Grayling, the fourth game fish.
A bad day's fishing beats a good day's writing

Philip meets a familiar character:

Just before dawn a Waterborne spirit approaches me. I feel a strong familiarity and a voice echoes within me:
“Who are you?”

“I am Harry.”

“Grandfather?”

“Yes.”

“You are a long way from our village.”
“Water knows all that is out of time and our meeting was ordained. I was required to come here to meet you.”

“Why are you Waterborne?”

“Who accompanied you to the water as a child? You and your father. Remember the willowy margins of Broomfleet ponds – and Flamborough ? We had some hairy, scary boat-rides, eh? Chasing after the cod and the mackerel. Jim is somewhere, and Ernie – and he has his sight again, much as we all do. I was so pleased when you and your brother kept my heavy old Greenheart rod for such a long time after I had gone. I sensed it every time it connected with the river.

[More:]

I sensed your presence as well. Norman is with us too, from the mill with the trout pool.”
A shadow passes over me and I look up. A chevron of mallard ducks are idling above us. They have sat out the night on the water, in the safety of the quiet margins, away from the jaws of mink and fox.
“Watch for those little so-and-sos. They know we are here and wait for moments like this to have a shit. It doesn’t stick to you but it leaves a nasty stain inside you that takes a while to wash away. They will make a grab at you when they are heads down in the water. Just chancers they are. Don’t really hurt.”
“Where is Nana? Is she with you?”
I feel a ripple of laughter.
“She is elsewhere. You knew her temperament; her moods. She is Flame-bound: Growing hot and cold in another dimension.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Not really. She lived for twenty years after I had come here. It was her choice to stay away from me. I think she wanted to go to hell and run the show from there, but they wouldn’t let her in. She was too hot for them. There was nothing she hated quite as much as when someone poured cold water on her arguments and opinions.”
The laughter rippled again.
“The other Waterborne ignore me.”

“They don’t know you. So why is it so strange? Family, friends and loved ones have just as much meaning in this existence and a stranger is still a stranger. They will come to you when you are more properly one of them.”

This is strange. I have met someone I remember well and I can hear his voice. I cannot see him, as like me, he has no form, yet gradually, somewhere within me a picture builds and I know what he is like in appearance. It is not a memory or an imagined portrait but an all pervasive sense of the person. I ‘see’ him with all of my being. I dwell for a moment on the different ways in which this new life is experienced and have a thrill of anticipation at the prospect of being reunited with Alexandra.
“I want to be with Alex again. Do you know of her? We met after you had gone.”
“But I know of her. All the Waterborne are aware when a significant spirit joins the community. The connections formed by family and love extend throughout the seas and rivers. Time and distance have no relevance. You will be together again.”
“She let me be me grandfather; more than any other person in my life. She never tried to change me, or expect me to behave in conventional manners because others wanted it. I was able to follow the dictates of my heart. She let me fly free knowing that I would come back to her nest. That was real love, real trust.”
“We must hang on to the affections and loves we hold precious. We are given another chance here to love again.”
That was grandfather. He came to the water when I was 17 years old. I wondered how he got here because I remembered that he was buried. Then I remembered something else. Something which had been placed way out of reach in the cobwebby far corner of the garden shed of my memory – it rained that day. And it rained and it rained. The cemetery was on a ridge; looking across a shallow valley to the chalk hills beyond - obscured by brooding cloud that day. We stood around the grave under black umbrellas and watched as he was lowered into the hole awash with muddy water. Mud was scooped onto the coffin and I walked away from the graveside flicking dirty water from my hand, conscious of not wanting to stain my only suit or face a grilling from mother as to how my clean white handkerchief was covered in mud. I remembered swishing my hand clean in a cold puddle and then I knew why he was with us -the rain, the water came to him.
He was the grandfather of stereotype and story. Slightly aloof, never cross or threatening, always kind and ready to tell us his stories. He was a small haven where we could hide away from the unpredictable temper of his wife. A favourite place was his shed. We would sit on musty sacking watching the shiny waistcoat of his back as he tapped small nails into the heel of the boot he was repairing; whilst grumbling his complaints through the nails between his teeth. At night we would lie in bed giggling; listening to him fart and belch his way up the stairs, with Nana stridently expressing her disgust from below.
His benign and kindly presence filled me with a deep contentment and satisfaction with my new existence, but this was tempered with a slight unease about the mallards; or something worse.

“I always remembered you with affection in the other life. This place is full of unexpected joys. Forgive me now but I must go on.”
“I know. We will meet often and tell fishy stories. Beware intruders from above. There are some far more dangerous than the mallard. Learn to hide.”
I told him about the car wheel and I sensed his understanding. I wondered how one could hide from a car wheel.