The Girl from the Sea and other stories E-Book

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

• Herausgeber: Young Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The stories included in this collection are classics of children's literature and have been cherished by generations of Portuguese children. This is the first time these stories have been translated into English. The author is one of Portugal's greatest poets and, like her poetry, these stories are filled with her delight and pleasure in nature, gardens and the sea, as well as her keen sense of the magical. Among other things, we encounter dwarves, diminutive little girls who live on the sea bed, plants that come alive at night, a tree that lives on long after it has been felled, and a pilgrim who discovers much more than the Holy Land. Her themes are, above all, loyalty and friendship.

Leseprobe

The Author

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen – known simply as Sophia to Portuguese readers – was born in 1919 in the city of Porto in the north of Portugal. Her Danish grandfather, Jan Andresen had set sail from Denmark, disembarked in Porto and never left. He went on to become a very rich man and a leading figure in Porto society. Brought up in a wealthy Catholic family, Sophia always retained her religious faith, but was fiercely critical of Portugal’s authoritarian Salazar regime, and became a member of parliament for the Socialist Party after the Carnation Revolution that overthrew the dictatorship in 1974. She published her first collection of poems in 1945 and went on to write many more, as well as short stories and translations, notably of Dante and Shakespeare. She became Portugal’s most acclaimed poet of the twentieth century, and was the first woman to be awarded Portugal’s highest literary honour, the Prémio Camões. She died in 2004.

Sophia had five children and originally wrote these stories for them. Like her poetry, the stories show a deep connection with the natural world, in particular with gardens and the sea. They are enjoyed by school children throughout Portugal to this day.

The Translators

Margaret Jull Costa has translated the works of many Spanish and Portuguese writers. She won the Portuguese Translation Prize for The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa in 1992 and for The Word Tree by Teolinda Gersão in 2012, and her translations of Eça de Queiroz’s novels The Relic (1996) and The City and the Mountains (2009) were shortlisted for the prize; with Javier Marías, she won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for A Heart So White, and, in 2000, she won the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for José Saramago’s All the Names. In 2008 she won the Pen Book-of-the Month-Club Translation Prize and the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Maias by Eça de Queiroz.

Robin Patterson came late to literary translating, after pursuing other careers in various parts of the world. He has participated in both the Birkbeck and the BCLT literary translation summer schools and was mentored by Margaret Jull Costa in 2013 as part of the BCLT mentorship programme. His translated extracts from José Luís Peixoto’s Inside the Secret were serialised in 2014 by Ninth Letter, and his translation of Eve’s Mango, an extract from Vanessa da Mata’s debut novel, was featured on the Bookanista website. He also contributed a translation of Congressman Romário: Big Fish in the Aquarium by Clara Becker to The Football Crónicas, a collection of football-related Latin American literature published by Ragpicker Press in June 2014. Our Musseque by José Luandino Vieira was his first translation for Dedalus.

Contents

Title

The Author

The Translators

The Girl from the Sea

The Fairy Oriana

Christmas Eve

The Danish Knight

The Bronze Boy

The Forest

The Tree

The Mirror, or the Living Portrait

Recommended Reading

Copyright

THE GIRLFROMTHE SEA

White house facing the vast sea,

With your garden of sand and sea flowers

And your unbroken silence in which sleeps

The miracle of the things that once were mine.

Once upon a time, there was a white house built in the dunes and facing the sea. It had a door, seven windows and a wooden balcony painted green. Surrounding the house was a sandy garden in which grew white lilies and another plant with white, yellow and red flowers.

In that house lived a boy who spent his days playing on the beach.

It was a very big beach, almost empty, apart from some marvellous rocks. At high tide, though, the rocks were under water, and all you could see were the waves growing and growing in the distance until they broke on the sand with a sound like people clapping. At low tide, the rocks became visible again, all covered in seaweed, whelks, anemones, limpets, algae and sea urchins. There were pools of water, streams, paths, grottoes, arches, waterfalls. There were pebbles of all shapes and colours, tiny and smooth and polished by the waves. The sea water was cold and transparent. Sometimes a fish swam by, almost too quick to be seen. You’d say to yourself: ‘Look, a fish’ and already it was gone. The jellyfish, though, drifted majestically past, opening and closing their red mantles. And the crabs scuttled all over the place, with furious faces and looking as if they were in a tremendous hurry.

The boy from the white house loved the rocks. He loved the green of the seaweed, the salt smell of the sea, the transparently cool waters. And that’s why he felt really sad not to be a fish and able to swim down to the bottom of the sea without drowning. And he envied the seaweed bobbing on the currents, so light and so happy.

In September came the equinox, bringing with it rough seas, gales, mists, rain and storms. The high tides swept up the beach as far as the dunes. One night, the waves roared and raged so loudly, and beat and broke so hard on the beach, that, in his whitewashed room in the white house, the boy lay awake into the small hours. The shutters on the windows rattled. The wooden floorboards creaked like ship’s masts. It felt as if the waves were about to surround the house, and the sea was about to devour the whole world. And the boy imagined that, outside, in the dark night, a terrible battle was being waged, in which sea and sky and wind were brawling with each other. Finally, grown weary of listening, he fell asleep, lulled by the storm.

When he woke the next day, everything was calm again. The battle was over. The wind didn’t moan, the sea didn’t roar, there was only the gentle murmuring of small waves. The boy jumped out of bed, went over to the window and saw a lovely morning of bright sunshine, blue sky and blue sea. It was low tide. He put on his bathing trunks and ran down to the beach. Everything was so clear and quiet that he thought last night’s storm must have been a dream.

But it wasn’t. The beach was covered with foam from the stormy waves, row upon row of foam that trembled in the slightest breeze. It formed shapes like fantastical castles, white, but filled with a thousand other shimmering colours. When the boy touched them, the tremulous castles crumbled.

Then he went to play among the rocks. He began by following a thread of very clear water between two large dark rocks covered in whelks. The stream flowed into a large pool of water where the boy bathed and swam for a long time. Afterwards, he went scrabbling on over the rocks. He was heading for the south side of the beach, where there was never another soul to be seen. The tide was very low, and it was a beautiful morning. The seaweed seemed greener than ever, and the sea itself was tinged with lilac. The boy felt so happy that he sometimes broke into a dance. Now and then, he would find a really good pool and plunge in. When he’d already done this about ten times, he realised it must be time for him to go home. He climbed out of the pool and lay down on a rock in the sun.

‘I really must go home,’ he was thinking, but he didn’t want to leave. And while he was lying there, his face resting on the seaweed, something extraordinary happened: he heard a very strange laugh, rather like the laugh you might hear from a bass baritone in an opera; then he heard a second even stranger laugh, a tiny, brief laugh, more like a cough; this was followed by a third laugh, which sounded like someone in the water going ‘glu glu glu’. The most extraordinary of all, though, was the fourth laugh, which was like a human laugh, only softer, finer, clearer. He’d never heard such a clear voice: it was as if water or glass were laughing.

Very carefully, so as not to make any noise, he stood up and peered out from his hiding place between two rocks. And there he saw a big octopus laughing, a crab laughing, a fish laughing and a tiny little girl laughing too. The little girl, who could only have been about a span high, had green hair, purple eyes and a dress made of scarlet seaweed. And the four of them were in a pool of very clean, clear water, surrounded by sea anemones. They were swimming and laughing.

‘Ho, ho, ho,’ laughed the octopus.

‘Hee, hee, hee,’ laughed the crab.

‘Glu, glu, glu,’ laughed the fish.

‘Ha, ha, ha,’ laughed the girl.

Then they stopped laughing, and the girl said: ‘Now I want to dance.’

In an instant, the octopus, the crab and the fish transformed themselves into an orchestra.

The fish clapped his fins together in the water.

The crab climbed onto a rock and began to use his claws as castanets.

The octopus also clambered onto the rocks, where he stretched out seven of his eight arms, using his suckers to fasten the tip of each arm to the rock, and then, with his one free arm, he began to strum his other arms like the strings of a guitar. And then he began to sing.

The girl climbed out of the water onto another rock and started to dance. And the water coming and going around her feet danced too.

From his hiding place, the boy was watching, silent and motionless.

When the singing and dancing stopped, the octopus picked up the girl and began to rock her to sleep in his eight dark arms.

‘The tide’s coming in, it’s time to leave,’ said the crab.

‘Yes, let’s go,’ said the octopus.

They summoned the fish, and the four of them set off. The fish swam ahead with the girl by his side, then came the octopus and, finally, the crab, still with that wary, angry look on his face.

They swam between the sand and the rocks until they reached a grotto and all four went in. The boy wanted to follow, but the entrance to the grotto was very small, and he was far too big. And since the tide was coming in, he had to leave so as not to drown.

He went home feeling astonished at what he had seen, and all day he could think of nothing else. As soon as he woke the next morning, he ran down to the beach. He took the same path as before, and again hid behind the two rocks, and from there he watched and heard the same laughter as before. The girl, the crab, the octopus and the fish were dancing in a circle in the water. They were having such fun.

Mad with curiosity, the boy couldn’t bear to sit there doing nothing any more. He lunged forward and grabbed the girl.

‘No, no!’ she cried.

Terrified, the octopus, the crab and the fish all vanished in the twinkling of an eye.

‘Octopus, crab, fish, help me, please! Save me!’ cried the girl.

Then, overcoming their fear, the octopus, crab and fish emerged from behind the seaweed where they had hidden and began to try and save the girl. They did their best: the octopus climbed up the boy’s legs, the crab pinched his feet with his claws, and the fish nipped at his shins. However, since the boy was bigger and stronger than them, he simply dealt them a few kicks and ran away with the girl, who continued to call out: ‘Octopus! Crab! Fish!’

‘Don’t scream and don’t cry and don’t be frightened,’ said the boy. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘How could I possibly hurt a pretty little girl like you?’

‘You’re going to cook me and eat me,’ said the girl from the sea, and again began crying and screaming. ‘Octopus! Crab! Fish!’

‘Cook you and eat you! Why would I do that? What a strange idea!’ said the boy, horrified.

‘The fish say that men cook and eat everything they catch.’

The boy burst out laughing and said: ‘Oh, the fishermen do. They’re the ones who catch the fish and cook them. But I’m not a fisherman and you’re not a fish. I don’t want to cook you or hurt you in any way. I just want to have a proper look at you, because I’ve never seen such a tiny pretty little girl before. I want you to tell me who you are, how you live, and what you’re doing here in the sea and what your name is.’

Then the girl stopped screaming, wiped away her tears, combed and smoothed her hair with her fingers and said: ‘Let’s go and sit down on that rock, and I’ll tell you everything.’

‘Promise you won’t run away?’

‘I promise.’

They sat facing each other, and the girl began: ‘I’m a girl from the sea. My name is Girl from the Sea and I have no other name. I don’t know where I was born. One day, a seagull carried me in its beak and brought me to this beach. He set me down on a rock at low tide, and the octopus, the crab and the fish took care of me. The four of us live in a very pretty cave. The octopus does the housework, smoothes the sand and fetches the food. He’s the one who works hardest, because he has so many arms. The crab is the chef. He makes seaweed broth, foam icecream, kelp salad, turtle soup, caviar and lots of other things. He’s a really excellent chef. When the food is ready, the octopus lays the table. The table cloth is a piece of white seaweed, and the plates are shells. Then, at night, the octopus makes up my bed with some more seaweed, very green and very soft. But the crab is my seamstress. And he’s also my jeweller: he makes me necklaces out of shells and coral and pearls. The fish doesn’t do anything, because he doesn’t have hands like me, or arms with suckers like the octopus, or claws like the crab. He only has fins, and fins are only good for swimming. But he’s my best friend. Since he doesn’t have arms, he never punishes me. He’s my playmate. When it’s low tide, we play among the rocks, and when it’s high tide, we go for walks on the bottom of the sea. You won’t ever have been to the bottom of the sea, so you can’t possibly know how lovely it is there. There are forests of kelp, gardens of anemones, fields of shells. There are seahorses suspended like question marks in the water, with a look of astonishment on their faces. There are flowers that resemble animals and animals that resemble flowers. There are mysterious grottoes, dark blues, purples, greens and endless expanses of fine, white, smooth sand. You’re from the land, and if you went to the bottom of the sea, you would drown. But I’m a girl from the sea. I can breathe under water like a fish and breathe out of the water too, like people. And I have the whole ocean at my disposal and can do what I like, and no one will hurt me because I dance for the Great Ray. And the Great Ray is the mistress of these waters. She’s huge, big enough to swallow a boat with ten men on board. She looks really nasty and eats men and fish and is always hungry. She doesn’t eat me because she says I’m too small and no good for eating, but that I’m very good at dancing. And the Ray loves to see me dance. Whenever she gives a party, she invites the sharks and the whales, and they all sit on the bottom of the sea and I dance for them into the small hours. And when the Ray is sad or feeling indisposed, then I have to dance in order to cheer her up. That’s why I’m a sea-dancer and can do what I want and it’s why everyone likes me. But I don’t like the Ray at all, and I’m afraid of her. She hates men and doesn’t like fish either. Even the whales are afraid of her. But I can wander the sea as I wish and no one eats me and no one hurts me because I am the Great Ray’s dancer. And now that I’ve told you my story, take me back to my friends, who must be terribly worried.’

The boy very carefully placed the girl on the palm of his hand and took her back to where she had come from. The octopus, the crab and the fish were all huddled together, weeping.

‘I’m back,’ shouted the Girl from the Sea.

As soon as they saw her, the octopus, the crab and the fish stopped crying and hurled themselves, like three dogs, at the boy’s feet, with the crab and the fish nipping and pinching him, while the octopus with his eight arms lashed at the boy’s legs.

‘Stop it, don’t hurt him, he’s my friend and he’s not going to cook me and eat me,’ said the Girl from the Sea. Utterly amazed at these words, the octopus, the crab and the fish stopped their assault on the boy. The boy bent down and placed the girl in the water next to her three friends, who were now leaping up and down with joy and laughing loudly. The tide was coming in, and the boy had to leave. He asked the girl, the octopus, the crab and the fish to come back the next day, at the same hour, in that same place.

‘I’m so curious to see the land,’ said the girl. ‘When you come tomorrow, bring me something from the land.’

And so it was.

The following day, early in the morning, the boy went into his garden to pick a highly scented red rose. He went down to the beach and looked for the place where he had met them the previous day.

‘Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning,’ said the girl, the octopus, the crab and the fish.

‘Good morning,’ said the boy. And he knelt down in the water, opposite the Girl from the Sea.

‘I’ve brought you a flower from the land,’ he said, ‘it’s called a rose.’

‘Oh, it’s lovely,’ said the Girl from the Sea, gleefully clapping her hands and dancing round the rose.

‘Smell it and you’ll see how perfumed it is.’

She put her head inside the rose petals and took a long breath.

Then she looked up and said with a sigh: ‘What a marvellous perfume. There’s nothing like that in the sea. But it makes me feel dizzy and a little sad. The things of the land are strange. They’re different from the things of the sea. In the sea there are all kinds of monsters and dangers, but the pretty things are pure joy. On the land, there’s sadness even in the prettiest things.’

‘In Portuguese, that’s what we call saudade,’ said the boy.

‘What’s saudade?’ asked the girl.

‘Saudade is the sadness that lingers inside us when we lose the things we love.’

‘Oh!’ sighed the Girl from the Sea, looking back at the land. ‘Why did you show me that rose? I feel like crying now.’

The boy threw the rose away and said: ‘Forget about the rose and let’s go and play.’

And off the five of them went, the boy, the girl, the octopus, the crab and the fish, along the watery paths, where they spent the whole morning laughing and having fun.

Until the tide began to come in, and the boy had to leave.

The following morning, they met again in what was now the usual place.

‘Good morning,’ said the girl. ‘What have you brought me today?’

The boy picked her up, sat her on a rock and knelt beside her.

‘I brought you this,’ he said. ‘It’s a box of matches.’

‘It’s not very pretty,’ said the girl.

‘No, but it contains something marvellous, beautiful and joyful called fire. Let me show you.’

And the boy opened the box and lit a match.

The girl clapped her hands in delight and asked if she could touch the fire.

‘No,’ said the boy, ‘that’s impossible. The fire is a joyful thing, but it burns.’

‘It’s like a little sun,’ said the Girl from the Sea.

‘Yes,’ said the boy, ‘but you can’t touch it.’

And he blew on the match and the fire went out.

‘You’re a wizard,’ said the girl. ‘You blow on things and they vanish.’

‘I’m not a wizard. That’s just what fire is like. When it’s small, anyone can blow it out. But when it gets big, it can devour whole forests and cities.’

‘So is fire even worse than the Great Ray?’ asked the girl.

‘That depends. As long as the fire is small and sensible, then it’s man’s best friend: it warms him in winter, cooks his food for him, gives him light at night. But when the fire grows too big, it becomes angry and unhinged, and then it’s crueller and more dangerous than even the fiercest of beasts.’

‘The things of the land are strange and different,’ said the Girl from the Sea. ‘Tell me about some more things.’

Then they sat down in the water, and the boy told her what his house and garden were like and about cities and fields, forests and roads.

‘Oh, how I wish I could see all those things,’ said the girl, brimming with curiosity.

‘Come with me,’ said the boy. ‘I’ll take you to the land and show you all kinds of lovely things.’

‘I can’t, because I’m a girl from the sea. The sea is my land. If you came to visit me in the sea you would drown. And so would I if I went on dry land. I can’t spend much time out of the water. Out of the water, I become like the seaweed at low tide, all dry and wrinkled. If I were to leave the sea, after only a few hours, I would be just like an old rag or a scrap of newspaper, the kind of thing you find on the beach sometimes and which always looks so sad and lonely, like something that’s no use any more and has been thrown away, unwanted by anyone.’

‘It’s such a shame that I can’t show you the land!’ said the boy.

‘And such a shame that I can’t take you with me to the bottom of the sea and show you the seaweed forests and the coral caves and the gardens of anemones!’

And that morning, as they swam in the water, the boy and the girl told each other stories of the sea and stories of the land.

Until the tide came in and they had to say goodbye.

The following day, the boy came to the beach, sat down beside the Girl from the Sea and said: ‘Today I’ve brought you something from the land that is both pretty and joyful. It’s called wine. Anyone who drinks it is filled with joy.’

While he was speaking, the boy placed on the sand a glass full of wine. It was one of those very small glasses used for liqueurs. The Girl from the Sea picked up the glass with both hands and studied the wine very curiously, breathing in its perfume…

‘It’s very red and very perfumed,’ she said. ‘Tell me what wine is.’

‘On the land,’ answered the boy, ‘there’s a plant called a vine. In the winter, it looks dead and withered, but in the spring, it sprouts lots of leaves and in the summer it’s full of fruit called grapes, which grow in bunches. And in the autumn, men pick the bunches of grapes and put them in big stone tanks where they tread on them to extract the juice. And it’s the juice from that fruit that we call wine. That is the story of wine, but I don’t know how to describe its taste. Take a sip if you want to know.’

And the girl took a sip of wine, giggled and said: ‘It’s really very nice and very jolly. Now I know what the land is like. Now I know the taste of spring, summer and autumn. Now I know what the fruit tastes like. Now I know the coolness of the trees. Now I know the heat of a mountain in the sun. Take me to see the land. I want to see it. There are so many things I don’t know. The sea is a transparent, frozen prison. There’s no spring or autumn in the sea. In the sea, time doesn’t die. The anemones are always in flower and the foam is always white. Take me to see the land.’

‘I have an idea,’ said the boy. ‘Tomorrow I’ll bring a bucket and fill it with sea water and seaweed. And you can sit in the bucket so that you don’t dry up, and I’ll take you to see the land.’

‘All right,’ said the girl. ‘Tomorrow, I’ll come with you in the bucket of water. And I’ll go and see your house and your garden and watch the trains passing and see night in a city full of lights and people and cars. And I’ll go and see the animals of the land, dogs, horses, cats; and I’ll see the mountains, the forests and all the other things you’ve told me about.’

And so the boy and the Girl from the Sea spent the rest of the morning planning the next day’s adventure. Until the tide came in, and the boy had to leave.

The next day, the boy came to the rocks carrying a bucket. He was in high spirits, singing and skipping, excited about his plan for the day, but when he reached the usual pool of water, he found the Girl from the Sea in deep despair, and the octopus, the crab and the fish looking very worried.

‘Good morning,’ said the boy. ‘I’ve brought the bucket. Let’s go.’

‘I can’t,’ said the Girl from the Sea. And she burst into floods of tears.

‘But why not?’ asked the boy.

‘Because of the whelks. They have very good hearing, and they hear everything, they’re the ears of the sea. And they overheard our conversation and went and told the Great Ray, who was furious, and now I can’t go with you.’

‘But the Great Ray isn’t here. Get in the bucket and let’s go.’

‘That’s just not possible,’ said the Girl from the Sea. ‘The Great Ray ordered the octopuses not to let me pass. The rocks are full of hidden octopuses that we can’t see, but who are watching our every move. I must say goodbye to you for ever. I won’t be here tomorrow, because, to punish me for wanting to run away, the Ray has decided that tonight at moonrise, I will be taken by the octopuses to a remote beach, whose name and location I don’t even know. And we will never be able to meet again.’

‘Let’s try and escape,’ said the boy. ‘I can run faster on my two legs than the octopuses can on their eight arms, which are neither arms nor legs.’

And with that, he put the Girl from the Sea in the bucket and set off at a run. At that same moment, though, the rocks were suddenly swarming with octopuses. Wherever he looked there were octopuses. He searched for some opening where he could get through, but there was none. The octopuses had formed a tight circle around them. And he was in the middle of that circle and could not escape. Then he tried to jump over the octopuses, but immediately dozens of tentacles twined about his legs.

‘Let me go, let me go,’ said the Girl from the Sea. ‘Let me go or they’ll kill you.’

‘No, I won’t let you go,’ said the boy.

But the octopuses had wrapped their arms about his waist and chest, grasped his shoulders, bound his wrists, and he fell, helpless, onto the rocks. He still had hold of the bucket though, until, that is, an octopus put one tentacle around his throat and began to squeeze. The boy saw the sky turn black, he could no longer hear the sound of the waves, and, finally, he forgot everything. He lost consciousness. He woke to feel the water lapping on his face. The tide had come in, and the waves had almost covered the rocks where he had fallen. He stood up, and his whole body still ached and was covered with the marks left by the octopuses’ suckers. He slowly made his way home.

Days and more days passed. The boy often returned to the rocks, but he never again saw the girl or her three friends there. It was as if it had all been a dream.

Then winter arrived. The weather was cold, the sea grey and it rained nearly every day. One misty morning, the boy sat down on the beach to think about the Girl from the Sea.

And while he was doing this, he saw a seagull flying in from the sea carrying something in his beak. That something was shiny, and glinted in the light. The boy thought it must be a fish. But the seagull came very close, circled him in the air, then dropped the object on the sand.

The boy picked it up and saw that it was a bottle full of a very clear, luminous liquid.

‘Good morning,’ said the seagull.

‘Good morning,’ said the boy. ‘Where have you come from and why are you giving me this bottle?’

‘I’m here at the request of the Girl from the Sea,’ said the seagull. ‘She told me to tell you that now she understands the meaning of saudade. And she asked me to ask you if you’d like to meet her at the bottom of the sea.’

‘Oh, I would, I would,’ said the boy. ‘But how can I go to the bottom of the sea without drowning?’

‘The bottle I gave you contains the juice of sea anemones and of other magical plants too. If you drink this potion, you will become like the Girl from the Sea. You will be able to live in the water like a fish and out of the water like people.’

‘I’ll drink it now,’ said the boy.

And he drank the potion.

Everything around him seemed to become brighter and more brilliant. He felt as happy, joyful and contented as a fish. It was as if something about the way he moved had become freer, stronger, fresher and lighter.

‘Out there in the sea,’ said the seagull, ‘is a dolphin waiting to show you the way.’

The boy looked and saw a large glossy black dolphin leaping about among the waves. Then he said.

‘Goodbye, seagull. And thank you so much.’

And he ran into the waves and swam out to the dolphin.

‘Hold onto my tail,’ said the dolphin.

And the two headed out to sea.

They swam for many days and many nights through calms and storms.

They crossed the wide Sargasso Sea and saw flying fish. They saw huge whales sending spouts of water up into the sky and saw great steamships that left columns of smoke hanging in the air behind them. And they saw majestic white icebergs in the lonely ocean wastes. And they swam beside swift sailing ships, sails taut in the wind. And the sailors cried out in amazement when they saw a boy hanging on to the tail of a dolphin. But the boy and dolphin dived deep down so as not to be caught. There they saw old shipwrecks with their coffers full of gold and their broken masts encrusted with sea anemones and shells.

After swimming for sixty days and sixty nights, they reached an island surrounded by coral. The dolphin swam around the island and finally stopped outside a grotto and said: ‘Here we are, if you go inside, you’ll find the Girl from the Sea.’

‘Goodbye, dolphin. And thank you so much.’

The cave was made all of coral, and the floor of fine, white sand. Outside was a garden of blue anemones. The boy went into the cave and peered about him. The girl, the octopus, the crab and the fish were playing with little shells. They were very still and sad and silent. Now and then, the girl would sigh.

‘I’m here! I’ve arrived! It’s me!’ cried the boy.

They all turned to look at him. For a moment there was great confusion. Then they all embraced and laughed and shouted. The Girl from the Sea danced, clapping and laughing, and her laughter was as clear as water. The octopus did a handstand, the crab performed somersaults, and the fish did back flips. Finally, after all these high jinks, they calmed down a little.

Then the Girl from the Sea sat on the boy’s shoulder and said: ‘I am so, so, so happy! I thought I would never see you again. Without you, the sea, despite all its anemones, seemed sad and empty. And I would spend whole days just sighing. I didn’t know what to do. Until one day, the King of the Sea gave a big party. He invited a lot of whales and sharks and a lot of important fish. And he ordered me to go to the palace to dance at the party. At the end of the banquet, it was my turn to dance, and I went into the grotto where the King of the Sea was seated on his mother-of-pearl throne, surrounded by his guests and by seahorses. Then the whelks began singing a very ancient song, composed at the very beginning of the world. But I was really sad and so I danced really badly.

“Why are you dancing so badly?” asked the King of the Sea.

“Because I’m full of saudade,” I replied.

“Saudade?” said the King of the Sea. “Whatever’s that?”

And he asked the octopus, the crab and the fish what had happened. They told him everything. Then the King of the Sea felt sorry for me in my sadness and felt sad to see a dancer who could no longer dance. And he said: “Come to my palace tomorrow morning.”

The following morning, I went back to the palace. And the King of the Sea sat me on his shoulder and swam up to the surface with me. He summoned a seagull, gave him the bottle with the anemone juice potion and sent him off to find you. And that is how I got you to come back.’

‘Now we’ll never be parted again,’ said the boy.

‘Now you’ll be as strong as an octopus,’ said the octopus.

‘Now you’ll be as wise as a crab,’ said the crab.

‘Now you’ll be as happy as a fish,’ said the fish.

‘Now your land is the sea,’ said the Girl from the Sea.

And the five of them set off through forests and grottoes and sand.

The following day, there was another party at the King’s palace. The Girl from the Sea danced all night, and the whales, the sharks, the turtles and all the fishes said: ‘We never saw anyone dance so well.’

And the King of the Sea was seated on his mother-of-pearl throne, surrounded by seahorses, and his purple mantle floated in the water.