‘Dad would kill me if I did that’ said Lucy suppressing a smile.
‘And you’d better not try’ added Bethany only half seriously. ‘Goodness knows what he’d say if he realised I’d been putting ideas into that head of yours.’
Bethany planted a kiss firmly on Lucy’s forehead. ‘Goodnight Kiddo. Sweet dreams.’
Lucy was so full of the day that she had trouble drifting off. Twenty minutes or so later she heard the door click shut as Dad came in and the murmur of conversation between him and Bethany downstairs. She heard him pad up the stairs and he shyly peeked around the door in case he woke her.
‘Hi Dad’ she said.
‘Hey Luce’ he replied. ‘I thought you were asleep. Did you have fun with Bethany?’
‘It was great Dad. I didn’t know she was coming over.’
‘Neither did I’ he said, pulling a bit of a face. ‘You get to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Night night Dad’ she said. But even though she was tired, she couldn’t help but wonder what he and Bethany were saying downstairs. Eventually her curiosity got the better of her. She tiptoed to her door, eased it open slowly so that it wouldn’t creak and crept to the top of the stairs so she could hear what was going on down below.
Lucy heard the sound of chairs scraping, the tap running in the kitchen and the clatter of plates. Dad coughed and she heard the murmur of voices, both Bethany’s and his, though she could not hear exactly what they were saying. Then the voices moved into the living room directly below.
‘So Bethany’ she heard Dad saying, ‘I know you said you were just passing by and wanted to drop in, but I just don’t buy it. It looks to me as though we were the object of a special visit.’
Lucy could imagine Bethany putting on a thin, brave smile before replying.
‘You know John, I shouldn’t need an excuse to come and see you both…It’s just that you don’t always exactly make me feel welcome when I do.’
‘I don’t think that’s fair’ her Dad responded guardedly.
‘Well, I don’t get the impression that you want me here this evening.’
‘I can’t pretend I wasn’t surprised when you called this afternoon and told me that you wanted to pick Lucy up from school’ said her Dad. ‘And sometimes I wonder just what you’re filling Lucy’s head with.’
‘You know I love Lucy.’ Lucy felt a surge of emotion to hear Bethany say so. ‘Why wouldn’t I want to spend time with my niece? She’s the only one I’ve got.’
‘It’s not that which I’m worried about’ said her Dad. ‘It’s what you tell her, what you say to her that worries me.’
‘Ok, so I know what you think about me, that I’m some sort of hippy and I know what you think about my opinions, but I have said nothing to Lucy, nothing at all. I have done exactly what you have asked me to do. I’ve been the model of discretion. I may talk to Lucy about Cornwall, I may tell her about how I love painting the sea, but that’s as far as it goes John. I don’t say one word more.’
‘Well I’m glad to hear it Bethany, I really am, but I can’t say it puts my mind at rest.’ Lucy could hear the strain in her Dad’s voice. She imagined him frowning as he spoke, pacing the room. ‘What worries me is that Lucy is bound to get drawn towards you and to get pulled into your world. Now you tell me she wants to come and stay with you in the half term. What am I supposed to say to that?’
‘You could say yes John. I’d love Lucy to come down and stay and I think it’d be good for her. She needs a break. Lucy’s not had much fun over the last year or so.’ There was a pause.
‘Oh, I’m sorry John, that was stupid of me to say. It’s been pretty hellish for the both of you. Maybe you could come down too. Why not?’
‘No, I can’t’ her Dad replied quickly. ‘I just can’t get away. There’s just too much going on at work.’
‘So what do you say? Can Lucy come down in half term? You put her on the train. I’ll collect her at the other end.’ Again Dad paused.
‘No, no I don’t think so’ Dad answered eventually. ‘Especially not down there in Cornwall.’ Dad hesitated a moment. ‘I just can’t take that risk.’
Lucy winced at the news, as she sat in the darkness at the top of the stairs. But what on earth was Dad talking about?
‘Look’ her Aunt said with an edge in her voice. ‘I’ve got to say this, now that Lucy’s in bed and that it’s just you and me talking. You know what I’m going to say. Lucy’s not just another kid ….and I’m not just saying that because I’m her aunt. She’s got the gift. She’s a …’
‘I don’t want to hear that!’ broke in her father sharply. Lucy’s heart pounded in her chest as she sat huddled at the top of the stairs in the darkness. ‘I don’t want to hear that nonsense.’
‘It’s not nonsense John’ pleaded Bethany. It’s….’
‘Not in my house Bethany, not under my roof. She’s my daughter and I’m going to bring her up to be a normal happy child. She doesn’t need to know about all…. all that.’ Lucy felt a sudden note of suppressed anger in his voice.
‘Oh John’ exclaimed Bethany. ‘We both want her to be happy, but you can’t hide things away from her forever’ she implored him.
‘It’s like sending your child out to play in the middle of the road’ retorted her Dad forcefully. ‘That’s just something no sane parent would do.’
Lucy was huddled in a tense ball at the top of the stairs. She lent forwards as she tried to absorb all that was being said. As she did so, the stair on which her feet were resting creaked. The conversation paused and she could imagine both Dad and Bethany looking up, wondering if Lucy was up there, wondering what she had heard.
‘Look, its late’ her Dad continued. ‘This conversation is getting us nowhere. I’m tired and I’m going to bed. You’ll be okay on the sofa bed won’t you? You know where everything is?’
‘Sure thing’ said Bethany. ‘I’ve got it sorted. I’ll make up the bed in a jiffy.’
‘Well goodnight then’ said her Dad gruffly, making towards the stairs. ‘We’ll speak in the morning.’
‘Goodnight John’ said Bethany.
Lucy scrambled back to her bedroom as quickly and as silently as she could and eased her door shut carefully so it wouldn’t click. She lay back in her bed, her heart still thudding in her chest, her mind a tangle of unanswered questions. Most of all she felt sick in the pit of her stomach at the idea she wasn’t going to get to go down to Cornwall and see Bethany there. She wondered just exactly what they’d been talking about.
‘I’m never going to fall asleep’ she thought to herself ‘after all that…’
Chapter Two:
Spirit was asleep. The waves were gentle and to a dolphin like him, warm. The sea was his lullaby and the familiar sounds of the waves enveloped him. He rolled languidly on the surface of the water, his blow-hole free to the air. Though asleep, as with all dolphins, half his brain was still alert to what was going on around him. He could swim, surface, breath and stay close to his pod, even though the other half of his brain was dreaming. Spirit dreamt of things he did not understand, far, far away.
Light came slowly in the early dawn. It was a clear day and the grey clouds had rolled away in the night. The water sparkled and the dolphins in the pod stirred slowly. Spirit was allowed to sleep in a little longer because he was a youngster in the pod and he needed extra rest. Restless, Dancer whistled Spirit’s name.
‘Hey, Spirit. Wake up lazy bones!’
All dolphin’s names were given by the pod, carefully chosen to reflect their true nature once three springs had passed since their birth. As his name suggested, Spirit was a dreamy, thoughtful young dolphin, but with a strong sense of justice and a will of his own. He was also a nimble and a deft swimmer. He could lift his body out of the water by the force of his tail and look around. He loved to dive deep and swim long and elegant shapes in the water. He could leap high and then slice back into the water leaving barely a ripple. He swam for
the joy of it and was almost as fast as any other dolphin in the pod.
Dancer was Spirit’s special friend and she was two years older than Spirit. They often played together, exploring the seas around them. Dancer loved to day-dream and could tell mesmerising stories to the rest of the pod as they lazed around after hunting fish.
Spirit woke up slowly. Although to humans, all dolphins look like they are smiling, Spirit and Dancer and the others in the pod showed how they felt with sound. Their clicks, whistles and the way they moved were how they expressed themselves. Spirit smiled with a whistle. He rolled over lazily, exposing his smooth belly to the surface of the water.
‘Oh, it’s too early!’ he yawned. He turned and swam back to where the rest of the pod were circling slowly, with Dancer at his tail. Summer, Moonlight and Storm whistled their greeting. Chaser and Breeze had already slipped away in search of breakfast.
‘The sea is calm today’ said Storm ‘and I sense a current from the east. We will eat well from mackerel today. There are shoals on their way.’ Storm always had a feeling for these things and, though the pod had no official leader, the other dolphins knew that as the oldest one among them his words were often wise.
‘And I hear no engines’ he continued, ‘that is good.’
‘But men have sailing boats as well Storm’ said Summer. ‘It is harder to hear them coming.’
‘It is true that the slapping of sails in the wind is quieter than the clangour of engines in the water’ replied Storm, ‘but we have little to fear from sailing boats and the men upon them.’
‘I have been close to many boats with engines’ said Moonlight, ‘and I have never felt fear near them.’
‘But I say beware.’ Storm clicked his warning. The men that come in powered boats are not always good and they can harm us. Their propellers can cut us, their nets can trap us. Their rubbish can poison us. Keep your distance.’
Spirit looked warily on. He knew well that Moonlight liked the men on boats and people in general. But Moonlight was younger than Storm and was less experienced in the ways of man. Storm’s words may be wise, but they were not welcome. Moonlight said that men were safe now, that they were harmless. Spirit had never got close to man, but he was intensely curious. They could not swim he’d heard, but found their way across the waves on boats. He felt as though he already knew them, though how that might be he could not say.
‘Well I am hungry’ said Dancer. ‘Come!’ she said to Spirit, ‘let us eat flounder this morning.’ The two younger dolphins sped off. Spirit took a great leap through the air and then the two dived down several metres to the sea bed. After seven or eight minutes or so they had eaten, though not as much as they would like and they rose to the surface again to breathe.
Spirit and Dancer looked at each other across the surface of the water. It always seemed so strange to do so, so different from the glorious hues of the water.
Let’s explore again today’ said Spirit with a sense of mischief in his voice. ‘I saw some very strange shapes on the other side of the island. Big things they were, on the sea bed. I want to find out what they are. I bet there’s good fishing to be had there too.’
‘Maybe they are the sunken vessels of man’ Dancer clicked. ‘And maybe men float down there still, living off the mussels at the bottom.’ Her eyes glowed with imagination.
‘Don’t be silly’ retorted Spirit, blowing his air-hole free of water.
‘Is it safe?’ asked Dancer, a note of worry in her clicks. ‘You know what Storm always says.’
‘Well I think that Storm’s too careful and Moonlight’s too careless. But if we take care of ourselves we’ll be just fine’ said Spirit emphatically. ‘After all, these are our islands, it’s about time we got to know them.’
After they found a reason to get away from the others, Spirit and Dancer slipped away, breaking the water in graceful arcs as they sped over the light frothy waves on the surface. The sun was still bright and the water unusually clear. It was going to be a good day thought Spirit as they raced along, clicking to each other as they went. They passed close to a basking shark, its mouth open wide, feeding on tiny krill.
‘That thing’s big enough to eat us both’ joked Spirit as they sped along.
‘Lucky they’re not interested’ replied Dancer.
They came close to the rocky coast of the island. The sea grew shallower here and the waves rougher, beating the rocks and shoreline rhythmically. A dozen or so metres away from the shore, there was a rock shelf as deep as a blue whale, with caves and chasms and dark, intriguing corners.
Spirit and Dancer dipped down from the surface excitedly and soon found themselves in a kelp weed forest. The long strands of the seaweed waved slowly in the eddies and currents of the water. They slowed down and pushed cautiously through the long, undulating strands, growing so thickly that, before they knew it, they were surrounded by kelp on all sides.
‘I hope you know where you’re going’ commented Dancer cautiously, but really she was full of excitement for the day ahead. Small fry, their fish scales trembling, darted away quickly in the gloomy depths as the two dolphins moved slowly forward.
Eventually, they broke through into clear water again. They took a gulp of clean air before diving again and doing so spied the strange shapes ahead of them in the gloom of the water. Somehow, the sea seemed to become quiet as they focused on the dark shapes, silhouetted against the larger expanse of water. They slowly approached, feeling nervous now at the strangeness of what they were looking at.
‘It’s an old ship’ whispered Dancer, ‘just like I said’. She turned and gave Spirit a companionable nudge with her nose. They could make out a huge hull, rusting and covered in limpets, with two funnels drooping perilously above. In between were what once must have been the decks, with gaping holes where doors had been and a row of neat circles where brass portholes once glistened. A moray eel slithered in through one of them and disappeared into the murk. A shoal of small fish skittered away at their approach. The two dolphins approached with a sense of excited anticipation between them.
A big hole in the rusting hulk loomed in front of them. Dancer and Spirit hesitated outside.
‘Lets go in’ Dancer dared Spirit. They swam cautiously forward. The dark engulfed them as they swam through the rusty, barnacle encrusted hole. The space inside was tight. Knowing no better, they could not make out what they were looking at and what humans did when they were not in water. They looked at the scattered metal tables and chairs and broken crockery with incomprehension. Something sparkled in the murk and Spirit swam up curiously to it, prodding it with his nose. The wine glass he had nosed rolled slowly in a half circle. Dancer seemed fascinated by the hulk they had swum into, but Spirit began to feel claustrophobic and longed to be back outside in the wide unrestrained sea again. He turned towards the entrance where they had swum in from.
Just as he did so, a shape loomed into the gap, partly blocking the light from the outside. Spirit let out an involuntary gasp, and panicking, whistled to Dancer to look.
‘What’s that strange thing Dancer? It’s moving in towards us!’
The shape had four limbs, was clad in black and had a mask over its face. Bubbles chased up from the mask towards the surface. Trapped and anxious, Spirit contemplated dashing for the hole, past the figure and up to the surface for a fresh lung-full of air. The black clad figure though did not seem aggressive.
‘It’s not going to do us any harm. I think it’s a human’ Dancer whispered.
‘I thought they were mostly pink all over’ replied Spirit anxiously.
‘That’s not true, they’re not always pink. Breeze told me that humans can change colour too or put on different things.’
‘But why would they do that?’ asked Spirit, backing away in the confined space from the human shape in the entrance.
‘Well, they’re not really supposed to be so deep down in the water are they?’ responded Dancer. ‘Maybe they have to do that to come down
here.’
The human figure, apparently realising that he was blocking the dolphins exit, swam back a metre or two so that the hole was clear for them to leave through. Spirit shot through in a flash, leaving a trail of bubbles in his wake. Dancer was not far behind. They raced to the surface and another lung full of air. After the initial panic passed, Spirit was overcome with a sense of curiosity.
‘I’m going back’ he said. ‘I want to take a better look at that human.’ He swam back down. The human was moving slowly, at least slowly compared to them and seemed to being doing something with a tool at the rusting hole they had just swum through. The human looked up. Spirit swum forward again, this time very slowly, his eyes alive with interest. He could just make out the humans eyes behind the mask.
‘I think the human’s friendly’ he said. Dancer, hanging back, was not so sure.
‘Come away’ she said. But Spirit did not move.
The human turned slightly in the water and Spirit saw that he had a sort of metal cylinder on his back, with thin black tubes running to the mask. Bubbles continued to escape up to the surface as the human breathed.
‘So that’s how they do it!’ Spirit thought to himself.
He looked at the human and the human looked back at him. The man stretched out a limb.
‘That must be what they call a hand’ thought Spirit.
Spirit sidled forward, with a mixture of tension and shy friendliness in his thudding heart. As he approached he could see the human’s eyes more clearly. There was something warm and inviting about them. Something about the human made him think back to his dreams. Yes, he had dreamt of a human before, although he’d never seen one till today. It wasn’t the same as the human that he had dreamed of, but now the memory of his dream made it come back vividly into his mind’s eye. It was a younger human he’d dreamt of, with long dark stuff (hair?) on its head and warm open eyes.
The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins Page 2
