The Duck Who Forgot How to Float

Pip woke up one morning with a worry sitting on his chest like a wet leaf. He had forgotten how to float. He was sure of it.

“You cannot forget floating,” said Nell, who was already out on the water and had never worried about anything in her life. “Floating is not a thing you do. It is a thing that happens to you.”

“That,” said Pip, “is exactly what somebody who remembers how to float would say.”

So Pip sat on the bank. He watched the pond do its slow morning shine. He watched Nell drift past twice, on purpose, looking smug. He watched a beetle cross the mud with the confidence of an animal that had never once questioned its own legs.

By lunchtime the sun was hot and the water looked very cool and Pip had built up a truly excellent list of reasons to stay exactly where he was.

“Come on,” said Nell. “One toe.”

“One toe is how it starts.”

“One toe is how everything starts.”

Pip put in one toe. The pond, which had been floating ducks for approximately four thousand years, did not seem impressed by the drama. It simply held him — first the toe, then the foot, then, before Pip had time to argue with it, all of him.

He floated. Of course he floated.

“Well,” said Pip, drifting, deeply relieved and pretending not to be, “I suppose it came back to me.”

“I suppose it did,” said Nell, who knew better, and who was a good enough friend to leave it there.