Young Fredle - Louise Yates [51]
Darkness and exhaustion caught up with him. How far across the field he might have gotten, Fredle couldn’t know. He might have been only ten steps from the stream—although he doubted that, since he could neither hear nor smell water. But he had come to a point—and also to a thick tuft of tall grass—where he could go no farther. He curled himself up on the ground at the foot of the stalks to rest, to sleep.
Neither the stars nor a moon could be seen, only low clouds.
Maybe, he thought hopefully, he was difficult to see in whatever shelter the grass was giving him, in the darkness.
Tired as he was, he was not so deeply asleep that rain didn’t wake him when it began falling again, pattering onto the stalks around him. He awoke cold and, of course, wet. He rose unhappily to his feet and drank some of the rainwater that was weighing down the long blades of grass. Then he set off again, going through more darkness. The air was thick with falling rain, and lightless. Fredle could hear nothing except the sound of rain hitting the ground. The sky overhead was dark, the field all around him more densely dark and filled with moving shapes. The only color was the occasional silver glint of rain, falling.
He didn’t allow himself to wonder what the coming day would bring. He just set off in the direction that felt right to his shoulders. He set off and kept going.
A lightening in the air told him when day began, which was good news. Still, he could see only rain and wet grass. He trudged on and on and then—all unready—he had come to water. He heard a gurgling sound behind the pattering of rain. He smelled a change in the watery odor of the air. He lifted his eyes from the place where he planned to place his front paws for the next step and saw that he stood on the bank of the stream.
In fact, Fredle was so surprised that he almost slid down into the water, what with the wet soil and the slippery grass of the bank; he just managed to save himself.
Standing on the bank, the water rushing by below him, the rain falling down on him from above, Fredle felt like giving a cheer. “Woo-Hah!” he laughed, as wild as any raccoon. He had done it! “Woo-Hah!” He was still wet and cold, he was still hungry and tired, but he had found the stream. Maybe, as the day went on, the rain would stop and there would be sunlight and the sunlight would warm him and dry him. He hoped so. In the meantime, he set about finding one of the ramp plants, and digging it up, and eating it. The ramp tasted so good that he set about digging up another, and then—he didn’t think he’d ever been so hungry in his life—he rooted around among the stalks of grass at the steep side of the stream for a third.
That was when he lost his footing. He scrabbled at the dirt with his rear paws, with his front paws, desperately seeking some kind of grip as he started to slip down the bank. He was still struggling when the water closed over his head.
Fredle gasped—it was so cold! When he gasped his mouth filled and he wanted to cough but he couldn’t because his throat was full. There was water all around him. His feet searched, but he was upside down until the current flipped him over and he felt something solid underfoot and without even thinking—he could no more think than swim—he pushed against it, pushed hard, to escape back up into the air, where he would be able to breathe. The water was flowing past him and dragging him along.
His head broke the surface and then he could cough, while the fast-moving stream shoved him back toward the same bank he had fallen from, although a good distance down from the spot where he had lost his footing. Fredle snatched at a narrow root that stuck out from the side and clung to it, until he had the strength to pull himself up onto it. Hanging over it, he coughed until at last he could breathe easily again. He shivered, until he shivered himself warm. Only a pale early-morning light was in the air. He looked up through the rain to see