Page 55 of The Two of Us at the End of the World

There are no ghosts watching for us in the future, little Mouse, Cat said.

She was wrong about that too.

Almost as wrong as Storm was about Freya being able to predict the future.

Come in, Cat said, nodding encouragingly at Storm who was still hesitating at the water’s edge. It’s quite shallow and nothing is going to eat you.

Well, I said. The pike is pretty big…

What’s a pike? said Storm, stepping back from the edge and looking at me in sudden suspicion.

A river shark, I said with a grin.

Stop it, Mouse, said Cat.

No such thing, said Storm, turning to Cat for reassurance. No such thing as a river shark, right?

A pike’s not going to bite you, said Cat. Mouse is just joking with you.

Mouse, said Storm. Not funny!

And Freya can’t see the future, I said, pointing at the bulging fish trap as Cat hauled it out of the stream. I could see at least four trout in it, their unmistakable golden bodies dappled with pale-ringed dark spots catching the light as they came up into the sun. There was also a much larger fish, a greeny one that we didn’t know the old name for, but called Big Red because of the colour of the circles round its eyes.

Shall we keep them all? said Cat.

I don’t want to eat that big one, said Storm. It’s got devil eyes.

The way the girls believed in good and bad luck signs was the opposite of us. Cat and I weren’t superstitious, maybe because no one had taught us to be. The closest we got to thinking like that was the bad feeling we both got about the quarry, and of course what we felt about strangers from the sea. But those things weren’t superstitious. They were rational, which means there were good reasons behind them: The quarry was dangerous because it killed things, and strangers were what had come from the sea and accidentally killed all our families and their friends. Only a fool puts their hand in the fire a second time. Superstition, the girls not-rational way of thinking, that was what made no sense.

We let the Big Red go and watched him jink away downriver, and then Cat showed Storm how to reset the trap while I quickly gutted all the trout and laced a reed through their gills so we could carry them home. I looked up and saw Storm watching me wash my hands in the river.

My mum used to leave fish guts out on the ground for the birds, she said.

OK, I said. That’s good.

She smiled.

She was clever with her hands, even though she couldn’t really read, she said. She was good at stuff like you two. You’d have liked her.

I bet we would, Cat said.

It was a good afternoon.

We were walking back to the Bunker through the hazel wood. I remember we were in the dappled green light under the branches because we couldn’t see the sky and so I didn’t immediately understand why what happened next. I was joking around with Storm about whether Freya would be so upset that her fortune-telling magic had got the day so wrong that she wouldn’t want to eat any of the nice sweet juicy trout when Freya herself stumbled into view hurrying towards us, her face wide eyed and paler than ever, pushing the babies in the wheelbarrow we used as a carrier. She stopped and waved her hands like she was signalling two equally urgent things at once. The first, accompanied by a hiss, was a shushing motion with her finger held to her lips, the second was harder to make out, but involved a lot of jabbing upwards towards the low canopy of hazel leaves above us.

Storm was first to run to her, followed by Cat and then the two dogs. By the time I caught up Cat had grabbed the male dog we still hadn’t named, and Storm had got hold of Digger.

What—? I began, to be greeted by three shushing fingers.

What? I whispered.

She’s seen something, said Cat.

Something? I said.

She’s going to show us, said Storm. Don’t let the dogs run off!

Cat already had her belt around the dog’s neck, and so I did the same with mine and Digger.