Anguilla's Retribution

by Kim Clover

Again I find myself on the rivers bank. Between the known and the unknown. The persistent rain finding its crafty way into my clothes ignores completely my scrunched up attempts to keep it out and makes tiny rivers of its own that sneak their way down the back of my neck. It could annoy me but I tolerate it. The earthy smell of bread compressed into a tight ball, watered down into a sticky paste and wrapped in a segment of old bed sheet. The dangerously sharp lipped tin can filled with moist grass sods ripped from the garden earlier that morning and wriggling with a life of its own with burrowing earthworms. The bait. This then is me the hunter, with the thrill of the hunt in my blood. And then more. I look at my line and envy what it knew I did not. The unknown. From the float down it disappeared into a world I could never. And then I could. All of a sudden I could. Hold your breath and I promise to take you with me.................. Enter the world of the river....meet the fish - Delair the roach, wonderful Thump the ever-eating Chub and the Eels Anguilla and Badron. Learn of the 'Healing Embrace' of the longfish, how Anguilla's treacherous liaison with the maniacal pike, Qeetus leads to a battle for the tunnels, a battle for life over death and a battle for the Broadwaters itself!