A countryside mystery for young readers

By Gareth M. Parkes

The River Torridge ran copper and gold in the morning light.

Benji stood on the bank and watched it — this particular Devon river that Henry Williamson had made famous, that Tarka the Water Wanderer had swum a century ago in the pages of a book that made generations of children feel the cold of the current and the joy of being very fast in something that moved. The water was amber over the stones, clear where it ran shallow across the gravel, deep and dark where the bank curved under the roots of old alders.

He had been watching it for perhaps five minutes before he noticed the otter.

She was already in the river. She was — playing, he thought. Or working. It was genuinely difficult to tell.

She dived, turned, surfaced, dived again. Each movement was pure joy — you could see it in every line of her body, the way she seemed to pour through the water rather than move through it. But the movements weren’t random. There was a pattern to them, circular, gradually tightening, pushing something invisible toward the shallower water below the bank.

On a low branch above the river, a kingfisher sat.

Not the usual kingfisher stillness — poised, watchful, reading the water below. This one was alert in a different way, shifting from foot to foot, his bead eye fixed on the surface with intense, focused attention. Williamson had called his kingfisher Halcyon, in the old book. This one, Benji would learn, was called Kester, and he had been fishing this same stretch of the Torridge for three years.

Something changed in the water. A flash of silver near the surface, close to the bank.

Kester dropped — a streak of electric blue — and came up with a small fish so quickly it was over before Benji had processed it was beginning.

The otter surfaced downstream, blowing a breath of fine spray. She looked at the kingfisher. The kingfisher looked at her. Some silent exchange passed between them — not effusive, not solemn, just acknowledged, the way two people acknowledge something that went exactly as planned.

Then the otter saw Benji.

She was on the bank in three seconds, dripping and brilliant, her eyes bright with an energy that suggested sitting still was not her natural condition and she was managing it generously on his behalf.

"You watched the whole thing," she said. Not a question.

"I wasn’t sure what I was watching," Benji said honestly. His red collar caught the Devon morning light.

"Fishing," she said. "We fish together. Kester sees from above — even in murky water he spots the fish faster than I can from below. But he can’t drive them up to where he can reach them. I can drive them up, but I can’t always see clearly enough down there to know which direction is worth driving." She shook herself in a spray that caught the sun. "Together we catch three times as much in half the time."

"It looked like you were playing," Benji said.

"I was," she said. "That’s how I do everything." She stuck out a wet paw. "Drift."