Pond People
22 Riding the Current

With one thrust of his tail, Eddy was beside him. ‘Flash… how…? Magic! I should have known.’

Flo joined them. ‘You’re bleeding. Let me look at that.’

She looked up with concern in her eyes. Flash moved his hand away and watched her kneel to inspect the wound in his side.

Of course. Shows of strength and feats of heroism would never be the way to get Flo’s attention.

But now he put his hand over hers and rose to his feet. She rose with him as he turned from side to side, staring out into the water. ‘Where’s Grandad?’

She stepped back. ‘Is Grandad with you?’

He launched like a reed-shot to the surface, where the ball was bobbing away from the waterfall. Eddy followed him inside it but by then Flash had seen it was empty. He swam out as Molly and Flo reached them.

‘Are you sure he didn’t fall out over the pond?’ He turned again, searching. ‘Maybe when the ball hit the water?’

Molly squinted up at the waterlilies, in case he’d landed on one. ‘I didn’t see him. But I miss a lot.’

Flo eyes were skimming the surrounding waterscape. ‘Neither did I.’ Think! ‘He must have fallen out while we were in the air.’

Flash followed Molly’s eyes to the waterlilies. No, Grandad could have rolled into the pond if he’d landed on a lily pad.

New plants had changed the waterscape. Stems trailed into the pond from a patch of ground cover beside the waterfall.

‘Maybe he’s in the garden.’

Eddy called, ‘Flash, what are you doing?’

He was already climbing but dunked his head under the surface to reply, ‘I may be able to spot him from here.’

‘And then what?’ asked Molly. Her words hardly reached him through the air. ‘You can’t just… run out and get him.’

Eddy started to follow, shouting, ‘There’s nothing you can do, mate.’ He slid back into the pond, too weak to climb far out of water.

Flash turned to check his friend was safe. Flo nodded to him as she joined Eddy and he returned to his search for footholds between pebbles slippery with blanketweed.

He climbed up the waterfall and around its curve, losing sight of the pair below. Needing to breathe, he hooked one arm around a firmly lodged pebble and submerged his gills in the turbulent water.

As he came up again, he thought he saw eyes peeping around a stone.

How far up was the ball when it hit the waterfall? It had felt like a long roll down.

He could see no eyes up there now. Must have been his imagination.

Wishful thinking.

Clinging to the stone, he began a careful turn to search the garden, but his eye caught movement in the channel above and he twisted back.

His feet slipped and he clung to his stone with all the strength in his webbed fingers.

‘Whoopee-ee-ee!’

The cry drew nearer.

Skeltering down the waterfall, veering between stones and slithering over blanketweed, Grandad’s tail thrashed like a dodger’s.

‘Just like the riv-e-e-r…’ Flash caught, as Grandad bounced past, swerving just in time around the stone at the end.

He heard a tiny splash among the tumblings of the water before Eddy’s ‘Yay!’ filled his head.

Flash threw himself into the waterfall and hurtled after Grandad.