In the middle of the river and on the outer side of the bend, the channel ran where the clear water flowed. Its floor was of shingle laid in beds and rolls by the rain-rush of Spring. Between the rills of shingle were long drifts of silver sand, carved by the daily flow and sharp edged in a way that the sculpting water wasn't. Where sunlight slanted down it bathed the sand in brightness and picked out thumbnail pebbles of quartz, marble and amber against a background of otherwise grey and brown shingle.
The moving stream, a river within the river, brushed here and there against the margins of the open channel; against almost intangible boundaries defined more by colour than substance, a tattered screen of greenish grey, olive and sage; great banks of finely particled mud and viscous cliffs of what looked like caramel jelly, held in place by rush roots and reed stems. Cliffs where a touch of the hand or the snout of a sudden darting fish would break off slivers as if it was made of glass, which would then dissolve to leave no more than a drift of smoke in the waters. A cloud that would at once be caught up by the flow and in moments disperse as if it had never formed.
Over the sun-speckled casts of shingle, fish followed the shade of reed tops and ripples, a few dapples of dace, a brace or two of bream, a trio of trout. In the shallows, minnows darted between the larger stones and a stickleback bristled as he protected his bower among the reed stems.
The boy slid silently through the water, his skin shadowed and striped by the greenish light glowing through the leaves of the water-lilies that colonised the calm beyond the eddies. His hands at his sides, toes moving gently to counter the errant currents as the calm pool slowly rotated. This was the swimming hole, a place that boys came to swim while their sisters and their friends' sisters sat on the bank and discussed whatever it was that sisters discussed.
Today the boy was alone in the water, the coven of sisters had climbed an easy tree and set up their dolls' world among its branches. The pool was quiet, no splashing, thrashing about or showing off, just one boy meeting the fish for the first time. He rose to the surface, turned his head just enough to take a breath, then sank back into the dreamlike magic of the river.
It was then that he saw the pike, three feet long and, like him, exerting just enough effort to remain on station. At first the pike's attention was only for the dace among the dapples on the river bed below them. Then that cold eye swivelled to meet with the curious ones of the boy. Something shocking and primeval passed between them. There was a sudden flurry in the water and the boy was alone, no pike, no dace, no bream nor trout, no minnows nor stickleback in view.
He waited a while, rising and falling with his need for breath, but their patience was greater than his.
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Copyright The Mundesley Hermit ©2007. All rights reserved.
That's beautiful. I like the primeaval moment between the boy and the pike.
I like the doll's world in the trees too, but "Whatever girls talk about"? What DO girls talk about? What were these girls talking about? If it was the boy's thought about them then fair enough, but the narrator would know.
You wanted crit, I'm giving a crit. You can tell me to shut up if you like