The Girl Who Didn't Know What To Believe

when they’re the right age, they swim out thousands of miles
into the middle of the ocean! And as if by magic, all the
eels know just where to go. They meet other eels, breed,
and then the babies who’ve never been here before swim
all the way back to the rivers.”
That did seem quite wonderful, Meritxell thought, and
very odd too, and she wondered why on earth they did
things in such a complicated and long-distance way. “So
something’s changed”, said the fisherman, “and maybe it’s
this global warming, or maybe it’s stuff we pour into rivers,
or maybe it’s something else. Humans are certainly doing
enough to change a lot of nature, and it seems to me we
should try to do less damage somehow. We’re like giants
stomping around in the dark, not realising what we’re treading
on.”
The sun was nearly set, and it was time for them all to
head home, so Meritxell and Hume left the old fisherman
to pack everything up, and they walked slowly back to Aunt
Dora’s. As the old man had reminded her of Grandpa, she
called Mother again on Merlin, and then she sat in a chair
by the window where she could watch the city being still
busy at night. She’d been flicking through Grandpa’s book
on Aristotle, and while she wasn’t really reading it and didn’t
understand it all anyway, she was excited to find a bit where
Aristotle talked about eels too. And if there had been lots
of eels in Ancient Greece when he was alive, and lots of
eels here when the old man was younger, it seemed important
somehow to her that things seemed to be changing a
lot right now.
Then she looked out at the cars moving through the
streets, and all the lights in the streetlights and windows,
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