Dolphin Song

by Lauren St. John

  Martine was fuming. She lunged at him in a last-ditch attempt to snatch her survival kit, but Ben was too fast for her and he pulled her out of the lighthouse and along the path.

  “Let go of me,” said Martine, panting. She wriggled out of his grasp and stood glaring at him. “Why didn’t you do something? How could you just let them get away with taking everything from us—our food, our shelter, our survival equipment? What will we do now? Why do you have to be so nice all the time? You’re ten times faster and fitter than Claudius. You didn’t have to give him your life jacket on the ship. You could have saved my survival kit if you’d tried. But no, you did nothing. What’s worse, you wouldn’t let me doing anything. Don’t you know that sometimes you have to fight for what’s right?”

  Without a word, he walked away.

  “That’s right, just run away,” Martine said scornfully. “You can’t even stand up to a girl. It’s true what everyone says about you. You are a wimp. You’re pathetic.”

  Ben froze in his tracks. He turned around slowly and the lighthouse beam fell on his face. Martine saw the terrible hurt in his eyes.

  “What did you want me to do?” he asked quietly. “Did you want me to hit him? Did you want me to attack Jake or Nathan or even Lucy? Why? Because they were hungry and ate a bit of fish? Because they saw an opportunity for some easy shelter and took it? The sea is full of fish and the island has plenty of shelter. When did fighting ever solve anything?”

  Martine didn’t answer. She felt as if she were standing outside her body looking down on herself. She knew she was behaving badly, but she was powerless to do anything about it.

  “I do fight,” Ben continued in his soft, steady voice. “I fight every day to be allowed to be who I am. I just don’t do it with my fists, or with words the way other kids do.”

  Then he strode away down the dunes and was swallowed by the night.

  16

  It was an odd feeling to be utterly alone. Martine felt like a pinprick in a vast, star-speckled universe, standing in a landscape as alien as the mountains of Mars. Every reference point she’d ever had was gone. Her mum and dad were dead. The new life she’d built for herself was an ocean away. Her new family had been torn apart. In a matter of a week, she had fallen out with her classmates, been unkind to her best and only human friend, and told her grandmother that she hated her. As a result, the loneliness she had been so scared of at Sawubona had come to find her here, in the loneliest place of all.

  Martine felt a lot of emotions, but the main one was shame. She wished that Grace was around to give her a mammoth hug and say something wise, or that Jemmy was nearby to nuzzle her and make his musical fluttering sound, but another part of her felt that she didn’t deserve a hug or a nuzzle. She listened, hoping to hear Ben’s footsteps. But there was only the whisper of waves and the sad whine of the wind, which lifted grains of sand and stung her with them. She wanted to cry, but she knew that crying wouldn’t help. People who felt sorry for themselvesin survival situations tended not to last very long. She needed to get her wits together and prepare for the long night ahead.

  After a final, longing look at the lighthouse, where the dancing light of the fire set the walls and windows aglow, she set off down the dunes. Her plan was to make her way to the rocky ledges above Dolphin Bay on the far side of the island. There she would be shielded from the worst of the weather and, with any luck, out of the reach of passing snakes or scorpions.

  The part of the journey Martine found most unnerving was the walk through the copse of trees near the lake, where blustery sea winds threw leaping-panther shadows. She was too heart sore to be truly afraid, but she was definitely relieved when her toes sank into the squeaking sand of Runway Beach. It took another fifteen minutes to reach Dolphin Bay, and her muscles were quivering with tiredness by the time she climbed the slick rocks of the cliff. She was starving too—not that she could have eaten a thing.

  The cave she chose smelled of birds’ nests and fish bones, but it was dry and sheltered. Martine sat on the ledge and gazed out at the moon and the glittering sea beneath it. There was some comfort in knowing that the same moon would be shining on the white giraffe and the other animals at Sawubona. And, of course, on her grandmother, who would probably be finishing dinner around now.

  But Martine’s other life, life at Sawubona, seemed a million miles away. She tried to remember how things were before they got so mixed up—before she upset everyone she cared about. That got her thinking about how small and petty the causes of arguments were. Mostly they came down to one person believing that they were more right than somebody else, or another person wanting what someone else had.

  That’s what had happened tonight.

  She lay down on the rock, but the hard, chilly stone made sleep impossible. She sat up again and that’s when she heard it—a cough. It came from the next ledge, she was sure of it. Ben! Immediately Martine felt better. Even though they weren’t speaking—even though Ben probably thought her the most monstrous girl he knew, it was good to have him nearby. She wondered if she should apologize, but she wasn’t ready to face him. She wondered too if he was as cold as she was, and was jolted by an awful thought. Ben had no warm clothing with him. When they’d returned to the lighthouse, he’d been bare-chested and in shorts, because she’d teased him about the goose bumps all over his body. And after the argument at the lighthouse, he’d been so concerned about preventing her from getting into a fight that he hadn’t thought to grab his T-shirt and Windbreaker as he went. Martine knew that if she was freezing in a T-shirt and sweatshirt, Ben would be feeling even worse.

  For half an hour, she plotted and schemed about hiking all the way back to the lighthouse and snatching her survival kit or, failing that, a red-hot ember she could use to start a fire. Then she remembered something. During one of her attacks of guilt over their fellow castaways, she’d taken a couple of matches from the pouch with the intention of giving them to anyone except Claudius if the opportunity arose. But it never had.

  She dug in her pocket. They were still there.

  Minutes later, Martine was foraging along the shoreline in pitch darkness to find dried palm fronds, coconut husks, pieces of driftwood, or anything else that might burn. It was horrible rummaging around blindly, not knowing whether a scorpion or vengeful crab was about to sting her or crush her fingers with its pincers—she kept thinking of the crab in the Buddhist story, slicing off the crane’s head “like a knife through butter,” but she persevered until she had two big piles of wood. Then, using her sweatshirt, she transported them back to the ledges.

  Ben was curled up on the edge of the fluttering moonlight, bare shoulders against the bare rock. He was asleep. Goose bumps covered his body, and his lips looked blue in the moonlight. As quietly as possible, Martine stacked the logs the way Tendai had shown her and lit the kindling. The flames crackled into life. Ben never stirred, but as the driftwood began to smolder and as the heat spread, his skin regained its smoothness and he stopped shivering. Martine made one more trip down the rocks for extra wood, which she stacked close by. Only when she was satisfied that the fire would burn for most of the night did she return to her own ledge. She built herself a smaller version of Ben’s fire and lay down beside it, tired to the bone. Not even the unforgiving rock could keep her from sleep.

  It rained all morning. Martine sat under the overhang, watching the still, empty sea. Alberto had told her that in his youth it had never rained in the winter, but that this year there had been floods. She neither heard nor saw Ben. Around midday, she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer and poked her head around the rocks. He was gone, although he had taken care to sweep the ash, coals, and unburned bits of wood into a pile so that when he returned, the embers beneath would be hot enough to restart the fire. Martine took that as an indication that he’d appreciated her efforts, but not that he’d forgiven her.

  At lunchtime the rain stopped and the sky turned a milky blue. The birds celebrated with a burst
of song. For a multitude of reasons, Martine did not want to encounter the lighthouse thieves, so she stayed in her shelter until hunger drove her out. Even then, she merely dashed to the nearest coconut palm for a couple of coconuts and dashed back. Removing the husks without the knife was a trial. Martine spent nearly an hour using a sharp rock to liberate the white flakes inside. But all she got for her trouble was a stomachache. It didn’t fill her. She ventured down again to the rock pools and scooped up a tangled pile of slimy seaweed. After several failed attempts to cook it on the fire, she ate it as it was. It was salty, rubbery, and completely vile, but it cleared her head and made her feel less tearful.

  Mid-afternoon, the dolphins appeared in the bay and she decided to go down and talk to them. They would cheer her up. They would make her believe that absolutely everything was going to be all right. That Ben would be her friend again. That Gwyn Thomas wouldn’t always be annoyed with her and wouldn’t send her away from Sawubona. That she would see Jemmy again.

  She was standing in the frothy fringes, adjusting to the water temperature, when she noticed that the departing tide had uncovered the wreck, and it reared once more from the sea that had conquered it. It seemed to beckon to her. Miss Volkner had told the class that no fewer than eleven Portuguese galleons had been dashed to pieces on the rocks along South Africa’s Transkei coast between the mid-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that many were thought to be treasure galleons. Ben had thought that this wreck might be one too, but now she would never know. She had turned down the chance to go out to it with him, and investigating the old galleon without him would be both pointless and insane. That was the thing about having a friend. You could do things that weren’t really possible on your own. Friends made you brave. Friends made things fun.

  Of course, fun was going to be in short supply from now on.

  Unless . . . Martine swallowed hard. Unless she did something to win back Ben’s trust. Something like . . . But no, it didn’t bear thinking about. Venturing out alone to the reef, where the only thing holding back the full ferocity of the Indian Ocean was a fragile wall of coral, was not a risk worth taking. There was no telling what treacherous currents swirled around its edges, or what sea monsters lurked in the rusty carcass of the wreck.

  But the thought wouldn’t go away. Ben had been so incredibly excited at the prospect of finding a casket containing old journals, maps, or bits of treasure. “It’s very unlikely,” he’d said, “but you never know. We might find something they’ve missed.” Perhaps she could find something. Then she could present Ben with a ship’s compass or a gold coin as evidence that his friendship was so important to her that she’d been prepared to overcome her worst fears to get it for him. Surely that would be enough to restore his faith in her?

  But at the back of her mind two things kept nagging at her. What if she got into trouble in the water and nobody knew where she was? Worse still, what if the rescue boats came and nobody could find her, and they thought she was dead or lost at sea, and they went without her and she was left alone on the island forever? What then?

  17

  The first sign that swimming out to the wreck might not be the best idea she’d ever had came when the dolphins kept blocking her path to it. They lay on their sides and squeaked and looked impossibly cute. They turned their bellies to the late-afternoon sky and did dolphin backstrokes. They did rolls and acrobatics and half a dozen other tricks. Initially Martine interpreted it all as a game, but when the end result of everything they did was to prevent her from swimming in the direction of the reef, she became convinced the dolphins were trying to tell her that there was something dangerous there. Either that or they had become drunk on rainwater, as the Tsonga believed they sometimes did.

  “What are you trying to tell me, Sun Dancer?” she asked. “What’s wrong, Patch and Honey? Is there something bad out there? Are there sharks out there?”

  Before wading out to the dolphins, Martine had made a trip to the lake to fetch a couple of reeds. In times gone by, warriors and hunters had used reeds as makeshift snorkels in order to cross rivers or approach enemies or animals undetected, and she was going to attempt to do the same while searching for treasure. She’d broken the reeds into pieces of varying lengths. After a brief experiment in the shallows, she’d chosen a medium-length one. Periodically, she scanned the beach for Ben in the hope that he’d come rushing over to stop her and to tell her that what had happened the previous night was a silly misunderstanding, and that of course he’d be her friend again. But the beach stayed empty.

  While she’d been at the lake, a stiff breeze had picked up and now she watched as a wave from the open sea dashed against the reef, sending an avalanche of spray across the wreck. Martine’s nerves combined unhappily with the stew of seaweed and coconut in her stomach. One false move and she’d be swept into the ocean.

  She started to swim for the galleon, but again Sun Dancer blocked her way. The other dolphins crowded around her and, sad and frightened as she was, she couldn’t help smiling. They had a way of looking at her that was very wise but also very childlike and cheeky. She suddenly realized that, far from being isolated, she was surrounded by animals, and that they would always accept her the way she was. That, even if every human being she knew gave up on her, or was angry with her, she would still have her gift.

  It was a heartening thought and it gave her the courage she needed to kiss Sun Dancer good-bye, push him gently but firmly aside, and swim for the reef. Nevertheless, she found it disturbing that the dolphins refused to accompany her. It was almost as if there was an invisible line in the bay that they knew not to cross. Martine crossed that imaginary place with trepidation.

  The wreck was much farther than it had seemed from the beach, and Martine had to cling to its side and rest for several minutes when she finally reached it. When she saw how close she was to the tumultuous waters of the Indian Ocean, her fear returned. At intervals, spray splattered the wreck and a powerful current tugged at her limbs. The insanity of her mission hit home. Surely there were easier ways to win back Ben’s friendship?

  Still, it seemed a shame to turn back, so she tested the reed again to be on the safe side. It was quite effective. It would have been nice to have a mask, but the water was so clean and the fish so brilliantly colored, it didn’t matter.

  As far as she could tell, the galleon had run aground on the reef and sunk right where it was. Martine wondered what had become of its crew. She understood all too well the terror they must have felt as white water plumed from the bottom of the boat. There would have been mayhem on board as men, doubtless the worse for wear on rum and without life jackets, were swamped by the in-rushing sea. Had their caskets of pearls and gold—if indeed that’s what they were carrying—gone down with them? Had they made it to shore? Had they ever been rescued? Or had their skulls become homes for fish and, over time, become one with the brain-like coral?

  These dark thoughts were pushed from her head by the otherworldly beauty of the reef. There were blue starfish and red and white ones; fat-lipped parrot fish in glorious shades of mauve, pink, and purple; angel fish with yellow and black stripes; and a sprawling octopus that looked like a jellified cartoon ghost. Best of all, there were half a dozen turtles. Their shells were a deep brown with patterned cream grooves, and they sailed lazily through their undersea world with their stumpy legs waving. It seemed impossible that such cumbersome creatures should float, but float they did, their prehistoric heads comically surveying their surroundings.

  Slowing every now and then to suck in oxygen through her reed—which was easy enough as long as it remained perfectly upright, but punished her with mouthfuls of salty water when it didn’t—Martine glided through the rainbow aquarium. She was surprised to find she was enjoying herself.

  At a certain point, shafts of gilded light illuminated the jade depths and she guessed that the sun would soon be setting. She was about to give up her quest and return to the surface when a metallic glint caught
her eye. She took a big gulp of air from the reed and dived down to it. As she neared it, she saw that it wasn’t the sunken treasure it had appeared to be from a distance, but a link in a thick cable. There was nothing old-fashioned about the cable. It was very modern and appeared to be very new.

  Martine knew she should be getting back to the beach, but was reluctant to leave without investigating further. A cable suggested communications or electricity, and there was always the possibility that it might be connected to something that could lead to them getting off the island. That would impress Ben as much as any treasure. She returned to the surface for more air and swam down again. As she drew nearer to the cable, she spotted another metal band, then another and another. There wasn’t just one cable; there was a whole grid of them! A virtual latticework of clear plastic tubing was snaking its way under the sea, tapering into the blue distance.

  Martine was about to give one of the cables a tug when a manta ray came flapping toward her. Its black diamond-shaped wings billowed out like a highwayman’s cape. Martine knew that manta rays rarely harmed humans, but its size was intimidating and she moved to one side so as not to be in its path. It changed direction and headed straight for her. She shifted again, but it kept coming. The closer it got, the less friendly it looked and the more it resembled a Stealth bomber jet she’d seen on the news in England. Its wings filled her whole vision.

  Then it cannoned into her like a charging bull.

  “Bl-bl-uhggh,” spluttered Martine as she was propelled to the surface, gagging on seawater. “Bubblug-h-uhh . . .”

  An instant later, there was a muffled, undersea explosion. The force of the blast had a water-cannon effect, flinging Martine upward and outward; but the ray caught the full impact. Bits of cartilage, tissue, and manta ray skin rained down on the sea like lava.