The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins (20 page)

‘
I’m so glad you could come Lucy’ Spirit exclaimed, as she
appeared suddenly by his side. ‘It makes me feel much better
knowing that you’re watching over me!’ Lucy smiled, happy to see
him again, but curious about what he was doing.

‘
You’re all on your own. Where’s the rest of the pod Spirit?’
she asked.

‘
I’m going on a journey’ replied Spirit. ‘It’s something that
all young dolphins do to come of age. I have to do it now. There
are, well, reasons….’ He trailed off.

‘
Where will you go?’ asked Lucy, full of curiosity and
admiration for her friend.

‘
I’m heading for the coast. It’s safer than the open sea when
you’re a dolphin on your own. You have to take care you
see.’

‘
Aren’t you scared?’ asked Lucy, floating beside him in the
water. Lucy stretched out to touch his smooth flank, but although
she could reach out with her fingertips to touch him, it felt as
though she would pass right through him instead.

‘
A little’ he replied. It was very dark when I set out and I
couldn’t say goodbye to my friend Dancer.’ Spirit seemed to frown a
little. It still felt strange to Lucy that they didn’t talk
normally with words, or even clicks and whistles, but somehow
directly from his mind to hers.

‘
But I am less alone with you by my side, my friend Lucy. The
morning just got better when you came’ he added. They chatted a
little longer. Spirit wanted to know what it was like in her world
on dry land. He wanted to know where she lived. Lucy didn’t even
begin to know how to describe a house to him, a mammal that had
always lived in the sea. Instead with all the brain power she could
muster, she used her mind to send him an image of her house and
then of her school. It was like sending him a mental snapshot from
her brain to his. It tired her out though and she felt her energy
levels plunging down. Spirit had drifted away from her and then she
lost sight of him.

‘
Goodbye Spirit’ she had called out as she drifted off. A
moment later she had been sitting on the floor of her bedroom
again, conscious all of a sudden that she was cold and hungry and
needed the bathroom.

Lucy didn’t know how to explain all that to Amy. Amy would
never understand, even if she wanted to. Maybe she’d tell Amy some
other time, but not now. The important thing, Lucy thought, was
that both she and Spirit were going on a journey. He was brave and
that made Lucy feel braver too. His determination strengthened her
own resolve.

Lucy looked back over at Amy.

‘
It’s just something I’ve got to do’ she whispered. ‘I can’t
explain really. I’ve just got to go there and see my Aunt. You
won’t tell will you?’ Her friend paused a moment.

‘
Don’t be silly, of course I won’t’ Amy reassured her. ‘But I’m
just not sure it’s a good idea. What if something happened to you,
how do you think I’d feel then?’

‘
Don’t worry’ Lucy smiled ‘Nothing bad’s going to happen to me,
especially not if you help me!’

It always mystified Spirit how, just when he was getting used
to her being there again, Lucy seemed to dissolve in front of him
and then disappear. First she was there, then only a small shadow
of her outline remained and then she was gone altogether. He felt
sad when she left him and a little lonely too. He never quite knew
when she would reappear and when she would go again. It made him
feel better to think that she would return before long. ‘Come back
soon’, he had whispered after she left him again.

Spirit stopped swimming for a while and let himself float just
under the surface of the water. He could feel the rays of the sun
warming his back and fin. What most amazed him from Lucy’s last
visit to him was the vision that she was able to send to him of the
place where she lived. It looked like a discarded box he had found
on the seabed once. And it looked so small! Spirit could have swum
from one end to the other with a flick of his tail if it was under
water. How could humans possibly bear to be confined in such small
spaces? When he had swum into the wreck, Spirit had instantly felt
overcome with a sense of claustrophobia. The thought of not being
free in the open sea, to glide and float, leap and dive sent a
shiver down his spine. He made a convulsive flick of his tail fin
and started swimming again. He did not understand the image of the
school that Lucy had sent him; it was of a series of larger boxes,
with many small humans just like Lucy streaming into it. There were
some larger humans in the image she had transmitted to him and he
assumed that they were fully grown humans. He knew that Lucy was
young like he was and had not yet come of age. The ‘school’ was
somewhere that the humans sent their young he knew, but he could
not think why. He learned everything he needed to learn from the
pod that he swum with and from his mother, at least he had before
she disappeared that day. Both images perplexed Spirit and he
thought that he would never learn the mysteries of the human beings
and their world without water on dry land.

Spirit was getting hungry and knew he needed to eat soon. He
set his mind to that urgent task. Luckily, before long he came
across a shoal of a hundred or so sprats swimming just below the
surface of the water. If he was with the pod, he knew they could
surround the sprats in order that they pressed close in on one
another, so the dolphins could dive through them and eat more in
less time. On his own Spirit could only plunge in the centre of the
shoal and hope to snatch one or maybe two sprats before they
dispersed. He could then pursue two or three stragglers but the
rest would escape unharmed. That would keep him going for now, but
he’d have to feed again before long. He launched himself upon them
with a keen appetite.

After breakfasting, Spirit continued on his way. As he swum he
though about some of the stories that Moonlight used to tell him
when he was younger. He could almost hear Moonlight’s voice as he
recalled the story.

There was once a young dolphin alone in the seas when a great
storm fell upon her in a crash of waves and a rumble of clouds
above. The sea was so rough that the young dolphin did not know
which way was up and which way was down. She came upon a great blue
whale and said ‘Please help me great blue whale.’ The whale turned
and saw the young dolphin being tossed this way and that by the
waves. He rumbled ‘Swim into my mouth little cousin.’ The young
dolphin gasped. Would he not just eat her? But she had learned that
blue whales eat only krill and plankton and had no interest in
eating a mammal such as her. She would only give him indigestion.
The great whale slowly opened his mouth and though the currents
were mighty strong and the storm thrashed furiously above her, she
struggled through the turbulent water until she was able to enter
the whale’s gaping mouth. Inside it was calm and the little dolphin
immediately felt safe. Instead of being in the dark as she had
expected, there was a flickering light. The young dolphin swum
slowly towards the light, not knowing what to expect. As she grew
close she could make out the shape of a small fishing boat and the
face of a human child staring forlornly into the water, with only a
torch to help him see. She greeted the human with her clicks and
whistles and, although he could not understand her questions, he
was delighted to see her. He could not speak to the whale as the
young dolphin was able to do and believed himself to be lost for
ever. He did not know that the whale was merely sheltering him
against the storm. When the storm had abated, the great whale
rumbled ‘Little dolphin, you and the boy are free to leave now. It
is safe outside.’ The young dolphin made to leave but looked back
and saw the boy, confused and anxious in his creaking fishing boat.
She clicked and whistled at him again but he still did not
understand, so she seized a rope that was dangling from the front
of the boat into the water and started to tug with all her might.
The boy finally understood and took up his oars and started to row
furiously as he could while the young dolphin tugged. The boy and
dolphin found themselves back in the open sea. With a low sigh the
great whale dived until the tip of his tail disappeared slowly
under the water. The young dolphin stayed with the human child
until a great wooden sailing ship came by and the child was
saved.’

At that moment in the story Moonlight would pause and the
young dolphins listening would all clamour ‘And who was the young
dolphin Moonlight?’ Laughing, Moonlight would always reply ‘Why it
was me of course!’ and all the youngsters would laugh delightedly
as well. Spirit never did know whether to believe her or not. Now
he though maybe Moonlight was not just pulling their fins in fun.
Perhaps she really had been saved by a great blue whale. Strange
things could happen in the deep, as Spirit was beginning to find
out. He swum on.

After another hour or so of swimming, guided by the slow
progression of the sun in the sky, Spirit paused awhile to rest
just under the surface of the water. When he turned again he saw a
silhouette in the distance.

‘
Greetings young dolphin’ came a voice from the distant
apparition.

Chapter Twelve
:

When Lucy was younger, she and Mum used to walk down to the
stream a mile or so from their house. There was an old stone bridge
that wasn’t strong enough for cars to drive across and only
pedestrians and horse-riders used it now. Water weeds swayed as the
current rippled through the plants that hung onto the gravel at the
bottom of the stream. Lucy would lean out over the edge of the
bridge, peering down into the smooth surface of the water below,
searching for the fish that would hang motionless in the current
and wondering where all that water might end up. Mum showed her how
to fold a small boat out of a piece of paper and Lucy would drop it
into the stream below. The current would catch the boat and it
would disappear under the bridge. Lucy would race to the other side
in time to see it emerge, borne along by the current. Sometimes her
boats would quickly get caught on the reeds, but other times they
would flow along, missing the submerged rocks, whirlpools and
over-hanging twigs and branches, until they disappeared round the
bend in the stream.

Mum said that the stream flowed into a bigger river and that
the river went all the way down to the sea. Lucy would imagine her
little paper boat bobbing along the mighty river passing ships and
seagulls until the fresh waters merged with the salty sea and the
tiny paper boat was caught by the waves and carried to a far off
and fantastical land on the other side of the sky.

‘
All rivers flow to the sea’, Lucy thought to herself as she
walked to school on Thursday morning, ‘and so will I.’ Although the
next day was Friday, the last day before half term, she would not
be going in. She’d never skipped school before and the thought of
bunking off made her feel immediately guilty, however it was the
only way she could put her plans into effect. Lucy felt nervous,
but excited.

That lunchtime, Lucy would normally have done her swimming
practice, but since her Dad had banned her from going, she had been
avoiding Miss Baldwin, partly because she was annoyed at her sports
teacher for having called her Dad and partly through her own
embarrassment at trying to explain why on earth had he stopped her
from swimming. She really missed it though; the sheer physical
release she felt as she sliced cleanly through the water and the
pleasant feeling of tiredness she felt when eventually she pulled
herself up onto the side of the pool. She itched to be back in the
water again, lost in a watery world once more.

Lucy and Amy walked around the playground slowly, deep in
discussion, talking through their plans and what they were going to
do the next day. They were so engrossed that when the bell went for
the end of lunchtime, they barely noticed and had to run to catch
up with the other children going into class.

As Lucy lay in bed that night, she wondered what the next day
might bring. Eventually, she drifted off into a sleep in which she
dreamt of trains full of water, with dolphins floating in their
compartments, staring out in rapt fascination at the strange and
inexplicable world of land and dryness on the other side of the
thin glass window.

Lucy awoke with a start. She glanced at her alarm clock; it
was six forty five exactly. Normally she wouldn’t get up for
another half hour, but she was wide awake and too alert to doze off
again. She dressed quickly and quietly in her school uniform,
taking particular care to look as neat and well-presented as she
could. It was important that she looked smart for her journey
ahead. Lucy padded down the hall to the bathroom.