flying and their tails floating behind them in long glistening waves. They were indescribably beautiful, and they seemed to be aware of it. They danced coquettishly, freely and openly, for themselves, for each other, for the island, for the sea – it seemed to be all the same to them. Sometimes they turned suddenly in the water so that the spray rose high above them, making rainbows in the moonlight. Then they would leap back through their own rainbows, looking up and bowing their heads to emphasize the curve of the neck and the line of the back down to the tail. It was as if they were dancing in front of a mirror.
    Now they were standing still, stroking each other, obviously thinking only of one another. Both were wearing grey velvet which looked very warm and soft and which never got wet. It looked as if it was patterned with flowers.
    While Moomintroll was watching them, something curious but quite natural happened. He suddenly thought that he, too, was beautiful. He felt relaxed and playful and light-of-heart. He ran down the beach crying: ‘Look at the moonlight! It’s so warm! I feel I could fly!’
    The sea-horses shied, reared and sprang away in the moonlight. They dashed past him with their eyes staring and their hair streaming and their hooves beating the ground in panic, but he knew all the time that they were
only pretending. He knew that they weren’t really frightened and he didn’t know whether he ought to clap or try to calm them down. He just felt small, and fat and clumsy again. As they flew past him into the sea he shouted: ‘You’re so beautiful, so beautiful! Don’t leave me!’ A cloud of spray rose in the air, the last rainbow disappeared and the beach was deserted.
    Moomintroll sat down in the sand to wait. He felt sure they would come back. They were certain to come back if he was only patient enough.
    The night passed and the moon went down.
    ‘Perhaps they would like to see a light on the beach, a light to tempt them back here to play,’ thought Moomintroll. He lit the hurricane lamp and put it in front of him on the sand, staring intently at the dark water. After a while he got up and began to swing the lamp backwards and forwards. It was a signal. He tried to think of only ordinary soothing things and went on swinging the lamp. He was very, very patient.
    It began to get cold on the beach, perhaps because it was getting on for morning. The cold floated in from the sea and Moomintroll’s paws began to freeze. He shivered and looked up; there was the Groke sitting on the water in front of him.
    Her eyes were following the movements of the hurricane lamp, but otherwise she didn’t move. But he knew she would come nearer. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her. He wanted to go away from the coldness and motionlessness of her, far away
from the terrifying loneliness of her. But he couldn’t move. He just couldn’t.
    He stood there swinging the hurricane lamp slower and slower. Neither of them moved and time began to drag. In the end Moomintroll started to walk backwards very slowly. The Groke stayed where she was on her little island of ice. Moomintroll went on walking backwards without taking his eyes off her, up the beach, into the aspens. He turned the lamp out.
    It was very dark and the moon had gone down behind the island. Was that a shadow moving across the water? – he couldn’t be sure. Moomintroll went back to the lighthouse, his head full of things to think about.
    The sea was quite calm now, but in among the aspens the leaves whispered with fright. He could smell paraffin strongly, coming from the thicket. But it