Free Sculptor's Daughter by Tove Jansson

quickly and the fog was there, moving thickly around us, shutting us in on all sides. The smooth swell rolled out of the fog, crawled under the raft with a swallowing movement and rolled back into the fog the other side. I was freezing and was waiting for Albert to say, what did I say? Or, I told you so … but he was silent and just paddled on and looked worried. He turned his head this way and that and listened and looked at the swell and kept in to the shore. After a while he kept more out to sea instead. Now there was a cross-wave in the swell and it started to come from all directions at the same time. Albert stopped paddling and said: we’d better wait until it lifts.
    I was a little scared and said nothing at all.
    If only Rosa would moo we’d get our direction, said Albert.
    We listened in the fog but Rosa didn’t moo, everything was as silent and deserted as the place where the world ends, and terribly cold.
    Look, there’s something floating, said Albert.
    It was greyish-white and straggly and was moving very slowly in a circle towards us in the swell.
    Albert said: it’s a herring-gull. He poked it with the paddle and lifted it up onto the raft. It looked very big on the raft and went on shuffling round in a circle.
    It’s not well, I said. It’s in pain.
    Albert picked it up by the neck and looked at it, and it began to screech and flap one wing.
    Let it go! I shouted. Everything looked so terrifying with the fog and the black water and the bird creeping around and screaming that I was beside myself and said: give it to me, I’ll hold it in my lap, we must make it well again!
    I sat down on the raft and Albert laid the bird in my lap and said: it won’t get well. We must kill it.
    You’re always killing and killing, I said. Look how it’s cuddling up to me, it’s lonely and unhappy!
    But Albert said it’s got worms, and lifted up one wing and showed me that it was crawling with them. I screamed and threw the bird down. Then I started to cry and sat down and watched Albert pick up the bird very carefully and examine its wing.There’s nothing you can do about this, he explained. It’s rotten. We’ll have to kill it.
    But let it fly away, I whispered. Perhaps it will get well after all.
    Why should it suffer? said Albert. He took out his sheath-knife and held the bird by the head, pressing it down onto the raft. I stopped crying and watched, I just couldn’t look away. Albert turned round so that he was between me and the gull. Then he cut right through its neck and let the head and the body of the gull slip into the water. When he turned round again he was as white as a sheet.
    Look, there’s blood! I whispered and began to tremble all over. Then he rinsed the blood away.
    Don’t get worked up about it, he said. You see, it was much the best way.
    He was so kind that I began to cry again, and now it was lovely to be able to cry. Everything was over and everything was all right.
    Albert always put things right. Whatever happened and however one behaved it was always Albert who put things right.
    He stood looking at me, worried and not understanding. Don’t be cross any longer, he said. Look, the fog’s lifting and the wind is changing.

High Water
    O NE SUMMER THE BOATHOUSE was empty because Old Charlie was out fishing all the time. Mummy sat on our veranda and drew illustrations and sent them to town with the herring boat. From time to time she took a dip in the sea and then she went on drawing again.
    Daddy looked at her and then he went and looked in the boathouse and in the end he went to town and fetched his modelling stand and box of clay, his armatures and his modelling tools. He turned the boathouse into a studio and everybody got interested in it and helped him. They tried to tidy up all Old Charlie’s tools and wanted to clean the floor, but that they weren’t allowed to do.
    Daddy got cross and then they