The Night the Pond Watched Back

The first time the pond looked back at Pip, he pretended he had been looking somewhere else.

He had been looking for somewhere impressive to spend the night. Nell had already chosen the sheltered water behind the reeds. Three other Mallards were settling there, turning themselves into rounded islands of feathers. Pip had announced that he would keep watch from the landing.

“All night?” Nell asked.

“The important parts.”

“Which parts are those?”

“I shall recognise them.”

A few days earlier, they had rescued the old brass bell after a storm swept it from its hook. The hook was still bent. The bell stood on the broad stump beside the landing, its faded red cord curled around the base. Pip passed it carefully. He liked knowing where it was.

Toby, the visiting Tufted Duck who had helped recover it, had left the following morning. Without him, the deep pool seemed to be keeping its secrets again.

Across that pool, two small silver marks appeared between the reeds.

Pip stopped.

They disappeared.

He took another step. They appeared again.

“Nell,” he said, very casually, “how many eyes does a pond usually have?”

Two lights in the reeds

Nell came out from the shelter and followed his bill.

Moonlight lay in a broad path across the water. At its far edge, the two pale spots rocked together, close enough to belong to one face. One blinked. Then the other.

Behind them, something scratched against a reed stem.

“That,” said Pip.

Nell watched until a cloud covered the moon. Both spots vanished.

“I saw two patches of light.”

“With something behind them.”

“There is generally something behind a patch of light.”

“You know what I mean.”

She did. That was why she stayed beside him.

Gideon stood on his usual post, one long leg folded among his feathers. Pip called to him. The heron lifted his head without appearing surprised, which Pip thought must take years of practice.

“Something is watching the reed bed,” Pip said.

“What have you seen?”

“Eyes.”

“What have you actually seen?”

Pip drew a breath to repeat himself. Nell answered first.

“Two pale spots, low over the water. They go when the moon goes.”

Gideon unfolded his leg. “That is a useful beginning.”

He flew across the pool and landed on the mud beyond the reeds. From there, the spots were hidden behind stems. He moved a few steps. Water clicked against the bank.

“I cannot see what you can see,” he called.

Pip had expected him to name the creature immediately. Instead, the tallest bird on the pond was asking where to stand.

“Left of the fallen reed,” Nell called back. “Low down.”

The heron leaned. The cloud passed. The lights returned, then turned slowly away.

“Whatever it is,” Pip whispered, “it knows.”

Gideon returned to the landing. “It is moving with the water. I will have another look when there is more light.”

“We cannot wait until morning.”

“We need not wait until morning to be careful.”

They moved the resting Mallards farther inside the shelter. Nell checked the narrow entrance, a water passage between a muddy shoulder of bank and the outer reeds. It was clear. Beyond it lay the open pool; beyond that, beneath the willow, was another quiet place out of the wind.

“If we need to move,” she told the others, “we go together.”

Pip looked back. The pale marks had vanished again.

He disliked the way a thing could be absent and still take up so much room in his head.

A watch with too many noises

At first, keeping watch was easy.

There was the landing under Pip’s feet, the moon above his head and a whole pond in front of him. He would notice everything. He would remain extremely awake. He would be ready before anything happened.

Then a leaf fell behind him.

He spun round.

At the same moment, a fish disturbed the water to his left. He turned towards the splash. Something tapped the mill wall. When he looked back towards the reed entrance, he could not remember which dark line had been the fallen reed.

“Has it moved?” he asked.

“What?” said Nell.

“Everything.”

She climbed onto the low end of the landing. “You are trying to look in every direction at once.”

“There are things in every direction.”

“Yes.”

That was not the reassuring answer Pip had wanted.

They listened. Without their daytime bustle, Mill Pond had an astonishing number of small voices. The wheel timbers creaked although the wheel itself stood still. Water made soft swallowing sounds beneath the landing. Dry leaves travelled over stone with tiny hurried feet.

A long scrape came from the reeds.

Pip opened his bill.

Nell touched his wing. “Say what you heard.”

“A scrape.”

“Where?”

“The entrance. I think.”

They waited. The scrape came again, followed by a small knock. Gideon turned his head towards it.

“I heard that too,” he said.

Pip felt relieved. Then he remembered what they had heard and stopped feeling relieved.

The wind freshened. Moonlight opened across the pond, and the two silver marks reappeared. They were closer to the narrow passage now.

One of the resting ducks raised her head. “What is it?”

“We are finding out,” Nell answered.

Pip almost said, “Nothing to worry about.” He stopped. He did not know that. He also did not know that there was something to worry about.

For once, neither answer seemed big enough for his mouth.

The mistake at the bell

Another scrape. A rustle. The two pale marks tilted, and Pip saw a long dark shape slide behind them.

He lunged for the faded red cord.

The bell tipped against the stump. Its note broke across the pond.

All three resting Mallards burst from the shelter at once.

“Where?” one called.

“Which way?” called another.

Pip had not decided.

They crowded the passage. Wings beat water. A brown duck caught her flank against the reeds and backed into the bird behind her. The silver spots bobbed beyond them, nearer than before.

“Stop,” Nell called. “Back into the shelter. There is room behind you.”

Her voice was firm enough to give them something to do. One duck turned. The others followed. The entrance cleared.

Gideon landed beside it, tall and unmistakable.

“Stay there,” he told the resting birds. “We are checking your way out.”

Pip let go of the cord.

The bell rocked once more and fell silent.

He had imagined the whole pond springing neatly into action. He had not imagined frightened birds asking him a question he could not answer.

Nell came back slowly.

“I thought they needed warning,” he said.

“They did. They also needed somewhere to go.”

“I made it worse.”

“You frightened them. We settled them. Now help me make the next bit better.”

He looked towards Gideon. “Should I leave the bell alone?”

“Until we agree what its sound means.”

So they agreed. One brief ring would mean: wake and listen. Nell’s voice would guide the ducks. Gideon would stand at the checked entrance. Pip would stay at the landing until everyone had answered.

“And if I see the eyes?”

“Tell us where,” said Nell. “We still need to know.”

She returned to the shelter to explain the plan. Pip remained beside the bell.

The cord was damp where he had held it. He smoothed its loose end against the stump with his bill, putting off looking at the water.

When he finally looked, he noticed that one of the pale marks was higher than the other.

He remembered them being level.

He watched longer.

A ripple lifted the higher mark and lowered the other. Then both disappeared behind a thin screen of reeds.

He did not ring.

“Gideon,” he called. “They are turning. Like the two ends of a stick.”

What the moon showed

Gideon waded along the outer bank. This time Nell stood on the landing, watching the marks while Pip described where they had gone.

“A little towards the mill. No, back. Beside the reed that leans across the water.”

“There are several,” said Gideon.

“The one with the broken top,” Nell added.

The heron bent his neck. His bill touched something with a hollow wooden knock.

He drew back.

“A branch.”

For a moment, Pip could not make that small word fit the size of his fear.

“With eyes?”

“With two places where smaller branches broke away.”

The moon emerged. Gideon nudged the floating wood just enough to turn it. Two pale knots shone silver. When he turned it back, rough bark covered them.

Pip stared. The thing that had watched him all evening lay crooked across the water, carrying a few dead leaves and no opinions about ducks at all.

He gave a small, embarrassed laugh.

Then the wind caught the leaves.

The branch slid along the reed edge. Its thicker end knocked against the muddy shoulder of the entrance. The thin end swung across the passage and caught among the stems.

Gideon tried to shift it. It rolled beneath his bill, floated back and jammed again.

Nell went quiet.

“The way out,” she said.

Only a narrow strip of water remained between the forked branch and the bank. A duck might squeeze through now. If more leaves and weed gathered behind it, the passage would become a tangle.

Inside the shelter, storm-flattened stems made a roof too low for spreading wings. The bank behind it rose steeply through roots. Their comfortable sleeping place had only one easy doorway.

“Can we pull it away?” Pip asked.

“Not safely in this light,” Gideon replied. “I cannot see what is caught below it.”

Beyond the branch, the other ducks were settling again. One tucked her bill into her feathers. They knew the eyes were wood. They did not know their doorway was closing.

Pip looked at the bell, then at Nell.

“Wake and listen?”

“Yes,” she said. “This time we are ready.”

The voices across the water

Pip braced his foot against the bell’s rim and pulled once.

The note travelled over the pond.

Three heads lifted.

“We are moving to the willow,” Nell called. “One at a time. Come to Gideon, then follow me.”

The first duck approached the gap. Gideon stood beside the thick end of the branch, showing the open water with his bill. Nell waited beyond it.

“Here,” she called softly.

The duck slipped through.

Pip watched from the landing. Two ducks inside the shelter. One beside Nell. Gideon at the gap. He repeated the places to himself, keeping each bird in the little map of his head.

Then a cloud covered the moon.

The path of silver folded away. The willow became a darker shape among dark shapes. Nell’s brown feathers vanished into the pond.

“I cannot see you,” called the second duck.

Pip felt the old urge to make a loud noise immediately.

Instead, he looked for what he could still recognise. Gideon’s pale neck. The broken reed. The gap on the bank side of the branch.

“Gideon is at the opening,” he called. “Nell is just beyond him.”

“Here,” Nell answered.

The second duck moved towards her voice, hesitated at the fork and edged through. Gideon kept still. The water stirred around his legs.

“Two through,” Pip said.

The last duck had backed into the thickest reeds. Pip could hear her moving but could not see her.

“Is the thing still there?” she asked.

“The branch is still there,” Pip answered. “The gap is still open. Gideon is beside it.”

There was a silence.

“And you?”

“At the landing. I am staying until you come out.”

She pushed forward. A stem rattled against her feathers. Pip held his breath as she reached the passage.

A gust dragged a raft of leaves towards the branch.

“Keep coming,” Nell called.

The duck turned sideways, slipped past the fork and emerged into open water just as the leaves gathered behind her.

“Three,” Pip said.

He said it again, louder. “All three.”

Nell led the small group towards the willow. Pip left the bell on its stump and swam after them. Behind him, the branch knocked once against the bank. He knew the sound now.

That did not make the passage safe. It made the sound something he could understand.

A place to close his eyes

Under the willow, the water was quiet.

The three Mallards settled near the bank. Nell chose the outer edge. Pip came alongside her, so close that their feathers almost touched.

“I can take the next watch,” he offered.

“After you rest.”

“I am still quite awake.”

He yawned halfway through awake.

Nell turned an eye towards him. “Convincing.”

Gideon landed on a low patch of firm bank.

“At first light,” he said, “we can look for another entrance to the reed shelter. The branch may move when the wind drops.”

“And if it does not?”

“We have this place.”

Pip looked around. The willow had been there every day of his life. He had fed beneath it, sheltered from rain beneath it and once mistaken one of its roots for a particularly unhelpful worm. Tonight, with the others resting nearby, it seemed newly useful.

“I thought keeping watch meant noticing everything,” he said.

Nell watched a ripple reach the bank.

“I missed the branch moving while I was talking to the others. You saw that.”

“After I rang the bell wrong.”

“Before you rang it right.”

He tucked one cold foot into his feathers.

Above the mill, the cloud thinned. A few stars showed. Across the pool, the branch rolled a little, and its two pale knots caught the moon again.

Pip could still make a face out of them if he tried.

He stopped trying.

The following morning would bring a new visitor, a small brown duck with a short grey bill and a journey she did not yet know how to describe. But for now there was only the willow, the water and Nell beside him.

“If anything changes,” he murmured.

“I will tell you.”

His bill found the warm shelter of his back feathers.

The pond went on making its small sounds. This time, Pip let some of them happen without him.