Spirit got as close in to the shore as he dared, before Lucy slid off his back. Standing with her feet on the pebbles, but still up to her shoulders in the water, she turned and looked deep into his eyes again, before saying something he could not understand and then turned to wade out of the sea again.
He left Lucy as he had found her that morning, standing on the shoreline, waving to him. Spirit swam off back to the rest of the pod. He was hungry and wanted to hunt for fish.
Breeze led Chaser, Storm, Moonlight and Dancer in a wild hunt for squid which they all loved to eat. Spirit hung back. He hated squid and could not understand how any dolphin could eat them; they were so rubbery and flavourless. Summer swam alongside him with her calf. No-Name was not ready to join in the chase and the others would bring her a squid or two which she could then eat while she looked after him.
‘I see you still haven’t developed a taste for squid!’ joked Summer gently. Spirit looked at her calf.
‘It looks like your little one hasn’t either’ he replied with a smile. The calf had chewed a spare tentacle cautiously, but then spat it out in disgust. Milk was evidently much better.
Spirit hoped that the pod would move on and find a shoal of fish that he might actually like to eat, but they didn’t. He was hungry but he didn’t mind. He thought he might go off again later when they were resting in the afternoon and find something by himself. It didn’t seem fair to drag Dancer out with him. She liked squid after all.
He hung peacefully in the water whilst the others hunted. Dancer peeled away from the rest of the pod and swam up to him.
‘Let’s go out again later and find you a tasty bite’ she said playfully.
‘That sounds good’ he replied. He knew he could rely on Dancer. It would be much more fun to go out with her than to go alone.
It often surprised Spirit where the day went. After the hunt, Chaser had recited one or two of the old stories as they relaxed and before Spirit knew it, midday had passed and the sun had started its slow descent back to the horizon. By this time though Spirit was even hungrier than he had been when he left Lucy that morning.
‘Come on then’, he whispered to Dancer as the others started to doze off. ‘Let’s go.’ They made their excuses again and swam off together companionably.
‘Let’s head for the coast.’
Soon they were swimming within a short distance of the shore. It was a hot sunny day and as they passed by a beach, they could hear the sound of humans nearby, splashing and shouting as they played in the water. The two dolphins were too far out to be spotted and it was funny for them to think that even though they were so close, the humans were oblivious to them.
‘Those humans couldn’t see a squid if it squirted them in the eye’ joked Dancer as they swam along.
Though Dancer wanted to swim on, Spirit was curious about the humans on the beach and they lingered at the edges, just out of sight. Spirit was intrigued by the noises that they were making.
‘What do you think makes them come to the water?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Do you think they’re looking for fish?’ replied Dancer.
‘But all that noise would frighten any fish away.’
‘Maybe they just swim in the sea for fun?’ continued Dancer.
‘There’s just so many of them’ said Spirit, glancing over the surface of the water towards the beach. ‘Why would they want to cram themselves up so close to one another like that?’
‘Well I suppose they just live in one big heap all the time. They don’t need open space around them like we do’ replied Dancer.
Spirit thought that even though he was so close to Lucy, he would never understand the ways of humans. They were such strange creatures and much of what they did seemed completely nonsensical. When they went somewhere, they didn’t just want to visit it, they wanted to change it out of all recognition or destroy it altogether. They were almost never alone and always seemed to want to be in a big group. Humans could barely keep themselves afloat in the water and yet they seemed to be irresistibly drawn to it.
Spirit might have dismissed them altogether, like Storm had, if it weren’t for Lucy. He knew that there was more to them than met the eye. He wanted to learn as much as he could about humans and the world above the sea that Lucy inhabited.
As Spirit and Dancer listened to the humans splashing and playing in the water, something large and plastic floated past them. It was clear and not easy to spot until it got close. The two dolphins hung underneath the surface of the water and looked up at it.
‘What do you suppose that is?’ Dancer asked.
‘I expect it’s just some more rubbish that they’ve thrown away’ said Spirit. There seemed to be something on top of the floating plastic, but he couldn’t make out what. They were well used to seeing plastic floating along in the water, though not generally a piece of plastic this big. When he was still a young calf, Spirit had taken a bite out of something white that drifted past him in the water and almost choked on a plastic bag as a result. They let the thing float on past them. It got caught by a gust of wind and was blown on to the rocks just out of sight of the beach with all the people on it. The clear floating plastic thing seemed to snag on something sharp and then crumpled as the air leaked out of it.
Suddenly there was screaming sound from the direction of the floating thing and Spirit and Dancer glanced back to look at it.
‘What was that?’ asked Dancer in alarm.
‘I don’t know’ replied Spirit turning back towards the plastic thing in the water. The airbed sagged and as they looked they realised that a child had started scrabbling around on top of it.
‘Is that a human?’ asked Dancer.
‘It looks like a child’ replied Spirit. The human was much smaller than Lucy and Spirit guessed that the child was about half her age.
In fact the girl on the airbed was about six years old and had fallen asleep as her brothers had played catch with a ball next to her. Another boy had stolen the ball and her brothers had chased him down the beach to get it back. Unattended, the airbed had floated away from the safety of the shallows, seemingly without any one noticing. Her parents thought she was with her brothers and her brothers thought she was with her parents. No one knew that she was out here at all.
The girl started to shout something and although the two dolphins could not understand what she was saying, they could imagine.
‘She must be shouting for help’ guessed Spirit, overwhelmed with concern for the young girl. Her face was red with tears and hot with fear. However the sound of her screams and cries would not carry far and no one on the beach could hear her over the gentle slosh of waves around them and the noise of the crowds.
The airbed had got caught on a shelf of rock a few metres out from the main shoreline, which rose up out of the sea like a small island. The sea was still coming in though and when high tide came, the rocks would be fully submerged. They were slimy with seaweed. The airbed was rapidly losing its air and soon became unable to support the girl’s weight. She clambered off it onto the rocky islet. In doing so the airbed got pushed free of the rocks again and floated away again out of her reach.
‘Look!’ exclaimed Spirit. ‘The girl’s trapped on those rocks.’ The rocks were so slippery that the girl could not stand upright on them, but instead clung onto them, tears streaming down her face. The two dolphins swam over to where she was and put their heads over the surface of the water in an attempt to whistle encouragement to her.
‘Do you think that she will get on your back like Lucy does?’ asked Dancer. Instead of being encouraged though, when the girl saw the two dolphins, she shrank back in fear. She’d never seen dolphins before and was too scared and too upset to appreciate that they were friendly and wanted to help her. He realised that even if the girl had wanted to, she wouldn’t have the strength to pull herself up onto his back.
‘I don’t think there’s any chance of that’ replied Spirit. Just as he spoke, a slightly l
arger wave came in and washed over the legs and feet of the young girl. It wouldn’t be long before the tide rose higher and larger waves started to batter her. They had to do something.
‘Well what can we do then?’ asked Dancer anxiously, looking at the scared child a couple of metres away from them on the rock. Spirit shook his head. If only he could reach out to Lucy like she could reach out to him. He could tell Lucy what had happened and she could fetch help. He had no idea how to do that though.
‘I’d better swim to the beach and find someone who can come back and get the girl’ said Spirit. ‘You stay here and keep an eye on her.’
Spirit swam quickly back towards the beach. It was the kind of beach that shelved away fairly rapidly and so it was possible for him to get reasonably near to land without fear of grounding himself. As Spirit swam in close to the beach, his dorsal fin showed above the surface. Although a dolphins dorsal fin is completely different to that of a shark and despite the fact that pretty much only harmless basking sharks patrol the coast round Britain, someone shouted ‘shark!’ loudly in alarm. Suddenly there was a clamour of cries and stampede of children as they all tried to get out of the water as quickly as possible.
Spirit put his face above the surface of the water and reared up as much as he could to try to click and whistle that a girl was in danger and needed their help. As soon as people saw the friendly face of a dolphin, realising that there was no shark in the water, people turned and stormed back towards him.
‘Look Mummy a dolphin!’ yelled a hundred children, as they all rushed towards him, eager to pet him and stroke his side. ‘Isn’t he adorable!’ replied their parents as they converged on him.
Spirit was alarmed at all of the humans coming towards him, each with their hands outstretched to pat and caress him. The noise and the clamour made him nervous and he retreated to slightly deeper waters. He put his head up again above the surface and tried to click and whistle his warning about the girl stuck on the rocks just out of sight, but none of the humans on the beach knew what he was trying to say, or cared. The adult humans started to hold little black boxes up their face, which made clicking sounds. The youngsters on the beach strained to touch Spirit, but he was worried that they’d cover his blow-hole and kept just out of their reach.
Spirit swam a short distance along the edge of the beach, in the direction of the rocks where the girl lay caught and then turned again, in the hope that they would follow him. Spirit realised though that it was no good. He may as well try to communicate with a shoal of mackerel. He simply could not think of how to tell them that a girl was in trouble and needed help. He swam back to where Dancer was waiting in the hope that at least one or two humans would come off up the beach and round the headland to try to find him again, but it seemed that none of them did. All he could hear was shouting and splashing behind him.
‘It’s not good’ warned Dancer as he approached her again. ‘The tide’s coming in fast now and that girl is going to get swept off the rock soon. She’s scared of us. We can’t carry her to safety and I’m worried that if she falls off that rock, she’ll drown. What can we do?’ called Dancer in increasing agitation.
‘Lucy!’ thought Spirit in desperation. ‘Lucy, Lucy, LUCY!!’
Lucy suddenly sat up with a jolt. She’d been lying in the grass of the field just behind the studio, looking at a brilliant green beetle climbing a grass stem and listening to the buzz of grasshoppers and insects around her. She suddenly felt a sense of great urgency, but she didn’t understand from where. Then she thought, ‘Spirit’. There was something to do with Spirit that was not right. She realised that she needed to reach out and contact him straight away.
Lucy composed herself and then focused her mind to concentrate before relaxing, letting her thoughts wander to the corners of her conscious mind. It was still hard to do and she was never sure when it would work, but she was in luck and suddenly she found herself floating in the salty waters next to the two dolphins.
‘Spirit, what’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Lucy!’ he replied. ‘You came! I called out for you and you came!’ Lucy looked around her, surprised to hear the sounds emanating from the beach nearby.
‘But what’s the matter?’ she asked again and then she saw the scared frightened little girl clinging to the rock, as another wave rolled in and almost knocked her off.
‘We can’t get the humans to come and save her. She’s scared of us and no one seems to know she’s missing’ said Spirit. ‘In another few minutes she’s going to fall off that rock altogether’. Lucy nodded. She wanted to emerge from the water to comfort the little girl, but she knew that when she came to Spirit in this way, she had left her physical self behind in the field where she’d been lying just a couple of minutes before. She’d look like a ghost to the little girl and scare her even more. The shock might make her fall of the rock by itself. Lucy looked around her.
‘Where are we?’
A minute later Lucy burst through the door into the farm office where Mary sat working on a spreadsheet on her computer. Mary looked up in alarm.
‘Whatever is the matter Lucy?’ she asked.
‘We’ve got to call the Coastguard, NOW!’
Lucy had disappeared almost as quickly as she’d come and Dancer and Spirit were left wondering what good she could do. But barely five minutes later two lifeguards had come running across the rocks and plunged into the water before swimming to the spot where the little girl lay clinging to the rocks, half submerged in the waters of the encroaching tide. Spirit and Dancer watched with satisfaction as the life guards carried the little girl off to safety.
The two dolphins turned away, relieved that the crisis had been averted and that they could swim away again. They wondered by what magic Lucy had been able to communicate with the humans on the beach, but it seemed to Spirit that she must be able to reach out with her mind to other humans in the same way that she was able to do so with him. The ways of humans were very strange and he would never be able to conceive what a telephone was.
What amazed Spirit though was that for the first time, he’d been able to send her a message. Normally, he would never know when Lucy might appear and when she wouldn’t. He could never contact her and had to rely on her coming to him. Yet when he really needed her, Lucy had the strong feeling that she had to reach out to him. Together, they had saved a little girl. It was a good feeling.
‘But how did you do it?’ asked Dancer, as they swam along quietly a safe distance from the shore.
‘I don’t know’ he replied. ‘I just really needed her and somehow, she knew.’ Suddenly Spirit felt light and happy. They chased each other round and round and leapt into the air for the sheer pleasure of it.
An hour or so later they arrived back where the rest of the pod was basking with the warm afternoon sunshine on their backs. Dancer soon regaled them with the story of the little girl in trouble and how Spirit had been able to contact Lucy and get her to help the little girl. The pod gathered round.
‘That’s a very useful gift you’ve got there Spirit’ commented Breeze, eyeing him speculatively. ‘A very useful gift for the pod.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Dancer.
‘Oh, you know’ replied Breeze. ‘What you’ve got to ask yourself is ‘how can I help the pod?’’
‘But I do help the pod’ answered Spirit. ‘All the time.’
‘It’s true’ said Summer coming to his defence, ‘Spirit does help the pod all the time.’
‘Yes but think what more Spirit could do for us with his gift’ continued Breeze.
‘Like what?’ asked Dancer.
‘Well you can help when we’re in danger and you can work with the humans to help them and then they can bring us more fish.’
Spirit glanced over at where Storm hung in the water. He regarded them all seriously, but didn’t say anything. Spirit wondered why.
‘Well that’s just silly’ replied Dancer. ‘Why would the humans bring fish to
us?’
‘More fish to eat sounds good to me’ chipped in Chaser, ‘but we don’t need handouts from the humans. We can hunt for our own fish.’
‘Do you remember seven winters ago when Spirit was still very young. There were no fish in these waters and we nearly starved. You’d have been glad of a handout then’ replied Breeze.
‘That’s true enough’ said Moonlight, who’d been following the conversation with interest. ‘We’ve got a little one in the pod now’ she continued, looking at Summer’s calf.
‘I, I don’t know what my gift is for’ said Spirit hesitantly. ‘I just know I have something special. I….’ he trailed away, as Summer’s calf swam up to him and gave him a friendly nuzzle. Of course he’d do anything he could to help the pod, wouldn’t he? There was a pause.
‘I think that humans are dangerous and not to be trusted’ said Storm. ‘I’ve seen more bad come from involvement with humans than good. We’re better off without them’. He paused. ‘But I’ve met Lucy and though I could not speak to her in the way that Spirit and Dancer can, I’ve looked into her eyes. There is something dolphin-like about her. I believe her to be a good human.’
‘Great’ said Breeze. ‘All the better for us! Just think, Spirit could send her instructions and she could get the humans to bring us fish any time we need it.’ Spirit and Dancer looked back at Storm. He was quiet for a moment, lost in thought.
‘A long time ago we all gave Star-Gazer a promise, before Spirit was named. We all vowed that we would look after Spirit, come what may.’
‘And now we have another youngster in the group and Spirit will join us to pledge to look after Summer’s new calf’ replied Breeze.
‘You forget the stories of old’ Storm replied, ‘and what it means to be a Child-Seer.’
‘Who cares about the old stories?’ asked Breeze defensively. ‘We’ve all got to pull together to help each other. What use is Spirit’s gift unless it puts fish in our stomachs?’
Dolphin Child Page 5