Ripple

by Tui Allen

  Carried in the midnight silk

  Of starry currents in the seas

  I listen to the rising wind

  That sings to you of galaxies

  It sings to me of you,

  Stranger from the blue

  And will you take my music

  To the galaxies with you?

  Under a moonlit rainbow

  Through the flying spray

  What were you fleeing from

  When you came my way?

  The last notes trailed away and the first song was over. Cosmo was silent for a long time, but spoke at last.

  ‘Ripple?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is this what your “chaos” has been?’

  ‘Yes and many dolphins have wanted to cure me of it. Even those who love me.’

  ‘What on Azure should we do?’

  ‘I could play you another one.’

  ‘There are more?’

  ‘There are dozens ready to share and dozens more to be processed.’

  ‘Dozens? How could you carry all this within you? I can’t bear to think of how we treated you like a freak! How can you ever belong to me alone?’

  He swam in silence, surfacing more frequently than normal to breathe. Ripple fussed alongside him, also agitated.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Cosmo said. ‘I’m . . . thunderstruck.’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then enjoy another song.’

  After many more songs, he said, ‘You’ve written my life’s work. Clearly it’s my task to circulate your music to the stars. It will repay a hundred-fold everything those distant cultures have given Azure.’

  ‘But not the first song. Take my other songs beyond Azure but let’s keep the first song to ourselves.’

  The first song of all time . . . was given to me alone, he thought.

  He saw Ripple as the central point of a beginning spiral, new as a baby seashell, ever expanding until its arms matched the spirals of the galaxy and all existence beyond it.

  Ripple nudged him with her beak. ‘Just enjoy the music,’ she said. Then she shared some more songs and he enjoyed them as he’d never enjoyed anything before.

  ~~~

  There were no barricades in Ripple’s brain this time. Deities and seraphim of the hereafter listened in with Cosmo. All of us heard what he heard. Like Cosmo, I knew without any doubt, that a new phase of the universe had begun. The future directions of no less a deity than Father Clement MJS (Most Joyfully Sublime) were permanently defined by the actions of one young female dolphin on the planet Azure. Music was my own destiny, I was certain of it.

  Sterne silently observed the two dolphins. Then she became absorbed in watching the seraphim. They changed as they listened. They’ve never been the same since. Music completed them at last. The first chords of the song calmed them as though true peace descended for the first time. They expanded and flowered. We watched as Ripple’s music exalted the race of seraphim into the race of angels, and in return they devoted themselves to music for eternity. Their auras intensified in colour and stretched into wings of power sweeping the universe. When the last notes faded the angels hovered transcendent, at the dawn of their perfection, almost too bright to look upon.

  After their metamorphosis, even Sterne viewed them with respect she had never shown towards their immature form. I suddenly recognised them as a vast source of latent musical abundance awaiting ignition. The newly exalted angel host remained over Azure for many weeks. I arranged them into choirs and they listened to Ripple’s music alongside me. They sang with her though she did not know it. Some of them returned with me to the Sacred Galaxy. Under my guidance, they commenced their new but everlasting task of musical praise and musical creation. They returned frequently to Azure to exchange places with angels who had remained there learning from Ripple.

  In recognition of Sterne’s achievement, I did not hesitate to recommend her advancement in the Divine Hierarchy. Sister Sterne DS (Developing Sublime) became Mother Sterne MLS (Master of the Light of the Spirit) for her work with Ripple alone, of all the billions of spirits under her care. I graciously encouraged her to share her revolutionary methods of measuring the worth of a soul by reading the light of its spirit.

  My own new task of guiding angels in their pursuit of music, allowed me to spend much time among the dolphins of Azure. I too was honoured with a new title: Father Clement MJS MAC (Most Joyfully Sublime and Master of Angelic Choirs).

  Later I thought back to the time when Sterne and I had listened to the first music. How strangely calm she had been; as quiet and still as the snow that lies on the poles of Azure. Not a tear escaped from her eye, though many poured from mine.

  Was it modesty? I was soon to discover the real cause of Sister Sterne’s strange calmness.

  ~~~

  Read on, or if desired . . .

  Return to Table of Contents

  Chapter 26: Rigel’s Prayer

  Cosmo explained to Delph that he needed some time free to support Ripple in something that would soon become clear. Then Cosmo accompanied Ripple on a visit to Axis to give him her song of mathematics.

  ‘Music might have stayed inside me forever if not for you, so I’ve created this to thank you.’

  They listened to the song. Axis was almost as astounded and appreciative as Cosmo had been. He played it over and over again and they left him there gently dancing to the music.

  Then they visited Aroha and Rikoriko.

  Aroha laughed after hearing her first song. ‘How fortunate I didn’t cure you of music as I once hoped to.’

  ‘Instead you were the one who revived it in me,’ Ripple reminded her.

  Rikoriko was not surprised to receive music. She’d never expected anything less from her favourite aunt. She demanded to become Ripple’s first apprentice and now had the full blessing of her mother. Rikoriko became the second dolphin ever to choose music as a vocation.

  Cosmo went to the elders, leaving Ripple to share her music with her relatives. He explained that Ripple had made a discovery more valuable than anything ever discovered by astronomers in the universe. He asked they call an assembly so she could reveal it to the school. The elders began arranging the first music concert for later that day.

  Ripple first gave them a lively piece in praise of the glittering oceans surrounding the Northern Islands in summertime. All over that very sea, thousands of dolphins leapt and danced to the melody. It was a smash hit.

  ~~~

  As I looked upon that first Azuran celebration of music, my attention was captured by the familiar golden shape of Rigel swimming deep in the crowd. I lacked Sterne’s finer skills but even I could see the light of his spirit expanding with pride, so great was the aura surrounding him. Rigel’s mighty intellect used all its power to convey a simple prayer.

  ‘Come back to us Pearl. Come back and see what our daughter has created!’

  No-one on Azure heard Rigel’s prayer though its energy resounded through the Hereafter. But Pearl was dead and her spirit had moved on to a galaxy impossibly distant. She could not come to him.

  Ripple shared a dozen songs at the concert.

  The demand was enormous and she circulated other music pieces afterwards by passing them to smaller groups of enthusiasts who circulated them from mind to mind. Ripple was correct in thinking that some would not respond to music as well as others. There were a very few who found it merely pleasant. Most felt as though they had been starved all their lives and Ripple had provided their first food. Dolphins born after that day could hardly imagine Azure without music.

  Many wished to talk to Ripple, to thank her, or to apologise for their former misunderstanding. Cosmo and Echo had to shield her when sometimes their attentions almost overwhelmed her. Cosmo decided this was a good time for a holiday in the hope that the initial frenzy would calm down while she was away. He collected a group consisting of Ripple, Echo, Rush, Flip, Quin, Givan and himself, and the seven of them took
time out to travel to his old school, near the Southern Islands. They shared Ripple’s music with the Southerners who received it as enthusiastically as the Northerners. Cosmo took great pride in introducing Ripple to his friends from childhood, including his old teacher Zenith. The seven visitors from the north were welcomed joyfully and shown the best hunting and surfing during their stay.

  A few weeks later on their return to the Northern Islands, the school had indeed recovered sufficiently to remember their manners so that Ripple was allowed to concentrate on her own work, including her new task of teaching Rikoriko. Many others soon wished to learn to make music. Ripple selected a small class to begin with and launched into the task of creating musicians capable of becoming teachers, to allow the new skills to spread. Delph offered to assign minders as required for musicians working at composition.

  Rikoriko proved the most adept of all Ripple’s students; she seemed to have been born to follow her aunt. Although the youngest in the class by far, by the time she was two years old she was making music comparable with Ripple’s.

  Cosmo returned to work with a clear mission. He and his team spent the rest of their lives transporting music to distant planets within Koru and far beyond.

  ~~~

  We deities can tell you folk of Azure today, twenty million years later, that music was the contribution above any other for which your planet is renowned. Initially spread throughout the physical realm by Cosmo and his team, it has rolled further through space and time than even he could ever have imagined, carried on and on by others in later generations and distant worlds, down the millennia.

  I still remember the day, not long after it all happened, when I discovered the reason for Sterne’s icy composure on the day of the first song.

  Surrounded by a phalanx of angels performing a stirring waltz in my praise, I sailed up to the recently promoted Mother Sterne (MLS) in the Sacred Galaxy, the rhythmic movements of my approach in perfect time to the waltz. With such music surrounding me, I felt that I must once again express my appreciation.

  ‘That was a resounding success of yours, Mother! I will thank you for it eternally.’

  ‘I’ve had a few successes lately Father Clement. To which of them do you refer?’

  Her aura dazzled brightly but lacked fluidity, having tightened up noticeably as we arrived.

  ‘Bit grumpish today eh? I’m talking about that tired little spirit you sent to Azure – who invented music and through love found the perfect way to release it to the universe.’

  ‘Oh yes, it was a success I suppose, if you like that kind of thing.’

  ‘But Mother! It’s an absolute hit. Every angel of the Hereafter has mastered the trick. They’re sitting about on nebulae, singing away like . . . well, like angels I suppose.’

  ‘But it goes on day and night. It’s given me a headache. I think I preferred the silence we had before.’

  ‘You’ll have to move with the times, girl. This music thing is here to stay. It’s all over the universe. Makes you want to skip and dance as though you were young again.’

  ‘It's inescapable, I’ll give you that. But the main thing is the little spirit was fulfilled at last. That’s my only concern. And I can put up with music if it makes the universe happier.’

  ‘Good lass, that’s the spirit!’

  I danced on my way, immersed in glorious music, with the colours of my aura shimmering around me, billowing in time to the majestic chords of the waltz.

  Sterne, poor thing, was tone-deaf. Yes, it’s true; even we deities have our imperfections, though I can’t think what mine could be. I thought back to the day when we had listened to Ripple’s first song and understood that Sterne had only been able to understand the magnitude of Ripple’s achievement by observing the metamorphosis it inspired in the seraphim.

  ~~~

  Ripple bore three children to Cosmo. Neither parented children with other dolphins. Their love mirrored that shared between Kismet and Mimosa, who’d died so long ago for Cosmo. Ripple and Cosmo produced only boys to Rigel’s delight. It was inevitable that with the blood of Rigel and Cosmo in their veins, two of them became master astronomers and followed their revered father and grandfather travelling between the stars. Only one became a musician. He was great in his day, but Ripple’s musical legacy flowed most powerfully through the spirit of her niece Rikoriko. For hundreds of years it was common to refer to both in one breath.

  ‘A song worthy of the era of Ripple and Rikoriko.’

  ~~~

  Towards the end of their lives, Ripple and Cosmo decided to bequeath ‘The First Song’ to the ocean. They knew it was too precious to die with them so they gave it to their children for release after their death.

  Twenty million years later, dolphins still sing the love song she gave to Cosmo. Known everywhere as, ‘The First Song’, it’s the most beloved of all the songs she created, though all remain as treasures within ocean mind.

  Winter was lashing the ocean when Ripple and Cosmo reached the end of their phase on Azure. They made a decision to give their worn-out bodies to a group of hunting sharks that were threatening their own newborn great-grandchild and other newborn dolphins in the area. The sharks were satisfied and the newborns survived. Cosmo and Ripple escaped their Azuran bonds together.

  ~~~

  We of the Hereafter wished to recognise their contributions during their lives on this planet. Mother Sterne took the spirit of Ripple and cradled it in her aural wing, as she had done before she had sentenced it to life on Azure. I drifted alongside her supporting the spirit of Cosmo.

  ‘Look at the change that has come over this spirit,’ she said. ‘Remember how pale and faint it was? We almost believed it was ready for aeons of rest. Now it has become strong and fulfilled. Do you still feel it should be withdrawn from its spiritual path Father Clement?’

  ‘I most certainly do not! You once read strength within that spirit, Mother Sterne, which I admit I did not see myself back then.’

  ‘Thank you, Father. But what do you suggest we do with them now?’

  ‘I believe both are now ready to step up to those levels which allow past-life memory.’

  ‘Agreed, but shall we reward them in any other way for their recent lives?’

  ‘I think we should allow them to meet in the Hereafter between all their future lives so even when they are temporarily separated by life sentences, they will know their love remains eternal.’

  ‘An excellent plan. You are kindly, Father Clement. I might never have thought of that. And let’s allow them to stay together for a goodly rest before they commence their first separation.’

  ‘Such a suggestion, Mother Sterne, illustrates to me that your compassion is advancing at a pace with your other special strengths.’

  ~~~

  In the twenty million years since the life of Ripple, music in the ocean has progressed far beyond even her wildest dreams. Dolphin music now has the power to heal any disease, heal any physical or emotional scar, display tales across the mind in moving pictures, carry a spirit into the past or the future, sweep the listener away on astral voyages and transport spirits into the Hereafter to visit lost friends. Dolphin music has also allowed the dolphin brain to evolve into an organ capable of splitting into two parts, one of which can stay present in the physical world while the other part is asleep or away on an astral or musical voyage of discovery. Minders are no longer needed.

  So you humans have now heard the story of Ripple.

  But you may be wondering why Mother Sterne was so keen for you to hear it. Why did she insist old Clement go to the great trouble of translating everything into your human speech? And why now?

  To answer that, let me take you away from your unimaginably distant past and into your not-so-distant future to show you where Azure is heading, now that humanity is on the scene . . .

  ~~~

  Read on, or if desired . . .

  Return to Table of Contents

  Chapter 27: Marcus’s Journe
y

  When Marcus Evans rose for a 5am piano practice on that wintry Thursday morning in the year 2257, he experienced an unusual headache. It alarmed him for a moment but passed so quickly he soon forgot it. He saw nothing to indicate that this would be the last piano practice of his life.

  Marcus threw on a warm robe and thick socks and crept to the music room, activating full sound-proofing to avoid waking the family. He settled at the instrument, un-brushed hair sticking up on end, hedgehog style. He warmed up with scale passages and then let his fingers lead him through some familiar pieces. As always he was absorbed and uplifted. For Marcus there was no world beyond the music as it travelled its route from page to eyes to mind to hands on keys, and from the keys through the workings of the machine, to make the sounds pouring into the room. He did not think of its complicated route. He was only aware of the music.

  There were other things he was unaware of as he played: the slow spread of magenta light in the eastern sky as sunrise approached; the eerie silence in the oceans washing the borders of his island home; and the tiny tumour growing aggressively in his own brain.

  The last piece he played that morning was ‘Dolphin Nocturne.’ He’d discovered it in a folder of old sheet music borrowed from a friend. The melody intrigued him. It had a light-heartedness which suited such playful animals. Since the piece was not too challenging, he was considering including it in the performance. The fact that he played it at all that morning was an odd co-incidence as it turned out; one he wouldn’t forget.

  The piano practice was necessary since his skills were rusty and he’d agreed to perform at a local community fundraiser only a fortnight away. Evans was an excellent musician when he practiced, but not a professional; his day job was scientific research in the field of sound. However the organisers knew that if Marcus Evans turned up to play, they would have a good turnout. Marcus had obliged, being community-spirited, even though he knew it would mean weeks of sacrificing early morning exercise. He’d become more inclined to jogging or cycling than music of late; it meant he could eat what he liked and stay lean. But piano practice was acceptable on such wintry mornings even if it did mean cutting down on food a bit.