Fish Read online

  “I think I'm stuck anyway,” called Dad, over his shoulder, because his back was to the Guide, who was floundering toward us. I turned and looked at Mum, who was hurrying in our direction too, but remembering to be very careful to test the ground with her stick, as the Guide had told us.

  When they reached us, the Guide managed to turn Dad around to face him, and took both his hands, which was difficult, as both of them were also keeping hold of their sticks. Mum planted herself firmly to one side of the Guide and made as if to lift me off, over Dad's head.

  “No, no, you will just fall forward with the weight and both you and the child will be in the deep mud as well. Take a hold of Tiger's backpack straps, and pull toward us when I say,” said the Guide.

  I didn't like to hear his voice worried and irritated. Nothing had bothered him up till now. I took it as a bad sign. We were not going to make it out of this.

  With the Guide and Dad grasping each other's forearms, and Mum gripping tight to my bag straps in front of my shoulders, Dad said:

  “OK, ready, pull!”

  Three things happened at the same time:

  Mum and the Guide each gave a tremendous pull.

  As we lurched forward, a huge, tatty bird swooped low across my head as if from nowhere, and I ducked and screwed up my eyes and maybe, I admit, screamed.

  At the same time, there was a dull ping from the bag on my back, and a muddy splosh from behind me. I was still on Dad's back, but with the combined efforts of Mum and the Guide he managed to move back to safety.

  As Dad's feet landed on the safe ground alongside Mum and the Guide, so that he was only knee-deep again, I shrieked and twisted round to look behind us.

  “Steady, Tiger, you'll have us in again!” cried Dad.

  “But the Fish! The Fish! Mum!”

  The cooking pot had landed on the surface of the deep mud, and was sinking rapidly.

  You never know with Mum. For all my frantic shrieking, I still didn't know if she realized how important it was to save the Fish. She might well have said, “Oh for goodness’ sake, Tiger, you and Dad might have been killed. Stop going on about a fish!”

  But she darted her arms out to grab the pot, not taking a step from the safe ground, and grabbed the string tied to the handles. She pulled, but the string was slithery with mud, and her hands flew off. The pot was still sinking.

  She bent down further and grabbed both the pot's handles and pulled.

  “It's stuck! I don't believe it! It's stuck faster than you or Dad!”

  “The Fish! Save the Fish!” I screamed now, despairing.

  Mum said afterward that it was those words that gave her the idea. The pot had sunk further until the mud was almost over the lid. Scrabbling at the elastic bands with her thin fingers, Mum got them off and pulled off the lid, with a great slurping sound from the mud. In the same gesture, she flung it away wildly. As she isn't great at throwing, it landed smack! near Dad, and splattered our faces with mud.

  She had her hand in the pot, as the mud flowed in and over the edges. Out came her hand as the pot disappeared from sight.

  “Did you get it? Did you get the Fish?” I screamed, still wild, not daring to believe she could have.

  The Guide had watched all this unfolding from his position facing me and Dad, where he could not quickly get by to help. But he had realized Mum's plan and as quick as a flash, had one of our little water bottles in his hand, half full.

  “Here!” He took off the lid. “Put him in here!”

  Surely he would never fit. The Fish was far too big to fit through that tiny hole that was the mouth of the bottle.

  With another of her deft movements, Mum's hand was over the neck of the bottle, and “There!” she said.

  “Is he … how could he fit?” I asked, as they all reassured me and Mum held up the bottle so that I could see the Fish, swimming worriedly around in his smaller world.

  “He—he looks smaller,” I said, worried but relieved. “Fish can't shrink, can they?” I asked the Guide.

  He didn't answer that one.

  “It is lucky he is small, anyway,” he said, “or he would never have fitted in the bottle.”

  “Have you finished screaming now, Tiger?” said Dad, who had been forgotten in the drama and was facing the wrong way to watch the rescue. “Only I think you may have deafened me forever.”

  I was a bit embarrassed about my panic over the Fish now, but I was still glad he was safe. “Er, yes, sorry.”

  “Some people might have thought it would have been more reasonable to make all that fuss when we were in danger,” he added.

  Then he said to the Guide, “I'm sorry. It was lucky I didn't kill us all. Donkey knows what she's doing. I think Tiger would be safer on her back, if she would be kind enough. …”

  “That's fine,” said the Guide, looking relieved.

  “I'll take my pack from her back, in exchange,” said Dad, and untied it and put it over his shoulders, as the Guide lifted me across the mud and sat me almost on the donkey's shoulders, in front of the packs.

  “Hold on back here,” he said, taking my hands and firmly wrapping them around two of the straps behind and either side of me. “Then if her head goes down, you won't slide down her neck and off the end.”

  “OK. Thank you,” I said.

  “And try not to scream in her ear,” added Dad.

  FIVE

  Nothing else dramatic happened during the crossing. I balanced on the jutty bit between the donkey's shoulders that they call the withers, and felt quite lucky at first. By the end of the crossing, I felt as if I'd been balancing on the crossbar of someone else's bicycle for hours, and I never wanted to sit on a donkey again.

  Mum, Dad and the Guide dragged each leg painfully through the mud. Dad said it was like walking through treacle—in fact, now he came to think about it, he had had nightmares like this.

  Everyone then remembered that they'd had nightmares like this too, and we all compared dreams. That passed the time a little. I said, I wondered if donkeys had nightmares, and if our donkey had had the same one about wading through treacle or mud.

  “If she hasn't before,” said Dad, “she probably will have from now on.”

  The mud became deeper when we reached the middle of the riverbed, and I pulled my feet up on either side of the donkey's neck, and started to worry about everyone, particularly Mum, because on her the mud was almost up to her armpits.

  But she called out that the mud was much thinner and more watery here, so it was easier to get through.

  The second half of the crossing went slowly at first, as the mud grew shallower but then thicker again, and now everyone was so tired. But as the bank approached, my heart started to well up with excitement. I had got used to the feeling that we were trapped in this crossing, and would be doing it forever and ever. The bushes on the bank grew larger and larger, and the faint green of the grass tussocks grew clearer and brighter. Soon I could even see the leaves on the bushes, and the blades of grass. I realized that when we reached the bank, we would be out of this mud at last.

  The donkey must have had a similar feeling, or maybe it was just that the grass was looking the way a table laid with food must look to us, because she picked up her head and feet and started to hurry, until she was almost trotting as we left the last few feet of mud and clambered onto the bank.

  The Guide, Dad and Mum trusted the donkey's instinct, dispensed with checking the last few feet, and rushed after her. Soon, we were all on dry land again, which was as well, because the dull sky was becoming duller as night drew down from the mountains.

  Dad lifted me down and started to shiver. All of them were caked in wet mud, and with the evening came the cold. While Mum and Dad got dry clothes out, the Guide, having quickly scraped some of the mud off himself with his stick, didn't let them change until he'd got the fire going—which was a good idea, because I think they would have frozen if they'd tried to undress and dress again in that cold air.

&
nbsp; “I know you don't like the porridge, Tiger,” said Mum, “but there's nothing else and I think we need something warm in our insides tonight,” and she started to prepare it, but Dad took over because she looked so tired.

  “I'll just look for a rabbit or maybe a bird, too,” said the Guide, to cheer me up. “But I don't think there will be much around here.”

  I had to agree with him. If I were a bird or rabbit or, come to think of it, just about anything alive, I would try and find somewhere else to live.

  While the porridge was cooking Mum carefully took off my socks and bandages, which was wonderful because my feet were becoming itchy and it was maddening because I couldn't scratch.

  “Best get some air to the skin now. It's the only chance you'll have to have bare feet, while the fire's lit. They do look better!”

  I admired my almost repaired feet as I stretched out my bare toes to the fire and wiggled them.

  “Does that mean I can have my socks back now?” asked Dad hopefully, and sprang on them and dragged them on when Mum said yes.

  We had started to eat the porridge by the time the Guide came back. Dad jumped slightly, because he just appeared without a sound.

  “I am sorry. I can find nothing,” he said, and sat down gratefully and took a bowl of porridge from Mum.

  We all made noises of thanking him for trying anyway when he must be as tired as the rest of us, and I tried to eat my porridge but couldn't manage very much.

  My stomach ached, in an empty, hungry way, but somehow the porridge only seemed to make it ache more after a while.

  We were all so tired that we lay down straight after eating and pulled our blankets around us to sleep. Even the donkey, who had been cheerfully tucking into the sparse greenery as though she would never stop eating again, propped herself with one back hoof resting under her, and sank her head low, her eyes blinking and almost closed.

  That night, something strange happened.

  My stomach must have been hurting so much in my sleep that it finally bothered me enough to wake me up—at least, I thought I was awake. I could hear a slight whimpering sound, and when I came to a bit more I realized to my surprise that it was coming from me.

  I quickly bit my lip, because I didn't want to wake the others—even the Guide seemed to be sleeping tonight. But another pang hit my middle, and in spite of everything, I groaned again.

  Tonight, there was a moon, and the light glowed whitely along the edge of the bank I was facing. The glowing embers of the fire warmed my back. Suddenly, I sucked in my breath. On the bank stood a wolf—or a wild dog—looking straight at me.

  Its coat, I suppose, was dark gray, but lit by the moon, it glowed silvery white all round. Its shadow was huge, and close enough to fall near my backpack, which I was using as a pillow. I glanced instinctively at the little bottle of water on the rock next to my head. The moonlight shone in through the clear plastic, and the Fish, for the first time on the journey, darted around cheerfully, with tints of all his beautiful colors shining in the light as he turned this way and that.

  Then I looked over at the donkey. She dozed still, but had one eye fixed calmly on the visitor, and one ear tipped lazily toward it.

  I felt the eyes of the creature on the path still fixed on me and looked back at it.

  The eyes were very pale gold, the pupils just thin, black slits.

  In one movement, it put its head down and picked up something I hadn't noticed that had been lying near its front paws. It took two paces closer to me— still, I didn't feel afraid, I don't know why—and dropped the something with a light thud about a foot away. Then like liquid, the creature turned and was gone, melting into the night and the unlit scrub.

  I pulled myself up on my arms, not wanting to come out from under my nice warm blankets, and inched closer to whatever it was the creature had left.

  It was a rabbit, unmarked, but unmistakably dead.

  Not sure if I was really awake, I decided that this was a dream, and best left for discussion in the morning. I crawled back under my covers and went back to sleep, even with my aching stomach.

  Next morning, I felt a hand shaking my shoulder. It was the Guide.

  “Tiger! Where did this come from?”

  “You have not been sneaking off and hunting alone at night, have you?” asked Dad.

  Mum said irritably to him, “Don't be—” then changed her mind and said, “Mind you, I wouldn't put anything past Tiger.”

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes and a bit cross, as would you be if someone woke you up like that. “What are you talking about?”

  The Guide asked more gently, “Don't you know how this rabbit got here?”

  “Oh, it's still here?” I asked. The grown-ups looked even more confused.

  “I mean, I thought it was a dream,” I explained. “The wolf brought it.”

  “Wolf!” said my parents both together.

  “Or dog thing. I don't know.”

  Both of my parents looked at the Guide. He shrugged.

  “Wild dogs, there are plenty. Wolf—a few have returned, so they say, to this area. Some of the wild dogs look so like wolves, it's hard to know the difference. They can breed together.”

  “I wonder why it just left the rabbit,” said Dad. “Perhaps it was startled to find us here and dropped it.”

  “I don't see why it should drop it before it ran off,” I said. “And I don't think it looked startled, exactly. I was groaning a bit, I suppose that might have—”

  “Groaning?” Mum said, “Whatever for?”

  “In my sleep. Well, and when I woke up. I had a tummyache.”

  “I wish you'd tell me—” began Mum, looking worried, but Dad interrupted her. He looked as though a thought had just struck him.

  “When you say groaning, Tiger, could you have possibly been more like, well, whining?”

  “I don't whine,” I said stiffly, and in the pause that followed this statement the adults looked at me intently. I thought for a moment. “Well, I suppose it might have been a bit like whining.”

  “I just wondered if she was carrying food for her cubs. Maybe she'd even lost them. People have claimed similar things have happened.” Dad looked at the Guide.

  “Certainly, all the females share in looking after one family of cubs. If the mother dies, another will become the mother. It's true that if this one had heard the—excuse me, Tiger—whining sound—she might have taken it for a cub in need of food.”

  “Well, she wasn't far wrong there,” I said.

  “This is true,” said the Guide, “and why do we question what has been given, when it was needed?”

  “That's a point,” said Dad cheerfully. “Ours is not to reason why, and never look a dead gift rabbit in the mouth.”

  The Guide, who was picking the rabbit up by the back legs and drawing his knife, stopped and looked so puzzled at this that Dad had to explain the true saying to him, which he thought was a really good one. He became very cheerful too, and said there was plenty of firewood here on the bank, and we deserved a really good breakfast after yesterday.

  Then, thankfully, he took the rabbit away to deal with it, and Mum and Dad sorted out the fire, so that I could get up in a bit of peace.

  Hot roast meat is a strange sort of breakfast, but at the time it tasted like the best one I could remember eating, ever.

  There wasn't very much—one rabbit doesn't go far between four people, and this one was skinny as there was so little food here for it. But we all went quiet and concentrated as we ate, and I made mine last as long as I could, and then we all licked our fingers before having a few swigs of water each, and packing up the things again.

  It was good to put on my socks and sandals again, and set off on foot like everyone else. As the Guide set off ahead of the donkey, upriver along the bank, Dad turned to me and said, “All right, Tiger? It's up the mountain today!”

  “Yep,” I said, “I'm good at climbing.”

  “Good,” called back the Guide, “bu
t don't worry, we are using the pass and it is narrow in places, but not too steep after the first part.”

  Just then, there was a distant bang, a pause, and then another. The Guide stopped and listened.

  “Is that thunder?” asked Mum, looking at him, and then at the sky, puzzled. It was colorless and cold, as ever.

  The Guide didn't say anything, but stood grim-faced, listening. We were all quiet. I could see from Mum and Dad's faces that the grown-ups, as usual, were all in on something, and I didn't know what.

  “What is it?” I asked, and at that moment there was another dull bang, from somewhere way behind us, and a nasty, sharp, repeated crack, crack, like a firework.

  “The fighting has come,” said the Guide simply, and the look on his face was not of fear, but sadness.

  “Will they … I mean, will we … ?” I asked urgently. I didn't want to be in a war. I had seen the people with bits missing, whom Mum and Dad had helped in our village.

  “Their war is down there, not up here,” said the Guide reassuringly, waving his arm in the direction we'd come from.

  “Are you sure there won't be soldiers up here?” I asked.

  “Fighting men, maybe, I wouldn't call them soldiers,” he said. “Some are hiding in the mountains. But they have no quarrel with you and your parents. Don't worry.” And he turned and walked more quickly along the bank, the donkey jogging to catch up, and Mum and Dad and me hurrying behind.

  We walked in silence for a while, listening to the terrible sounds behind us. I kept reminding myself, Everyone has gone, everyone has left. They can only blow up the huts and houses. But then I thought of the rough little house that we had called home for so long, and the things we'd had to leave behind, and the school hut Mum and Dad had helped build, and I felt a lump in my throat. Looking at Mum, I realized she must have been thinking the same thing, so I caught up with her, held her hand and gave it a squeeze.

  Mum is really very pretty, but now I saw that her hair, which is usually shiny and dark, stuck to her face in dusty strands, and her eyes looked tired and old. There were pale streaks in the grime on her cheeks, and I realized with a shock that they were made by tears.