David Blaize and the Blue Door

It was neither cold nor wet below the glass roof of the lake, for, as David already knew, when you are completely in the water, from your head to your heels, you never think of saying ‘Oh, how wet it is!’ and it is only when a piece of you is wet, like when you are washing your hands, or a snowball goes down your neck, that you think of wetness. Certainly also it was not cold, because there were so many red-leaf fires burning. Up overhead the moon shone very brightly through what David knew was ice to the ordinary world, but which it was much more correct to call fish-glass, and it made the most lovely lights in it, just as if all the diamond tiaras and emerald and ruby necklaces had been mashed up in the fish-glass.

‘That’s something to know,’ he said to himself. ‘When there’s fish-glass on the lake, I shall make a hole in it and get underneath. What nonsense grown-up people talk! They all say it’s dangerous to get under the ice – fish-glass, but it was the only safe thing to do. I suppose I’d better call on some fish and thank them for rescuing me.’

He began walking towards one of the red fires round which there were a lot of fish collected, but they all looked so very uninterested and solemn (‘just as if they were hearing a sermon in church and not attending,’ thought David), that he decided that he would explore a little first, and turned quickly off in another direction. At once he felt he was not walking any more, for his feet had come off the ground, and he was lying flat a few feet from the floor. This sensation was rather like losing your balance, and he made a sort of wriggle with his feet in order to recover it again. But instead of recovering his footing, he merely darted off at a great speed in a perfectly unexpected direction.

‘Why, it’s a sort of mad flying in the water,’ he said to himself. ‘O-oh, I see, it’s swimming fish-fashion.’

This was a great discovery; he flicked his feet again, and plunged into a great thicket of water-trees that waved and swayed round him. Once more he kicked, but instead of darting forward again, he came to a dead stop, though he couldn’t understand how he had kicked differently from before. Another kick made him spin round, and once again he kicked as he had kicked the first time, and flew out into the open.

‘Take care where you’re going,’ said a thick, bored voice near him, and, turning round very cautiously lest he should fly off again, he saw an old brown trout, not looking at him exactly, but not looking anywhere else. One eye – the only one that David could see, in fact – seemed to be turned towards him rather than towards anything else, but it merely stared vacantly at him, as if it was painted there.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said David, ‘but I don’t seem to go where I want.’

The trout opened and shut its mouth once or twice without saying anything, and then it slewed round and turned its other eye upon him. Then it turned its back on him altogether, and took no further notice of him.

This was rather an unpromising beginning, but David was so eager to learn how to swim, fish-fashion, that he risked being snubbed.

‘Could you spare me the time just to show me the sort of way it goes?’ he asked.

‘You wave yourself,’ said the trout, ‘and then you go. The sooner you go, the better I shall be pleased.’

David waved himself, and ran into the trout’s tail.

‘Don’t do that,’ said the trout, not the least angrily, but in the same bored manner. ‘It’s bad manners to hit anybody’s tail. You’re a very ill-bred sort of creature.’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said David. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you.’

‘Then you did it without meaning,’ said the trout, with its back to him, ‘which is worse, because there’s no sense in it, if it doesn’t mean anything. I wish you would go away. Right away, I mean: none of your hanging about here. Get some low, coarse fish to teach you. I’m busy.’

David felt rather discouraged. He didn’t know what adventure might happen next, or how soon it might happen, and he wanted to learn how to swim fish-fashion before something else took place. But he felt he could not face any more dull eyes just yet, which looked at you as if you didn’t mean anything, and so he moved very cautiously away from this stupid old thing, for fear of butting it again, and began practising by himself. He found it was not so difficult as it seemed to be at first (which is the case with most things). The great point was to make up your mind first where you wanted to go to, and then look at the place and wave yourself, and he found that he usually went in that sort of direction, just as if there was something inside him that knew how to do it, if he only told it what he wanted. He passed a fish now and then, which took no notice whatever of him, and presently he found he was getting on so well that he wished to show off to somebody, so he returned in the direction of the trout that was so busy. There it was precisely as David had left it, doing nothing whatever except slowly opening and shutting its mouth, and staring at nothing at all. So David gave a tremendous kick in order to dash up to it in a real fish-boy-like manner, and, miscalculating his direction, ran violently into its nose.

‘Don’t go on doing that,’ said the trout. ‘You butt me here, and you butt me there, and you’ve got no self-control. It’s very boring of you. Better go away. You needn’t bother to come back any more, for ever. I shan’t miss you at all. I only wish you had missed me.’

‘I wish I had too,’ said David. ‘But I was getting on so nicely, and I wanted to show somebody.’

‘And you’re mudding everything up,’ said the trout. ‘So you’d better show somebody else, and not me. I don’t care what you do, or where you go, so long as you don’t do and go it here.’

David felt annoyed at this.

‘Are all trout as rude as you?’ he asked.

The trout opened its mouth two or three times, and each time David thought it was going to speak.

‘Yes,’ it said at length. ‘All.’

‘I should think you must get rather tired of each other’s company then,’ said David.

Again it seemed as if the trout was going to speak, and this time David counted that it opened and shut its mouth eleven times before it answered.

‘We are,’ it said. ‘We’re each of us tired of everybody else. But I’m most tired of you. I hate being interrupted when I’m busy, and I hate people running into my face. I never have liked it, and I don’t mean to begin now.’

‘Well, I’ve apologised for that,’ said David. ‘I can’t do more.’

This time the trout opened and shut its mouth only nine times before it answered.

‘Yes, you can,’ it said. ‘You can go away. I can’t think why you don’t.’

David was naturally a polite boy, but when any one was rude to him he could easily be rude back. He forgot all about his swimming fish-fashion.

‘I don’t believe you’re a bit busy,’ he said. ‘You haven’t done a thing since I was here before. You’ve just waved and stared.’

The trout looked at David with one eye, then moved his head and looked at him with the other.

‘That’s two things then,’ it said.

‘Yes, but that doesn’t make you busy,’ said David. ‘You couldn’t possibly be idler. That doesn’t count.’

A faint gleam of intelligence came into that foolish face.

‘I can count,’ said the trout. ‘One – two – four – three – nine and a half – a hundred. There!’

‘You’re quite wrong,’ said David. ‘It goes one – two – six – four. Let me see what does come after four?’ he added, suddenly forgetting how to count himself.

‘Nothing: that’s the end,’ said the trout. ‘You needn’t wait any longer. We’ve both finished. You may get down. Never mind about wiping your mouth or anything.’

‘One – two – six – fourteen,’ began David again, determined to get it right, when suddenly he was blown all sideways, as it were, by a tremendous draught of water, and the trout’s tail whisked by his face. As for the trout itself, that one swish of its tail had carried it ten yards away, and it was drifting back again with an enormous worm hanging out of its mouth. Its cheeks bulged with it, and its eyes stared so that David thought they would drop out. But in two or three gulps it managed to swallow the rest of the worm, and to David’s great surprise it looked almost pleasant and winked at him.

‘There!’ it said. ‘Now you know why I was so busy. I shall have a holiday for three minutes until I’m hungry again. Who are you, and what are you doing here, without being drowned? It’s all very irregular.’

‘I was a Field-Marshal last,’ began David, rather proudly.

‘What a stupid thing to be!’ said the trout, ‘especially as there aren’t any fields here. And who asked you to come to my lake?’

‘Nobody. I chose to come,’ said David.

‘Well, I choose next: I choose that you should go away. I believe you are a sort of caddis-worm, whom nobody likes.’

‘No, I’m not,’ said David. ‘I’m a boy.’

‘Then you can’t be a Field-Marshal. That’s one to me.’

‘Are we playing a game?’ he asked. ‘Is it a sort of happy families?’

‘No. Two to me. Go away. I’ve got to be busy again.’

‘What you mean by being busy,’ said David, ‘is that you want to eat something.’

The trout’s eye began to get glazed and vacant.