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The Golden Fish

A long time ago, there was a fisherman who lived on the edge of a great lake. He lived with his wife and small son, simply and alone, and was happy and content with his life. Each morning he would take his canoe, a strong fifteen-foot kayak, and traverse the lake for the family’s fish. And each afternoon he would return early - for the lake was abundant - and spend the rest of the day with his family, wandering the wild fields and meadows of the countryside.

From time to time he would meet others on the lake, and sometimes their talk would turn to the subject of the Golden Fishing Ground. It was a fact, many said, that somewhere, in the middle of the hundred mile long lake, there was a fishing ground where all the fish shone like bars of gold. If ever a man found it, he would have his heart’s desire. The fisherman enjoyed the story, but had little faith in it. He had little need either, for he already had his heart’s desire, waiting for him at home.

However, one day he came home to find them dead. Crushed by the rocks of a landfall.

The shock of losing them so suddenly was made all the more painful because his family had been killed in a such needless way. They had been out gathering berries when the rocks, which had hung motionless ever before, had chosen that time to fall and kill them both. The boulders could have fallen at any time; his family could have been anywhere else. The improbability made the loss so unbearably cruel that the fisherman could make no sense of it. He was dazed with grief when he knelt slumped and weeping beside their bodies, watching the soil absorb their blood; but he was fueled with anger when, two days later, he buried their bodies beneath that same ground.

As shock lessened and grief was buried under angst, the fisherman turned against the earth, for it was the earth he saw as responsible for taking his family from him. It was earth that was in the rocks, and the earth that had loosened them. It had even claimed their bodies. He railed against it, hated it, beat it with his fists in pitiful despair. And rejected it. In an all consuming rage he loaded his kayak with as many supplies as it would hold, and kicked off from the shore, vowing never to touch solid ground again.

As he paddled away, the fisherman knew he needed something to give his mind a focus. Now, he remembered the Golden Fishing Ground, and though he still doubted its existence, that no longer mattered. He needed something to hold onto, and a search for this place would serve. As he struck out for the centre of the lake, he allowed himself to think of nothing else.

The lake was hundreds of square miles, but the fisherman didn’t concern himself with directions, as long as it was away from the land. With the hills behind him he paddled throughout the long days. At night he let the canoe drift, caring little if he was blown back over the distance he traveled the day before. He knew this made no sense, but for him, little did now.

The days passed by, with only the steady plop of his paddle to mark time. He survived on the fish and water from the lake, occasionally swimming in it to stretch his cramping muscles. He found that he could do everything he needed in his canoe, and it pleased him that he had so successfully removed the earth’s existence from his life.

However, there was one task that was difficult to perform, and that was to repair the canoe. It was made of skins, and whenever a patch needed to be recovered, he was disadvantaged by not being able to dry it probably. To rest it. The skins he sewed into place sagged and bulged away from the side of the boat, making it harder to paddle. And as it happened that all the repairs were along the left side, the fisherman was pulled constantly in a curve.

The days became weeks, months, and the limited diet of fish ravished his body; the fisherman grew malnourished and weak. He knew what was happening: that soon he would be too weak to paddle, to care for himself. But he paid no heed. His only hope now was to see the golden fish before he died. He traveled on, growing ever more feeble, until at last he fell into an exhausted sleep. And in this sleep he dreamed.

He dreamed of the loss, though it seemed misty and unclear now; of his hate, though that too had been spent in the effort of this new life. Even his grief had been calmed by the silence of the lake. The dream pulled him back from himself and he saw himself from a distance - as though watching from behind a glass. He saw his body lying uneasy in the boat; his head and chest caught and held up by one of the cross struts. The canoe drifted and twirled in the currents, and as the fisherman watched, he saw it pulled towards a great golden glow.

Instantly, the dream put him back inside his body, and from there he watched the glow grow and divide into a million little points of light and darted and weaved with each other. ‘The Golden Fish,’ he heard himself say, and he felt his heart swell with joy that he had succeeded, that he had found the great hunting ground. It did not matter that he would soon be dead, never to taste these magical fish. Just to see them, to know that the stories was true, now seemed enough.

And it was then that he saw something else.

At first he thought they were simply larger fish, dipping amongst the smaller ones. But as he looked closer, he recognised the mischievous grin that was his child’s, and the grace that was his wife’s. They were alive, and happy, swimming amongst the flickering glows. In his dream he dragged himself higher in his boat, straining his eyes to see, but their image faded back into the darting golden lights, and strangely, with them went the last of his grief. Seeing them in that way; knowing they were not dead but vibrantly alive, had given him peace.

He lay still in the boat, watching the dancing fish, wondering at the new sense of peace he now felt. Perhaps he was about to die, he wondered, and with a smile he prepared himself for the last lapse of consciousness, the one that would take him on his final journey. But death and that journey didn’t come, at least not yet. The image of the other golden fish did not dim as his family had, instead the image grew clearer, each one solidifying into a gently waving point. As he blinked his eyes, staring, the fisherman saw that it was not a shoal of fish that he was seeing but the wild flowers that covered the same meadow that he had buried his family in.

Awake now, he looked down: his boat was bumping against the very shore he had left. He had travelled a circle; he had come back to where he started. Almost.

For it was not the same. There was a peace here now; a peace he had brought back with him. The fisherman wondered at this: Did the earth desire that peace from him and had called him back to its side because of it? Or did it just desire him, as it had his family? He did not know. And it did not matter. He knew he could no longer be taken - he could only be given. And that, he had already done.

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