The Little Yellow Duck

My niece asked me if I would write her a story, so this week’s Teabreak Tale is for a younger audience, or a young at heart audience, and is dedicated to Emily.

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It was bath time in the McGregor household. Emily was splashing the water over the side of the bath when her mum wasn’t looking and giggling. She upturned a beaker and let the air escape with a burble. Little Yellow Duck bobbed up and down, feeling happy – bath time was fun.

Soon it was time to pull the plug and watch the water disappear. Little Yellow Duck did sometimes wonder where all the water went, but there was never time to think about that for too long. Miss Muffet, Humpty Dumpty, Incy Wincy and the Marie Celeste boat were all packed away in their linen bag and Little Yellow Duck was placed in pride of place on the edge of the bath. Mrs McGregor lifted Emily out, dried her and swept her hair up into a big bundle on the top of her head in a lovely warm towel.

‘You look like the Queen of Sheba,’ said Mrs McGregor.

Emily ran out of the bathroom shouting, ‘I’m the Queen of Sheba.’

Mrs McGregor switched out the light in the bathroom and the bath toys drifted off happily to sleep. Quiet finally reigned on the McGregor household, except if you listened very carefully, you might hear Miss Muffet snoring or Humpty Dumpty complaining that Incy Wincy was kicking him with his many legs.

The next day the sky was as blue as blue and the McGregors were having stick races in the river at the bottom of the garden. Mr McGregor told Emily and Jasmine to stand ready with their sticks at one end of the decking and when he shouted ‘go’, they had to drop their sticks into the water. The stick that reached the other end of the decking first was the winner.

‘Go!’ he shouted.

Emily and Jasmine threw their sticks in. They watched the two sticks as they were born along by the current in the water. This time it was Emily’s stick that won.

‘Hoorah,’ she said doing pirouettes round the garden – she had just learnt how to do them in ballet. Jasmine, who was still very little, didn’t seem to mind that her big sister had won and she started dancing round the pear tree.

‘I’ve got at idea,’ Emily said, running into the house.

She came back a few minutes later, holding something behind her back.

‘Can we do another race?’ she said.

‘Well, go and choose your sticks’ said Mr McGregor.

Jasmine and Emily lined up and when Mr McGregor said go, rather than dropping a stick into the river, Emily pulled out Little Yellow Duck and threw him in instead. She knew he would be faster than a dirty, brown stick.

For Little Yellow Duck, it was great fun. ‘Wee,’ he said as he sped along the riverbank. ‘Look at how fast I’m going,’ he cried out.

He was going so fast that the fields looked like a green line from one of Emily’s paintings. He spun round to see if Emily was watching, but he couldn’t see her anymore, he couldn’t see the McGregors’ garden and he couldn’t see their house – the river was flowing so fast, it was taking him away from his home.

Little Yellow Duck was washed past tall reeds and rushes, past people who were enjoying a leisurely walk along the riverbank and past an inquisitive black dog that tried to fish him out with his paw. Little Yellow Duck called out but no one could hear him. On and on the river flowed, until finally Little Yellow Duck came to rest in some brown reeds. He had no idea where he was and he wondered if he would ever see the McGregors again.

Then he heard a loud ‘quack’ and a creature floated past him – it had a beak and wings and a feathery tail that it was waggling, in fact it looked just like Little Yellow Duck, and following on behind were four tiny creatures. They were real, live ducks – the kind which would hate living in a bathroom.

As the duck family floated past, he moved out of his hiding place and joined the end of the procession. From the front of the line, Mrs Duck shouted ‘halt’ and the ducklings stopped so abruptly that Little Yellow Duck banged into the duckling in front of him.

Mrs Duck began to count: ‘One, two, three, four, five … good … wait … five?’ Mrs Duck couldn’t understand why she suddenly had five ducklings. She looked at number five suspiciously.

‘Who are you?’ she said.

‘I’m Little Yellow Duck. I’m lost.’

‘We can’t have little ducks floating around the river on their own. You’ll have to join our family,’ she said in a kindly voice.

So Little Yellow Duck became duck number five in Mrs Duck’s family. It was fun being a real duck – he now had four other brothers and sisters who he could play hide and seek with. But he could never get the hang of diving under the water – all the other ducklings could do it, in fact some of them could hold their breath and dive right down to the river bed, but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t manage it.

One day the Duck family were swimming along the river when Little Yellow Duck saw a large grey and white heron flying overhead. Now a heron can be a scary looking bird if you’re a little duck. Mrs Duck and all the other ducklings were able to dive under the water out of sight, but they forgot that Little Yellow Duck couldn’t dive. Little Yellow Duck looked around for some reeds where he could hide, but the heron had already seen him. He swooped down and in one swift movement snatched Little Yellow Duck from the river in his long beak.

High up into the air went the heron with Little Yellow Duck in his beak. Over fields and houses they flew. They were so high that the cars far below looked like tiny toys. Little Yellow Duck looked down to see if he could spot the sandpit and swing in Emily’s garden, but all the houses looked the same. The fields looked like green, yellow and brown squares, a bit like the patchwork quilt on the bed in the spare room. Little Yellow Duck had never imagined that the world looked so beautiful from above.

Slowly the heron began to descend. He landed on a large, grey rock on a sandy beach and stood completely still looking out to sea.

‘Please don’t eat me,’ Little Yellow Duck said. ‘I don’t think I would be very tasty.’

The heron opened its beak to speak, but as it did so, his grip on Little Yellow Duck loosened and Little Yellow Duck tumbled out of his mouth, rolled down the side of the rock and into the sea which was even now lapping up against the edge of the rock. Then just as he feared he might be caught by the heron again, the sea pulled him backwards out of harm’s way. It was the waves, moving up and down the beach, that had saved him.

Back and forth the sea pulled him – sometimes he was on the beach and sometimes he was in the water again. Then after a time he realised that there was more water around him than sand and that he was heading away from the beach and was being taken out to sea.

The beach got smaller and smaller until it was just a yellow line on the horizon and he wondered if it was even there at all. The sea was all around him. It was moving like the water did in the bathtub when Emily had races from one end to the other. It was a much darker blue than the water in the bath or the river where Mrs Duck lived with her five, now four, ducklings. Did they miss him? Did anyone notice he had gone?

How long he drifted, he didn’t know. Then he saw a colourful patch of water floating nearby. As he drifted nearer, he realised the colourful patch was talking. There wasn’t just one voice, there were hundreds of different voices, all speaking in different languages which he couldn’t understand. Before long he was in the middle of the colourful haze and he realised it was actually a group of lots of different bath toys – there were red octopuses, blue boats, pink fish, purple dolphins, green turtles and of course there were lots of little ducks too.

‘Where are you from?’ Little Yellow Duck asked a green frog which was nearby, but none of the toys could understand him.

Then he heard a little voice speaking in his language. It was a bright orange starfish with a cheerful smile.

‘We were on a ship being transported to our new homes, when the container we were in fell into the sea. What brings you here?’ he said.

‘I’m lost,’ said Little Yellow Duck. ‘I’m trying to find my way back home.’

‘That’s easy – you can use the sun and the stars to help you. We’re on our way to the port of Tacoma, but if you’re looking for the nearest land, I estimate you head off in that direction,’ the Starfish said, pointing behind Little Yellow Duck.

‘Thank you,’ shouted Little Yellow Duck as a wave took him away from the group of toys. ‘Good luck finding your way to Tacoma.’

But as he moved away, he began to wonder which direction the Starfish had meant. At sea, every direction looked the same.

As he was thinking which way to go, suddenly, in front of him the large bow of a boat appeared. He managed to move out of its way, just in time. ‘Phew,’ he said, ‘that was close.’ Then he felt a strange feeling – he was being lifted up out of the water. The boat was a fishing boat and it had put out its net to collect fish – as it was reeling in its net of squirming fish, it had also managed to catch Little Yellow Duck. There was Little Yellow Duck stranded in the net. The fishermen pulled the net onto the deck of the boat and released their catch. How surprised they were to see Little Yellow Duck tumble out with all the silver fish.

One of the fisherman with a curly white beard bent down and looked Little Yellow Duck right in the eye.

‘Well, well, look at you,’ he said. ‘How did you get here? I’m going to take you and enter you in the duck race tomorrow. If you can survive at sea, the race down the river will be easy.’

Then the fisherman picked up Little Yellow Duck and put him inside his warm jacket pocket. Little Yellow Duck soon fell asleep. When he woke up, he could hear the sounds of laughter and talking. The fisherman took Little Yellow Duck out of his pocket and Little Yellow Duck found himself on a bridge above a river which was flowing through a town. Crowds of people lined the banks of the river.

‘Here we are, little one, the start of the duck race. Swim as fast as you can,’ said the fisherman. And with those words, he tossed him into the river. Little Yellow Duck landed with a splash in the middle of hundreds and hundreds of little blue ducks with red beaks. They were all jostling with each other to get near the starting line which was marked by a long, red ribbon stretching from one side of the river to the other. Little Yellow Duck stood out like a sore thumb as he was the only yellow duck among the hundreds of blue ones.

Then the was a loud bang. The people lining the bank cheered as the ribbon holding all the ducks in one place was released. The race had begun. Little Yellow Duck swam as fast as he could. He was passing blue ducks right, left and centre. He knew he was in with a chance to win. It felt as though all the people were cheering for him as he rode the river current round the river bend. The finish line was in sight when a group of little blue ducks came from behind and nudged him towards the bank.

‘Oh no,’ he said coming to rest in a some reeds, ‘now I’ll never win the race.’

Then he heard a voice.

‘It looks like Little Yellow Duck.’

He recognised that voice – it was Emily with Mr and Mrs McGregor and Jasmine. They had come to watch the duck race.

‘Where have you been?’ said Mr McGregor. ‘We thought we’d lost you.’

So Little Yellow Duck didn’t get the chance to win the annual duck race, but he didn’t mind one little bit. He was just happy to be returning home with Emily to the bath tub. He wondered if Miss Muffet, Incy and Humpty would believe half of what had happened on his adventure.

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