The Fog
Allan Baillie
I was fishing in the deep water and still smelling the ancient woman's cauldron on the slope when the fog arrived. The ancient woman pickled strange things in her cauldron and I was wondering how those pickled pieces would taste. The fog rolled across the still water, drifted over bobbing seagulls, the grey beach, the old woman's hut and the ruin on the hill. It slid slowly, as silent as the tide. It muffled the seagulls to the squeaks of mice and the water lapping on the beach. But that was quite normal for fog and mist on this water. I ignored it, dived and got on with my fishing.
But when I surfaced with my catch, a trout, I could not see anything. The ruin, the ancient woman's hut, the beach, the seagulls – all had gone into grey mist, and when I lifted my fish above the water to inspect it, I couldn't see it wither. I couldn't even hear the drops from the fish splash into the water. And then I realised that I didn't know the way to go. The beach could be ahead or behind or to the left or anywhere …
I have to admit I was a bit frightened.
But that was stupid. All I had to do was float in the water until the sun burned away this nuisance. And even that was a bit stupid. I have been hunting fish for a long time in this water. All I had to do was taste the current down below and I'd know where I was – roughly. I could nudge the current and tell that the beach was on my left, about a hundred metres away.
So I dived. Almost immediately I found a current but it didn't feel right. The water was warm and very clear, so clear I could see the bottom. Now I was a little bit confused. I could see sand and swaying green seaweed.
Suddenly a great white-grey fish slid toward me and showed its teeth, an arc of pointed fangs with blood still trailing. I had never seen anything like this hideous fish and I was terrified. My head recoiled in alarm, but I knew that any sign of fear would bring on those teeth. I hopelessly tried to grin at the fish, baring my own teeth. And incredibly the mighty fish looked at me, saw my quivering lip, flicked its tail and scooted away. I watched the cowardly fish go, then I shivered and swam to the surface.
Then I knew that I was in terrible trouble.
The fog had completely gone, as if it had never been. But now I was looking at a simmering sea reaching a horizon that I had not seen before. There was a sun near the horizon but I didn't know it. It was a bigger sun, burning deep red, and it shimmered in the air. I was totally lost in a hostile sea with a different sun. I think I shrieked in panic, then I heard the seagulls and I turned in the water.
I calmed down a little. The seagulls were flapping away from the water, probably driven off by my scream, but I could see land and that was better. Although I had not seen this land before. The grey beach, the old woman's hut, the brown hill and the ruin had been replaced by a grim island and a curling river. The island had only scrub and a few straggly saplings clinging onto its sandstone and it looked like some crouching beast. I felt that the island was watching me.
I thought of swimming into the empty sea to get away from the island, but I knew I had to go into the river to survive. So slowly I slid toward the island and the water changed from blue to grey. Three eagles scudded in the sky above and circled me until I was deep in the river. The eagles went off to hunt fish in the sea and I cruised the bottom. Bushy hills crowded the area as I moved along and the water became muddy with less salt. I didn't like the river much but I started to relax and began to think of food.
I'd intended to save the trout I had caught on the other side of the fog, but I ate it suddenly. I wondered if there were fish in the river and if I would be able to eat them. I dived down, saw a fat grey fish and lunged for it. But this fish was fast. The fish flicked around and scorched away, but I raced after it. I was not used to the water's warmth and cloudiness, but I was accelerating in the chase. Soon I caught up with the fish and I could almost imagine its taste in my mouth –
Then there was a bolt through the water and my fish was whipped away. I couldn't work it out, and I was frowning as I thrashed to the surface.
There, floating on the water, was a very small boat made of bark. A blackened man stood in it as if he had been stoking the sun. He had a long pointed stick and he was pulling my fish from it when he saw me. He pointed his stick at me.
‘Oh …' he said.
For a moment he stared at me and I wondered what the blackened man would taste like. But then he lowered his stick and with an odd smile he offered me the fish. I gently took the offering from his hand and nodded. He nodded back, picked up a branch of leaves from the bottom of his boat and paddled away furiously.
After that I saw quite a few other blackened people. When the tide was low some of the women and children came over to the bank and I watched them pulling black shells from the rocks. I tried a few and they were delicious – better than any of the fish – once I had mastered cracking the black shells with my teeth. The children waved at me until their mothers told them to stop. I guess I looked dangerous. But I had decided not to eat them anyway, despite the children calling me a funny name.
I caught fish in the river and a few ducks in the little inlets – two of the ducks I caught in mid-flight. I even crept past that menacing island to chase seals, but I almost ran into an immense fish that made the toothy-fish look like a shrimp. This great fish blew a thunder of water from its back at me and sailed past. That was enough; I slithered back into the river, buried myself in the mud at the bottom and slept.
* * *
When I woke up things had changed again. The blackened people had moved to a small stream and there were red-faced people everywhere. There were huts on the hills and bigger boats of wood floated over the river. It was noisy, with a few explosions on the banks and trees kept crashing down. I didn't like it at all and I wanted to see if the fog had returned to the sea. I slipped past the island, keeping a nervous eye open for any of the big fish.
The fog was not there, but there were two creatures that were worse than the squirting fish and the fish with the bloody teeth. In the distance these creatures looked like seagulls but they were far bigger than the squirting fish. They had opened their white wings and were running from the wind, but they could not quite take off. Then I realised that when they finally did fly they could pluck me from the sea like an eagle snatching a trout. I scuttled back to the river and hid in the mud once again.
I oozed out of the mud at night, figuring that the giant seagulls couldn't see me. There was a little light wandering through the bushes at the edge of a cliff and it was singing. The singing sounded like a wail from a dying bird, but I was curious and I swam closer to the light, lifted my head and …
‘Bunyip!'
The light crashed over some rocks and splashed over the water. A red-faced man was carrying the light and he was staggering away. His breath was heavy with something noxious. I knew that smell but I couldn't remember from where.
‘Bunyip, bunyip!' he howled as he accelerated.
At least I could remember that. That's what the blackened children had called me.
The red-faced man thundered along the cliff top, hit a big tree, spun away and bolted over the edge. He was running in the air until he splashed into the water.
I went over to the man to have a look but he seemed to be asleep under water so I nudged him into the shallows. Then I peered down at his red face and the white hair under his chin, and I wondered how that man had got the name for me from the blackened children. Maybe these peoples became whiter as they grew older?
Then the man bubbled and snored at me. His breath was redolent of concentrated wheat and other strange smells from plants and ashes. And that brought back the memory of the ancient woman near the ruin with her bubbling cauldron full of strange pickled things. I had sniffed in that cauldron apples, turnips, fish, frogs and birds – that ancient woman would pickle almost anything.
And this red-faced man was pickled.
His eyes opened, he looked at me, screamed, galloped away over the rocks and crashed through the forest. I looked after him and wondered why anyone would pickle a man. Then I saw drops of blood from the red-faced man. I sniffed at a drop and picked up salt, rust and wheat. I licked at it and the taste was delicious!
I spent the rest of the night sitting at the bottom of the river wondering about pickled men and I realised that I would have to investigate them tomorrow.
Next night I came out of the river and sniffed the air around where I first saw the pickled man and I picked up a very strong scent of concentrated wheat and different types of sweetness and bitterness from a small track. I followed the track and soon I could see a glimmer of light through the trees.
I tried to creep through the forest but it was hard. I was too big in this brittle forest; I was better in water. But I managed to furtively move closer to see that the light was glowing from something like a giant seagull's broken wing. I was about to shuffle away in fright but then I heard several men moaning their song under the broken wing. I saw the men's shadows in the glow of the wing and smelt the concentrated wheat and different types of sweetness so strongly that my belly rumbled.
Men were pickling themselves under that broken wing! I became so excited I accidentally knocked over a tree.
That terrible noise stopped the pickled men's moaning song. And then the man who had fallen in the water the previous night put his head out of the white wing. He shouted ‘Bunyip!' and ran, throwing his arms about. The other men shoved their heads out and shouted a lot of things and tumbled over each other. The broken wing dipped and suddenly flared into a fire.
I charged toward the pickled men but they untangled themselves and scattered like a panicked school of fish. I was a little hurt and I thought of catching a couple of them for a sniff, but they were too quick and the trees got in my way. So I settled for a look at the broken wing.
It didn't look like a part of a giant seagull any more. It didn't look like anything. Little flames were nibbling at the grass and leaves and black ash floated down on the flattened area. The ground reeked of pickling. There were funny big shells lying around, black shells, brown shells, white shells and each different shell had a special smell.
I poked at a white shell – ten times as big as one of the rock shells – and I saw that it was leaking from one end. When I sniffed at it my nose sneezed three times and I staggered until I sat on a tree. But the white shell had a lovely scent, like berries all munched together. I picked up the shell and carefully tasted it. More berries and wheat but then it was warm in my throat. I gulped all of it and licked the sides of the white shell and there was a gentle burning in my belly.
I picked up a brown shell but this time it wasn't leaking. But really that didn't matter. I had learned how to get the food from the shells on the rocks, hadn't I? I cracked the brown shell with my teeth and the concentrated wheat blasted down my throat and my eyes bulged. As I spat out the pieces of the shell they seemed to lose their brownness. I opened my mouth to cool my throat for a while, and after a time the scorching became a glowing warmth. I liked it, so I opened another.
I opened every shell around there. The taste of them became blurred and I forgot to spit some of the shells. My head began to hammer as if little men were trying to break out. Suddenly I realised that I had pickled myself!
Grabbing a tree for support I pulled away from the clearing and the broken wing, but it was too late. I stumbled down the little track and I knew that I was dying. My head was about to drop off from my body, my belly was carrying a wild thunderstorm and everything was swinging before my eyes.
I lurched to the cliff, toppled to the river and swam very slowly to the bottom. I covered myself with mud and waited for the end.
* * *
Many, many moons later, I rolled over and drank the muddy river until my parched throat wasn't feeling like a gravel track. Slowly I surfaced and saw several huts, bigger than before, and a long bridge across the river. I was not dead. I had only just taken a sleep but I would not touch the pickling shells ever again.
After I caught a few fish to keep my rumbling belly happy I drifted along the river to see what had happened while I'd been asleep. The river was down, the taste was bitter and suddenly the water hummed. Something thrashed through the water toward me so I scudded to the bottom, but there wasn't much room between the surface and the bottom. The noisy thing passed overhead but I felt the surge in the water above me and I could see the wake surging to the edges of the river.
For a moment I thought that it was one of the giant seagulls taking off but when I surfaced I saw that it was a boat – a boat that galloped across the water and roared angrily at the hills. I wanted to get away from this terrible river but now night was falling and I was still hungry.
I gently drifted up a quiet stretch of the river looking for fish or food. Happily I saw some of the small black shells I had eaten with the black people. But these were not on rocks, they were dangling above the water in odd wooden frames and there were thousands of them. All I had to do was swim over and eat.
So I did. I would have finished the shells on that night but I thought that it would be nice to save some for the next evening. So I swam away and burped in the bottom of the river.
The following night I arrived at the place of the black shells, my mouth dripping with anticipation. I leaned over the shells and opened my jaws …
And everything went berserk. Several bright lights blazed at me, a lot of boats roared and raced at me. Men shouted at me, ‘King seal?' ‘Elephant seal!' ‘Bunyip!' ‘Giant squid!'
I raced away from the bright lights and the roaring boats and the shouting men. They chased me under the bridge, down the river, past the grim island – and then I saw the fog rolling in from the sea.
I skimmed across the water and dived into the fog.
* * *
I knew I was home when I tasted the cold sweet water of the long lake. I dived down, down to the black darkness, shaking the mud from my body, and then surfaced to see the ruin and the grey beach. Now I would not hear funny names like ‘bunyip'. Here they call me a special name, and here I can have trout today, or a goat, or a deer …
Then there was a terrible sound, a moaning song floating from the shore and I sniffed the deep scent of concentrated wheat. The ancient woman had gone from the shadow of the ruined castle, but she had taught me something. She pickled apples, turnips, fish – everything that she wanted to eat.
I slid softly to the dark shore.
I would never crack another pickle shell, but for some reason several men had been pickling themselves – for me. They even sang their terrible songs to attract me. I was not about to complain.
The pickled man sang: ‘I'll take the low road …'
I nibbled a thistle and waited. Waited for my meal to come closer …