Alone Page 7

  And this time I don’t see tiddlers or scraps of tinfoil. I see food. I’ve eaten small fish before – whitebait, admittedly only once, and the fact that they still had their heads on freaked me out, and I could only stomach them when they were smothered in mayonnaise, but that doesn’t seem important now. Food is food, fish is fish, and half a dozen minnows would make a decent mouthful.

  But my stick’s no good and I have no net, so how can I catch them? I sit on the bank and roll a scab between my thumb and forefinger, and I have an idea.

  Water laps my bottom. My knees are bent to ninety degrees and my cupped hands are resting on the riverbed, knuckles down and fingers spread wide, with a scab from my arm rocking in the centre. After a few long minutes a minnow circles my finger trap, swimming closer and closer, then veering away a dozen times, until it plucks up the courage to dart in and nibble at the bait. My muscles tense and it takes all my willpower not to snap my fingers shut and yank my hands up out of the water, but I know I must be patient, and wait until more fish have entered the trap. Moments later the minnow is joined by three others and I can hold out no longer. As fast as I can, I clamp my fingers together and lift my closed hands up off the riverbed, feeling the touch of a tiny fin as I do so.

  I step onto the shore and crouch, barely able to contain my excitement. Did I get all four or did one manage to escape?

  I open my hands.

  Empty. Not one fish.

  I stare at my hands in confusion, stretching my fingers wide to check the gaps and turning my palms over to inspect the backs.

  Then I dig through the damp sand for any sign of the minnows.

  Nothing. Not one minnow. Not even a fin.

  I don’t want to believe it. I can’t. Part of me wants to scream and part of me wants to cry but I’m too numb, too disappointed. So I do nothing, just sit on the damp sand with shoulders slumped and head in hands, chewing the inside of my gums. I’ve failed. Again. I’m done. Drained. I just want to go back to bed and sleep, and dream myself far away from here. But somewhere in my brain a faint but stern voice tells me I can’t. Tells me I have to stay on my feet. Tells me that if I crawl into bed now I may never get up again. Tells me I can’t give up.

  No. Bed is not an option. Not if I want to live.

  I know what I must do. I must not give up. Somehow I must find a way to catch these bloody fish.

  SIXTEEN

  Standing stark naked in the mosquito-defying smoke from the fire, eyes streaming and coughing my guts up, I jump, and slap at my leg as the fire spits another spark into my flesh. I flick the ember from my skin and spread my palms wide once more, shielding my bare bottom, and blink through streaming eyes at the blurred shapes lying on the ground before me – every possession I own. It’s pitiful. A pile of junk.

  But somehow I need to turn this junk into something useful. I need to turn it into something to catch fish.

  Another spark, this time embedding itself in my bum cheek. This is ridiculous! I’ve had enough. I move away from the fire, grab my pants and pull them back on. I leave my socks by the fire to dry. I’d thought about filling one with sand and using it to club fish with, but I doubt I could get close enough to a fish to use it, and anyway, there are holes in both socks and the sand would simply pour out. I have no net and I’m crap with a spear. And I’m no otter. The only idea that makes any sense is the simplest one. To catch a fish I need to be a fisherman.

  So to be a fisherman I need a fishing rod, line, hook and bait.

  I can use my so-called spear as a rod and my shoelaces tied together will do for the line. It means my trainers will be really loose or I’ll have to go barefoot from now on but I figure it’s worth it. Now all I need is a hook and some bait.

  I pick up Dad’s watch. After much agonising I prise the dial off but to my dismay I can’t find anything to use as a hook. Until I notice the wire pin connecting the strap to the body, and after some painful biting and twisting I manage to break it free. It’s far from ideal but it will have to do.

  Now all I need is some bait.

  And I know just where to get it.

  In less than twenty-four hours the catfish has been reduced to a shrivelled sausage of skin littered with tiny brown cigar-shaped pupae. I flick what’s left of it over with my stick to reveal half a dozen maggots, and scrape all six into my bowl before quickly walking across to the spot on the riverbank where the minnows evaded me yesterday. Pinching a maggot from the bowl I try to impale it on my hook without dropping it or pricking my thumb.

  The maggot squirms from my grip and falls to the sand and I swear, and wipe my hands on my T-shirt while I try to calm down and tell myself to be more patient. Squeezing the writhing grub more firmly this time, I hook the wire into a crease in the maggot’s taut body, and steadily increase the pressure until with a sudden give the point pierces the skin.

  The maggot thrashes violently on the hook and I quickly extend my rod over the bank and drop my bait in the water. I watch in excited anticipation as it sinks, twitching. Within seconds the minnows appear and go straight for the bait. As one swallows it I yank my rod up and can hardly believe my eyes when I see the small silver fish dangling from the end.

  I pull my rod in and grab the minnow. After a moment’s hesitation I tap its head hard against the rod and cram it into my mouth. It seems to be more bones than flesh and tastes extremely salty, like an anchovy, and I hate anchovies. But it’s food, and I’m too famished to care. In two swallows it’s gone and the maggot is still whole and wriggling so I drop it back into the water, a huge grin spreading across my face.

  For every fish I land I lose two or three more, some of which are injured and ripped apart by the rest of the shoal, but in no time at all I have caught and consumed five minnows, and another eight lie on the sand next to me. I reach into my bowl to bait the hook again and pause. I only have one maggot left. I should quit now, cook the fish I’ve caught and save the remaining grub for later. But there are more minnows than ever, and for the first time in ages I’m enjoying myself. So I bait my hook with the last maggot and cast.

  The grub sinks. A minnow grabs it. And in that instant, that nanosecond before I strike, the minnow is engulfed in a snare of jagged teeth. The line goes taut, the rod’s tip bends towards the water and the minnow disappears in a swirl of flashing red and silver scales, along with my hook and a length of shoelace.

  My fishing is over. Hook gone. But even the loss of the precious hook can’t dent my feelings of success and satisfaction. My contraption worked. It actually worked! I have a decent haul of minnows to cook and I can use the other pin on Dad’s watch strap to make another hook. There was something thrilling about the piranha’s attack and in the back of my mind an idea is starting to form.

  The fire is still smouldering when I reach camp and I hurriedly add more wood and place my bowl of fresh water on the rock to boil. None of the minnows are more than a few centimetres long, far too small to try to gut, so I drop four into the water whole and keep the other four for later, wrapped in a leaf and tucked in my sock for safekeeping.

  After a few minutes the heat softens the fishes’ bones and the opaque flesh turns white and breaks apart. I lift the bowl, blow, and sip. OK, so my fish soup isn’t exactly delicious but diluted by stream water, the minnows’ saltiness works in my favour, seasoning the broth. At least it’s better than snail soup and I’m more than a little impressed with my cooking skills and self-control, especially when I make four small fish stretch over three big bowls of broth.

  The fish soup provides a much needed boost to both my body and my determination, and I spend the rest of the day cleaning camp, tending to the smoke signal, and hauling logs. By sunset the camp is neat and tidy, my bed has a fresh leafy mattress and I have at least three days’ worth of logs piled up which, with any luck, I won’t have to use.

  It’s time to turn my attention to my big idea.

  ‘Use a sprat to catch a mackerel!’

  That’s what Gran used to sa
y and that’s exactly what I intend to do. I don’t know if I can make this work but I’m certainly going to try. And I do know one thing for sure.

  I’m going to need a bigger hook.

  SEVENTEEN

  Wide awake and too excited to stay fidgeting in bed any longer, I’m up and at the river before dawn, jogging up and down the riverbank and rubbing my arms in the pre-dawn chill.

  As the sun’s soft glow lights the horizon I stand completely still and stare, amazed by the way the spreading sunlight colours the trees and melts the fog blanketing the river, and I realise that I’ve never made the effort to watch a sunrise before. It’s spectacular.

  A few minutes later I reckon it’s light enough for me to give it a try. I unwind the shoelaces from the shaft of my new pole, twice the thickness of my previous one, and catch hold of my new piranha-proof hook, made from the reinforcing wire of the life jacket. My fingers still ache from the hours of twisting and tearing it took to extract it, but by taking my time and carefully unpicking the seams I managed to get the wire out in one piece, without puncturing the jacket’s air chambers. Pretty soon I’ll know if it was worth it.

  Time to fish! I hook a minnow through its glazed eye and drop it in the water, hands trembling with excitement. There is no wind and the water is so still I can clearly see the circles rippling out from where the quivering wire enters the water. Fixing my eyes on the minnow I wait for the piranhas to arrive.

  An hour or two later the sun is a hell of a lot hotter and much higher in the sky, and the only thing that’s feeding is the mosquitoes. On me.

  I don’t get it! I’m in exactly the same spot as I was yesterday, so what was different then? What made the piranhas come? I slap at a mosquito chewing on my arm and stare at the smudge of blood left behind.

  Blood! That’s why the piranhas came. They must have tasted the blood and fluids from the maggots and crippled minnows. If I want to attract piranhas then I need to send a message; a bloody ‘Breakfast is served’ broadcast to get their attention.

  But I only have two minnows left and the last maggot turned into a chrysalis overnight. No problem. I’ll use my own blood instead.

  I peel a freshly formed scab off my arm, clamp my mouth over the wound, suck up the blood, and spit the scab and blood into the water. As the scab sinks I quickly drop my minnow in the centre of the bloody cloud and jig it up and down, to mimic an injured fish, but I don’t jig too hard – I don’t want the minnow to disintegrate. More blood is seeping from my arm and dripping onto the sand so I suck up another mouthful and spit that in as well.

  Two gobs. Thirty seconds. That’s all it takes.

  Less than a teaspoon of blood is enough to summon a shoal of voracious piranhas from every direction, churning the water, zeroing in on the bait.

  Wow they’re quick! Lightning fast. The first piranha to arrive rips the minnow from my hook and vanishes before I can even think about striking. I yell, and thump the ground in frustration.

  I was too sluggish to react in time. Far too slow. I rub my palms together hard and fast and slap my face. I’m going to have to be much quicker than that.

  I hook my last minnow and drop it in the water. This time I’m fully tensed and alert and as soon as a piranha seizes the bait I strike in a swift upward motion that wrenches the fish from the water. Swinging the rod around as quickly as I can, I drop the fish on the ground above the riverbank. The piranha hits the earth with a thud, the impact dislodges the hook from its mouth and in two tail-flexing springs it bounces off the bank and into the river. I scream, ‘No!’ and scrabble to the edge of the bank and peer into the water, but it’s no good, the fish has gone.

  That was my last minnow. I pick up my hook. Half the minnow is left, enough for one last cast. Focus!

  This time, the instant the minnow hits the water and I feel a tug on the line I strike, and hook the piranha securely through its jaw. I swing it onto the bank, and as it meets the ground I grab my rock and scramble across to it, and slam the rock down on the piranha’s head over and over again, bashing it as hard as I can until its eye pops from its socket and its jaw breaks. I’m panting, heart racing, and my T-shirt is splattered in blood and scales.

  I stick two fingers into the piranha’s mouth to retrieve my hook but as I do so the fish bucks and its teeth graze across my knuckles, slicing the skin. Man those teeth are sharp! With its head smashed to a bloody pulp the fish is clearly dead and that was no more than a muscle reflex action, but I bash its head in again anyway, purely out of spite, then suck up the blood pouring from my throbbing knuckle and spit it into the water.

  I have no minnows left but it doesn’t matter. The piranhas are in no hurry to leave and this fish will provide me with all the bait I need. I take great pleasure in pulverising the piranhas to a pile of bait-sized pieces and chucking the bloody remains back in the water, to keep its cannibalistic mates around.

  A dozen casts later, seven piranhas lie on the ground beside me. Seven fish! More than enough. More than I could have dared hope for. A feast!

  But the fish are not only a feast for me. Swarms of biting black flies have arrived and it’s only a matter of time before the ants appear, and I’m covered in minging fish blood and guts. Time to go.

  With the fish wrapped in my T-shirt and my rod balanced on my shoulder, I hurry back to camp, licking my cracked lips at the thought of the feast ahead. I’ve done well. Really well. If only someone could see me now!

  I stop. Keen as I am to cook and eat my catch there’s somewhere I want to go first.

  Yes! The otters are on their rock, mother pinning the pup down and licking his head while he squeaks in complaint and tries to wriggle free.

  I place my T-shirt on the ground, select the two biggest fish and lift them high in the air, jerking them up and down to get the mother’s attention. I so want her to see me, to see what I’ve done. Almost immediately my boastful display catches her eye and she pauses in cleaning her pup to peer in my direction, and thankfully this time she doesn’t tense or get ready to flee. Instead she sniffs the breeze and adjusts her stance to get a better view. Then she relaxes and grunts, and I choose to believe it’s a grunt of approval. I choose to believe she’s impressed.

  The pup takes advantage of the break in Mum’s attention to wriggle out from under her and escape into the river. Mum watches him go, then yawns and starts grooming herself.

  Watching the mother clean herself I become aware of how grimy and sweaty I am, and how much I reek of fish blood and guts. I could really do with a good wash too. But as appealing as the river appears, I’m not going in. Not after what I’ve just seen. Not covered in smelly fish guts and with my knuckle still seeping blood. I’m still stunned by the effect just a few drops of blood can have on piranhas and I try not to think of the many times I sat in the river scratching bloody scabs off my skin.

  But my sticky hands really are too disgusting to put up with any longer and I can at least wash the blood and scales from them without having to enter the river.

  I walk to the water’s edge and dip my hands in. I’m concentrating on prising a sharp fish scale out from under my thumbnail when there’s a sudden disturbance on the surface a few metres away. I jump and jerk my hands from the water so quickly I lose my balance and tumble backwards.

  But to my relief it’s not a piranha. Or a caiman. It’s the otter pup!

  He bobs, and paddles closer, so close I can clearly see his teddy bear nose, glinting liquid-brown eyes and ruff of magnificent whiskers. He’s beautiful. Ridiculously cute. Holding his head clear of the surface like a periscope the pup treads water, and it’s apparent by his chirping and the way his nostrils flare and his whiskers twitch that he’s bursting with curiosity, desperate to see what’s wrapped in my T-shirt. He’s also completely unafraid, and I realise I’m probably the first human he’s ever seen.

  I purse my lips to whistle hello, but all that comes out is a deflated raspberry followed by a wheeze and a cough, and the pup huffs then make
s a farting noise in response. Another sound swiftly follows and for a moment I wonder what the strange noise is, and where it has come from, and then I realise it is laughter, and it has come from me. It’s been a long time.

  I clear my throat and try again. ‘Come on, Pup,’ I say, as encouragingly as I can. ‘Come and have a look.’

  The pup chitters and moves a little closer to the bank. Then he glances back across the river at Mum, dozing in the sun. I can tell he’s torn between his desire to see what’s hidden in my T-shirt and concern that Mum will see him and tell him off for straying too far again.

  He chirps once more, this time with a hint of frustration, and Mum wakes and calls him back with a sharp two-tone whistle. I don’t want him to go but I don’t want him to get in trouble either. I look down at my fish, my precious piranhas, and throw him one. It’s a poor throw and the fish lands with a splash a couple of metres to the pup’s left and he disappears. For a moment I’m worried I’ve screwed up and scared him away but then his head breaks surface, with my piranha held firmly in his jaws. With a flick of his tail he kicks hard and swims back towards Mum.

  I watch the pup porpoise away, his paddle tail pumping and my fish glinting in his mouth, and I’m thrilled, beaming with delight, and as the pup clambers onto the rock and dodges a cuff from Mum, I have an irresistible urge to give him a name. I can’t keep calling him Pup. Not now we’ve actually met. I look at the way his wet fur gleams in the sun, smooth and silky and chocolate brown, and I think about the way I’m feeling right at this moment. And I know what to call him. I’ll name him after my favourite chocolate. The smoothest, tastiest chocolate in the world. I’ll call him Galaxy.