So we got on our bikes and cycled round my house to find the fish bowl. Someone, probably me Dad, had put it in the shed after the goldfish died and it was all mucky and full of dead spiders and flies, yuk ! I start looking round for a cloth or something to clean it out but Terry just sticks his hand inside and scrapes it all out onto the ground. Then we got some water and really washed it clean inside and out so it was all sparkling like new. We couldn’t carry it too easy when it was full of water so we rummaged around for an old bag and then cut some peepholes for the fish to look out of.
“She’ll love this.” Terry says proudly, holding up the bag with the bowl in it. “Come on.”
He wanted to hurry did Terry, but we had to cycle slowly cos the bowl was glass and it would only take one small knock to break it. But we was real careful and got it down to the river in one piece.
“Where’s the fish ?” I asks Terry, the river is clear of any trout as far as I can see.
“She’ll be around, I’ll just call her.” He says and lies down on the bank where he can touch the water and starts dabbing on it.
Fish must be deaf or something cos it took ages for the fish to come, even though Terry was dabbing away on top of the water. Anyway it finally comes swimming out of the weeds and nibbles on his fingers like before and the Terry gets the fish bowl out of the bag and lowers it into the water. The fish didn’t look to pleased at that. It backed off some and only come back after more dabbing. Then it tried to nibble the bowl. Stupid fish, you can’t eat glass. So after a lot of Terry dabbing and the fish nibbling the bowl, eventually the fish swims inside the bowl so’s he can lift it out of the river and put it on the grass.
It looks even more beautiful in the bowl than it did in Terry’s hands and no mistake. So the fish is in the bowl looking out at us with those big dark eyes the it starts turning around in the bowl. Terry does some more dabbing and the fish nibbles his fingers like before, then he nods and lifts the bowl into the bag.
“Give us a hand.” Terry says to me cos the bowl and the water are pretty heavy.
So with me on one side and Terry on the other we carry the bag up to the road and stopped on the pavement. I suppose the fish was looking out, but I wasn’t really looking at it. I was looking out for me other mates, I didn’t want to get caught carryin’ a fish around in a bag. Then Terry points towards the bridge over the river.
“That way.” He says and off we trudge, Terry, me and the fish.
We put the bag up on the bridge so’s the fish can look down on the river and all the other fish swimming in it. Strange thing, they all seem to be facin’ our way. Then we took it up to the railway line and watched as the trains went rushing by. I don’t know about the fish but I love it when a really fast train goes zooming by so fast it’s a blur. After one really big express goes roaring by with its horn a blastin’ the fish starts splashing around in the bowl, don’t think it liked it, and Terry had to do a lot of dabbing to calm it down.
“She wants to go home.” He says when the fish isn’t kicking up a fuss anymore.
“Suits me.” I says cos I was getting a bit bored carryin’ a fish around and it was getting on for teatime too.
Now that’s pretty much where me and the fish parted company, with Terry lettin’ it swim out of the bowl and giving it back to me to take home. So what I tell you now is what Terry told me later and it all sounds pretty fishy to me, but this is what he said.
“I was lying there, looking down at her.” Terry says. “Kinda thinking, well wishing really, just for a second mind, wouldn’t it be great to be a trout and swim in the river with her.”
“Child of Eardra.” She says in that quiet way. “You have granted my wish and shown me what lies beyond my realm of Swollia. I have seen the moving rocks that you travel in (fish got no words for car or train see), I have heard their terrible voices and tasted the taint of their breath. I have looked down out of Aerea at my beautiful Swollia as though a child of that realm and seen my kin from afar. Never has one of my kin travelled so far from home and then returned safely to its embrace.
I thank you child of Eardra.”
I was lying there and wishing while she spoke and looked at me with her lovely dark eyes and she knew, I swear she knew what I was wishing.
“Child of Eardra, will you join me in my realm of Swollia ? Will you let her cradle you in her cool embrace ?” She asks me.
I wanted to say yes more than anything, but, I couldn’t.
“I can’t swim.” I says quietly.
“All the children of Eardra may swim.” She tells me calm and certain like.
“But I can’t.” I says again. “I’m afraid.”
“Ahh.” She sighs, so soft. “Fear. Have no fear child of Eardra, before you were born you lived as a child of Swollia, bathed in Swollia, growing in Swollia, safe in Swollia. Then you had no fear, return to us. Return to Swollia and be our child again.”
All the time I’m looking into her eyes and its like they’re growing, bigger and bigger so’s they’re all I can see.
“Come to me child of Swollia.” She says.
And that’s when I did it. With my eyes wide open I put my face down into the water, clean under the surface, my entire head, and I wasn’t frightened anymore. It was so quiet and peaceful in the water.
“Swim with me child of Swollia.” She says and kisses me right there on my lips.
I just slid right off the bank and into the river with scarce a splash like it was the thing to do and there I was underwater looking into her eyes not more than an inch between us. I swear its true, I do.