by J Seab
~~~~
Willow, Geldane, and Mel sat at a table in Hevens Inn next to the big windows near the back. The orange tint of the setting sun bathed them in a ruddy glow while the warm summer air spilled in bringing the smells of freshly cropped grass and the promise of a hot, muggy evening. Most of the inn’s bustle was centered along the opposite wall where Twine was serving the last of his famous spice-veg stew to a few lingering patrons.
Geldane spooned the last of his stew into his mouth and sat back with a satisfied grunt. Mel broke off a small chunk of bread from the remains of a loaf sitting at the center of the table and soaked up some gravy from his bowl. Between bites he said, “It wasn’t your fault, Willow. There’s nothing else that could have been done.”
Sitting up and interlacing his fingers behind his head, Geldane added, “Even Med Servitor Arla said you did just fine.”
“I know,” Willow said, disconsolately swirling her nearly untouched stew with a spoon. “That’s just the point. There was nothing else we could do.”
Willow wiped at an eye and sniffed, absently picking again at her stew. “Arla said that the only thing that kept Swiik alive so long was her need to deliver her message. Once that was done, her body just quit. It wouldn’t have mattered what we did.”
“Do we know why she was on the rocks?” Mel asked.
“Not for certain. Swiik didn’t say much about that,” Willow said, trying to lift herself from her despondency. “Misti thinks she was being chased. Given that, her wound, and the confusing waterways through the Salty Flats, she was disoriented and wound up stuck when the tide moved out. She’d apparently been there since yesterday.”
“She was coming here, then?”
“So it appears.”
“What was chasing her?” Geldane asked.
“We don’t know for certain. Misti said that part of Swiik’s story was unclear. She got the impression that it wasn’t just a predator looking for a meal. Something strange and fearsome was deliberately after her, trying to prevent her from delivering her message.”
“Is that how Swiik got that wound? Is that what killed her, battle wounds she got fighting some evil beast?”
“Maybe,” Willow said slumping, any pretense of finishing her stew abandoned.
“It sounds more like it was the prolonged exposure,” Mel said, glaring at Geldane.
“Maybe,” Willow said. “It was probably both. In either case, there were no other treatment options. Arla concurred that we did everything possible under the circumstances.”
“Arla has been at this a long time, she should know,” Mel said. “How old is she, anyway?” he asked.
“I don’t know, must be in her sixties, I think. She’s never mentioned it,” Willow said absently, pushing her bowl away. “Sometimes I wish she knew some kind of ancient magic that healed wounds instantly, like in some of those fairy tales we read as kids.”
“Yeah.” Geldane perked up. “Noble knights sallying forth to battle evil dragons, great wizards slinging fireballs into hordes of monsters.” He waved his arms as if conjuring fire from his fingertips.
Willow responded curtly. “Things aren’t so simple in the real world, Geldane. Evil is not as obvious as drooling monsters and you can’t solve your problems by conjuring magical solutions.”
“Well,” Geldane said defensively, “the stories aren’t all about monsters and magic. They’re also about risking your life and making an effort to do what’s right, about fighting against evil and doing good.” Geldane’s voice trailed off as he pushed at a small piece of carrot spilled onto the table.
Willow was surprised to hear this from Geldane, he wasn’t the type to rationalize his actions. Whatever came along, he just did what he felt was appropriate at the time and then moved on. Willow, in any case, decided she needed to put aside her funk and, like Geldane, move on. “Yes, perhaps you’re right, Geldane. Swiik’s actions certainly seemed to fall into that category.”
“Speaking of magic,” Geldane said, brightening and turning to Mel, “What is that made-thing that Swiik was so concerned about?”
Mel reached into his belt pack, pulled out the cylindrical oddment, and placed it on the table. “Seems we’ve got a bona fide mystery. This oddment is quite unusual.”
Geldane reached over and retrieved it, turning it in his hands as he examined it. He scratched at it with a thumbnail. “I can’t see any way to open it but it’s crusted with dirt. Maybe there are markings underneath.” He scraped back his chair. “I’ll go wash it.”
“Wait,” Mel said, holding out a hand to Geldane. “Before you rush off, I think Willow needs to tell us about Swiik’s message. What did she tell Misti? Is this oddment the reason Swiik was attacked?” he asked, touching it with a finger, his voice subdued.
Willow’s eyes clouded over for a moment at the memory and then, sitting straighter, she nodded. “So it would seem. Speaking of monsters and noble deeds, Swiik’s tale is right up there.”
“How so?” Mel asked.
“Swiik told Misti a story she called the Mysteries of Bathus. It’s a story of Swiik’s distant ancestor who lived in a time that was different from today, a time when humans dominated the land and lived in vast cities far more advanced than ours are today,” Willow said glancing at Geldane. “It’s more than a story, it’s a fundamental part of Swiik’s pod history, their mythos.”
Geldane pulled his chair closer to the table. Rolling the cylinder in his hands, he said, “A story that explains these oddments and the occasional ruins that we find from time to time?”
“In part, yes.”
“If it’s a myth,” Mel objected, “doesn’t that mean there’s little truth to it, that it’s just some contrived attempt to explain something that dolfinas don’t have the intelligence or knowledge to understand?”
“No, not at all. Mythos can mean a system of beliefs and values that define a culture. The story is absolutely factual to Swiik and her pod,” Willow said, warming to the discussion.
“Hold on,” Mel persisted, raising a hand. “Just because her pod believes the story is true doesn’t make it true. Dolfinas are water creatures. What would they know of the land? And how about those fairy tales Geldane likes so much? Aren’t they myths too? Imaginary tales told around a campfire at night to entertain the kids?”
“How then,” Geldane asked, holding up the oddment, “do you explain this little piece of myth?”
Mel didn’t answer; he simply looked over at Willow.
Lacing her fingers before her, Willow leaned back and thought for a moment. “I understand your point, Mel. But I believe that the Mysteries of Bathus is more than a fanciful tale for a couple of reasons. First, many people believe that dolfinas are simply happy little creatures that swim around in the ocean having fun all day long. I’ve learned through many hours of conversation with Misti that dolfinas are smart. Sometimes,” Willow said, her words slowing, her eyes distant, “I wonder if they are smarter than we are.” After a moment, she took a deep breath and continued. “Regardless, try to put yourself in their place.”
“You mean go play with them in the ocean?” Geldane asked with a frivolous grin.
“No. Try to be serious, will you?” Willow scolded.
“Sorry, I’ll shut up and listen now.”
“Things like our homes and towns are part of what gives humans our sense of time, place, and identity. Dolfinas can’t live in permanent houses at the bottom of the ocean—they are air breathers. Their home is the open ocean. So, instead, they build structures from traditions and pod memory.”
“Weird,” Geldane said. “What does that mean, anyway?”
“It is weird to us humans. To a dolfina, a home isn’t the building where you and your family grew up or even a particular spot in the ocean. It’s a complex weave of activities and memory images shared with close family and friends.”
“I get that part. But I don’t understand why that makes the story true,” Mel said.
Willow leaned
forward, placing her hands flat on the table. “When I said memory image a moment ago, that’s exactly what I meant but in a way that you probably didn’t envision. Now, Geldane, this is going to get even weirder.”
“Yeah, and you pick on me about my fairy tales.”
“Maybe not that weird,” she said with a chuckle.
Geldane’s glare was softened by a thin smile. “Get on with it, then. Maybe we’re finally getting to the interesting part,” he said pushing at the piece of carrot again.
“Think how dolfinas’ vision is limited because of their watery environment. They can’t see very well or very far underwater, especially when they go deeper than ten or twenty meters. They, therefore, evolved in a different direction. Instead of using light to see as we do they use sound.”
Mel cocked his head with a puzzled look. Even Geldane looked up from his carrot with growing interest.
“Sound carries farther and better underwater than does light,” Willow explained, “so it’s perfectly logical that dolfinas evolved a complex auditory system whereas humans evolved a complex visual system. Dolfinas produce sound waves that bounce off things and then listen to the pattern of echoes. Their brain then interprets those signals to visualize the object. It’s not that different from how we see except that we use eyes to detect light patterns bouncing off things. As best I can understand from Misti, sound images perceived by dolfina brains are every bit as detailed as light images perceived by our brains. It isn’t, after all, the actual object that our brain perceives but a visualization our brains create by interpreting the sound and light data bouncing off the object.”
“Ah, is that why they make all those clicking and whistling sounds?” Mel asked. “They’re looking at things by bouncing sound off them?”
“Partly. But they also use those and other sounds to talk to each other. Dolfinas are able to generate a huge array of complex sounds that range far outside our hearing range. That’s another reason it’s hard for us to communicate with them. Their language must be very rich, more than anything we can imagine. The only reason we can communicate at all is that they are smart enough to have figured that out and keep our conversations simple enough for us to understand.” Shaking her head, she said, “Talking to us must be like talking to a two-year-old.”
“When they want to see something,” Geldane concluded, “they yell at it and listen to the echo?”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” Willow said, smiling. “But there’s another even more important factor which leads me to the second reason that I believe the Mysteries of Bathus is more than a fanciful tale. When you combine their ability to produce complex sounds with their ability to form mental images from the echoes, you have a most amazing talent. They can talk in pictures.”
“You’re saying they communicate with pictures rather than words?” Mel asked.
“Sure, in part. Take this, for example,” Willow said, picking up her mug. “We’ve learned to associate a label with this type of object. When I want to talk about it, I use its label: mug. Your memory supplies the details. Dolfina speech is able to pass along much more information than that. They can speak the actual auditory image of the object instead, and that image is much less prone to confusion or distortion than a verbal description. It would be similar to you projecting a visual image via mental telepathy.”
“Hey, wow!” Geldane said. “Dolfinas are telepathic!”
“Now I think I see the connection,” Mel said, ignoring him. “They can accurately preserve information by passing it along using picture-speak much as we might preserve an image with a painting.”
“Exactly,” Willow said, smiling broadly. “I like that term, picture-speak, but it’s more than that. It can be a moving, three-dimensional auditory image, an actual memory image that’s as real today as it was hundreds of years ago. It’s like a window into the past.”
“That means,” Mel said, “that Swiik’s story is more than some imaginary tale like Geldane reads in his weird books but an actual image passed down for generations within Swiik’s pod.” After a pause, he said, “Still, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been distorted over the generations. Even dolfina picture-speak can’t be perfect.”
“True,” Willow admitted. “But there’s one more thing that convinces me that we can trust this story.”
“And that would be?” Geldane prompted.
“That would be Swiik’s stated purpose and the nature of her pod, the very foundational reason for their existence, the sacred duty of all members of the Bathus pod: to preserve the Mysteries of Bathus until the time of need.”
“That sounds pretty awesome.”
“Maybe it’s time to tell us this Mysteries of Bathus,” Mel suggested.
“I agree but first I need something to drink,” Geldane announced standing and stretching. “Anybody else?”
“Sure, thanks. Some of Twine’s mint lemonade would be nice, if there’s some in the fridge,” Willow said.
“Make it the same for me,” Mel added.
“Three lemonades coming up.”
The bustle in the inn had subsided. Only one other patron occupied a table and he appeared oblivious to his surroundings. The last hint of twilight’s glow had faded from the windows beside them. A clatter of pots rang from the kitchen as Twine cleaned up after the evening meal. Safflower, Twine Farlow’s young daughter, circulated through the large room turning on the lectric lamps spaced along the walls. Hevens Inn was one of the few buildings outside Oak Cove’s Doma that had its own generator, partly because Chilly Creek ran nearby which made a waterwheel turbine practical. It was another reason the inn was a favored stop for travelers once winter took hold of their community—plenty of lectric heat, hot water, and light to push the winter blues away.
Geldane returned with three big mugs of chilled lemonade and set them on the table. They sipped their drinks quietly for a few minutes and then Willow eased back in her chair, closed her eyes, and began reciting the Mysteries of Bathus, her memory of it sharp and clear, as if she were reading it from the pages of a book.