Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  He plunged on deeper and deeper, and at length, nuzzling softly the sandy bed of the stream with his blunt fish’s snout, he hid his head between two boulders at the bottom. There, under a net of bright green water-weed, he lay for a while utterly still, brooding again on his mother and on what her feelings would be if she should see him no more – or in the shape he was! Would that he had listened to her counsel, and had never so much as set eyes on rod or hook or line or float or water. He had wasted his young days in fishing, and now was fish for evermore.

  But as the watery moments sped by, this grief and despondency began to thin away and remembrance of the crafty and cruel magician came back to mind. Whatever he might look like from outside, John began to be himself again within. Courage, even a faint gleam of hope, welled back into his dull fish’s brains. With a flick of his tail he had drawn back out of the gloomy cranny between the boulders, and was soon disporting himself but a few inches below the surface of the stream, the sunlight gleaming golden on his scales, the cold blood coursing through his body, and but one desire in his heart.

  These high spirits indeed almost proved the end of him. For at this moment a prowling and hungry pike having from its hiding-place spied this plump young tench, came flashing through the water like an arrow from a bow, and John escaped the snap of its sharp-toothed jaws by less than half an inch. And when on land he had always supposed that the tench who is the fishes’ doctor was safe from any glutton! After this dizzying experience he swam on more needfully, playing a kind of hide-and-seek among the stones and weeds, and nibbling every now and again at anything he found to his taste. And the world of trees and sky in which but a few hours before he had walked about on his two human legs was a very strange thing to see from out of the rippling and distorting wavelets of the water.

  When evening began to darken overhead he sought out what seemed to be a safe lair for the night, and must soon have fallen into a long and peaceful fish’s sleep – a queer sleep too, for having no lids to his eyes they both remained open, whereas even a hare when he is asleep shuts only one!

  Next morning very early John was about again. A south wind must be blowing, he fancied, for there was a peculiar mildness and liveliness in the water, and he snapped at every passing tit-bit carried along by the stream with a zest and hunger that nothing could satisfy. Poor John, he had never dreamed a drowned fly or bee or a grub or caterpillar, or even water-weed, could taste so sweet. But then he had never tried to find out. And presently, dangling only a foot or two above his head, he espied a particularly juicy-looking and wriggling red worm.

  Now though, as has been said already, John as a child or even as a small boy, had refrained from tasting caterpillars or beetles or snails or woodlice, he had once – when making mud pies in his mother’s garden – nibbled at a little earth-worm. But he had not nibbled much. For this reason only perhaps, he stayed eyeing this wriggling coral-coloured morsel above his head. Memory too had told him that it is not a habit of worms to float wriggling in the water like this. And though at sight of it he grew hungrier and hungrier as he finned softly on, he had the good sense to cast a glance up out of the water. And there – lank and lean upon the bank above – he perceived the strangest shape in human kind he had ever set eyes on. This bony old being had scarcely any shoulders. His grey glassy eyes bulged out of his head above his flat nose. A tuft of beard hung from his cod-like chin, and the hand that clutched his fishing-rod was little else but skin and bone.

  ‘Now,’ thought John to himself, as he watched him steadily from out of the water, ‘if that old rascal there ain’t the Lord Fish in the rhyme, I’ll eat my buttons.’ Which was an easy thing to promise, since at this moment John hadn’t any buttons to eat. It was by no means so easy to make up his hungry fishy mind to snap at the worm and chance what might come after. He longed beyond words to be home again; he longed beyond words to get back into his own body again – but only (and John seemed to be even stubborner as a fish than he had been as a human), only if the beautiful lady could be relieved of her tail. And how could there be hope of any of these things if he gave up this chance of meeting the Lord Fish and of finding the pot of ‘unguent’ he had read of in the rhyme? The other had done its work with him quick enough!

  If nothing had come to interrupt these cogitations, John might have cogitated too long. But a quick-eyed perch had at this moment finned into John’s pool and had caught sight of the savoury morsel wriggling and waggling in the glass-clear water. At very first glimpse of him John paused no longer. With gaping jaws and one mad swirl of his fish-tail he sprang at the worm. A dart of pain flashed through his body. He was whirled out of the water and into the air. He seemed on the point of suffocation. And the next instant found him gasping and floundering in the lush green grass that grew beside the water’s brink. But the old angler who had caught him was even more skilful in the craft of fishing than John Cobbler was himself. Almost before John could sob twice, the hook had been extracted from his mouth, he had been swathed up from head to tail in cool green moss, a noose had been slipped around that tail, and poor John, dangling head downwards from the fisherman’s long skinny fingers, was being lugged away he knew not where. Few, fogged and solemn were the thoughts that passed through his gaping, gasping head on this dismal journey.

  Now the Lord Fish who had caught him lived in a low stone house which was surrounded on three sides by a lake of water, and was not far distant from his master’s – the Sorcerer. Fountains jetted in its hollow echoing chambers, and water lapped its walls on every side. Not even the barking of a fox or the scream of a peacock or any sound of birds could be heard in it; it was so full of the suffling and sighing, the music and murmuration of water, all day, all night long. But poor John being upside down had little opportunity to view or heed its marvels. And still muffled up in his thick green overcoat of moss he presently found himself suspended by his tail from a hook in the Lord Fish’s larder, a long cool dusky room or vault with but one window to it, and that only a hole in the upper part of the wall. This larder too was of stone, and apart from other fish as luckless as John who hung there gaping from their hooks, many more, plumper and heavier than he, lay still and cold on the slate slab shelves around him. Indeed, if he could have done so, he might have hung his head a little lower at being so poor a fish by comparison.

  Now there was a little maid who was in the service of this Lord Fish. She was the guardian of his larder. And early next morning she came in and set about her day’s work. John watched her without ceasing. So fish-like was the narrow face that looked out from between the grey-green plaits of her hair that he could not even guess how old she was. She might, he thought, be twelve; she might, if age had not changed her much, be sixty. But he guessed she must be about seventeen. She was not of much beauty to human eyes – so abrupt was the slope of her narrow shoulders, so skinny were her hands and feet.

  First she swept out the larder with a besom and flushed it out with buckets of water. Then, with an earthenware watering pot, and each in turn, she sprinkled the moss and weed and grasses in which John and his fellows were enwrapped. For the Lord Fish, John soon discovered, devoured his fish raw, and liked them fresh. When one of them, especially of those on the shelves, looked more solemn and motionless than was good for him, she dipped him into a shallow trough of running water that lay outside the door of the larder. John indeed heard running water all day long – while he himself could scarcely flick a fin. And when all this was done, and it was done twice a day, the larder-maid each morning chose out one or two or even three of her handsomest fish and carried them off with her. John knew – to his horror – to what end.

  But there were two things that gave him heart and courage in this gruesome abode. The first was that after her second visit the larder-maid treated him with uncommon kindness. Perhaps there was a look on his face not quite like that of her other charges. For John with his goggling ogling eyes would try to twist up his poor fish face into something of a smile when she ca
me near him, and – though very faintly – to waggle his tail tips, as if in greeting. However that might be, there was no doubt she had taken a liking to him. She not only gave him more of her fish-pap than she gave the rest, to fatten him up, but picked him out special dainties. She sprinkled him more slowly than the others with her water-pot so that he could enjoy the refreshment the more. And, after a quick, sly glance over her shoulder one morning she changed his place in the larder, and hung him up in a darker corner all to himself. Surely, surely, this must mean, John thought, that she wished to keep him as long as she could from sharing her master’s table. John did his best to croak his thanks, but was uncertain if the larder-maid had heard.

  This was one happy thing. His other joy was this. Almost as soon as he found himself safe in his corner, he had discovered that on a level with his head there stood on a shelf a number of jars and gallipots and jorams of glass and earthenware. In some were dried roots, in some what seemed to be hanks of grass, in others black-veined lily bulbs, or scraps of twig, or dried-up buds and leaves, like tea. John guessed they must be savourings his cook-maid kept for the Fish Lord to soak his fish in, and wondered sadly which, when his own turn came, would be his. But a little apart from the rest and not above eighteen inches from his nose, there stood yet another small glass jar, with greenish stuff inside it. And after many attempts and often with eyes too dry to read, John spelled out at last from the label of this jar these outlandish words: UNGUENTUM AD PISCES HOMINIBUS TRANSMOGRIFICANDOS. And he went over them again and again until he knew them by heart.

  Now John had left school very early. He had taken up crow-scaring at seven, pig-keeping at nine, turnip-hoeing at twelve – though he had kept up none of them for very long. But even if John had stayed at school until he was grown-up, he would never have learned any Latin – none at all, not even dog Latin – since the old dame who kept the village school at Tussock didn’t know any herself. She could cut and come again as easily as you please with the cane she kept in her cupboard, but this had never done John much good, and she didn’t know any Latin.

  John’s only certainty then, even when he had learned these words by heart, was that they were not good honest English words. Still, he had his wits about him. He remembered that there had been words like these written in red on the parchment over the top of the rhyme that now must be where his breeches were, since he had tucked it into his pocket – though where that was he hadn’t the least notion. But unguent was a word he now knew as well as his own name; and it meant ointment. Not many months before this, too, he had mended a chair for a great lady that lived in a high house on the village green – a queer lady too though she was the youngest daughter of a marquis of those parts. It was a job that had not taken John very long, and she was mightily pleased with it. ‘Sakes, John,’ she had said, when he had taken the chair back and put it down in the light of a window, ‘sakes, John, what a transmogrification!’ And John had blushed all over as he grinned back at the lady, guessing that she meant that the chair showed a change for the better.

  Then, too, when he was a little boy, his mother had often told him tales of the piskies. ‘Piskies, PISCES,’ muttered John to himself on his hook. It sounded even to his ear poor spelling, but it would do. Then too, HOMINIBUS. If you make a full round O of the first syllable it sounds uncommonly like home. So what the Lord Fish, John thought at last, had meant by this lingo on his glass pot must be that it contained an UNGUENT to which some secret PISKY stuff or what is known as wizardry had been added, and that it was useful for ‘changing’ for the better anything or anybody on which it was rubbed when away from HOME. Nobody could call the stony cell in which the enchanted maid with the fish-tail was kept shut up a home; and John himself at this moment was a good many miles from his mother!

  Besides, the stuff in the glass pot was uncommonly like the ointment which he had taken from the other pot and had smeared on his ribs. After all this thinking John was just clever enough to come to the conclusion that the one unguent had been meant for turning humans into fish, and that this in the pot beside him was for turning fish into humans again. At this his flat eyes bulged indeed in his head, and in spite of the moss around them his fins stood out stiff as knitting needles. He gasped to himself – like a tench out of water. And while he was still brooding on his discovery, the larder-maid opened the door of the larder with her iron key to set about her morning duties.

  ‘Ackh,’ she called softly, hastening towards him, for now she never failed to visit him first of all her charges, ‘ackh, what’s wrong with ’ee? What’s amiss with ’ee?’ and with her lean finger she gently stroked the top of his head, her narrow bony face crooked up with care at seeing this sudden change in his looks. She did not realize that it was not merely a change but a transmogrification! She sprinkled him twice, and yet a third time, with her ice-cold water, and with the tips of her small fingers pushed tiny gobbet after gobbet of milk-pap out of her basin into his mouth until John could swallow no more. Then with gaspings and gapings he fixed his nearer eye on the jar of unguent or ointment, gazed back rapidly at the little larder-maid, then once again upon the jar.

  Now this larder-maid was a great-grandniece of the Lord Fish, and had learned a little magic. ‘Aha,’ she whispered, smiling softly and wagging her finger at him. ‘So that’s what you are after, Master Tench? That’s what you are after, you crafty Master Sobersides. Oh, what a scare you gave me!’

  Her words rang out shrill as a whistle, and John’s fellow fish, trussed up around him in their moss and grass and rushes on their dishes, or dangling from their hooks, trembled at sound of it, A faint chuffling, a lisping and quiet gaggling, tiny squeaks and groans filled the larder. John had heard these small noises before, and had supposed them to be fish talk, but though he had tried to imitate them he had never been sure of an answer. All he could do, then, was what he had done before – he fixed again his round glassy eye first on the jar and then on the little larder-maid, and this with as much gentle flattery and affection as he could manage. Just as when he was a child at his mother’s knee he would coax her to give him a slice of bread pudding or a spoonful of jam.

  ‘Now I wonder,’ muttered the larder-maid as if to herself, ‘if you, my dear, are the one kind or the other. And if you are the other, shall I, my gold-green Tinker, take the top off the jar?’

  At this John wriggled might and main, chapping with his jaws as wide and loud as he could, looking indeed as if at any moment he might burst into song.

  ‘Ah,’ cried the maid, watching him with delight, ‘he understands! That he does! But if I did, precious, what would my lord the Lord Fish say to me? What would happen to me, eh? You, Master Tench, I am afraid, are thinking only of your own comfort.’

  At this John sighed and hung limp as if in sadness and dudgeon and remorse. The larder-maid eyed him a few moments longer, then set about her morning work so quickly and with so intense a look on her lean narrow face, with its lank dangling tresses of green-grey hair, that between hope and fear John hardly knew how to contain himself. And while she worked on, sprinkling, feeding, scouring, dipping, she spoke to her charges in much the same way that a groom talks to his horses, a nurse to a baby, or a man to his dogs. At last, her work over, she hastened out of the larder and shut the door.

  Now it was the habit of the Lord Fish on the Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays of every week, to make the round of his larder, eyeing all it held, plump fish or puny, old or new, ailing or active; sometimes gently pushing his finger in under the moss to see how they were prospering for his table. This was a Thursday. And sure enough the larder-maid presently hastened back, and coming close whispered up at John, ‘Hst, he comes! The Lord Fish! Angry and hungry. Beware! Stay mum as mum can be, you precious thing. Flat and limp and sulky, look ’ee, for if the Lord Fish makes his choice of ’ee now, it is too late and all is over. And above all things, don’t so much as goggle for a moment at that jar!’

  She was out again like a swallow at nesting-time, and
presently there came the sound of slow scraping footsteps on the flagstones and there entered the Lord Fish into the larder, the maid at his heels. He was no lord to look at, thought John; no marquis, anyhow. He looked as glum and sullen as some old Lenten cod in a fishmonger’s, in his stiff drab-coloured overclothes. And John hardly dared to breathe, but hung – mouth open and eyes fixed – as limp and lifeless from his hook in the ceiling as he knew how.

  ‘Hoy, hoy, hoy,’ grumbled the Lord Fish, when at last he came into John’s corner. ‘Here’s a dullard. Here’s a rack of bones. Here’s a sandy gristle-trap. Here’s a good-as-dead-and-gone-and-useless! Ay, now my dear, you can’t have seen him. Not this one. You must have let him go by, up there in the shadows. A quick eye, my dear, a quick watchful eye! He’s naught but muddy sluggard tench ’tis true. But, oh yes, we can better him! He wants life, he wants exercise, he wants cosseting and feeding and fattening. And then – why then, there’s the makings in him of as comely a platter of fish as would satisfy my Lord Bishop of the Seven Sturgeons himself.’ And the little larder-maid, her one hand clutching a swab of moss and the other demurely knuckled over her mouth, sedately nodded.

  ‘Ay, master,’ said she, ‘he’s hung up there in the shadows, he is. In the dark. He’s a mumper, that one, he’s a moper. He takes his pap but poorly. He shall have a washabout and a dose of sunshine in the trough. Trust me, master, I’ll soon put a little life into him. Come next Saturday, now!’