Fish (12 page)

“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.

“I am supposed to stop anyone trying to cross the border,” said the policeman, “but I am not stopping the wretched people I find. I am certainly not going to stop you. There are laws greater than the law of my land, others greater than the ruler of my land, whom I have to answer to.”

Dad said, “Thank you, thank you so much. I know you are certainly not allowed to help those entering. But we are not local refugees. We are aid workers. We have an embassy in your capital. I wonder if you would make a call for us. …”

I sat down on the dusty road, and leant my back against the car's tire. I closed my eyes and smelt the hot smell of metal, of gasoline and oil. My head ached.

I felt Mum sit down alongside me and then take me in her arms and hug me.

“It's all right, Tiger. This country and our country are friends, and the policeman is sure he's allowed to help us. He's calling his bosses and the embassy right now.”

Just at that moment, Dad touched my leg and I opened my eyes. “Come on, Tiger. He's giving us a lift in his car. Up you get, and hop in.”

I should have been pleased, but I just felt irritable. Every time you sat down, or fell down, they made you get up again. And I couldn't swallow or speak very well.

“Water,” I said, with difficulty, trying not to bite the little shape in my mouth. “Ask him, water first.”

I heard a murmur, then the policeman said, “Of course, how stupid of me. You must be so thirsty.”

He passed a big, clear plastic bottle to me, but I waved it away and said, “Others first.”

He looked surprised, but all the grown-ups looked at me knowingly and took long swigs and gulps before
passing it back. The Guide knew what was on my mind.

“Drink first, Tiger,” he said, handing me the bottle. I pushed the Fish firmly into my cheek with my tongue and tipped the bottle to my mouth. A thin trickle was all I allowed over my tongue, down my throat. Finally, I leant forward, wiggled with my tongue and slipped the Fish into the neck of the bottle.

“What … ? Are you all right?” asked the policeman, worried.

I held up the bottle to show him.

“It's a fish,” I said. “I'm sorry, you can't have your bottle back, just yet.”

And then I climbed into the backseat of the car, gripping the bottle, and Mum and Dad say I fainted, but I think I just fell instantly asleep.

I can just about remember waking up a little and it was dark, and someone was carrying me. We looked like we were at the refugee camp.

The next bit Mum says was a dream, but I still don't know.

I woke up in a nice, clean bed, very low to the ground, with white sheets on it. It was dark, so I knew it was still nighttime. I was in some kind of hut or building. There was a tube going from my arm into a clear bag full of what looked like water, hanging from a pole by the bed. I knew that was called a drip, because Dad had used them on some of the sick villagers.