Midnight Dolphin (28 page)

‘
Spirit’
called Storm. ‘Stop a moment. You are searching with your eyes, but
I believe that you need to use all your senses.’

Spirit drew
back and observed the wall in front of him. Storm was right, his
eyes told him nothing. He tried to use his clicking echo-location
to see through the bladder-weed to the rock behind it. There were
half a dozen spots where there could be something behind the weed.
Then he let his mind free itself.

Suddenly, with
a great convulsion of his tail flukes, Spirit powered forward,
straight at a particular patch of the cliff.

‘
Watch our
Spirit!’ called Star-Gazer in alarm. It seemed to the others that
he would strike his beak and head against the wall of rock. Instead
he quite simply disappeared.

‘
Where’s he
gone?’ cried out Moonlight in alarm. Dancer immediately darted
forward to where her friend had disappeared.

‘
Look!’ she
exclaimed. ‘There’s an opening.’ Sure enough, behind the slimy
bladder-weed there was a smooth round hole in the rock. It was worn
down by the thousands of years that the sea had pounded against the
hard granite. It was barely wide enough for a dolphin to pass
through and was absolutely black. There was no sign of Spirit in
there at all.

‘
I’m going
after him!’ Before anyone else in the pod could respond, Dancer
turned and with a flick of her tail, she too disappeared into the
solid wall of rock.

It was dark
and tight in the tunnel and at some points there was barely enough
room for Dancer to squeeze through. She became scared that she
would get stuck there and continued on cautiously, with small
flicks of her tail flukes to propel herself forward. Eventually the
tight passage opened up into a great subterranean space.

‘
Spirit,
Spirit!’ she called.

‘
I’m here’ he
replied, and they touched fins briefly in greeting.

‘
This place is
amazing’ said Dancer, full of awe as she looked around her. The
great cave was shaped like a huge whale and was filled with an
eerie green phosphorescent glow that seemed to emanate from the
crystalline rocks that covered the cave.

‘
I know, it’s
beautiful isn’t it?’ replied Spirit quietly.

‘
But how did
you come to dream of this place?’ asked Dancer, still gazing around
her.

‘
I don’t know’
Spirit replied. ‘I just did somehow.’ They spent a few more moments
looking in wonder at the ancient cave. ‘Come on’ said Spirit. The
two young dolphins swam round the cave slowly, admiring its
structure.

‘
What could
have made this?’ asked Dancer.

‘
Not humans,
that’s for sure’ replied Spirit. ‘This place is as old as time
itself.’ At the far end of the cave, there was a natural archway
that led to something beyond.

‘
What’s
through there?’ asked Dancer. Spirit did not need to answer,
because with a flick of his tail, he had passed through the archway
and then Dancer followed him. The second cave was smaller than the
first, but had a similar shape and was still iridescent and green.
It had more sparkles of light shimmering on the walls than the
first, larger cave and Dancer could see that above the surface of
the water there was a sort of platform.

There were
great crystals submerged in the water, the like of which Dancer had
never seen before and they navigated around them carefully. Dancer
felt a sense of peace and tranquillity overwhelm her as they
progressed. Her heartbeat slowed, and her movements became
calmer.

‘
It feels…
magical in here’ she whispered.

‘
I know’
replied Spirit, equally as quietly. They swum round slowly with a
sense of awe at the beauty of the place. The eerie green light
reflected from the ripples on the water and appeared to come from
everywhere and nowhere, infusing the caves with a sense of
calm.

At the very
end of the second cave there was a lower and narrower opening to
what seemed to be the third cave.

‘
What’s
through there then?’ whispered Dancer.

I’, I don’t
know’ replied Spirit cautiously. Dancer expected Spirit to swim
right through, but he hung back.

‘
Aren’t you
going to go through there then’ asked Dancer, ‘or would you rather
I went through first?’

‘
I, I don’t
feel that I should go through there now, not without Lucy anyway’
said Spirit, cautiously measuring his words. ‘I just have this
strong sense that it’s somewhere that only Lucy and I should go
when the time is right.’

‘
That’s if she
ever finds this place’ murmured Dancer, more to herself than to
Spirit. The two dolphins lapsed into silence as they looked at the
amazing crystal formations around them.

‘
Why haven’t
the others followed us into the cave do you think?’ asked Dancer
eventually.’

‘
Well if you
and I can only just squeeze through the passage from the sea,
there’s no way that the adults will be able to do so’ replied
Spirit. ‘They’d get jammed in the hole.’

‘
I hope they
haven’t tried then’ said Dancer, ‘or we’ll be stuck in this cave
for ever.’ They swam back into the largest cave and listened for a
few moments. They could still hear the sea through the tunnel. No
dolphin was blocking the passage.

‘
I suppose
we’d better get back to the others’ said Dancer reluctantly. ‘I’ve
lost track of how long we’ve been in here.’

First Dancer,
then Spirit swam back through the dark, tight tunnel out to the sea
again. ‘
Another few months and I’ll be too
big to fit through here at all
’ thought
Dancer, brushing her flank on the rock as she swam. At least it was
smooth and didn’t hurt her.

The rest of
the pod were lounging lazily in the sea when they emerged
again.

‘
You took your
time!’ exclaimed Chaser. The rest of the pod came close, and rubbed
fins in greeting.

‘
Well, what
was it like then?’ asked Star-Gazer. Between them, Spirit and
Dancer explained what they had just seen.

‘
But what I
don’t understand is how Spirit could have dreamt of the cave and
his entrance if he didn’t know it was there already’ said Summer,
voicing what all of them had been thinking.

‘
You know that
there is a greater consciousness that we are all connected to’
replied Storm thoughtfully. ‘It links all dolphins past, present
and future into a larger whole. I think that Spirit knew of the
Three Green Caves not because he had been there himself, but
because generations of young dolphins had been there over the
millennia. The caves were revealed to Spirit because he needed to
know about them to realise his destiny.’ Storm turned to Spirit and
looked at him calmly. ‘I have thought for many months that you have
a special destiny, now I am sure of it.’

Later on, once
darkness had fallen, the clouds cleared briefly and the stars were
visible in the cold black sky. Spirit had been dozing lightly and
seeing Star-Gazer looking upwards, he joined her.

‘
What is it
that you’re looking at?’

‘
Oh, I was
just looking at the heavens’ replied Star-Gazer dreamily. ‘You see
those stars over there? They’re called the
Three Sisters
. They seem to be
coming into alignment.’ Spirit stared hard, but he could make out
nothing unusual in the scattering of stars above him. Eventually
his mind became clouded with dreams and he slipped back into his
waking-sleep.

Chapter
Seventeen:

Waking up the
next morning, Lucy immediately jumped out of bed and pulled open
the curtains to look at the white and silent world outside the
cottage. Snow had evidently continued to fall during the night and
all the lines of the hedges and fences had softened and all but
disappeared under a great undulating layer of whiteness.

Lucy pulled on
her jeans, tee-shirt and fleece and went downstairs. She thought
that Dad would be in the kitchen drinking his first coffee of the
day, but it looked like he was still in bed. Lucy went to the
backdoor and pulled it open. A wall of cold air hit her and a small
pile of snow fell across the step. It was powdery and soft. This
was how Lucy had always imagined Christmas to be. She felt a clutch
of excitement in her chest at the crisp beauty of it
all.

There was no
food in the cottage but Mary and Darren had told Dad and Lucy to
come over to the farmhouse for breakfast at nine o’clock, by which
time they would have already been working on the farm for two or
three hours, tending to the livestock in the bitterly cold
conditions.

As Dad and
Lucy walked the short distance down the lane half an hour later,
the snow yielded with a satisfying crunch to their advancing
footsteps. In some places it went up to Lucy’s knees, and where the
snow had drifted it was deeper still.

‘
I think we’re
going to need skis!’ joked Dad as they walked along, wrapped up in
their coats and mittens. ‘There’s no way any cars are going to get
up this lane today.’ Lucy frowned to herself. She just had to get
to her rendezvous with Rachel Greenwood.

The farmhouse
kitchen was warm and full of the tantalising aroma of frying bacon.
Darren was standing over the stove and Bethany and Mary were
cupping mugs of tea in their hands to warm their fingers
up.

‘
You’ve got
here in the nick of time’ said Darren, frying pan in hand, ‘I’m
just about to dish up.’

Half an hour
later the conversation had moved from discussing the sheep and cows
to the transport system.

‘
According to
the radio, the local authority are getting their snow ploughs and
gritting lorries round all the main roads’ observed
Mary.

‘
What about
the country lanes?’ asked Dad.

‘
Oh they won’t
get down lanes like these for days’ replied Darren. ‘They expect
farmers like us to look after ourselves.’

‘
But I wanted
to go Christmas shopping in Merwater’ said Lucy forlornly. ‘So did
Bethany.’

‘
Don’t you
worry about that’ replied Mary brightly. I’ll be running the
tractor up the lane after breakfast. Bethany can follow in the
Land-Rover with chains on the tyres. We’ll soon have the lane clear
again.’ Lucy marvelled gratefully at Mary’s can-do
attitude.

‘
What about
you John?’ asked Darren. ‘Are you itching to get into
town?’

‘
Oh I’ve done
my Christmas shopping already’ replied Dad. ‘If it’s okay with you
I’ll stay at the farm and help out like I did yesterday. After my
years chained to my desk it’s a pleasure to do something useful for
a change.’ Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. It would have been a
disaster if Dad had wanted to come into town too.

Half an hour
later Mary sat in the high cab of the tractor and started its
engine. It chugged noisily, sending plumes of exhaust out into the
cold sharp air. Bethany sat in the freezing Land Rover but Lucy
opted to walk behind until they got to the top of the lane. Darren
had bolted some sort of plough to the front of the tractor to
shovel snow out of the way as it toiled its way up the lane.
Looking around her, Lucy could see rabbit tracks, lolloping across
the snow. How could they find grass to eat on a day like
this?

Presently they
reached the top of the lane. Mary turned the tractor to go back
down the lane and Lucy got into the Land Rover next to
Bethany.

‘
Well Kiddo’
said Bethany now that they were alone, ‘I think we’ve got a bit of
a date with destiny.’

Megan slipped
off Jet’s back before they got back to the beach at Old Man’s Cove
so that Mum and Dad wouldn’t realise what she’d been doing. She
swam the last part of the way back to the beach. They’d woken up
and were playing catch with Bethany. When Megan emerged from the
water they told her off for going so far out and talked about the
currents and dangerous rip tides, but in the end they let her be
and she sat in the sun to warm up and think about what had just
happened.

‘
Was it good
then, the swim?’ asked Bethany shyly. Megan smiled and nodded. She
wouldn’t complain about her kid sister ever again she thought. How
had Jet known about the tunnel into the rock? Did it lead to the
Trinity Caves that Owen Davidson had written about in his article
all those years ago? As recently as a month ago, Megan would have
been able to reach out to Jet with her mind and ask him. Now all
she could do was guess. Jet definitely hadn’t known before, or he’d
have told her whilst he still could. If it was a tunnel leading to
the Trinity Caves, he must found out about it somehow.

Perhaps
thought Megan, it didn’t matter. The most important thing was that
now she had an idea about where the caves might be. Even the most
determined potholers like Dave and Jane hadn’t been able to figure
that out. Megan looked up at tops of the cliffs. Somewhere up
there, there had to be a way into the caves.

‘
Mum, Dad. I
fancy going for a walk along the cliff tops for half an hour or so.
You don’t mind do you?’ she called to her parents.