Everything that has no longer the power to keep above the water, all that is dead and drifts about, belongs to the crayfish and to her.
The Nipper had already found the body when Oa arrived.
[IX: THE WEDDING FESTIVAL]
Spring has come, and the pike are about to spawn. Grim, the great she-pike, has been lying motionless for days among the bottom vegetation, waiting the call of the sun. And now it has come. One morning it suddenly bursts through and lights up the forest of stalks in the yellow, weedy margin. In the little open spaces between the tufts there is life and movement, and a sound of splashing everywhere; dark scaly bodies rise slowly out of the water. Then the young fish gambol, their fins beating like wings in the sunshine.
Grim’s cold heart, too, feels the spring, and it warms her icy blood. She swims about, full of gentler feelings, she notes an attraction in the shallow water close inshore, the grass of the ditches, and the sheltered pools of the marsh. And suddenly she recollects her bridal chamber, far up at the end of a broad, sun-warmed ditch fringed with flowering willow and drooping birch, with flickering sunlight and shadow, and the splashing of lively wooers.
Spring comes on apace, the sun’s rays piercing ever deeper into the water, where the plants shoot and rise out of the ooze with herculean strength, mass themselves, expand, and throw wide arms abroad. From the stubbly reed-bed rise fresh stems; and all the fallen willow wands that are floating about put forth leaves and take root.
Soon the banks grow green, and in the sour mud of the creek, where in a short time water-soldiers and duck-weed will form hanging islands, brown toads and green frogs are beginning to bark and croak.
All kinds of fish are gambolling with joy and delight; and at last comes Oa, the old recluse. Without evil intentions she approaches the bank, and in the flaming dawn she lays her hundred thousand eggs among the thronging mare’s-tails and grasses. But there is no bridegroom near her, for none exists. Bleak and little roach revel in her roe; and when she has spawned her heart once more grows cold, and she sinks back into the deep water, gloomy and sullen as before.
Grim becomes more and more eager. Her deep-blue pupils, surrounded with a brass-coloured ring, shine like sapphires in an amber setting; the clayey tones along her sides and flanks change to green, and her gill-covers take on a deep orange hue.