Fish (6 page)

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

“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.