″‘You’re a bottler,’ said Charlie gratefully. ‘Isn’t she, Simey?’
Simon couldn’t answer. If he opened his mouth, he knew he would yell ‘Don’t call me that’. And what was the use? It would just make another name that nobody could say. They had to call him Simey; they were Edie and Charlie.”
“A boy was the accident of a moment, something as light and brief as a sun-glint on water- but a good trick was something to chuckle over for a hundred years.”
“All that night the wind blew. Simon lay in the dark and listened: to the sirens in the roof, and the stealthy slither of the mat along his floor, and the crying of the pine outside the window. Now and then in the night he work and heard them still.”
“The Potkoorok stirred. Its golden eyes gleamed. It slid like a ripple through the water, watching the boy. It waited while he explored the edges, examining brilliant green moss with air-bubbles trapped in it. It waited while he scooped up tiny slate-blue tadpoles and examined them and let them go. It waited till he stepped into deeper water; then it curled a coldness round his ankle, slithering like an eel.”
“Whatever it was in the swamp, it was something different. Tricky... wild... not solid and dull like a grown-up stranger. More like another boy... He was a bit frightened, but he almost wanted to go back.”