The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins (23 page)

‘
Remember’, she would say to him, ‘that we are all connected.
All life in the ocean. Not only you and me and the other dolphins
in our pod, but we are connected, each and every one of us, to all
living things that dwell here. You may think that krill and
plankton are too small and inconspicuous to notice, but without
them, we could not survive. They are the stuff of life and are
eaten by the small fry and the great whales alike. Octopus, hermit
crabs, shell fish, dolphins and whales. We all rely on each other,
even when it is not obvious how.’

‘
Even sharks?’ the young Spirit had asked his
mother.

‘
Yes, sharks too’ his mother had assured him. ‘Even though
sometimes they may attack us, they have a place in the oceans too
and we would be poorer without them.’

‘
And humans?’ Spirit had heard of humans, but had never seen
them at that point. He knew that they were creatures of the land,
but that sometimes they swum in the sea too. His mother paused and
turned to look at him, smiling gently.

‘
Humans are the most dangerous creatures of all, because they
are not of the sea and they do not understand how to behave here.
But yes, even they are connected to us, more than you might think.
Come now, let’s catch up with the others’ she had said and they
swam off to join the rest of the pod. Spirit wondered now whether
she had known it was possible to have links with humans as he now
had with Lucy, but he would never know. She was gone and lost to
him forever. Whatever she might have been able to teach him, he
could only guess at.

Slowly Spirit became aware of sounds in the distance. There
was a high, metallic, clanging noise, quite alien to the types of
sounds he normally heard in the sea and which caused a jarring,
discordant feeling in his head. Even though the strange sounds were
far off, he didn’t like them at all. They gave him a sharp headache
with a dull throbbing behind his eyes as if he’d swum headlong into
a submerged rock. He’d have swum away from the noise if he could,
but he couldn’t tell which direction it was coming from.

Spirit was determined to persevere though and before long he
put his head up above the waves and was rewarded with the view of
cliffs in the distance. Soon he would be in waters where he would
be safe from all predators and it would be great to explore along
the coast. When he returned to the pod he’d be able to regale them
with his adventures. He’d know as much as Storm and Summer and all
of the rest of them he thought. He’d be an equal to them all at
last. With these thoughts, he swam on with a firmer stroke of his
tail, in the knowledge that soon he’d be able to rest and then
feed. Even though the distant metallic noise was still causing him
a headache, he felt happy and eager to have almost
arrived.

Two miles away, at the edge of a small sandy beach snuck away
between the granite stone cliffs, a man stood on a wooden landing
stage talking into his mobile phone. The man, in his early
thirties, wore black sunglasses, although it was hardly sunny
enough to justify them and his hair was slicked back with hair
cream. He wore brightly coloured Bermuda shorts and his tee shirt
was obscured by the life jacket that was half zipped up. He idly
tapped the toe of his flip-flop against the wooden decking as he
talked away into his mobile phone.

‘
Yeah darling’ he was saying ‘I’ll come over in the convertible
once I’m done here. We’ll burn some rubber and scare some yokels on
the way.’ He grinned at what the woman on the other end of the
phone was saying and extricated some chewing gum from his mouth
which he stuck to the wooden pole on which he was
leaning.

‘
See ya doll’ he said before ending the call and slipping the
mobile phone into his pocket. He looked around expectantly and saw
the young guy getting his jet ski ready.

‘
You ready with that thing yet mate?’ he called. ‘I haven’t got
all day!’

‘
Almost done’ the young man called back. ‘Bloomin grockles’ he
muttered under his breath to himself. These city-types could be so
brash and ignorant and this one in particular was really getting on
Dan’s nerves. The man was so impatient and had more money than
sense. Dan had already told him carefully how to ride the Jet Ski,
but he was sure the guy was not going to take any notice at
all.

‘
Ok, she’s ready to go’ said Dan.

‘
About time too. Let’s rev her up and get on out
there.’

‘
Now remember what I said….’

‘
Yeah, yeah yeah’ said the man, kicking off his flip-flops and
getting down into the shallow water where the jet ski was waiting.
‘I’ve taken some pretty powerful motorbikes through their paces and
I’ve driven cars that’d make you say sweet mother. This thing’s not
going to be any problem for me.’ He started the engine and the jet
ski spat out water from the back. He revved it up and the Jet Ski
jerked forward before the engine cut out again.

‘
Don’t you worry, I’ll soon have this baby going.’ This time
the engine roared into life and the jet ski pulled off into open
water. He gave Dan a dismissive wave.

‘
Slowly at first’ called Dan, ‘and stay where I can keep an eye
on you from here!’ He might as well have been talking to himself.
The guy probably hadn’t heard a word he’d said. He watched as the
man put the machine through its paces. Though Dan hated to say it,
the guy seemed to get the hang of it pretty quickly. The Jet Ski
scudded over the low waves and turned easily enough, left and right
without getting into trouble. Most beginners would have come
a-cropper by now thought Dan. ‘The jammy so and so!’ It wasn’t a
warm day and no one was swimming in the sea nearby. ‘Just as well’
Dan said to himself.

Suddenly with a roar, the man on the Jet Ski put on an extra
spurt of speed and shot off in the direction of the open sea to the
right of the looming cliff face.

‘
Hey come back!’ shouted Dan, vainly waving his arms to attract
the man’s attention. The man didn’t look back though and soon he’d
disappeared out of site round a screen of rock at the edge of the
sandy cove.

‘
Right’ thought Dan angrily, ‘I’m charging you double, no
triple, for that!’ He glanced towards his walkie-talkie back in the
hut. If he couldn’t see what the guy was doing, he didn’t know if
he was safe. ‘If that fool’s not back in ten minutes’ he said to
himself, ‘I’m going to have to alert the coastguard. There’s no
knowing what trouble that grockle is going to get himself
into.’

Spirit’s headache was getting progressively worse now. The
metallic noise seemed to be all around him in the sea and nowhere
at the same time. His head pulsed and the blinding pain behind his
eyes made him feel woozy and sick.

‘
You’re ok, it’ll pass’ Spirit tried to reassure himself.
Spirit knew that his normally reliable sense of direction wasn’t
holding up, so he decided to stop and ride the waves a while to
rest and to try to get his bearings. He glanced up as he took a
lung full of air through his blow-hole. The cliffs were quite close
to him now, in fact much closer than he had thought. He’d never
seen anything so high and imposing. The rocks he and Dancer had
explored under the waves seemed much more alive than the grey,
sheer rock-face he could see above the water. Seagulls wheeled
above him and he could hear the gulls call to each other. That
metallic noise was so bad now that he could hardly see. There was a
real danger that he might either ground himself or find himself
smashed on to the rocks by the swell and currents of the sea. ‘Pull
yourself together’ thought Spirit. ‘Is the coast such a safe place
after all?’ he thought to himself.

Suddenly there was a great clanging roar and this metal thing
almost raced over his head. The rush of metal and noise so close to
him all of a sudden shocked him and Spirit felt more disorientated
than ever. The pain in his head now was so severe that he did not
dare dive. He could sense the nauseating smell of petrol and smoke
that the Jet Ski left in its wake as it had passed almost over the
top of his head.

The man whooped to himself. This was fun! He was getting the
hang of it now as the Jet Ski scudded from wave to wave. He liked
the feeling of power the machine gave him as he revved its engine.
He’d quickly given that yokel, Dan, the slip and now he was free to
do whatever he wanted. ‘This is the life’ he thought. This’d be
something to tell the lads back home about! As he powered on the
man suddenly realised that he’d almost ridden over the head of a
dolphin.

‘
Hey, dolphin!’ cried the man to himself. ‘Let’s take another
look at you!’ He turned the Jet Ski in a tight circle and roared
back in the direction of Spirit again. Spirit, disorientated, in
pain and barely able to see, turned and started swimming away,
hardly able to tell which way he was headed, but not daring to
fully submerge himself for fear of drowning, he felt so
bad.

‘
Yo dolphin!’ the man shouted over the roar of engine and the
sound of the waves. ‘You want to race? I’ll give you a race!’ The
man turned his jet ski in the water and bore down on Spirit again,
throttle out, knuckles white as he gripped the handles of his
machine. Spirit fled in front of him, dazed and confused and the
man practically ran him down, with Spirit diving under water just
as the Jet Ski passed over where his head had been a moment before.
Spirit swam on underwater, even though he didn’t want to, he knew
that it was the only way to escape the man and machine
above.

‘
Help me Lucy, help me!’ Spirit implored, but he had no sense
that Lucy was able to hear him or realise the danger he was in, or
that she would come to his rescue at all. He still felt so sick in
his head and, at that moment, could see no way out. The day which
had started so promisingly, he feared, might well turn out to be
his last.

Several hours after she’d sat down next to the older lady on
the Truro train and after everything that had happened that day,
Lucy felt physically and mentally exhausted. She slumped where she
sat, resting her head in her arms, looking absently at the table
beneath her elbows. Lucy was about ready to drop. Her eyelids
flickered. ‘I’ll just close my eyes and rest them for a few
seconds’ she thought. As soon as she did so though, sleep engulfed
her. But it was not a peaceful dream. No sooner had her eyes
closed, than Spirit was there in front of her, swimming for his
life, while a terrible metallic engine noise droned above him, its
dark shadow passing across the surface of the water. What Lucy saw
so shocked her, that she jerked into consciousness, immediately
finding herself back in the room, with her elbows on the table,
alarmingly awake.

‘
What’s going on?’ she thought to herself, ‘What’s happening to
Spirit?’ What was certain was that Spirit was in trouble, serious
trouble and if she didn’t do something right now, he might be badly
hurt, or worse. Lucy couldn’t will herself back to sleep, not after
the shock she’d just had and instead she had to try to find the way
back there by focusing the conscious part of her mind and find that
secret portal into the world of water. The trouble was though, that
the only times she had done so before was in the comfort of her own
bedroom at home, sitting in a position that she knew worked, while
she looked out of the window and then sort of let her mind go out
of focus, so she could become aware of that alternate reality just
hidden out of the view of her normal conscious mind. There was no
chance of doing so here though and her brain was so agitated that
she didn’t know if she could slip into that relaxed state that she
needed to attain.

‘
You’ve got to, you’ve got to’ she told herself determinedly.
She took her head in her hands again and focused instead on the
table in front of her, studying every detail of the wood, before
then letting her mind drift backwards. It wouldn’t work and so she
started again, trying to maintain that delicate balance between
focus and relaxation. Without quite knowing how, she suddenly found
it again and felt herself plunging into the cold salty waters,
floating effortlessly along to where Spirit was swimming
desperately away from the menacing machine above him.

‘
Spirit, what’s going on?’ she called to her friend. Spirit
turned and smiled at her, relief breaking over his face. Lucy could
tell though that he felt terrible. The engine noise above was bad
enough for her, but it was much, much worse for him.

‘
Lucy, help me, that machine…’ He trailed off, barely able to
speak. Lucy glanced up. She could see the outline of the Jet Ski
circling in the water above them and heard the noise of the revving
engine.

‘
It’s no good’ mumbled Spirit, barely coherent, I’ve got to
breath again.’ He swam up to the surface and took another lungful
of sweet air through his blowhole, but no sooner did he do so, than
the Jet Ski was bearing down on him again, engine
roaring.

‘
Come on you stupid dolphin’ the man yelled into the air. ‘Show
yourself, come to Daddy!’ ‘This is great sport’ the man thought to
himself as he churned round in tight circles, before rushing at the
sickening dolphin again. ‘The lads back home won’t believe what I’m
getting an eyeful of.’

Spirit dived back under water for safety, but Lucy knew
instinctively that he couldn’t last much longer. If he was by a
beach he’d have beached himself by now she thought, just to escape
that terrible noise. At this rate he’ll dash himself against the
rocks. The water was getting shallower here and the rocks weren’t
far below. He tried to run and hide, but Lucy knew he was in no
state to out-swim that terrible machine and he would soon need to
surface for air again. She went up close to him again and got as
near as she could to his ear.