Fish by L.S. Matthews Read Free Book Online

wide across, wider than anything I would have called a river. I looked across to the far bank. It looked miles away. Bushes were just little dots. It looked impossible.
    In the silence, as we stared, the sound of buzzing flies drew our eyes to the rotting carcass of a goat, which must have been swept down by the rains. The donkey snorted sharply through its nostrils and backed away and shook its head. Mum, Dad and I looked first at each other and then at the Guide.
    “Rest and eat, then think,” he said.
    Sometimes I wondered if the Guide had learnt the things he said as sayings from his mother—you know, like, “A stitch in time saves nine”—or whether he just spoke like that and made them up as he wentalong. I didn't dare ask him, in case it was a Personal Question.
    Mum said it was rude to ask Personal Questions, and I was never quite sure what that meant, except I knew it applied to eyepatches, because that's when she'd brought up the whole subject.
    I had asked a visitor, a smart old man who was supposed to be someone quite important, if he was a pirate, as he had an eyepatch, and even then, I think Mum may have got it wrong about this being a Personal Question, because he didn't seem to think I was rude, and laughed quite a lot.
    We didn't much feel like resting here, or eating, with the goat and everything, but we moved further down the bank onto a place where the giant's child had kindly placed the boulders like seats around a cleanish, flattish area for our donkey and packs, and settled down. We didn't light a fire, as the firewood had to be saved for nights.
    Dad dug out a tin of some kind of mashed-up meat he'd been saving, and it sounds horrible, I know, to eatit cold out of the tin, but it didn't taste too bad. Then Mum mixed up sugary powder out of little packets with the bottled water and we all drank some, except the Guide, who just drank his water as it was. The donkey was fine, because it had the tussocks of grass and leaves from the bushes. But I saw Dad looking at it thoughtfully, and realized he'd noticed that the most tempting grasses were right on the edge of the mud, and the donkey, whilst desperate to reach the blades, was very cautious about where it put its hooves and was stretching as far as it could with its neck without stepping off the dry bank.
    While we were watching the donkey and Mum was packing away the empty packets and water bottles, the Guide was pacing up and down the bank. I thought he wanted to find somewhere narrower to cross, but it looked the same in all directions as far as you could see.
    Then I noticed that he was looking at the banks and the mountain on either side of the riverbed. He saw me looking at him.“I'm looking at the way the land goes up and down,” he explained.
    “We call that the lie of the land,” said Dad.
    “Yes, that's it, exactly. The lie of the land,” said the Guide, trying out the phrase and liking it. “I can't see through the mud, but I might be able to work out where it's likely to be less deep. We need sticks,” he added, whisked out the knife he'd used for preparing the rabbit, and started choosing branches from the bushes.
    When he'd cut them I looked at them, disappointed that I wasn't going to have one. Stupid feet! Why did I have to be carried? I considered myself an expert on mud, after the puddle at home. I was sure I'd be better than Mum and Dad, at any rate.
    “Are they long enough?” I asked.
    “If a stick this long doesn't touch the bottom, we don't want to go there,” said Dad firmly, and I realized he was right.
    “The child on the donkey?” asked the Guide again, but without much hope in his voice.
    “Donkey has the packs and is going to show us the way, isn't she?” asked Dad. “Adding the child will put her off balance and make her sink more.”
    I quite liked riding donkeys, and I thought that the Guide always knew best. I was also not looking forward to hanging on if Dad slipped again, though if he managed to