The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins (30 page)

‘
I hope so’ replied Dancer. They swam on. Twenty minutes or so
later, Storm broke the silence again.

‘
Look. There are the cliffs.’ He was right. Dancer took a low
leap, just high above the waves enough to see the cliffs snaking
away along the horizon. They were almost there. ‘Call out to him’
said Storm. Dancer wondered why he didn’t do so himself, but Dancer
was glad to oblige. A dolphin call can carry a long way, sometimes
for miles across the expanse of the sea and Spirit’s sensitive
hearing would be able to pick up even the faintest sound of a
dolphin. For some minutes, they heard nothing.

‘
Hush, listen!’ said Storm eventually. Dancer stopped her call
mid-flow and listened keenly. Above the dull crash of the waves and
the drone of a ship in the distance, Dancer could hear a higher,
sharper call carrying through the water.

‘
Yes, I hear it’ whispered Dancer, listening intently. ‘Do you
think it’s...?’

It’s coming from over there’ Storm whispered back, nodding
with his nose in a slightly leftwards direction. ‘Let’s keep
going.’ The cliffs were getting bigger now and when she broke the
waves Dancer could just make out white flecks at their base, where
the waves crashed against the granite rocks. Dancer’s muscles were
still aching and she was tired and hungry, but she did not care.
They were almost there. She called out again and heard the distinct
reply of a dolphin. It must be Spirit. Although it was hard to hear
clearly, it seemed to her that the dolphin’s reply was distressed.
Certainly, they could tell that the dolphin’s position did not seem
to move and that was unusual in itself. Normally they would expect
another dolphin to be constantly swimming, constantly
moving.

They drew close to the cliff and knew that when they came
around the rocky outcrop in front of them, they would be
there.

‘
You go on. I’ll stay here’ said Storm quietly. ‘You go to
him.’ Dancer turned to look at Storm in surprise.

‘
I don’t think he will want to see me right now. I was young
once too and eager to prove my independence. Spirit struck out on
his own to prove himself. I don’t think he needs me to tell him he
was wrong. He needs a true friend like you now, not an old dolphin
like me.’

‘
But…’ exclaimed Dancer.

‘
No’ replied Storm firmly. ‘Go on now young Dancer.’ He nodded
her on. She nodded back and with a firm flick of her tail, she
propelled herself onwards. She came to the rocky outcrop and pushed
on past and around it. She wondered what she might find. She moved
through a curtain of kelp and there she saw a silhouette of a
dolphin, hanging in the water, scanning the sea anxiously, looking
out for the dolphin that had been calling to him.

‘
Spirit!’ she cried swimming up to him.

‘
Dancer!’ he replied in surprise. ‘You came to me.’ Approaching
him, she could see that his eyes had lost their lively sparkle and
instead looked drawn and pained. His skin had lost its natural
colour and looked more grey than blue. She gently rubbed her beak
against his in greeting. She could not help but glance behind to
his tail. She could see the steel wire snaking round and the red
bloody mark where it cut into Spirit’s skin. It looked horribly raw
and Dancer could see Spirit’s blood leaching into the water where
the metal chafed through his skin. She looked back at her friends
face.

‘
I bet it doesn’t look good’ said Spirit, guessing her
thoughts. Dancer tried not to answer.

‘
Does it hurt?’ she replied, but she knew the answer before the
question was even out of her mouth. It was a silly question and
Spirit did not reply directly.

‘
The line goes up there’ he said instead, indicating with his
head. It’s linked to a buoy and the buoy is lodged in those rocks.’
Dancer could make out the red and white stripes of a buoy. She swum
up close to it. She took the cable in her mouth and gave it a firm
tug. She pulled again and again. It was no good, she could not make
it budge. She swam back to Spirit.

‘
You didn’t come alone did you Dancer?’ asked Spirit. ‘Where
are Storm and the rest of the pod?’

‘
The pod are following on behind. I came on ahead with….’ She
trailed off uncertainly.

‘
Is Storm with you?’ he asked.

‘
He didn’t want to shame you by coming to you during your
coming-of-age swim. He’s waiting just around the rocks over there.’
She paused and Spirit too was quiet for a few moments.

‘
I don’t care’ he replied eventually. ‘I’m just glad that both
of you are here. At least he knows stuff. Maybe he can get me
free.’ Dancer turned to call him.

‘
Before you get him,’ Spirit spoke quietly, almost shyly, ‘how
did you know to come and find me?’

‘
I had a vision. Your child. She came to me, she… It was she
who told me. She told me you were in danger. But it was Storm who
knew how to find you. I would never have known how to find you if
it wasn’t for him.’

‘
And what then?’

‘
I don’t know. Let’s not worry about that now’ said Dancer.
‘We’ll figure something out’ she said, though she really wasn’t
sure how. She eyed her friend. He really looked bad and she
wondered how long he could last. She called out to Storm. A minute
or so later he emerged through the fronds of kelp to where the two
friends hung in the water. He carried a fish in his mouth and
approached Spirit quietly, with a concerned look in his eyes. He
presented Spirit with the fish, who gulped it down hungrily. He was
famished and thirsty too. Dolphins do not drink but get their
moisture from their food. Dancer wondered why she hadn’t thought to
catch one for him herself. At least if nothing else she could find
him more fish. Storm regarded Spirit with warm eyes.

‘
I’m glad to see you Spirit’ he said.

Lucy paced around Bethany’s studio, full of nervous energy.
Now that she was rested, all that she wanted to do was to get out
there again and look for Spirit. She dared not stretch out to him
with her mind, not yet at least. To do so would deplete her energy
again too quickly. Yet doing something, anything, seemed better
than just sitting there. Bethany regarded her, chewing her pencil
as she worked on her seagull sketch.

‘
You’re like a cat in a cage’ she observed. ‘Come on. Let’s get
our coats and head back up to the cliffs. It can’t do any
harm.’

They drove back up through the country lanes. Lucy was
beginning to recognise the local landmarks. There was the corner
with the clump of ferns just before the gate. There, just where the
road forked, was an old rusting milk churn. They soon joined the
bigger road just below the cliffs and pulled into the
lay-by.

They jumped down from the Land Rover and headed off up another
path this time which traced the edge of the cliffs. Lucy felt
nervous near the edge but was keen to look down in case anything
from above reminded her of the scene below where she knew that
Spirit was still trapped. Bethany warned her that it was dangerous
and a sign warned them of the risk of falling rocks. Lucy got down
on all fours and inched her way forward until she was just peering
over the edge. Bethany was just a short way behind in case anything
happened. There was no chance of her falling, but still Lucy felt
nervous.

It certainly was a long way down and she could see the waves
crashing futilely on the great hunks of raw granite below. She
scanned the water for signs of a dolphin; for a dorsal fin, or a
friendly face peering up out of the water, but it was quite
impossible. Even if Spirit had been down there, it was pretty
unlikely that she would be able to see him. She could spend all day
walking along the cliff and she would be none the wiser. She inched
back from the edge of the cliff and got up.

‘
Come on, let’s walk’ said Bethany smiling. ‘You can look again
soon.’ They continued on along the cliff path and Lucy strained her
eyes to study the sea, still half expecting to find something,
though what, she was not sure.

A seagull hung almost motionless in the air above them, borne
aloft by the stiff breeze that came off the sea. Right now Lucy
wished that she could fly and swoop down along the foot of the
cliffs to search for her friend. Bethany kept up a semi-monologue,
talking about this and that, trying to take her niece’s mind off
things, but Lucy was only half listening. She was much more alert
to the sea.

Suddenly Lucy was struck by a sharp shooting feeling that
seemed to radiate up from her feet and ripple through her body. She
cried out in pain and fell to the ground. Bethany thought that Lucy
had tripped and fallen. Maybe the girl was still too tired to come
back up here, she wondered to herself. But Lucy had not tripped and
the pain that seized her came from nothing physical that was around
them. Though she could not tell Bethany, she was convinced it was
something to do with the pain that Spirit was experiencing.
Somehow, she thought, she could feel what he was feeling. What was
happening to him, she wondered anxiously. Bethany gently picked her
niece up and told her in a kindly but firm way that they had better
turn and go back to the car. Her face was clouded with concern.
Lucy protested, but then reluctantly agreed.

Lucy winced as they walked back. It was as though her ankles
had been caught in a snare. It felt like a ring of fire. She did
not know it, but Spirit, Dancer and Storm had all three of them
been straining at the steel cord; Spirit pulling with his tail and
his two rescuers pulling at the cable with their teeth, hoping that
their combined strength would enable them to pull the buoy free
from the rocks. It was no good and metal rope had cut painfully
into Spirit’s flesh in the attempt.

‘
Stop, stop’ he cried despondently. It was too much for him.
The sun was just about to set and they were in deep shade. There
was little to be done now but rest until first light and hope for
the best.

Ordinarily Lucy would have been so happy to be in Cornwall
walking companionably along the cliff tops with Bethany, looking
out towards the sunset. Instead, she felt anything but happy. As
the sun slowly descended, Bethany put her arm around her niece’s
shoulders.

‘
You know when I was young I had a little dog called Toby. One
morning he burrowed under the fence in the back garden and
disappeared. I was beside myself with worry and spent hours after
school searching for him, riding round the neighbourhood on my
bike. Eventually it got dark and my Mum insisted that I came home.
I couldn’t bear the thought of him trapped out there somewhere on
his own in the dark and I hardly slept all night.’ Lucy looked up
at her Aunt curiously.

‘
What happened to him?’ she asked. Bethany smiled.

‘
Oh the next morning when I came downstairs he was curled up
outside the backdoor. Goodness knows where he’d been, but he got
back somehow and behaved like he’d never been away. My Mum thought
he’d been away wooing some lady dog somewhere.’

Lucy gave a little smile. She knew that Bethany was trying to
cheer her up, but the story of Toby was hardly the same. She was
only too painfully aware that Spirit was trapped by a steel cable
around his tail. If something didn’t happen soon, he would die.
What she couldn’t tell was exactly where he was, or how to set him
free. That uncertainty was agonising to her. She hoped that Dancer
might have found Spirit by now, but even that seemed an impossible
dream. She decided that when the got back to the studio, she would
reach out to Spirit again. She didn’t know what she could do when
she did, but she had to find out what was happening to
him.

They got back to Bethany’s Land Rover and clambered in. Her
ankles were hurting less now. They drove back down the hill on the
now familiar lanes and pulled up outside the studio. Back inside
Bethany made her a drink and then Lucy made an excuse to go and lie
down for a while.

Immediately Lucy started to focus her thoughts to stretch out
to Spirit. She strained her mind and then relaxed, hoping that she
would be able to find that door in the corner of her consciousness
and tumble through into the world of water. Try as she might
though, she could not seem to do it. Perhaps because she had done
so earlier and was still very tired, it just felt too difficult.
Instead Lucy’s eyes drooped and then closed. Normally, when she
slept, she would only dream of dolphins towards the morning. Now
though, her sleeping mind brought the vision of Spirit to her
straight away.

Though darkness was falling, she could see his silhouette at
rest just underneath the surface of the water. But then, what was
that? There was a second dolphin. And a third! Lucy’s excitement at
seeing two other dolphins next to Spirit half woke her up, but that
was just what she needed to find the door in her mind that sent her
plunging through. Suddenly she was engulfed in the cold salty
water. It felt strange to be there after sun-down.

‘
Spirit!’ she cried. ‘Dancer! You found each other.’

‘
Lucy!’ Spirit exclaimed warmly, smiling with his eyes at her.
Lucy was going to ask him how he was, when the other two found him
and whether he had eaten. She tried to focus her mind on what to
say first, but she was so tired and her mind had been sleeping just
a moment ago. Instead the third dolphin moved closer to her and
started whistling and clicking at her. She could hear the sounds
coming through the water, but they meant nothing to her.