to the waves that swept around the island on both sides and then rejoined and moved on towards the mainland – a long blue landscape of vanishing waves that left only a small wedge of quiet water behind them. A fishing boat with a big white moustache was sailing across the bay.
“Oh look!” Grandmother said. “There goes a boat.”
She looked around for Berenice, but by this time the child had concealed herself completely beneath the tree.
“Oh look!” said Grandmother once again. “Here come some bad men. We better hide.”
With some difficulty, she crawled in under the pine tree.
“See?” she whispered. “There they are. They’re coming. You better follow me to a safer place.”
She started crawling across the rock and Berenice followed along on all fours at a furious pace. They made their way around the little bilberry bog and came to a hollow full of willow bushes. The ground was wet, but that couldn’t be helped.
“That was close,” said Grandmother. “But we’re safe for the moment.”
She looked at the expression on Berenice’s face and added, “I mean we’re safe. They’ll never find us here.”
“Why are they bad?” whispered Berenice.
“Because they’re coming to bother us,” Grandmother said. “We live here on this island, and people who come to bother us should stay away.”
The fishing boat sailed on by. Sophia hunted for them. She looked for half an hour, and when she finally found them, quietly teasing some tadpoles, she was angry.
“Where have you been?” she screamed. “I’ve looked all over!”
“We hid,” Grandmother explained.
“We hid,” Berenice repeated. “We won’t let anyone come bother us.” She walked over very close to Grandmother and stared hard at Sophia.
Sophia didn’t answer but turned abruptly and ran away.
The island shrank and grew crowded. Wherever she went, she was aware of where they were. She had to stay away from them, but the minute they disappeared she was forced to search them out so she could ignore them again.
After a while, Grandmother got tired and started up the guest room stairs.
“I’m going to read for a while,” she said. “You go and play with Sophia.”
“No,” said Berenice.
“Well, then, play by yourself.”
“No,” said Berenice. She was scared again.
Grandmother went after a pad of paper and a charcoal pencil and put them down on the steps.
“Draw a picture,” she said.
“I don’t know anything to draw,” the child said.
“Draw something awful,” Grandmother said, for she was really tired now. “Draw the awfullest thing you can think of, and take as much time as you possibly can.”
Then she closed and latched the door and lay down on the bed and pulled the covers up over her head. The southwest wind whispered peacefully, distantly in from the sea and enveloped the island’s inner core – the guest room and the woodyard.
Sophia pulled the bait box up to the window and climbed up and gave three long and three short knocks on the windowpane. When Grandmother emerged from her blankets and opened the window a crack, Sophia informed her that she had withdrawn from the society.
“That Pipsan!” she said. “I’m not interested in Pipsan. What’s she doing?”
“She’s drawing. She’s drawing the awfullest thing she can think of.”
“She can’t draw,” whispered Sophia passionately. “Did you give her my pad? What does she have to draw for?”
The window slammed shut, and Grandmother lay down again. Sophia came back three times, each time with a dreadful picture, which she pasted up on the window facing in towards the guest room. The first picture showed a child with ugly hair who stood screaming as large ants crawled over her body. The second showed the same child being hit on the head with a stone. The third was a more general view of a shipwreck, from which Grandmother concluded that Sophia had worked off her anger. When she had opened her book and found her place at