Pond People

A tiny black swimmer glided below the surface as the morning sun warmed the water. Its shade travelled the pond floor and passed over a dozing bronze sleeper basking in filtered sunlight, his eyes glazed and his feet twitching. Above him, at the edge of the pond, goldfish grazed.

Slender arms broke away from the swimmer’s sides and fins became hands to sweep the water and steady her descent. Her tail parted to become legs, touching down on flat, triangular feet which, moments ago, had served as tail fins.

The sleeper on the pond floor shivered as a shadow blocked his sunlight. Fish dived and scattered.

A watcher concealed in the watermint glanced up through the surface ripples. A black cat rose from its crouch and padded around the pond to the warm brick paving at the end.

At the bottom of the pond, eyes moved in the weathered bronze face.

‘Molly, lass. How are things at the deeps?’

‘Things are stirring.’ She ran webbed fingers through hair that clung to her shoulders like blanketweed. ‘The fish are on the move now the weather’s warmer.’

The watcher in the watermint strained to catch the conversation.

‘Your feet were twitching, Grandad. Were you dreaming?’

‘Aye, lass. I was back in the river, riding a rain surge with the sticklebacks and dodging the stones. Don’t suppose I could do that now without getting battered.’

His gills laboured as he eyed the waterfall across the pond. The old mirling was missing a scale or two. He took a blade from his belt of plaited blanketweed to carve a sliver from the reed behind him.

The watcher coveted both belt and blade. Had his own people made things like this? The pond mirlings he’d met since he arrived had been tame and easy to impress, but this old mirling was raised in wilder waters.

Molly had sneaked away early from the deep end before her parents filled her day with spawn-watching and her head with instructions. She’d rather fill both with Grandad’s memories of his river.

Grandad wintered with the other mirlings in deeper water, but when the sun grew strong enough to warm the shallows, he would move here to be close to the waterfall.

No fish or mirling rode the pond’s waterfall. It cascaded from the filter outlet, high above the deeps, and its channel formed a wall around half the pond. Birds came to drink and splash in the water that sparkled over its stones.

It emptied into the shallows, where people from the house came to scatter fish food, and where a goldfish now grazed under the watchful eye of the cat.

Molly saw the cat tense at the same time as Grandad shouted.

But fish aren’t frightened of mirlings. This one carried on nibbling its way towards the cat.

Molly launched.

A paw descended, dark as death. She found herself hurtling into a swipe that would scoop both fish and mirling out of the water.

Something streaked past Molly, washing her aside and propelling the goldfish into the cover of reeds. The cat’s paw rose empty through the water.

The bright blur swooped into a somersault before slowing to become an orange-and-black mirling. He landed with a flourish in front of Grandad and two watching youngsters, while Molly fought to re-establish which way was up.

‘Hi, kids. The name’s Flash. They call me Flash Lightning.’

His iridescent orange glistened in the watery sunlight. A contrasting black streak fell rakishly across the left side of his spiky hair, across one eye and down the side of a muscular body. Molly had to admit he was an impressive looking mirling.

And no one was more impressed than Flash.

Drawing himself up to his full two centimetres, Flash noted with satisfaction that he was taller than his audience, although he thought the old mir might have matched him in his youth, before his bronze back stooped.

‘Well done, lad! That were fast.’

‘I like to keep fit.’

A scrawny yellow youngster groaned quietly.

It was a groan, not a thoughtwave, but Flash’s hearing was excellent, and the ear-slits in front of his gills caught the sound. He’d seen this undersized runt at the pump, where fit mirlings exercised by swimming against its pull. The strawhead had disrupted their training with his irritating pranks.

A new voice crept into his head. ‘Aren’t you the m-mirling who came with the fish from the pet shop?’

The pale mirling who’d asked was a head shorter than the others, skinny as a water-reed and as plain, but her cream-coloured eyes glowed with admiration around their inky pupils. He rewarded her with a smile.

‘You noticed me then.’

Her flat, white face flushed pink.

‘Flo notices more than people realise.’

The speaker was the black swimmer he had swept aside in his dash to the goldfish. Her scales seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it. His proud colours suddenly felt garish.

He turned to the rosy white one. ‘Then you must be Flo.’

She flushed deeper as the old mirling nodded. ‘Yep, that’s Flo, and this here is Molly.’ He rested his hand on the dark one’s shoulder. ‘Call me Grandad, everyone does. The clown over there is Flo’s brother, Eddy.’

The strawhead had drifted away to make faces at the cat, which settled to wait for another fish.

Flo frowned. ‘There m-must be something we can do about that cat.’

Flash turned to the old mir. ‘You can’t have always been called Grandad.’

‘No. Me sister were named Penny, for a coin that lay in the river, and I were Tuppence.’ He shook his head. ‘It in’t a name to grow old with.’

‘So, how did you come to the pond?’