Chapter 4 – A Challenge Is Set
The one thing you can rely on is Fish. Ambrosius scowled as he walked dejectedly back to his shack. He had never been able to rely on Fish, so why should he start now? He looked up at the Smug. It was about one o'clock by his reckoning, and a lurid, diffuse heat filtered down from above. He thought about the madness of this fateful morning. His life had flashed past his eyes when he fell; his sad, fishless life. But he had learned something new as he plunged through the canopy towards the rolling mist: there are worse things than fishlessness. Fish can be bought or begged off other people whose catch is good. Missed opportunities are gone forever. And there it stood, a shining, gloating list of missed opportunities. Sunbeam Lightning or, more accurately, Sunbeam Treegirth, stood glowing in his minds eye. He had never realised it before but she had been the only girl who had shown the slightest bit of interest in him. Perhaps she was the only friend he had ever had. Perhaps... well, even Ambrosius had a spark in him, a spark that longed to make flame. Yes, there were more things than a lack of fish that Ambrosius now regretted.
He got back to his shack thoroughly dejected, limbs heavy from his climb up the tree and with an immense feeling of tiredness weighing down on him. He had lived there for going on five years now, since he was eighteen, but he still hadn't bothered to decorate the place. The walls, made of rough planks of Hookwood, smouldered red and resinous in the lunchtime light of the Smug. There was a complex smell of wood smoke emanating from a small fireplace full of last night's ash and a few dying red-flecked embers, a smell as of burnt wisdom and old incense that begged for more fuel and a bass to roast. Ambrosius had neither, but he blew on the embers nonetheless. Somehow, the fire still had life in it and mustered a few small yellow flames for a couple of seconds before sulking again into an angry red. Ambrosius breathed in the masculine musk of the hut, and felt a little better for being home. He moved away from the moribund fire and sat on a chair that he had carved himself.
And now he had to think. He couldn't help it, for he was a dweller. He dwelt on the memories that had swam so clear in front of him. He dwelt on his mother's tears at his father's funeral. More than anything, he dwelt on the sound of bells and shower of confetti as Sunbeam, his Sunbeam, had found her false true love. He had attended the wedding – how could he not? He had watched without any real emotion as she walked down the aisle, he had felt that millisecond of eye contact as she passed him, that millisecond that, had he been open to it, would have communicated a volume of emotion. But he had just not bitten the bait of reality – he had shied away, dissociated, for he felt that this was the logical thing to do. What point was there feeling love, pain, regret, loneliness? What point? Only a barbed one, like a Fish-hook. A barbed one that, once you had been caught by it, dug deeper and deeper. And now he had been snagged - by an unexpected fall, by the unknown, by the infinite. Yes, a fall had made him and broken him all at once.
He thought about his close encounter with the Fish. Such unfathomable sadness he had seen in those sparkling, whirlpool-black eyes; such infinite sorrow. Something was happening to the Infinity Fish, and he had to find out what. But first he had to get the girl.
“What do you want?” Sunbeam had come to the window after Ambrosius' third throw. He had read somewhere that suitors threw stones against their beloved's window, which he had diligently done. Sunbeam now had a round lump on her head where the Hookfruit stone had sailed through the glassless aperture.
“Can I come inside?” Ambrosius decided to ignore the angry tone in Sunbeam's voice.
“What's going on?” came a voice from inside the room. “If some fishing idiot is throwing things through the window he's going to feel the back of my hand!”
Sunbeam looked over her shoulder, then quickly back to Ambrosius. “Look, you can't come in. Whatever you've got to say, say it now and quickly.”
“But I can't say it,” said Ambrosius. “It would take a million words. "
Sunbeam's face dropped. “Oh Ambrosius, no. Not now.”
“Sunbeam, I lo...”
“No! Don't you dare! I have a life and I'm happy with it. Don't you dare try and ruin it.”
“You know how I feel about you. We're meant for each other!”
“I don't believe in destiny, Ambrosius. Forget me, Ambrosius. Go back to your books.”
"What can I do to change your mind?"
Sunbeam seethed, before anger made her reply burst forth without thought. “Ambrosius Codwich, the day I love you is the day... is the day... is the day you catch a fish!”
It is not possible to slam a glassless window, but Sunbeam drew her curtains with such ferocity that a bang was almost audible. Perhaps it was the sound of Ambrosius' heart breaking, but that is a cliché. Anyhow, Ambrosius' suit had failed and he was left to plod mournfully along the boughs. He didn't know where to go, what to do. Suddenly all those years of carving and learning seemed useless, wasted. What had he gained from them? Grey matter. That was the best description. And grey matter was just that – grey. When he thought of Sunbeam he though of colour.
Colour is a terrible thing, be under no illusions about that. Colour is a broken promise. When we see a field of flowers we demand beauty of it, but ask a botanist and he will tell you it is nothing but cut-throat competition. We see a Hooktree Frog display its vivid colours and are enticed by beauty to touch it, whereupon we collapse in a convulsing heap at its venomous feet. Colour looks nice, so we accept it as good without thinking.
Be that as may, Ambrosius longed for glorious, deceitful colour, the colour of no less than true love. And suddenly it came to him in Sunbeam's own angry words. “The day I love you is the day you catch a Fish.” How cruel she had been, but in that cruelty lay hope. Somewhere out there a Fish was waiting for him, he knew it. Fate could only have dealt him such an ultimatum for a reason. Jaw set in determination, Ambrosius went over to his book case and selected a volume that was his father's, a volume that had been collecting dust for a long time now. He blew and a whirlwind of grey fled into the air, revealing the hand-painted cover underneath. There was, picked out in silver against a white marbled background, a bass of prodigious proportions. Underneath this fine Fish was the following inscription:
“A Piscador's Companion
by Gigantic Turbot”
Ambrosius carried the book over to the chair and sat down. The book creaked open and Ambrosius flipped past the title page and the index. Just before the book started there was a page blank but for a single quote:
“A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. ”
Ambrosius didn't quite know what that meant, but then there are many such puzzles in life. He flipped through the book a little until a heading caught his eye:
“The Philosophy of Fish
What is the meaning of the Fish? Piscadors have debated this point for millennia. What cannot be denied is that there is something intrinsically meaningful in Fish and Fishing. This meaning translates to the Fisher as what is known as The Game. The Game is the battle of wits between the Fisher and the Fished; it engages the utmost faculties of both to the extent that a sort of blissful dance is played out and the minds and bodies of both parties work in an antagonistic kind of harmony. Let us investigate this relationship further.
Firstly, consider the Fish. Swimming along happily through the mist one day, our friend sees a Hookworm apparently helpless in the water. An immediate moral dilemma is posed for the Fish. She is hungry and must eat to live, yet in doing so she must cause this helpless creature to suffer a most terrible fate. Some fish may swim away and go hungry at this point. Others, however, will make the judgement that they somehow have an intrinsic value higher than that of the worm, and will eat. Immediately they are hooked. It must then go through their minds that they are deserving of this cruel predicament they now find themselves in. They judged another creature to be expendable, now they too have so been judged. What cruel irony now stings the Fish along with the pain of the Hook, but is there education there too? Surely the fish, if at all sentient, has learnt a huge moral lesson.
Now consider the Piscador. It may well be impossible to know what goes on in the mind of the Fish, but the Piscador must try. Information on the mind of the fish has been reduced to simple modulations of the tension in a string. Somehow two creatures, with completely different brains, connected only by a thread, are transferring complex notions such as fear, tenacity, free-spiritedness, the will to survive. The data are processed, reduced to changes in the tension in the line, expanded and processed again in an interactive process. This is just part of what we call “Fishing”.
Ambrosius lost interest and flicked through the pages once more. He spotted several sections on Good Fishing Practice and Hooks, Baits and Lines which he mentally noted and earmarked for future reading. The leaves flipped past until he was only a few pages away from the end of the book. Something caught his eye.
“The One That Got Away
Every Fisher has experienced it. The tentative nibble. The bite. The Game. Then, without explanation, the line goes slack: the Fish has got away. Much lore exists about this phenomenon, but perhaps the most common story which young Fishers hear is the tale of the Progenitor. According to legend, the Progenitor is a giant Infinity Fish the colour of alabaster which taunts Piscadors by taking their bait, playing with them for hours on end, then either breaking the line or somehow unhooking herself. Some say the Progenitor strikes when the planets are in a special alignment, some that only sinful Piscadors are so teased, and some even say that all cases of a fish escaping are due to the same fish. It is unlikely that the true nature of the Progenitor will ever be discovered. Some say that this fish is the archetype of Fishiness created by God before the universe came into existence; the very same fish who first brought the seed of Fish to Expiscor.”
More codswallop, thought Ambrosius. As far as Ambrosius was concerned fish were fish. All else was dangerous misdirection. He flicked back to the start of the book and started reading.
****