A Menina do Mar (The Girl from the Sea)

Once upon a time there was a white house in the dunes, facing the sea. 

There lived a little boy who spent his days playing on the beach.
It was a very large, almost deserted beach with marvellous rocks.
In September came the equinox. There were high tides, strong winds, fog, rain and storms. The high tides swept over the beach and went up the dunes. 

One night, the waves screamed so loudly, howled so much, crashed and broke so hard on the beach that, in his whitewashed room in the white house, the little boy couldn’t sleep until late hours.
When he woke up in the morning, everything was quiet.
So he went to play on the rocks.
He got out of the water and laid down on a rock to sunbathe.
And while he was lying there, with his face pressed against the seaweed, something extraordinary suddenly happened: he heard a very strange laugh, it sounded a bit like an opera laugh given by a “bass” voice.
He then saw a large octopus laughing, a crab laughing, a fish laughing and a very small girl laughing too. The little girl, who must have been no more than a foot tall, had green hair, purple eyes and a dress made of red algae. The four of them were in a small pool of very clean, transparent water surrounded by anemones. And they were swimming and laughing.
Then they stopped laughing and the little girl said:
  – “ Now I want to dance.”
When the song and the dance were over, the octopus picked up the little girl and using his eight very dark arms, cradled her gently.
– “The high tide is coming, it’s time to leave.” –  said the crab.
They walked along the sands and rocks until they came to a cave where they entered.