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THE BOTTLE IN THE MOONLIGHT

Emma loved the ocean. The house where she and her family lived stood right behind the dunes, and at night you could hear the waves rush over the sand. To Emma that was the most beautiful lullaby in the world. Her four brothers, however, thought that it sounded like a growling sea monster, and it made them dream of giant octopuses that pulled them out of their beds with wet arms.

Brothers are strange. During the day they fight and scuffle, and at night their fear of the dark won’t let them sleep. Nearly every night one of Emma’s brothers crawled into her bed to hide from sea monsters and octopuses, only to immediately start snoring so noisily that she couldn’t hear the rush of the sea anymore.

It was on nights like those that Emma put on her bathrobe and snuck out of the house to trudge through the dark and down to the water.

The salty wind whispering across the waves, the beach stretching from one end of the night to the other, it all belonged to her alone. It was wonderful. Four brothers can be quite hard work for one girl, so every now and then she really needed a little solitude.

The darkness never scared Emma. After all, she had Tristan with her. His legs might have been as short as bratwursts, and his tail might have looked like a twirly noodle, but he also had lots of pointy teeth in his mouth.

Sitting on wet sand is not very comfortable, so Emma always took a cushion with her to the beach. On that cushion Emma and Tristan sat side by side, and the sea breathed at their feet like a living thing.

On clear nights, when the moon poured a silver highway onto the water, Emma imagined that at the other end of that highway lay the most beautiful and wondrous land on earth. People rode on camels, and palm trees swayed in the warm breeze. There were no brothers in that land, or maybe a few teeny-weeny ones who were very gentle and only wanted to scuffle on Saturdays. Nobody went to school or had to work. The sun shone every day, and there was just enough rain to water the oases, which lay like shimmering diamonds at the edge of the desert.

Who knows?

Maybe the moon likes to eavesdrop on the thoughts of girls who sit alone by the sea with noodle-tailed dogs. Maybe he listens to their dreams and tries to make them come true. Maybe . . .

One night, when Emma again came trudging down the beach with Tristan and their cushion, there was a bottle floating in the moon-silvered water. It bobbed just a few steps away from the water’s edge. It shimmered and flickered as though someone had stuffed it with a thousand glowworms. Emma tried to pull the bottle from the water, but her arms were at least a couple of feet too short. So Tristan waded into the cold waves.

“I wonder what’s in there,” Emma said, as Tristan dropped the bottle in front of her feet. “Do you think I should open it?”

The glimmering and glowing made her feel a little uneasy, but Tristan just looked at her and smacked his lips, which meant something like, “Of course you should open it!” If he’d meant, “You better not!” he would have turned his backside to her.

“Fine. If you say so,” Emma said. “But it’s your fault if something bad happens.” Then she pulled the stopper from the bottle.