A Different Kingdom(11)

'Don't let go of me.'

'Ach, you've no courage. Did I not teach you how to swim last summer?'

But last summer was a year ago, a lifetime to a child. He shook his head.

'Well here, then. Grab hold of this.' She pulled down a slim branch of the old oak for him to hold. 'Got it? Good. Now don't let go. Hold on there while I splash about a bit.'

He clung there blinking water out of his eyes and feeling the current move lazily around him. His feet kicked for a moment and the liquid forced his toes apart. What were they thinking, those underwater knights and ladies, those dragons? He shifted uncomfortably as he thought of eels, pikes—who knew what?—powering through the water to nibble at him.

Rose was scattering a shower of sun-kindled spray as she splashed and kicked in the middle of the river. Behind her the black arch of the bridge loomed like an open mouth. Michael saw her head go under and her buttocks flash as she dived, and the river quietened, ripples plashing and spreading, lap-ping the banks.

'Rose?' he called, alarmed, but she broke surface seconds later with black hair plastered over her face.

'I can see down there,' she called. 'I can see under the water.

It's dear as a bell, Michael, like another world.' And then she had dived again. Her pale form was a blur under the river, sinuous as an otter.

She could be a fairy, Michael thought. All she needs are wings. A water fairy. Were there such things?

Rose stood up in the shallows, waist deep. Water poured off her like liquid flame. She raised her arms to wipe the hair from her eyes, grinning, and for a second the water that streamed from her shoulders, sunlit, looked like two transparent wings, and Michael gurgled with happiness.

But something tore his stare away, drew it to where the stone of the bridge was covered by the trees. Movement, a white blur. A face disappearing quickly into the shadow there. Someone watching.

'Rose!' he yelled, lifting one chubby arm to point. His other hand slid along his oak lifeline, leaves torn free by his slipping palm, and he was floating free— no, sinking freely, his astonished eyes filling with water, the river's cool clutch easing over his forehead as softly as a caress.

He batted at the stuff surrounding him, kicked and wriggled, and felt himself rise. Then there was a grip in his hair and he was hauled into the air, the pain making him cry out.

'You wee twit, Michael! What did you want to do that for? What was it anyway?' She hugged him tightly, and he would remember afterwards and replay endlessly in his mind the way she felt against him. Cold with the water, her arms hard around him, his kneecap tickled by the soft pelt at the top of her thighs.

'There was somebody there, Rose. Somebody was looking at us, up by the bridge.' No fox face. Just an ordinary one. A real face, but gone in a moment, quick as shame.

'Oh there was, was there?' Oddly, she smiled, a curious, inward smile. 'It doesn't matter, Michael. I don't care and you've nothing worth hiding.'

'What's so funny?'

'You.' She released him. 'Your face when you went under the water. I thought the pike was tugging at your toes for a minute.'

'It's not right to spy on people.' Especially when they've no clothes on, he added to himself. There was an odd feeling in him, like a cold blush tightening under his stomach. He looked down through the clear water. 'Rose!'

She followed his goggling gaze and her eyebrows shot up her forehead. 'Dear me. You're growing up, Michael.' She kissed his wet nose. 'It's alright. Come on. I think it's time we got dressed.'





FOUR

GROWING UP... TERRIBLE, frightening words. They were on a par with dentist and mortal sin. The feel of Rose holding him, and his unprecedented reaction. That dizzy, fearful excitement. These things wheeled in his head for days so he forgot about the face at the bridge, the fox faces at the river. They were placed somewhere in a back room, filed away until something should bring them to light again.



The bridge drew him. He was fascinated by the fact that it was impossible to see daylight through it. It seemed more like a long tunnel leading into the earth. A place for goblins, subterranean workings, mines and borings. But there was water there too, the river, as deep as a sapling and as slow-moving as cold honey. The place was like a green-walled cathedral, the oaks and limes standing back from the bank where the willow and alder clustered as if eager to drink. Light fell on to the water and filtered through the canopy like the rays running through the stained glass of a church. It was both shadowed and brilliant, sparkling and dim. And dominating all was the black mouth of the bridge, as lightless as a well. To enter the arch of the bridge one would have either to swim or procure a boat. Michael could do neither, so the blackness remained one of the fixtures of his young life, as unplumbed as the deepest Pacific canyon.