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| Pond Creature by Katie |
When Coral opens her eyes, it looks at first as if the bubbles like crystal castles are still above her. Wait…no…it’s frogspawn! Yes, the bubbles are larger with black dots in the middle like thousands of eyes, eerily goggling around near the surface. A shadow breezes by swiftly over the bath, and the spawn seem to throb with anxiety, but don’t move otherwise. The shadow swoops again, but is bigger this time.
Omigod…she thinks. It’s a bird! What on earth is a bird doing inside the bathroom?
She has an urge to go up to the surface and fetch the frogspawn, before it becomes bird food. She wants to bring them to the bottom of the bath where she can keep them safe. But she doesn’t want to move, not yet. It’s so quiet and peaceful down here…
But then another shadow swoops, and she knows she has to go.
Near the surface the light changes. The water is the shade of grass when burnt under a long summer sun, and pondweeds dance and sway in the bath. It is much deeper than she expects. She must’ve left it running, she realises. She’ll reach for the taps when she gets to the top.
And when she does, her face and hair is covered in soft slime. She is no longer in the bath; she is in a pond. There is a large weeping willow that bends down over her, and bluebells beneath it on the edge of the pond. A heady waft of lavender floats by. It’s a garden she’s in, she comes to see; and, realising she’s naked, she tears a large water-lily from the roots and covers her chest. She must’ve left her nightgown behind. She can feel the smooth, slick bodies of fish brushing past her belly, and it tickles.
There is no sound but the faint buzzing of a dragonfly as it alights, rests, and then leaves the green foliage surrounding the pond. There are no shouts or screams anymore: just the simple peace of water and the hush of the willow leaves in a slight wind. She can’t see any birds above, but she gathers the frogspawn close to her, just in case.
Then she sees the legs below the curtain of willow braches. Trousered legs, with socks and trainers. A boy bends down and peers under the drape of leaves, staring at Coral, his face tilted to the side. He blinks and blinks again.
‘Huh – hello,’ he says. ‘What are you doing in the pond?’
Blushing, Coral slumps into the water so that he can’t see her skin. She is about to take the frogspawn back to the bottom of the bath, but then thinks better of it.
A call comes from a distance away. ‘Elliot! Dinner’s ready!’
The voice belongs to a woman – urgent but affectionate; the boy Elliot turns back to the world beyond the willow tree and shrieks ‘Coming!’ in reply. He looks back at Coral, fairly agitated.
She smiles, and raises her finger to her lips.
‘Hush,’ she whispers. ‘Keep me secret.’
She dips her head beneath the water, knowing that she will come back, and leaves a water-lily floating in her wake.
The End
It's been a while since I last posted a part of this short story, and if anyone's been following and eager to read the rest, sorry for the delay, and I hope you're not disappointed. It's more of a children's story, this one, and I've come to realise lately that it's for children that I'd most like to write for. I'm planning a small story, based on my characters I've created through my embroidery, that I want to send away one day in the hope I can get it published as a picture book. J'adore pictures books. Also, in spite of my mistrust of the increasingly popular e-readers, they nevertheless afford me the possibility of self-publishing short stories through Amazon for free so that anyone interested can download straight onto their computer of e-reader for a minimal cost, and therefore I can have a store where I sell my short stories. So that is a project for the future. For the moment, if you've fallen into this story at the scaly tail-end, other parts I'd posted can be found from the beginning if you search the archives from February onwards. It's short and sweet, and I hope you like. The above drawing is a sketch of Katie's she did after reading this story, so I thought it was appropriate to post alongside. FYI we've just come home from our last stay in London with big sis Lubix, so within the next couple of days we'll be blogging individually about our trip. Until then, sweet dreams
Nina x
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