Gaia Girls Way of Water

by Lee Welles

  They both entered and bowed. She let Ojisan make the greetings and looked closely at her teacher. He was pale and, if possible, even smaller than before. But his eyes brightened at the sight of them, and he rose to make his return greetings.

  Miho left the two men murmuring together in the front of the room and wandered back to the shelf that held the brushes, stones and ink. A few times, she heard her name in the conversation. She got the idea that Ojisan was seeking Sensei’s advice. Would he tell her teacher all she had told him? What if Sensei didn’t believe her, called her a liar? What if he said it was too dangerous for her to go to Taiji?

  She used a brush to write the courage kanji, kimo, over and over in the dust on the windowsill. She needed courage, not so much for Taiji, but to be patient as these men discussed her future. She knew what her uncle had thought of her mother running off to talk to whales and dolphins, and she worried.

  The windowsill was laced with kimo when Ojisan barked, “Miho!” It startled her and as she spun around; she dropped the brush on the floor. She retrieved it and hurried to the front of the room, heart pounding like drums at O-bon. She stared at the floor and clenched her jaw. What would she say if Ojisan commanded that she couldn’t go? But he didn’t command anything. He asked her a question.

  “Sensei and I would like to know why you feel you must go to Taiji.” Miho looked up at the two sets of dark eyes and had to bite her lower lip to keep from laughing. They were asking her ‘why!’ An impish part of her wanted to snap, “No why!”

  When she was sure the urge to laugh or make fun had passed, she said, “Satoru satori. Those men in Taiji don’t understand what they are doing…that Oikomi! They don’t know those are mothers and children and friends.” She had to swallow hard as the memory of Notch and Star and the Stooges flashed through her mind. “Those men in Taiji don’t understand the one they take away may know something the rest of them need. They don’t understand; until they do, I will stop it another way.”

  Sensei stroked his chin. Ojisan looked over her head and stared out at the garden. Miho waited and the silence of the moment stretched out until it made her twitchy. “Ojisan, if you don’t want me to go, you must find another way to help them understand. You. Because I’m just a little kid, not even Japanese—just gaijin-ko.”

  Ojisan looked surprised and Sensei laughed aloud! His laugh turned into a long cough; Miho and Ojisan helped him out of the classroom and back into the store. After he sat down in his chair and Tomiko brought him a glass of water, Sensei told Miho to go home while he talked to her Oji alone.

  Never in her life had Miho wanted to ask ‘why’ so badly.

  46

  Hokusai Surprise

  When Ojisan returned, he wouldn’t look Miho in the eye. He brought a laptop from his room, hooked his cell phone to it, and spent the afternoon pointing, clicking, and occasionally cursing. His credit cards were strewn across the counter, and she heard him give their Goza address more than once.

  Miho kept herself busy programming the global positioning feature in her phone and trying to figure out how long it would take to get to Taiji. She wished she knew for sure if she would travel with a pod (which might take too long) or by whale ping (how would the next whale know where to catch her?) or if Ojisan could charter a boat! Maybe Gaia had something else in store for her. Did Gaia even know about Miho’s Taiji plans?

  Miho finally asked if she could go to the beach. “Are you going to disappear for two days?” Ojisan gave her a very parental look.

  “No. I just want to walk a little, think, maybe find some shells.”

  “Hrrmmff. One hour.” He returned to his pointing and clicking.

  It was as fine a beach day as one could hope for. It was hot, but not too hot. An onshore breeze kept things cool, but it wasn’t too windy. The waves were well-formed, but not too big. The sand was dappled with families escaping city heat, and Miho had to wend her way around them to get to the water. She tried not to notice mothers unpacking food and fathers swinging their kids through the waves. She tried not to notice the dark ache that began to thrum in her chest.

  She put her toes in the water and stared out at the sparkling, blue Pacific. The whoosh and hiss of the incoming surf was almost hypnotic and the sounds of family laughter seemed to fade away. All Miho heard was the water. “You will do well, Miho-san,” said a familiar otter-voice! Miho spun around, looking for Gaia, shocked that she would come to this busy beach where anyone could see her! “Why do you still insist on using your eyes? I am in the air and the sand and especially in the waves that you hear so clearly. You don’t need to see me.”

  “How am I hearing you?” Miho said out loud. A little boy digging a hole in the sand stopped and looked at her.

  “The ocean is my heart.”

  “Ishin Denshin,” Miho whispered.

  The waves rose higher, broke, and swept to shore with a happy hiss. Gaia’s voice exclaimed, “Hai, very good! Now speak to me from your heart.”

  Miho reluctantly focused on the dark ache in the center of her chest. That ache was for her parents. She loved them. She missed them. But she had work to do. From her heart she saw the dolphins and the terrible day in Futo. She pictured the map and zoomed her mental image in on Taiji and then…she wasn’t exactly sure yet what she was going to do.

  “You will know, my dear.”

  “Gaia, will you be there?”

  “I am everywhere because I am everything.”

  Miho struggled. Just because she knew how to make the kanji for understanding, satoru satori, didn’t mean she could always understand Gaia’s riddles.

  “Will you help me?” Miho asked from her heart.

  “You are helping me.”

  The little boy who had been digging the hole in the sand was now tugging on Miho’s shirt. She looked down at him and for a moment his eyes went wide. He sees my green eyes, my gaijin eyes. Miho smiled, hoping that the stranger-ness of her wouldn’t scare him.

  “Who is Gaia?” the little boy asked.

  Miho’s knees felt shaky. How did he know?

  She remembered that Gaia had said, “You heard me every time you went to sleep listening to the waves come to shore. You heard me when you turned your ear toward the horizon and heard the breath of whales.You heard me when you sat on your boat and listened to the sea birds cry and call. I am Gaia. I am the whole of the earth. And the earth is the sea, the river, and the rain.” Miho squatted down so she could better look the little boy in the eyes and gestured to the sea. “Just listen,” she told him.

  Miho walked away feeling different—a little older, maybe even a little wiser. She had to smile thinking that small boy probably felt like she had given him a riddle. Knowledge flowed like water. Mujo. She had just handed a drop of knowledge to that boy.

  The people in Taiji needed knowledge and understanding if they were ever to stop slaughtering the minds in the water. It occurred to Miho that she could stop the Oikomi, but until the people in Taiji had knowledge and understanding of what they were destroying, nothing would really change.

  And even that might not be enough. As she climbed the hill to her house, she considered the destruction she had seen while traveling to New York. If the bottom of the sea were destroyed, how would the dolphins ever live? Where would their food come from? And, for that matter, where would the people of Japan (and America, don’t forget you’re American too) get their fish?

  All this understanding made Miho feel as if she were carrying a hundred pounds on her back. When she came through the front gate, she instantly forgot about everything when she saw Ojisan with a cigarette!

  “Ojisan! You…”

  Ojisan held up his hand, cutting her off. “Hai. Hai. Miho, I will quit this.” He rubbed the cigarette out with the heel of his shoe and stared over her head at the endless blue below. “I will quit when you come back from Taiji.”

  Miho threw up her hands and yelled, “Yeeaaaaah!” which means the same thing in every language.
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br />   Ojisan told her she couldn’t leave for two days. Before she could ask why, he showed her an article about the Taiji dolphin drive. The local police were securing the land access to the inlet so no photos or videos could be taken.

  Over those two days, Miho watched his worry lines deepen. She also watched an impressive number of trucks stop in front of their house. Boxes of all kinds were showing up. Ojisan lugged most into a spare room, but one small box had her name on the shipping label.

  Miho had just come back from a short lesson with Sensei when she saw the package on the counter. Ojisan chewed his new stop-smoking gum noisily while she opened the box. Inside, was a sort of plastic bag with a strap attached to one end. It said, “AquaTalk” on it.

  Miho knew what this was. Her mother had one. Used to have one, her heart whispered in a chill voice before she could shush it. It was a waterproof case for a cell phone! She held it up and grinned at Ojisan. “Would you like me to call in reports?”

  “Zettai!” Again, Miho knew this meant, “absolutely!” although she had never heard this word before. Her heart warmed, appreciating the Gaia gift of understanding.

  “Although,” Ojisan continued, “we will set it up to be fast and easy. I just want to know you are okay.”

  He spent the next 45 minutes fiddling around with her phone until it was programmed to send a special ring to his phone: *1 when she was okay and *9 if she were in trouble. They tested it out a few times and then Ojisan reminded her to plug it in to charge it fully. He also reminded her about the importance of getting sleep.

  When Miho unrolled her futon, a wonderful surprise tumbled out. It was her Hokusai print! Miho didn’t know if she were more surprised to see it, or shocked that Ojisan had gone to the trouble to roll it into her futon and set up such a cool surprise.

  Miho tacked it to the wall and stared at it as she waited for sleep. Unfortunately, Miho couldn’t sleep. She rubbed her scar, stared at her print, and began to doubt that she could do anything to stop the Oikomi in Taiji. Maybe she was fooling herself because she felt so bad about Notch and Star and especially little Shinju. Miho knew how hard it was not to have your real parents. She hoped the real Shinju was okay.

  “I gotta know for sure,” she whispered to the stuffed Shinju, who was nestled in the crook of her elbow. “Do you want to come?” Miho imagined her ragged, one-eyed dolphin exclaimed, “Zettai!”

  Miho tiptoed through the house. She thought about waking Ojisan to tell him where she was going and what she was doing. But if she failed, she didn’t want anyone else to see. Except Shinju! Stuffed Shinju was very good at keeping secrets.

  47

  The Test

  Miho went to the mermaid cove. However, she didn’t climb down to the mermaid chair. She sat high up on the rocks and turned her ear to the sea. She wanted to make sure none of her white-sided friends were nearby. When she was sure that no one would get hurt, she set Shinju to one side and got to her feet.

  She rose, balled her Hokusai-hand into a fist, and raised it into the air. She squeezed her eyes tight and saw the big wave coming, crashing, foaming. Nothing happened. She tried again…and again. When her temples began to throb with the effort, she sat back down.

  “I must be crazy,” she said to Shinju, who had her one good eye turned toward the sea. “I swear I did it before. I was swimming with the real Shinju and…”

  Then it hit her. She was standing on the rock; before, she had been in the water. Miho climbed down the rock enough to put her feet into one of the small tide-pools. She wondered if the water in the tide-pool, the memory of the high tide of that day, would be enough. Again, she clenched her scarred hand.

  This time, the water in the cove dropped as if someone were sucking it out with a straw. It continued to drop. Miho felt a whisper of fear at what she was doing. She released her fist and stared across the water. Here it comes!

  Her elation was replaced with panic as she realized the approaching wave was much higher than the highest tide! It would dash upon the rock. It would dash her upon the rock! It would drag her down and continue to throw her against the rock until all its energy was spent.

  She turned and began to climb as quickly as she could. But the wave was faster. The wall of water fell upon her with a sound like the end of the world! It flattened Miho, but then something curious happened.

  Miho felt all of her skin that was touching the rock—her hands, her feet, her forearms, her knees, and even her right cheek—begin to tingle. She knew the wave was churning over her and dragging back across her, but the pull of it was small. She took a deep breath and waited until the second wave came. It rose only to her knees.

  The ocean resumed its regularly scheduled lapping. Miho got up on shaky legs. When she examined her arms she saw they were patterned with small circles. She had seen such a pattern before. When she was six, her family had pulled into a slip in Moss Harbor somewhere in California. She was shocked when they winched the research vessel up and it was covered with what looked like dollops of cement.

  “Barnacles,” her father had said. Miho had watched, fascinated, as her father used a rented pressure-washer to knock the little organisms off. Her mother and father then spent three whole days using paint scrapers to remove the remaining husks. Miho hadn’t known there were creatures so tough they could hang on to the bottom of a boat! From then on, she noticed that in many places, you could tell how high the tide got by seeing where the barnacles clung.

  She rubbed her skin, feeling the last of the bumps recede. She knew this was another power—another Gaia power. Being able to stick like a barnacle was the only thing that kept her from being swept off the rocks by the big waves. “Wow! I guess that will come in handy! Right, Shinju?”

  She looked up, but her small stuffed friend was gone! Miho turned and squinted out at the dark sea. There was Shinju: floating up and over small swells, heading out to the open ocean. The moonlight winked once off her single eye, and then Miho lost sight of her.

  She wanted to cry. An ache greater than the wave she had just created rose in her chest. She was about to give it permission to fall over her when she remembered that there were real dolphins who needed her. She curled her Hokusai-hand into a fist and put it up to her mouth. She now knew for sure. She knew the way of water and would use this understanding to help her friends.

  Back in her room, she lay in her futon, stared at the print, and tried to convince herself she was too old to talk to stuffed animals. It was only after she decided Shinju had swum off to be with her parents, that she could finally fall asleep.

  The next morning Ojisan began driving her nuts. Why was Gaia an otter? How did she make waves? How would the whale know where to take her? Just what was she going to do when she got there? Miho found it tiring because these were all questions she was asking herself over and over. She finally suggested he go visit Sensei. Ojisan suggested she should go too and say goodbye.

  “Ojisan, you wouldn’t believe how fast a whale’s ping travels. I’ll be back in a day. I’m not saying goodbye to anyone.”

  Her Oji started to answer, but then he realized that she was sending him to Sensei so she didn’t have to say goodbye to him either. “Is your phone charged?” he asked, indicating he knew she was ready to leave for Taiji.

  “Hai.”

  He ruffled her hair as he went past and then called over his shoulder. “I’ll tell Tomikoro-Sensei that you will come tomorrow evening for Shodo.”

  Miho smiled. She liked this idea. It was as if the appointment with her teacher was strong enough to ensure her return. She braided her hair tightly back, got a big drink of water, made sure her phone was sealed tightly in its case, and then went to the mermaid cove to begin her mission.

  48

  Mama

  At first Miho was disappointed that Gaia was not waiting there, toes up and whiskers twitching. But she remembered that she didn’t need to see; she needed to listen. She clambered down the rock and sat in the mermaid chair.

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sp; It was like the first day she had come to the cove.The rising tide sent the smooth, small swells occasionally sliding across her lap, like a liquid blanket. Miho sat on the smooth seat and listened to the endless heartbeat of the incoming waves.

  Gaia? She thought. I’m here. I need the pod; I need to travel. The water continued to rise until Miho was bobbing up and out of the mermaid chair with each wave. She finally gave up trying to hang on and allowed herself to float out into the cove.

  She slapped the surface of the water, then dove under to call and to listen. She was just starting to really worry about getting to Taiji when the wonderful high whistle/ click of dolphin greetings reached her ears. They were coming!

  The real Shinju was the first to meet her. It was almost overwhelming to be with the pod again. They all talked at once and took turns buzzing past her. “Let’s go!” Miho said. She suggested they head east.

  It was an exhilarating ride. They met up with another, much larger group of lags and being one in a group of a few hundred was amazing. Occasionally they all let out what was like a group cheer. It was only after the group had fallen into a nice rhythm of breathing and leaping and chatting that Miho dared to say anything. She asked to find a whale. “Why? Whale! What kind? Why?” images of all manner of whales zipped through the water around her. The group slowed and Miho did her best to explain. She had to show again the awful day in Futo to do it, but if her mission were to get going, she would need the pod’s help.

  A group of ten young, strong lags peeled off and sped south. Most of the group agreed that it was the most likely place to find a whale. The pod slowly followed the same path as the group of ten. Miho began to worry. What if she couldn’t find a whale to send her to Taiji? Would she have to read a horrid story in the newspaper about how they captured dolphins for amusement parks and killed the rest?

  But soon enough, the ten returned with a happy vision of a sei whale to the southeast. The pod gained speed and soon they were leaping free of the water. Miho was going to be extra careful on her mission; she wanted to be around to take this kind of wild ride again!