Fish Page 9

  Looking for me at the mud-stream had been the Guide's idea, because he knew that I knew we had to cross it. He thought that if I'd escaped—which he thought very likely—I would have sense enough to find my way there.

  I was proud that he'd thought all this, but of course, my ending up there had nothing to do with sense and more to do with blind panic. They were kind enough not to say if they noticed this, when I told them my story.

  “Ah,” the Guide said, when I got to the part about finding the youngest man dead. “He didn't agree with their plan, you see—and it doesn't suit these people to have one of their number turn against them.”

  “It doesn't seem right to leave him like that,” put in Mum. “He was some mother's son, as they say.” There was silence for a moment.

  “And now,” explained the Guide, looking at me carefully, “we must go on, and not give too much thought to these men anymore. I have asked some friends of mine, real soldiers, to look out for them and they are in pursuit. They will also,” he added, turning toward Mum, “find and attend to that young man.”

  “We do have to finish this, Tiger,” said Dad, tired, looking at me. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” agreed Mum, and stood up.

  “OK,” I said, feeling much, much stronger for a moment, now we were all back together. But I couldn't help looking around as I stood up.

  The Guide noticed.

  “We can't do this looking over our shoulders all the time, Tiger. You must trust, now. We have to get down the mountain and concentrate. What will be will be. We can only try our best, eh? And it is harder to catch a Tiger than those men thought, eh?” And he smiled suddenly, which he didn't do very often, and which always made anyone smile back however they felt.

  We went to the edge and looked down.

  There was no path, just loose rubble and bushes, some growing, some fallen. I had clambered down similar slopes, but not for such a long way. It wasn't a sheer drop, and every so often there was another outcrop, or more level area, where we could stop and catch our breath—or where you might end up if you slipped.

  The Guide set off first, and the donkey braced her back legs on the edge and felt around with little tap-tapping movements of her front hooves. She seemed less worried than when she'd had to enter the mud, despite her earlier fall.

  Seeing them upright, and moving downward, we all followed—me and Mum first and Dad behind. We told him not to fall, because we didn't like the idea of him landing on top of us.

  At first, we could almost walk in a normal way, especially as areas of path would suddenly appear from out of the rubble. The Guide obviously knew the way very well, because he led us across the featureless piles of stone and earth, tracking exactly where the path must have been. Where it reemerged it was a relief, even for a few paces, to stride along.

  But increasingly you had to walk sideways, trying to keep a grip with your back foot, while your front foot slithered. Loose rock scuttled away with every step, and showered down the mountain. Dad's heavy feet sent earth and stones onto me and Mum, so he hung back a little.

  In the tricky bits, it seemed to take hours to go a few paces. The only good thing about the occasional, scary slither was that you covered the ground very quickly.

  None of us said anything, because we were concentrating.

  Dad, from his vantage point above and behind us, called out once, “Watch the Guide. Follow him exactly. He knows what he's doing.”

  We realized that it was too easy to end up staring at your own feet. Not only did this take you slightly off course, but you missed the handy tips the Guide passed on in the route he chose—for example, he had a knack of noticing where a bush would hold the ground well with its roots, and of keeping handholds nearby, such as roots and even tussocks of grass.

  By midday, we had been walking and sliding for almost six hours. Without a word between us we kept our eyes on the only level place ahead, where an out-crop jutted out horizontally with a few bushes to mark it, and knew we would rest when we reached it.

  The donkey, who had overtaken the Guide at some point, got there first and obviously had the same idea. She stopped immediately and started picking at the bushes in a determined manner.

  The Guide and Mum reached it next, and I slipped, went down on my bottom, and arrived sitting down rather suddenly, so Mum had to hop out of the way. Luckily, seeing this, Dad picked his way very carefully for the last few feet. A tobogganing man might have sent the lot of us, donkey and all, over the edge of the outcrop, in spite of the bushes.

  I stayed sitting down, getting my breath back, and Mum and Dad hovered around for a moment as if looking for a rock to sit on. There weren't any, except a few jagged ones, so they sort of crumpled where they stood and sat hugging their knees with their heads down.

  The Guide straightened the donkey's packs before sitting down next to me. For once, I had nothing to say. I didn't even seem to be able to think, I was so tired. The Guide leaned back to look at my backpack.

  “Fish still there,” he said, as if to cheer me up.

  I had almost forgotten the Fish, after my slide. Guiltily, I slipped off the backpack. It wasn't really heavy, but it suddenly seemed very difficult to pull it around onto my lap. I took out the bottle and surveyed the Fish. Small and pale—such a fuss I had made about such a little thing.

  I examined him closely. The fins, almost transparent, had tiny lines radiating outward. They were all placed just so. The tail spread upward and downward, forked in the middle, the tips tapered just right. Looking very closely, you could make out the tiny scales all over. Each one fitted snugly over the next. The eye was big and golden, with tawny mottling, and a black pupil right in the middle. He was perfect. I forgot how small and dull he seemed to have become, and felt a warm glow run through me. I was very glad I had saved him and he was still with us.

  “So small, so delicate, but so tough,” said the Guide, looking with me, and giving me one of his rare smiles.

  It was the dullest, quietest and saddest rest we'd had so far. Usually, we didn't exactly celebrate, but we cheered up at these points. This time there was no reward of a little food. The only reward we could offer ourselves was simply to stop for a while.

  Mum passed around the water bottle. We had been rationing it, but now it was obvious that there was not enough left to save. There was one gulp each left. For some reason, I didn't much care. I didn't really feel thirsty anymore, and not even hungry. I was used to the dull ache in my stomach now, and it almost made you feel not like eating.

  The Guide was looking at my sandals. “The feet are rubbing again,” he said to my mother, looking across at her.

  She lifted her head and looked at him for a moment as if she had been daydreaming, and didn't understand.

  “Have you any cloth?” asked the Guide, more insistently.

  Mum gave herself a little shake, and turned to her bag uncertainly. Dad seemed to wake up a bit too and said to her, “No, it's OK. I've a spare T-shirt here.”

  He pulled one (which looked as if it had once been white) out of his bag, and asked the Guide for his knife.

  Having made a cut to start with, he managed to tear it into strips like thin bandages, sometimes using his teeth. Hardly bothering to stand up, he shuffled over to me and inspected my feet and the sandals.

  I hoped he wasn't going to suggest bandaging my feet again. He was too tired and it would be too dangerous to try and carry me down the mountain. I had seen even the donkey struggling to keep her feet. I didn't think I'd be safe on her back, and especially not half on her neck, in front of the packs, pointing downhill.

  But Dad had a good idea. We pulled off the sandals, and Dad carefully bound around the straps with the strips of T-shirt. They were tighter, but softer, when I put them back on, and I could do them up a bit more loosely so that they weren't too tight.

  “Is that better?” asked Mum.

  “Yes,” I said, “but I hadn't really noticed they were sore this time.” />
  Dad straightened up and looked down at me, then looked at the Guide.

  “How much further?” he asked.

  “Just under the same time again, the same we have traveled already today,” said the Guide firmly, getting to his feet.

  “Last bit now,” said Dad, seemingly to all of us. Me and Mum didn't move for a moment.

  Dad went over to the donkey and put his arm around her head from underneath and steered her gently away from the bush, as if to point out that we were leaving.

  So, slowly, me and Mum stood up again. I saw the empty water bottle on the ground near a rock, but Mum didn't pick it up in her tidy way like she would normally have done. She was too tired to care anymore.

  The donkey obediently stopped eating and stood with Dad, but waited for the Guide to start off before following. Soon she overtook him again, picking her way slowly and carefully.

  On and on we went, down and down. Sometimes we seemed to be traveling across the side of the mountain, which was easier going, but took us no closer to the bottom.

  Then there would be another steep, crumbling descent and we would feel we were getting closer. Now the scrub was clearing, we could see the last hum-mocks at the base of the mountain, not foothills, just heaps of rock and gravel like at a quarry. They almost entirely obscured the road that marked the border, but we could just make it out.

  Our journey went on like that for hours without change. Your body became tired with the effort of balancing and stumbling. The palms of your hands became laced with deep little cuts from the jagged, unforgiving stones that met you when you fell, or tried to hang on. Your brain and eyes became tired with the effort of looking, thinking, concentrating.

  Once, the donkey slipped, and stopped, and her back end traveled right round her in a semicircle until she ended up facing the other way around, her head pointing up the mountain.

  But she stood very calmly as the Guide slipped and staggered over to her, and somehow between them she ended up the right way around again, and they carried on.

  Soon, time meant nothing. It was like being in the mud. I had started to accept that I would forever be picking my way over this stone, around that tussock, falling, sliding, moving on again. Maybe I always had been. Maybe it would only end when I fell down and couldn't get up anymore. I forgot, or was too tired, to think of anything else, anything that had happened before, anything that would happen.

  Little snippets of our journey—the cooking pot falling into the mud, the donkey hanging over the edge, the strange men's faces gleaming in the light of our fire—flitted in and out of my mind, but I was no longer sure if they were all part of a dream, or if I was dreaming now.

  Suddenly, Dad called out to the Guide.

  I didn't hear what he said, but the Guide stopped, looked back at Dad, and then down and ahead of us again.

  Mum, walking almost alongside me and a little in front, stopped too, so that Dad caught us up.

  “A car,” Dad said, panting. “A car on the road. I saw it.” I thought this should be good news, but I wasn't sure. He narrowed his eyes, and the Guide stopped and stared too.

  “We have to go on, at any rate,” said my mother, in a dull voice.

  “I just hope—it could be anyone, I suppose,” said Dad. “They can't send us back, now.”

  I didn't know what that meant. I couldn't make sense of it. I just knew, with certainty, that I couldn't go back. I could hardly go forward anymore.

  The Guide must have come to the same conclusion as my mother, because he lowered his head to concentrate on the track again, and the donkey sighed and continued.

  Under a lowering gray sky, we struggled up and over the last but one hillock of rubble before the road. I could dimly make out part of a car parked, its back end obscured by the last heap of shale. A man in some kind of uniform with a flat cap was standing with his hands resting on his hips, staring up at us.

  As I started after Mum down the hillock, my legs finally crumpled, and I tumbled down, head over heels, and ended up, slightly winded, against a rock. Mum struggled to catch up with me. The Guide and donkey, hearing the start of my fall, stopped. I ended up almost on top of them.

  I saw Mum stoop to pick something up as she approached me.

  “Are you all right, Tiger?” she gasped urgently, short of breath. Seeing me nod and sit up, she leant over me and my rock to the donkey on the other side.

  “Quick! Quick!” she said to the Guide. “Something, I don't know, anything!”

  And then, in her hand, I saw it.

  The Fish's little plastic bottle, hideously distorted, and opaque where it was sharply bent, was dripping water. There was a large crack and a small hole in one side near the base.

  The Guide fumbled with the packs.

  “There is nothing. We left the last water bottle,” he said, desperately searching.

  Then there was a scrape of metal, and Mum passed a baking tray we had used for cooking into my hands. It was blackened, greasy, and very shallow.

  I was so weak, I could hardly hold it.

  “Hold it flat and level,” said Mum, almost crossly. “We are almost there. It is only a few more yards. Oh,” she added almost tearfully, “there is no more water. He will only have what is left in the bottle.”

  She had the lid off the bottle and poured the poor Fish with his little pool of water into the flat tray. I struggled to stop it tipping.

  The tray was bent, and where there were bumps and dents upward the water didn't even cover the base.

  The Fish swirled into a corner, and I tried to keep the tray tilted a little that way.

  “Mum, you are madder than me. How am I going to walk—”

  I was going to say “holding this level?” but I just stopped. How was I going to walk at all? Despite the padding, my feet were cut to ribbons where tiny sharp stones had slipped between my sandals and my feet.

  Besides, my legs wouldn't work.

  “Pass it to me a moment,” said the Guide, sharply, and leant across the rock and took the tray in a steady, straight grip; then, “Get up,” he said, more fiercely than I had ever heard him before, “get up, stand up now.”

  To my own surprise, I did, and he passed the tray back to me.

  “Keep it straight, keep it level. Mother, keep your eyes on Tiger's feet. Tiger, keep your eyes on the tray. Last few yards.”

  Mum and Dad, if they didn't like his sternness, didn't say anything.

  Grimly, they steered me the first few paces and we reached the base of the hillock safely, behind the Guide and the donkey.

  Up, over the next. Watching the water in the tray seemed to make me not notice the sharp stones, the tired feeling. Sometimes the water would slop away from the corner of the tray, taking the Fish with it. For a second he would lie stranded on one of the bumps, his gills flapping, in, out.

  Then I would tilt the water back, like a tide coming in, and sweep the little Fish back into his safe corner, where the water just covered his top fin.

  As we started down the last hillock, toward the man in uniform who seemed to be waiting, watching us, the Guide said, “Border police. He is not supposed to let us pass.”

  Suddenly, there were black spots dancing in front of my eyes. I tried to blink them out of the way, so that I could see the Fish.

  But the spots grew and grew in number, and started to collect together, so that I could hardly see anything but blackness. Again, my legs crumpled, and I fell.

  This time, I heard the tray tumble, clanging away down the side of the hillock.

  The Fish! Gone! This time gone forever!

  Dad's arm was around the back of my neck and my shoulders, pushing me up into a sitting position.

  “Come on, Tiger, come on. We're here. Sit up, quick, I have the Fish.”

  The surprise might have got rid of the black spots. I blinked and my eyes cleared.

  I looked down at Dad's hand, curled in a gentle fist.

  He opened his fingers to show me. There lay the
little Fish, looking paler and tinier than ever. The gills rose and fell.

  “There's no water. He won't live,” I said, starting to cry.

  “In your mouth, quick. Shut up and stop crying.”

  “But …”

  “I know a thing or two about fish, remember, Tiger? I used to go fishing. You just have to keep him wet. He will live, long enough.” Dad said urgently, “In your mouth, now!” and I took the limp creature from his hand without another word, and slipped him into my mouth.

  Gently, I pushed the little shape into my cheek. I sat up, and then stood.

  Mum and the Guide were staring, concerned, but the Guide reached out and squeezed my hand before walking on ahead with the donkey again, and Mum now held my elbow tightly, so I couldn't fall again.

  Dad overtook us and reached the uniformed man just after the Guide. As Mum and I drew closer, I could see he had a gun—not a long rifle, like the men in the mountains, but a shorter, heavier one, in a proper black holster. But I saw that he didn't move to take it out.

  The Guide spoke to him and the policeman nodded and looked past him to Dad and then beyond, to me and Mum picking our way slowly, very slowly, the last few steps.

  Then the man said something to the Guide and smiled and looked sort of sad at the same time, and the Guide turned to us and smiled, but didn't look sad at all.

  Dad must have heard what he'd said as well, because he shouted to us, “It's all right. It's all right. He won't stop us or send us back.”

  We were finally all together there, huddled around the car.

  The policeman spoke our language. “What is your name, little one?” he asked.

  “That is no little one,” said the Guide sternly, and proudly it seemed. “That is a Tiger.”

  I was glad he answered for me. When I tried to move my mouth or tongue, the Fish would slip from his place in my cheek, and was so streamlined it felt as if at any moment he would shoot down my throat, and I would swallow before I knew what had happened. You will know what I mean if you have ever chewed a chewy sweet and tried to make it last as long as you can.