Dolphin Song

by Lauren St. John

  Grimacing, Martine ducked out of the door and turned left along the swaying corridor to the galley. She was just in time to see Ben disappearing down the stairs to the engine room, and she smiled to herself. This had become their ritual. Every evening after dinner, when everyone else was watching DVDs or playing board games, she and Ben were in separate parts of the ship talking to the crew.

  Ben’s father was a sailor, and Ben adored boats and anything to do with the sea, so Martine knew that he’d be learning how the Sea Kestrel worked. She, meanwhile, had become firm friends with Alberto, bonding over daily breakfasts of bacon and banana rolls and after-dinner treats of crème caramel dessert or coconut cake.

  On her third night on board Martine had been unable to sleep because, at dinner, Miss Volkner had told her that she absolutely had to join the rest of the class when they were snorkeling and searching for dugongs in Mozambique. She wasn’t interested in excuses. After that the conversation at the table had moved on to shipwrecks and the many reasons ships went down, so that by the time Martine reached her bunk all she could think about was the washing-machine wave engulfing her and water pouring into her nose and mouth.

  She’d tossed and turned for what seemed like hours before giving up and creeping quietly out of the cabin, taking care not to rouse Sherilyn. Alberto wasn’t in the galley, but she’d found him up on deck, smoking and looking out over the inky sea.

  “You look very troubled for one so young,” was the chef’s comment.

  Martine denied it at first, but after a long pause she said: “Alberto, were you ever afraid of the ocean or even just, you know, of deep water?”

  The chef smiled ruefully. “Many times I have been scared on the dhows, the sailing boats we use in the Bazaruto Islands. Many, many times. As a boy, especially. But my grandfather was a fisherman. One night a cyclone swept through the islands of Bazaruto, uprooting palm trees and whipping up waves as big as houses. The dhow he was on overturned, leaving him and four others in the sea, but the dolphins—mathahi, we call them in our language—they surrounded them and protected them from the sharks. After this time I was afraid no more.”

  He studied Martine kindly. “The Sea Kestrel is a big, solid ship,” he said, in case she thought otherwise. “It would take a bomb to sink her.”

  They’d gone down to the galley after that and Alberto had made her a mug of malted Milo, which he’d heated in a pot on the stove. Martine had felt a bit shy because the chef was a virtual stranger and yet there she was in her pajamas, about to tell him things she couldn’t even admit to her grandmother. But she knew instinctively he wouldn’t think any less of her for them.

  When the hot, sweet Milo gave her courage to speak, she said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Alberto. At Sawubona, the game reserve where I live, I’ve ridden my giraffe at night with lions, hippos, and buffaloes. I’ve almost been bitten by a Cape cobra, escaped from poachers with guns, and been in underground caves with bats. Yet I’ve never been as afraid of any of those things as I am of deep water. I loved the Sardine Run and I especially loved the dolphins, but I just don’t feel at home on the ocean. I was okay when I thought I wouldn’t have to go in the sea, but this evening Miss Volkner told me that I absolutely have to go snorkeling when we reach Mozambique, and I’m scared that something will go wrong and I’ll drown because I’m a terrible swimmer. Alberto, I’m the worst swimmer in the whole school.”

  “I would be afraid of a giraffe if I saw one,” Alberto said, somewhat confusingly.

  Martine was puzzled. “Why? Giraffes are the gentlest animals in the world. They’d never dream of hurting anyone. Not unless they were trapped, or threatened, or protecting their young.”

  “I’m sure you are right, but I have never been close to any wild animal, apart from whales, dolphins, and dugongs, and I have never been in a safari park. I would be afraid because it is all unknown. You are afraid of the sea because you don’t understand it. It is not familiar to you. So you shall know about it.”

  On the night of the storm, Martine sat on the stainless steel bench in the galley, swinging her legs and listening to Alberto talk about what she thought of as “island-craft.” Tendai had taught her bushcraft, vital tips and tricks to help her understand and survive the natural laws of the African savannah, and in some ways the chef did the same for the marine environment of his homeland.

  “On Benguerra,” he said, bracing his legs against the rolling of the ship, which seemed to be worsening by the minute, “the children of fishermen learn from their earliest days to catch fish in many different ways, because their fathers believe it will teach them to know the sea’s secrets and be grateful for the gifts that it provides. So they send each child out to catch his or her own pilot fish, a small fish that hitches rides with large fish like they are buses. When they find this pilot fish, they tie a fishing line around it and send it out to sea. When it attaches itself to a big fish, they reel it in, eat the big fish, and set the little one to work again!”

  Alberto liked to hear about life on Sawubona as well, so Martine told him about Tendai and about Grace’s traditional medicine and her incredible cooking. Alberto’s local witch doctor, a young male sangoma, was very different from Grace. According to the chef, he spent more time in a soccer shirt than a feather headdress, and had never been known to say no to a home-brewed concoction called palm wine. Alberto told her a story about a villager who’d once gone to him with a skull-splitting headache. The soccer-loving witch doctor had started the treatment by putting a large pebble into his fire. While it was heating up, he blended herbs in a bowl made from a special wood and engraved with a cross, then added water. When the stone was red-hot he dropped it into the bowl, causing the water to boil and turn green. After making a series of tiny incisions in the man’s forehead, the witch doctor rubbed in a little of the herb potion and sent him home with the remainder in a bottle and the wooden bowl on his head.

  “From that day on, no more headaches,” Alberto said with a grin.

  Martine expressed what she hoped was the right amount of respectful admiration, while privately thinking that Grace was clearly a better traditional healer by miles, since her remedies were not based on hocus-pocus like putting bowls on people’s heads, but had been tried and tested by all the grandmothers going back hundreds of years. She cast a critical eye over Alberto’s smooth brown forehead. “Do you go to the witch doctor for headaches?” she asked.

  Alberto chuckled. “No, I prefer to take an aspirin.”

  He was interrupted by a thunderbolt so ear-piercing, it sounded as if the Sea Kestrel had collided with an iceberg. The ship bucked wildly. Martine flew off the stainless steel bench and hit the tiles with a painful smack. A split second later, a stack of plates sailed off a shelf and shattered against the bench in the exact spot where she’d been sitting. A confetti of sharp ceramic chips showered down on her head. Alberto helped her up, dusted white flecks of plate from her hair, and checked her for cuts and bruises, but he was no longer laughing.

  “Miss Martine,” he said darkly, “this is like the cyclone that nearly stole my grandfather. I have work to do to secure the galley. You must go now and stay close to your friends and your teachers.”

  The ship was tossing violently and both he and Martine were holding on to the bench for support. Martine felt a mounting sense of alarm. Unbidden, the shark and dolphin cave painting came into her head. What if she’d been mistaken and the picture had not been about the Sardine Run or the incident at Shark Alley? What if the prophecy was yet to be fulfilled?

  She said to Alberto, “What makes you think this is a cyclone? Surely it’s just a bad storm, and you told me that this was a big, solid ship. You told me it would take a bomb to sink her.”

  Just then, the siren began to wail.

  10

  In the corridor, frightened children in puffy orange life jackets were streaming up to the deck. Some, like Sherilyn, were a ghastly color. They wore pajamas with the buttons done up wrong and
dressing gowns with trailing cords, and one boy had on a lone leopard-print slipper. Others had flung on mismatched clothes in clashing colors and had sticking-up sleep hair. Only Lucy, immaculate in a white tracksuit with a red trim, looked as if she were on her way for a lesson at the tennis club. Most of the girls were crying.

  Miss Volkner and Mr. Manning were doing their best to keep everybody calm by telling them that this was nothing more than a routine safety procedure and they’d be back in their bunks in no time.

  “Walk, don’t run,” ordered the teacher, trying to make herself heard above the racket of the siren. “No, Boysie, you can’t bring your suitcase. You want what? Yes, you can bring Pooh Bear.”

  Martine darted unnoticed through a side door. Her survival kit had been around her waist for the entire duration of the trip, as she’d promised Tendai it would be, but she’d taken it off to shower before dinner and had forgotten to put it back on again. In the event this was a real emergency, she wanted it with her.

  The siren’s insistent blare had shut off and the cabins were eerily quiet. Martine was reminded of a ship disaster movie she’d watched with her parents. She took the survival kit from behind the locker where she’d hidden it, and tied it securely around her waist. Then she put on a Windbreaker. As a sort of tribute to Grace, she’d put the forlorn remnants of her plant in a blue mineral water bottle Alberto had given her. The bottle had toppled over and was lying in a puddle on the floor. Martine wrapped the leaves in Ben’s bandanna again and added them to her survival kit. She felt a little silly doing it, but there was something about the wisp of plant that made her feel connected to Grace and Sawubona. The last thing she did was take off her shoes. She always felt better barefoot. She was on her way to join her classmates when she heard voices coming from the recreation room.

  “But don’t you think we should go up to the deck?” Luke was saying. “What if it’s serious? What if the ship is sinking and we miss getting on the lifeboat? And anyway, won’t they take a roll call?”

  Claudius laughed. “Please tell me you’re kidding. You are kidding, aren’t you? This is a drill, that’s all it is. Or maybe it’s just some teacher who knows nothing about the sea getting into a panic over a breeze and a bit of rain. This is nothing compared to some of the storms I’ve been through on our yacht. There’s no way I’m going out there and getting drenched to the skin for nothing. I’m going to stay where it’s warm and dry and watch a movie.”

  “Look, I’m sorry but I have to go check on Lucy,” Luke said apologetically. “Even if it is only a drill, she’ll still be scared.”

  “Hey, no hard feelings,” Claudius told him. “See you in ten minutes.”

  Anxious to avoid being seen by either boy, Martine skipped nimbly up to the deck. She was almost flattened by the force of the storm that lunged at her out of the night. In seconds, her jeans were soaked through. Luke pushed past her, shielding his face from the onslaught. He leaned into the wind and headed for the prow, where the rest of the children were gathered in a dripping bunch, outlined against the torrid sky. They appeared to be receiving emergency evacuation instructions from a couple of crew members. Lucy threw her arms around her twin and handed him the life jacket she’d been keeping for him. Even through the rain and from a distance, Martine could see how pleased she was to see him, and she thought how great it must be to have someone who loved you unconditionally no matter what. That made her remember Jemmy and she was glad that at least one creature on earth loved her that way.

  Unconditionally.

  Miss Volkner and Mr. Manning emerged from the doorway behind Martine. “You’ve checked every cabin?” Miss Volkner was saying. Her red curls waved madly in the wind. “You’re absolutely sure there’s nobody left below deck?”

  Martine wondered what had become of Claudius. As much as she disliked him, she knew she should tell Miss Volkner he was planning to stay in the rec room for the duration of the storm. But before she could say anything, the teacher let out a startled shriek. “Martine, where is your life jacket? Where are your shoes? Lord, give me strength. Why aren’t . . . ?”

  The rest of her tirade was drowned by the screech of splitting metal. Jake Emery, who had been leaning over the edge of the ship, transfixed by the raging sea, jumped back, a horrified look on his face. A section of rail had torn loose and was swinging like a gate in the gale.

  Grace’s words came back to Martine. “Beware of the boat fence.”

  The boat fence! Of course! It was the railing around the ship. How could she have been so blind? How could she have missed something so obvious? The railing was going to be the cause of a catastrophe.

  Martine started forward, but Miss Volkner grabbed her by the arm. “Oh, no you don’t,” she cried. “You’re not going anywhere until you’ve got a life jacket on.”

  Martine tried to twist away, but Miss Volkner was surprisingly strong. “The guardrail,” Martine screamed in the direction of the kids near the prow, cupping a hand over her mouth. “Get away from the guardrail!”

  But the wind and the roaring sea swallowed her words, and the only one to look her way was Ben.

  The ship pitched sharply. Miss Volkner lost her balance and was forced to let go of Martine to save herself. The children near the railing went down like dominoes. Through slanting sheets of rain, Martine saw Ben start toward her. She blinked and he was gone.

  She blinked again, but he was definitely gone.

  Concerned that he might somehow have fallen overboard, Martine leaped out of range of Miss Volkner’s clutching fingers and started running along the slippery deck, ignoring her teacher’s enraged shouts. The pelting rain stung her face. Beneath her feet, the ship rolled and shuddered, and foaming crests of waves shot so high above the sides of the ship, they might have been tsunamis. Two sailors were untying the lifeboat. That’s when the severity of the crisis really came home to Martine. If the storm didn’t abate soon, she could end up living her nightmare.

  She rounded the ship’s funnel and stopped short. Two figures, one large and one much smaller, were wrestling in darkness, lashed by the driving rain. Claudius and Ben!

  “Give it to me, you little runt,” panted Claudius as he wrenched at Ben’s life jacket, trying to pull it off by brute force.

  Ben wriggled out of Claudius’s desperate grip and held up a hand in a gesture of surrender. There was a faint smile on his lips. The look he gave the bigger boy spoke so many volumes that it rendered Martine, who’d been about to intervene, temporarily paralyzed. Mainly it was a look of pity. It was a look that said: “If you want this life jacket so much that you’re prepared to do this terrible thing, you need it much more than I do.”

  Then he unzipped the orange vest and handed it to Claudius.

  Claudius snatched it from him without a word, pulled it on over his tubby frame, and stumbled away into the rain-swept night. Martine went up to Ben. She was sickened by what she’d seen. She wanted to rush after Claudius and pound her fists against his meaty back, or rant to Ben about how evil he was, but she knew Ben wouldn’t appreciate either. So she just said, “Don’t worry, I don’t have a life jacket either,” which she knew was a bit lame because why would it be of any comfort to him that she too was without a safety vest?

  The same thought must have occurred to him, because his mouth curled up at the corners and he replied, “Well, that’s okay then!”

  Another tsunami-like wave rose into the night, its crest glistening like shaving foam. Martine remembered that she was supposed to be trying to move everyone away from the railings. Hurriedly she told Ben about Grace’s warning and together they pushed into the teeth of the gale. Their progress was slowed by the sheer volume of water swilling around their ankles.

  They were within reach of their classmates when the ship dipped so steeply, it seemed certain it was going to upend. One moment Martine was straining to stay upright on the waterlogged deck, the next, the deck wasn’t there. The momentum of their run carried her and Ben helplesslyforwar
d and they collided with the tangle of bodies. There was a screech of tearing metal and the entire rail gave way. Next time Martine looked, some of the children didn’t seem to be there anymore.

  Before she could fully comprehend what was happening, the deck was dropping away again. Once more Martine had the feeling that time had slowed to a crawl. First she grabbed at a steel post in a bid to save herself. It came away in her hand. Second she took in that the noise on the boat—the slashing rain, the roaring sea, the screams and yells—was hurting her ears. Finally, Martine noticed that the two girls in front of her, the last line of resistance between her and the witches’ cauldron of ocean, had lost their grip on the slippery edge and were on their way overboard.

  Then time speeded up again and she was plunging after them, tumbling headfirst into the darkness, and the seething, sucking sea was reaching up to claim her.

  11

  Concrete. That’s what went through Martine’s mind. When you hit water from a great height, it feels like concrete. It almost winded her. The icy shock of it blasted the remaining air from her lungs and before she knew it she was spinning helplessly into the jet-black deep, dropping like a human anchor until she was sure she’d hit the ocean floor, 10,000 leagues under the sea. Then, chest burning, she was shooting up again, flailing, spitting salt water, gasping for breath.

  Already the ship was farther away than she could ever have believed was possible, but it was still within reach. She could see people scurrying around the deck. They were throwing lines and lowering a lifeboat. A weaving searchlight illuminated pale heads bobbing in the surrounding sea. Martine struck out in their direction, but her clothes and the survival kit weighed her down and restricted her movements. She could have been a cork on a rapid for all the impression her efforts made on the black waves. She went to unbuckle the pouch, but something stopped her. “Keep your survival kit with you for when you most need it, little one,” Tendai had told her, “when you need it to survive.” He hadn’t said anything about what to do if the kit that was supposed to save you was dragging you down to the bottom of the sea, but there was no denying that this was a survival situation if ever there was one.