Fish Read online

  Dad put his head up again and leant his cheek on his hand and made a noise that was a kind of cross between “No, no,” and “There, there.”

  “But that is what the mind can do,” insisted the Guide. “It took me a while to realize that I had not been spared unfairly. My family were my life. My life, after all, had been taken.”

  Dad said nothing. Then he mumbled, “Yet you are here, now, for us. As my wife said. And I am very, very grateful.” And he said the Guide's name, which I could never pronounce, and reached out and put his hand on his arm in the light of the fire.

  The Guide smiled at him unexpectedly. “Yes, maybe that is why I am still here. For you.”

  Dad shivered suddenly and pulled his hand back under his blanket. “You are cold! Don't you feel it? For goodness’ sake, put your blanket around you. For my sake, then,” he added, as the Guide shook his head, smiling.

  Still, the Guide dutifully reached around for his blanket and put it around his shoulders.

  “And when do you sleep, man? If you're on watch, give me a shove and I'll take a turn.”

  “All right, all right. You get some sleep now,” said the Guide, still smiling, and his words must have had a magical effect on me, because I didn't remember anything else until the next morning, when I woke to the clanging of pots and the spitting of the fire again.

  FOUR

  “We must thank our lucky stars that the wind has stopped, just as we're heading up the mountain,” Mum said to me as she helped put the elastic bands around the fish's cookingpot lid. “Old Fish here was the most comfortable of all of us yesterday, I should think.”

  When everything was ready, and I had my bag with the cooking pot tied onto it on my back, Dad crouched down and I managed to scramble up. It reminded me of when I had been really little and he would carry me around like that and pretend to fall over to make me scream.

  “Just like old times, eh, Tiger?” he said. “Talking of which, don't dribble in my hair and it's a good idea not to hold on by putting your hands over my eyes.”

  Having ridden a few donkeys, I knew a thing or two and gave him a good kick with my heels just above the hips.

  “Ouch! Less of that, or I might have to buck you off. Or I might wait until I find a really thorny bush. …”

  The Guide grinned and turned away abruptly, setting off up a narrow path into the foothills, and I thought of his children and wondered if he was remembering carrying them around on his back, so I went quiet for a while and rested my chin on Dad's head.

  The path quickly became narrow enough to make us walk single file. The donkey generally preferred to walk behind the Guide, but whenever we came to a difficult bit the Guide would stand aside and chirrup between his teeth, and the donkey would choose the way with a slightly reluctant look in its eyes, as if it didn't like the responsibility.

  Mum chose to walk behind me and Dad, and I sensed her hovering a few times in the awkward places and knew she'd taken that position with some crazy idea of being able to catch me, or us, in case Dad fell.

  But we walked out well, with Dad only gasping slightly on the steeper parts, until we came to a place where the path divided and the donkey, who'd been in the lead, stopped and turned its head inquiringly to the Guide.

  “Now,” said the Guide, turning to Dad, “we can go on along this little path and it will take us to the pass, but it does get very narrow and steep and I'm not sure what condition the rains will have left it in. If we take the lower path it will lead us to a dried-up riverbed, which also leads to the pass. That is the way I would normally choose. Again, my only concern is how bad the mud will be across the riverbed.”

  “Do you think it will be impossible to walk along?” asked Mum simply.

  “Generally, yes. I think that the rains, just for a while, made the river run again, and now there'll be mud. I would choose to walk along the raised edge, the bank. But to reach the pass, you have to cross the bed to the bank on the other side, at some point.”

  “So we just have to cross the mud, not walk along in it,” said Dad thoughtfully, sliding me down off his back for a moment to sit me on a convenient flat rock. “You sound like you'd choose the riverbed.”

  He looked at the Guide.

  “In dry conditions, it's easy. Today, alone, I would take the higher path to miss the mud. But with you carrying the child …” And he shook his head doubtfully.

  “Might the mud be thinner or drier in places?” asked Mum.

  “Well, that is the question. And that is what I hope, certainly. But it may not be easy.”

  “I don't see we've a choice, then—we'll have to take the lower path,” said Dad slowly, rubbing his face with his hand and looking tired suddenly.

  “Let the donkey take the child, now,” said the Guide quietly.

  “No, no …,” said Dad, and then looked as if he was remembering last night's conversation, and added, “Maybe a bit further on, by all means, yes.”

  Mum put on what I call her shut-in face, which meant, “There's no point arguing with you, I can see, but you know you're wrong,” as Dad hoisted me onto his back and we set off again, the Guide showing the donkey which path we'd chosen.

  This path was easier and rolled gently up and down. Now and again scruffy little blades of grass and thorny bushes with narrow leaves grew along the sides. Dad had to keep being careful not to stride into the narrow flanks of the donkey, as it would stop every so often to grab a mouthful.

  Once, when it found a really tasty bush, the Guide had to scold it with a clicking noise, and Dad gave it a push from behind with his hand. The donkey gave one last jerk on the bush and took the whole thing out by the roots, and kept munching it along the way, which didn't look easy as the branches kept catching on things and getting under its hooves.

  This started a chat between me and Dad about the difficulties donkeys would have in finding a take-away meal service, and the Guide listened, smiling. Dad suddenly remembered nosebags, which the rag-and-bone men had used on their carthorses when he was a boy, and the Guide was fascinated to know what a rag-and-bone man was, so Dad had to explain. He also explained what a nosebag was and asked if the people here used them.

  “Oh, yes, yes. I know them. But I personally don't do that, because the food here is very dusty, sometimes moldy, and I don't think it's good for my donkey to breathe it in.”

  Dad said he had never thought of that, and that once again, it made good sense.

  Suddenly there was a scraping sound and I had that horrible feeling like when you're going down in a lift too fast.

  The feeling stopped very abruptly with a thump from below. I was still sitting on Dad's back and upright. He'd managed to fall down but land in a sitting position.

  “Are you all right, Tiger?” asked Mum, with her hand pressed to her chest with the shock.

  “All my insides got left behind and then they came back up and smacked the top of my head,” I said, because it was the truth, and to my surprise the Guide and Mum seemed to find this funny.

  Then they looked worried again, and started asking Dad if he was all right too, and Mum hauled me off backward, which was easy because my toes were on the ground anyway, and the Guide put out a hand and pulled Dad to his feet.

  “I know exactly what you mean, Tiger,” he said, dusting off his trouser seat and glaring at the Guide and Mum. Someone should tell grown-ups that putting your hand across your mouth doesn't hide the fact that you're giggling.

  Then my heart gave a thud.

  “Is Fish all right?” I asked Mum urgently, showing her my back.

  “Yes, not a drop of water spilt. He's hanging a bit lower down now, but he's still on,” she said, as she brushed Dad down to show she did care really, even if she had giggled.

  “I was talking too much, and not concentrating,” said Dad.

  “Oh, talking makes the distance shorter and the way easier,” said the Guide. “It takes a while to learn to concentrate at the same time. You'll soon get used to it. On
ly a little way to go, and we reach the riverbed. The bank at least will be dry and we can stop and rest and eat. Then maybe you'll think about using the donkey,” he added, looking at Dad meaningfully.

  Dad didn't say anything, but picked me up again and we set off along the track again with me gripping a little tighter than before, and the donkey rather irritated that it'd had its surprise snack break interrupted again.

  Soon the path dipped down and widened out, ending at what had once been the bank of an old river. As we came to the end of the path, a large, dark bird took off from somewhere on the scrubby ground and flapped away low over the bushes, with slow beats of his shabby wings as if he didn't intend to go very far.

  Because of the rains a few tufts of grass grew, some on tussocks that had been swept down when the land had given way further up the mountain. Here and there, boulders and dead bushes and old tree roots lay strewn about.

  What a mess! I thought. It looked exactly as if a giant's child had been playing in a sandy, muddy corner of his garden, and no one had cleared up afterward.

  But what everyone stared at was the riverbed itself.

  Beneath a cold, colorless sky, a sea of mud stretched wide across, wider than anything I would have called a river. I looked across to the far bank. It looked miles away. Bushes were just little dots. It looked impossible.

  In the silence, as we stared, the sound of buzzing flies drew our eyes to the rotting carcass of a goat, which must have been swept down by the rains. The donkey snorted sharply through its nostrils and backed away and shook its head. Mum, Dad and I looked first at each other and then at the Guide.

  “Rest and eat, then think,” he said.

  Sometimes I wondered if the Guide had learnt the things he said as sayings from his mother—you know, like, “A stitch in time saves nine”—or whether he just spoke like that and made them up as he went along. I didn't dare ask him, in case it was a Personal Question.

  Mum said it was rude to ask Personal Questions, and I was never quite sure what that meant, except I knew it applied to eyepatches, because that's when she'd brought up the whole subject.

  I had asked a visitor, a smart old man who was supposed to be someone quite important, if he was a pirate, as he had an eyepatch, and even then, I think Mum may have got it wrong about this being a Personal Question, because he didn't seem to think I was rude, and laughed quite a lot.

  We didn't much feel like resting here, or eating, with the goat and everything, but we moved further down the bank onto a place where the giant's child had kindly placed the boulders like seats around a cleanish, flattish area for our donkey and packs, and settled down. We didn't light a fire, as the firewood had to be saved for nights.

  Dad dug out a tin of some kind of mashed-up meat he'd been saving, and it sounds horrible, I know, to eat it cold out of the tin, but it didn't taste too bad. Then Mum mixed up sugary powder out of little packets with the bottled water and we all drank some, except the Guide, who just drank his water as it was. The donkey was fine, because it had the tussocks of grass and leaves from the bushes. But I saw Dad looking at it thoughtfully, and realized he'd noticed that the most tempting grasses were right on the edge of the mud, and the donkey, whilst desperate to reach the blades, was very cautious about where it put its hooves and was stretching as far as it could with its neck without stepping off the dry bank.

  While we were watching the donkey and Mum was packing away the empty packets and water bottles, the Guide was pacing up and down the bank. I thought he wanted to find somewhere narrower to cross, but it looked the same in all directions as far as you could see.

  Then I noticed that he was looking at the banks and the mountain on either side of the riverbed. He saw me looking at him. “I'm looking at the way the land goes up and down,” he explained.

  “We call that the lie of the land,” said Dad.

  “Yes, that's it, exactly. The lie of the land,” said the Guide, trying out the phrase and liking it. “I can't see through the mud, but I might be able to work out where it's likely to be less deep. We need sticks,” he added, whisked out the knife he'd used for preparing the rabbit, and started choosing branches from the bushes.

  When he'd cut them I looked at them, disappointed that I wasn't going to have one. Stupid feet! Why did I have to be carried? I considered myself an expert on mud, after the puddle at home. I was sure I'd be better than Mum and Dad, at any rate.

  “Are they long enough?” I asked.

  “If a stick this long doesn't touch the bottom, we don't want to go there,” said Dad firmly, and I realized he was right.

  “The child on the donkey?” asked the Guide again, but without much hope in his voice.

  “Donkey has the packs and is going to show us the way, isn't she?” asked Dad. “Adding the child will put her off balance and make her sink more.”

  I quite liked riding donkeys, and I thought that the Guide always knew best. I was also not looking forward to hanging on if Dad slipped again, though if he managed to fall the same way as before, I was satisfied that I'd probably stay pretty dry, although Dad might go under.

  The Guide, unusually, started to chivvy the donkey around the bank, to show her that we really had to cross. The donkey thought it would be a far better idea if we just followed this bank, where the ground was safe and dry, but finally got the message.

  She went backward and forward, putting a front hoof in here, and trying another there, her ears stuck hard forward. She slowly narrowed down an area about two feet of bank wide. Then she did some more checking and sideways shuffling, and took quite a bold step out into the mud. Soon she was walking, and the mud only came up to just above each hoof.

  Dad said, “Clever old thing. I wonder how that system works?”

  “It's like she can see through the mud,” I said.

  We took up our old positions again, but this time I felt it was Dad worrying about Mum, instead of the other way around. He kept stopping and trying to look back at her, but couldn't really keep his balance and turn with me and my pack on his back and both of his feet in the mud.

  “You look straight ahead, Dad, at the donkey and the Guide, and I'll keep checking on Mum,” I said at last, and he said:

  “OK, good idea.”

  The Guide called back, “Stay close together now. We must follow exactly where the donkey treads—not a little to the left, not a little to the right. I will follow her exactly, you follow me exactly, and the person behind you does the same. Use your stick all the time to the front, to both sides, before you take a step.”

  The mud became deeper—up to Dad's knees, and higher on Mum, who is smaller. But we were getting across. It was taking ages, however. After what seemed like an hour, we were only a little way away from the bank we'd left. Checking before every step slowed us all down.

  Dad must have wanted it over quicker than all of us. Once out in the mud, there was no way he could put me down to take a rest.

  I started telling him about my design for a mud boat or raft, remembering what the Guide had said about talking being good, and Dad thought of lots of important ideas that might help stop it from sinking.

  “Ho!”

  The Guide stopped and raised his arm suddenly.

  We looked up. The donkey, who had no stick, but, like us, was somehow checking every step before taking it, had stopped.

  None of us said anything. We didn't know how her special powers worked, but she certainly looked like she was thinking, or listening, and we did know it's easier to do that if people aren't chattering.

  The donkey cast her head and neck side to side for a moment. Then she just stood, as if she had given up the job and now it was someone else's turn.

  Carefully, the Guide waded up to the donkey's hindquarters, and staying close to her side, felt along her back until he reached her head.

  He reached with his stick into the mud in front of the donkey—this side, that side, a little further. Our hearts sank as we saw the stick disappearing.
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  “Oh no, I think that means we'll have to reverse a bit,” said Dad, jockeying me up a bit higher on his back.

  The Guide moved sideways from the donkey's flank now, parallel to the opposite bank and pointing up-river, feeling every step of the way with his stick. The mud was too thick to swish the stick through it. You had to put it in, draw it back out, and try again.

  He was very patient, but I was starting to get frightened for the first time. If we gave up and turned around, would we even make it back to the bank now?

  The Guide had found safe ground. He moved along it several feet, and the donkey, encouraged, picked up her heavy head, turned sideways and began to follow. Then the Guide managed to find a shallow enough place to start heading straight on toward the opposite bank again, and the donkey set off quite confidently, so the Guide could take up his position behind her again.

  Mum and Dad each traced the maneuver with their own footsteps. Then, before we knew it, me and Dad almost trod on top of the Guide as the donkey had stopped suddenly again.

  “Oh no,” groaned Dad for the second time. But the donkey thought for a moment and then moved sideways and started to stretch for a branch with a few leaves on it that was lying on the surface of the mud.

  “ That's why she stopped. No you don't, you cheeky devil,” and before anyone could stop him, Dad sloshed and slurped his legs across to head the donkey off before she could reach the stick.

  It was as if Dad had just stepped straight into a big hole. There was the horrible dropping-down sensation again and the surface of the mud seemed to rise up to meet me. This time, the sinking stopped with less of a thud than when Dad had fallen on the path. The mud was level with my feet and his waist and Dad had managed to stay upright.

  No one moved or said anything for a moment, and Dad stood very still, hardly breathing. The donkey looked puzzled for a moment and then reached for the branch anyway, dragged it across, and nibbled the leaves off while everyone looked at me and Dad.

  “What was all that about, eh?” said the Guide, sounding cross for the first time. “Stand still, now, stand still,” he called, as if afraid of what Dad might do at any moment. I could feel Dad standing stock-still with shock, so I could have told the Guide he wasn't about to rush off.