Fish Read Online Free Page A

legs went all shaky with the shock and he had to sit down and have a drink. Mum didn't make any fuss at all, but for the next few days she couldn't lift her arms at all or move her neck very well.
    With his back to me, I could still see Dad drop his head a little and knew that he was remembering this story as well.
    “You're right. I just feel guilty. We shouldn't have stayed this long. Just a day or two earlier …”
    “We can try the road, and you can show the guards your papers,” said the Guide, comfortingly. “It's just we will have to walk further if it happens that we can't cross there. We can try. It is up to you. I am just here to show you the way.”
    I sighed at the bit about walking further. I was sure I could do it—after all, I thought about the widows and old people who'd left the village pushing my blanket friends in rickety wooden wheelbarrows, and a woman expecting a baby who had waddled slowly butdeterminedly behind them. But the fish? How long could it last in that little pot of water?
    I turned over and looked at the cooking pot, sitting firmly on a flat rock where I'd put it when we'd stopped to camp. The lid was off, to let in the air. It was so cold tonight. I had all my clothes on, and my blankets. Did fish get cold too? Was the water frozen?
    I used my elbows like a seal's flippers to drag myself over to the rock and looked into the pot. The water was just a pool of blackness. I couldn't see the fish.
    “All right, Tiger?” called Dad softly, so as not to wake Mum. You could tell even in those three words that he was wondering how long I'd been awake and whether I'd overheard the conversation.
    “The fish is fine,” said the Guide. “If you tip the pot a little toward the fire, you'll see.”
    I did as he said, and the light suddenly flashed in a patch across the black surface of the water. Through it, I could see the fish. It wasn't moving around, just fanning its fins a little to keep its place. Now it just looked brown.
    “Do fish sleep?” I asked the Guide.
    “Of course they do, if people wouldn't keep disturbing them,” he said, and I could hear rather than see the smile. He pushed another few twigs on the fire and I wondered where they had come from. No one could get hold of firewood anymore. I decided I didn't care, I was just very, very grateful. It was so cold.
    I put the pot down carefully again, so as not to disturb the poor sleeping fish, and scuttled backward under my blankets to keep warm.
    “Everyone should try and sleep a little,” said the Guide, showing no signs of doing so himself. “We have a long way to go in the morning, and morning is not far away.”
    Dad lay down again, slowly and reluctantly, and I put my whole head under my blankets to try and warm up. My eyes were wide open. I worried about the border crossing. I would never sleep, I thought.
    I woke up to the sound of pots clanging and a smell of porridge. It actually smelt good, which told me I must be
very
hungry. I sat up and saw the grown-upssplashing their faces with a little water from the rations and hoped they wouldn't notice if I didn't. No one said anything, and Mum passed me a hot drink and some porridge. No nagging about washing for a change—there were some good things about this trek anyway.
    When I'd eaten, though, the Guide pushed a clean, wet rag into my hand.
    “Just wipe around your eyes and mouth. Keep the sand off. And there are still flies in the day, even though it's getting colder.”
    He was right, of course. But by the time he'd shown me how to use the campfire ash on my finger to clean my teeth, I was starting to miss our bathroom.
    “Do you have any children?” I asked the Guide suddenly, realizing he always seemed to know what to do, and feeling rather sorry for his children if they had to do this every day.
    Everything seemed to go quiet for a moment, and I sensed Mum and Dad freezing mid-packing.
    “I had four. Two boys and two girls.”
    “Oh,” I said. I didn't like