In which some peculiar performers arrive in Moomin Valley, a volcano erupts and the family find a very dangerous island…

Autumn was approaching fast. But instead of the weather getting cooler as winter drew in, it had nearly doubled in heat. Sparrow hadn’t been fishing for days because he said the fish didn’t taste as good in such hot weather but it was clear his real reason was because it was cooler inside than out. Sneep and Imony had taken to irritating Imy and Peep, and Peep and Imy had started annoying Imony and Sneep, and Little Min and Little Me just annoyed and irritated everyone. Little Min stole Imy’s pink feather tail decorations, while Imy stole Little Me’s pocket knife, who took Sneep’s spade, while he decided to ‘borrow’ Imony’s butterfly net, while Imony pinched Peep’s copy of ‘Great Expectations’ by Charles Dickens, who was so furious she took Sparrow’s fishing rod, who told Moominmamma, who scolded all of them.

“Children, children,” she cried. “You must control yourselves!”

“Fine!” they all chorused.

“Everybody!” shouted Moominpappa who had just come bursting through the door. “Look at this! There is this group of performing hemulens coming to town so how about we go see them?”

“Oh, yes!” shouted the children.

They were all made give back the items they had taken and quickly got dressed in their best clothes, (including Imy’s pink feather tail decorations which Min had stolen.)

“This is exciting,” whispered Peep to her brother as they trooped through the woods. Ahead they could see light and soon they broke through the last of the trees and saw a giant theatre, a theatre on legs. Well, not quite legs, they were really stilts so the theatre could travel around the world and put on performances anywhere. There was a frame, (evidently meant to be used for balancing and tightrope-walking on,) several acrobats and clowns and a hemulen in a top hat and black cape on stage talking to each other and acting as if the crowd around them did not even exist.

“Hello!” squeaked a small wood mouse.

“Hello,” replied Imony politely.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!” a voice boomed across the chatter of the audience. They looked up and noticed that the performers had stopped talking and were in peculiar poses all around the stage.

“Presenting the amazing acrobats!” At once, the acrobatic moomins started their routine. One walked across the frame on her finger tips while the other balanced on one foot and spun a ribbon around her head whilst the crowd all clapped and cheered.

The clowns began juggling little round beach-ball-like toy clowns and skipping across the stage while the crowd laughed.

“And now!” cried the Hemulen in the top hat. “I shall do magic!”

“It’ll just be an illusion,” muttered Sneep.

The magician took off his hat, showed it to everyone and then reached inside and pulled out a black rabbit which blinked sleepily at the audience and started to snore peacefully. The crowd blinked back, and then laughed. The rest of the evening passed in a similar fashion.

At approximately nine o’clock, there came a rumble from a distant mountain not far from Moomin House. Although the moomins did not know it, this certain mountain  was a volcano and right now, it was erupting.

“Look!” cried a small squirrel, pointing to the larva coming from the cliff. “There’s fire coming from that hill!”

“It must be a volcano!” cried Moominpappa. “We need to get out of here!”

“No, please, be calm!” called the now worried magician over the fearful chatter of the crowd. But the moomin family paid no heed and raced down to the beach where they had a boat they could use to sail away. As they all clambered in Imy noticed several other families hopping into their boats and sailing away from the valley.

Moominpappa started readying the sail while Imony took the oars and at once the six moomins, the two mymbles and the one whomper started to sail away from Moomin Valley.

“Where will we go?” asked Sneep.

“There!” called Peep, who was at the prow, looking for rocks, reefs and islands. “There! There’s one!”

“We shall dock there for the night,” answered Moominpappa. “For I fear there is a storm coming.”

As the crew drifted slowly closer the Island, Imony noticed there were a lot of peculiar grey lumps all other the place. And Sneep noticed that, despite the day being rather hot, there was a cold chill coming from the island. And when Moominmamma picked up the telescope and looked through it at the island, she saw why.

“Grokes!” she cried. “That island is covered with grokes! We have to change course!”

“But we can’t possibly change course because of the wind!” Imony shouted over the wind.

“Oh-no,” whimpered Imy as their boat slowly bumped up against the sand of the Island’s beach.

To be continued…