Chapter 7. Something Fishy
Splat!
Ryan coughed and choked, as what felt like a bucketful of water hit him in the face. He shook his head in bewilderment.
Splat!
More water. Ryan gagged. He tried to look around but there appeared to be something wrong with his eyes. They weren’t working properly. Not only that, it appeared to be pitch dark.
‘It must be night time,’ he thought.
Splat!
This time he closed his mouth, but for some reason the whole world was rocking around him and he flailed his arms wildly to get his balance. There was something wrong here too. ‘Wings,’ he thought. ‘Joanne wished for wings.’ His brain seemed to have trouble holding more than one thought at a time.
Splat!
Ryan turned his head and shut one eye. He could see quite clearly from the other eye now, where a lantern cast a circle of wavering yellow light. He was perched at the front of some sort of raft. He could count five pieces of what looked like bamboo lashed together in front of him and curving out over the waves of a large grey river.
Splat!
Ryan blinked as another wave splashed over him. He still felt dizzy and disorientated and risked opening the other eye. That was a mistake. The world spun wildly again. He closed both eyes and opened the other eye slowly, then gave a squawk of surprise. Behind him on the raft were three enormous black birds huddled together in a bunch. Beyond them, under the light of the lantern hanging from a pole, was a large wicker basket. Behind the basket a giant of a man could be seen through the gloom. He held a pole, which he was using energetically to push the raft along. More black birds perched beside the man and more perched behind him, although it was hard to see with the shifting shadows. As Ryan’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he looked around cautiously and saw more lanterns bobbing in the distance, each with a raft with more of the black birds on. Ryan looked more closely at the giant and recoiled in disbelief.
‘He’s wearing pyjamas and a straw hat,’ he thought. ‘He’s even got his hair in a long black pigtail. That makes him Chinese. But why is he so huge?’
Ryan gulped in astonishment. He felt something pressing around his throat and reached his arm up to feel it. To his horror he saw a large black wing flap up beside him. He ducked instinctively and as he did so he turned to look down. There he saw that what he had thought were his feet were in fact large black claws.
‘Oh my goodness. I’m a bird,’ he croaked. An answering noise came from the birds behind him but Ryan couldn’t understand what they said. Part of him wanted to scream and run away but the other part, which he dismally reflected was probably the bird brain, just crouched on the raft and peered around at the water in search of fish.
Splat!
This appeared to be the last wave as the huge Chinaman, who Ryan realised was probably only the normal person size, poled the raft into calm water by the bank. Ryan heard indignant squawks as the Chinaman used the end of his pole to eject the birds into the water and suddenly it was his turn. Gulping a breath he plunged beneath the surface of the river. There was a roaring watery sound in his ears and in the pool of lantern light he saw other birds diving and swimming. He was appalled to find that the bird part of his brain took over completely at this point. Spotting a silver fish, it made him open his beak wide and grab the fish firmly. The fish struggled and flapped in panic. Ryan just had time to think, ‘This is gross. This is so totally disgusting,’ before he was headed for the surface again. He joined the other birds in swimming to the raft. There, by observing the other birds, he discovered what was pressing on his throat. It was a tight circle of thin cord that prevented him from swallowing the fish. The Chinaman called out something unintelligible, and Ryan promptly spat the fish into the wicker basket. With a moan he felt himself being propelled back into the water again. He found it easiest to let the Ryan part of him switch off as the bird part promptly caught and regurgitated seven more small silver fish.
When the basket was full, the Chinaman called out something else and cut a couple of the fish into tiny pieces. He held these out on the palm of his hand and offered it to the birds. Ryan was disgusted at how keen his bird body was for this, as he found himself jostling the other birds until he had gulped down his share of raw fish. The little pieces were small enough to swallow and he heard himself uttering squawks of delight, while the Ryan part of him felt like fainting. Finally the Chinaman made sure all the birds were settled on the raft as he poled it back down the river. Shouts and laughter came from the other fishermen and the flickering of lanterns showed that they too had finished fishing for the night. Ryan tried flapping his wings. He had a vague idea that maybe he could fly off and escape somewhere but his body seemed heavy and full of fish and his bird brain was content to fall asleep on the raft.
‘I wonder if the others are birds as well,’ Ryan thought. He looked more closely at the bird perched next to him. It had a distinct look of Joanne around the eyes. ‘That one must be Andy,’ he sighed, as a large bird flapped its wings wildly and lurched from one side of the boat to the other. The Chinaman gave it a friendly cuff on the head as it went past and the bird gave an indignant squeak. ‘I can’t even understand him,’ Ryan thought indignantly. ‘This wish really sucks.’
He entered a sort of waking doze then as the raft was poled back though the darkness. He came to with a start as the reached a boat, which looked like a cross between a boat and a raft. This one was a lot larger, with a small cabin where the Chinaman lived with his family. A sleepy looking small boy called out, asking his father what luck he’d had, before being shooed back to bed by a diminutive Chinese woman. Ryan and the other birds were herded into a small wicker cage. Ryan looked around hopefully to see if there was any means of escaping this, but all he could see in the gloom was a bowl of fresh water and a few lengths of bamboo to perch on. Miserably he huddled next to a smaller fatter bird who he was sure was Mindy, and finally fell asleep.
When he woke the next morning, for a moment Ryan had no idea where he was.
‘I dreamed I was a bird in China,’ he thought, then made the sickening realization that it had not been a dream at all. There were busy bustling sounds outside the cage as the Chinese family prepared and ate a breakfast of rice and vegetables, before the man and woman wrapped the fish in large flat leaves and packed them into a basket. By peering through the slats of the cage, Ryan could see the man loading this basket onto the raft, before poling it away out of sight up the river.
‘He must be going to sell them,’ thought Ryan. ‘What’s going to happen to us now?’ The day passed slowly. At one point the cage was opened and the birds were given a handful of cold rice to peck at. Ryan, who normally wouldn’t touch rice if he was starving, ate this with alacrity, pecking viciously at another bird that seemed determined to eat more than its share.
‘I’m stuck like this for life,’ Ryan thought with mounting horror. There had been no sign of the spoon at all and in fact the Chinese family had eaten their meal with short wooden chopsticks and their fingers. ‘Joanne must have left the spoon behind in Andy’s bedroom,’ Ryan groaned. ‘We’re really stuck now. No one will ever find it in all that mess.’ Even the thought of what he’d like to do to Joanne wasn’t enough to cheer him up. As this consisted of boiling her slowly in oil or hacking off pieces slowly and feeding them to the sharks, this was hardly surprising.
What felt like hours went by and finally the sun set as the man arrived back at the boat. He called cheerfully to his wife and chattered to his little boy who had spent several hours catching crabs from the side of the boat. After another meal, which Ryan gloomily saw was yet more rice, the Chinaman opened the cage and began to grab the birds. With a sinking feeling, Ryan realised that they were off to catch fish again.
‘I can’t do it,’ he thought frantically, at the thought of the fish squirming in his beak. ‘I’ll be sick. I’d rather die. Why doesn’t something happen to save us.’ He cowered at the back o
f the cage, along with three of the other birds. The largest bird bit the Chinaman on the hand with his long beak. The man said what Ryan was sure were some very bad words and reached in again grimly. ‘Oh no,’ thought Ryan hopelessly. ‘There’s no escape. We’re stuck like this forever.’