The Crowstarver by Dick King-Smith Page B

knowing how close Spider had been to death in the path of the stricken plane, and Spider had no means of telling him.
    Afterwards, he had spread his arms wide andrun clumsily towards Tom, making swooshing noises, but he had not the powers of speech to describe what had happened.
    On any farm at any time there are of course hazards that a boy might have to face, but in general Spider was kept well away from machinery and not allowed to handle sharp tools. As to dangers from livestock no-one worried overly, because of the boy’s strange empathy with all living creatures.
    Only recently he had been out with Tom when they passed near a bunch of the Irish heifers with their bull. Percy Pound had come roaring up the drove on his motorbike and had stopped to talk to the shepherd. Looking round after Percy had gone, Tom saw that Spider had walked in among the cattle and was making directly for the Aberdeen Angus bull. Hornless and placid-natured the animal might be, but that great heavy head could do a power of damage if swung at the boy in anger or irritation.
    But no, before Tom could say or do anything, Spider reached the bull and began to pat and stroke it, while the big black animal stood stock-still, apparently enjoying this attention. To cap it all, Spider took hold of the brass ring in the bull’snose and led it over to his father and halted before him.
    â€˜He’s a good un, Dada,’ he said.
    â€˜Never seen anything like it,’ said Tom to Percy later.‘I said to him “Come on now, Spider, bulls is dangerous, you know”, so he lets go of the ring and comes on along of me. But then as we went on across the field, there’s the old bull walking along a couple of paces behind us, just like a big dog following his master, wanting a pat.’
    But the danger into which Spider was shortly to fall was one that Tom and Kathie had never considered. The River Wylye was a gently-flowing chalk-stream that meandered its way through the meadows, spanned here and there by pretty stone bridges that carried the road back and forth across it. The waters of the stream were clear, bedded with gravel and festooned with waving weed, and in them were trout and perch and roach and rudd and the occasional predatory pike.
    The Wylye formed one boundary, the northern, of Outoverdown Farm, and near the village there were a couple of pools where some of the children bathed on hot summer days. Spider did not of course. Neither Tom nor Kathie could swim, so the idea of teaching Spider to do sonever occurred to them. There was no reason for him to go into the water.
    But Spider in his free time often walked by the river. He liked to look at the wild birds there, the swans and ducks, the moorhens and dabchicks, the brilliant flashing kingfishers, all of which accepted his quiet presence without worry. He liked to watch the water voles swimming across, and one day he was fortunate enough to set eyes upon a creature he’d never seen before, a sleek brown animal with a round catlike head and a long ruddery tail. He was leaning on the parapet of a bridge when he saw it, twisting and twirling beneath the clear water as it chased a fish.
    He found its picture in his book that evening and showed it to his parents.
    â€˜What that?’ he said.
    â€˜That’s an otter,’ they said.‘Did you see one?’
    Spider nodded rapidly, excitedly. He spent a long time staring at the picture and tracing the outline of the creature with a finger, and mouthing to himself. Passing close to him, Kathie heard him saying, ‘Hotter. Good un. Hotter. Good un. Good hotter.’
    For Percy Pound the foreman, the River Wylye held a special magic. He had been born by it, ina village some miles further downstream, and, apart from those grim years of fighting in France, had lived near it all his life.
    Percy was not a churchgoing man. The peace of God passed his understanding (though he had called upon His name often enough in