Then she regained her native element; water covered her gills, and she could begin to swim.
[II: IN THE SHELTER OF THE CREEK]
Grim was a year old when her scales began to grow.
In her early youth, when she could only eat small creatures, she had lived exclusively upon water-insects and larvae; but from now onwards she had no respect for any flesh but that which clothed her own ribs.
She attacked any fish that was not big enough to swallow her, and devoured bleak and small roach with peculiar satisfaction. Now she took her revenge on the voracious small fry that had offended her when she was still in an embryo state.
She had not been hatched artificially, or come into the world in a wooden box with running water passing through it. No, the whole thing had taken place in the most natural manner.
In the flickering sunshine of a March day, her mother, surrounded by three equally ardent wooers, had spawned, and the eggs had dropped and attached themselves to some tufts of grass at the edge of the lake. The very next day, however, little fish had begun to gather about those tufts; one day more, and there were swarms of them. Eagerly they searched the tufts and devoured all the eggs they could find; and so thoroughly did they go about their business, that of the thousands upon thousands of the mother’s eggs, only two that had fallen into the heart of a grass-stalk were left.
Out of one of these Grim had come. The sun had looked after her, hatched her out, and taught her to seize whatever came in her way. Now she was avenging the injuries to her tribe.
She possessed a remarkable power of placing herself, and knew how to choose her position so as to disappear, as it were, in the water. The stalks of the reeds threw their shadows across her body in all directions; water-grass and drifting duck-weed veiled her; the silly roach and other restless little fish flitted about her, sometimes so close to her mouth that she could feel the waves made by their tail-fins. Some would almost run right into her; but when they saw her, then how the water flashed with starry gleams, and how quickly they all made off!
She liked best to hide where the water-lilies floated in islands of green, for there the treacherous shadows--her best friends--fell clearly through the water; absorbed her, as it were, and made capture easy for her. If she found herself discovered, she would retreat with as little haste as possible; for that sort of thing aroused too much attention, and created widespread disturbance in the fishy world.