Soon the lesson finished and the children turned out for their mid-afternoon break, chair legs scraping noisily as they all crowded to the door to get outside.
‘Err Lucy’ called Mrs Penhaligon with a smile, as Lucy was half way to the door. ‘Could you stay a moment?’ Amy went off outside to play and Lucy went up to Mrs Penhaligon’s desk. Mrs Penhaligon paused again, not quite sure how to begin.
‘Have you really had the same dream since you were a little girl?’ she asked.
‘Since I was a baby I think’ replied Lucy. ‘I can’t remember not having dolphin dreams’ she added, ‘not really.’ Mrs Penhaligon smiled again.
‘And the special dolphin you wrote about. Has he always been in your dreams as well?’
‘I think so’, answered Lucy. ‘All the dolphins are always there, but the small dolphin has become more special to me, well, in the last few months I suppose.’ Mrs Penhaligon nodded.
‘And can you easily tell them apart?’
‘Oh yes’ exclaimed Lucy enthusiastically. ‘They are all completely different. They may look the same to us, but they have quite different personalities. I can tell them apart easily.’
‘And when they click and whistle, you know what they’re saying? Do you hear their clicks and whistles, or do you hear them as though they’re speaking like you or me?
‘Oh I hear them clicking and whistling’ replied Lucy. I just sort of….know what they mean instinctively.’ Mrs Penhaligon smiled and nodded again.
‘It’s lovely to be at the seaside isn’t it. Have you ever seen a dolphin in real life?’
‘Dad told me that when I was small he took me to a dolphinarium once when Mum was away. He said that I started to cry and make a fuss because I wanted them set free. I don’t really remember, but I do think that they should be out in the open sea, don’t you?’
‘Yes I certainly agree with you there’ replied Mrs Penhaligon emphatically. ‘An over-sized swimming pool is no place for a dolphin. Have you seen any in the sea?’
‘No’ said Lucy, ‘I’d love to, but Dad hasn’t taken me to the sea for ages and ages. I don’t think he likes it.’ Mrs Penhaligon paused.
‘Do you think it was seeing the dolphinarium that made you start dreaming about dolphins?’
‘I don’t know really’ replied Lucy. My dolphin dreams are always, well almost always happy dreams and the dolphins are always in the open sea.’
‘Yes I can imagine’ nodded Mrs Penhaligon. She hesitated again. She leant in slightly and spoke with a softer less teacherly, but more urgent voice.
‘Listen Lucy’ she said. ‘Where I come from, it’s very special to have dolphin dreams like the ones you have described. It’s a gift. It means that….well, it’s silly really I suppose, just folklore really. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all, but it’s lovely that you have those dreams. I’m so glad that I know.’
‘Goodness’ she added, glancing up at the clock. ‘It’s almost the end of break and I haven’t even marked these exercises yet. You’d better run out and catch some fresh air whilst you can.’ Lucy turned to leave, but then glanced back.
‘Mrs Penhaligon, where is it that you come from?’
‘Oh I come from Cornwall Lucy. Right down near Lands End.’ Lucy ran out into the playground.
After school that afternoon Lucy and Amy both went to choir practice and then Amy’s Mum picked the two of them up and Lucy had dinner at their house before Dad collected her at half past six. Lucy wasn’t very good at singing, but she liked being in the choir and all the voices joined together so she didn’t stand out. Amy was better than her, so Lucy tried to copy her as much as she could.
Dad looked tired and obviously wasn’t in the mood for talking. Lucy wasn’t prepared to let that put her off though.
‘Dad, I want to go and see Bethany in Cornwall in the half term’ she announced to him as they drove home. Dad sighed.
‘Look, I’m sorry Lucy, but I just don’t think that’s such a good idea.’
‘But why?’ Lucy complained.
‘It’s just….for the best’ Dad replied, turning into the parking space outside their house. ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to see Bethany’ he added, ‘You’ll see her soon enough, I expect’ he continued. ‘I’m not ready for you to go off gallivanting around on your own here and there, you’re just not old enough and I don’t have the time to take off work.’
‘You just don’t want me to be happy do you!?’ exclaimed Lucy, getting upset. They’d got out of the car and Dad had his key half way into the key hole. He turned round slowly and gave Lucy a measured look.
‘Sometimes Lucy your parents know what’s best for you. Sometimes parents can’t explain and you just have to accept that.’
‘Mum would’ve let me go’ Lucy responded angrily, as they walked into the house.
‘Look, I’ve just about had enough of this’ replied Dad, his voice rising in response to hers. ‘You’re not going to Cornwall this half term and that’s that.’
Lucy stomped upstairs angrily and went to her room. She thought about banging her door, but decided against it. She threw her school bag down and collapsed onto her bed. She didn’t see what right Dad had to be such a misery. He could easily put her on the train at this end and, just like Bethany had said last night, she could collect Lucy off the train at the other end. Kids her age travelled like that all the time.
It would be so perfect to go down to Cornwall and spend time with Bethany. She could swim in the sea, explore the coast, see Bethany’s studio, look at her pictures and meet her friends. It’d be a lot more fun than being stuck at home for a week. It would be great and Dad knew full well that Bethany would take care of her. In fact, Lucy thought, Bethany would take better care of her than Dad would. He’d only dump her with one baby sitter or another all week. It was just like him to come over all mysterious when she tried to put him on the spot about why he didn’t want her to go. He certainly wasn’t telling her everything.
Then Lucy thought that since she had started asking him about going to Cornwall the day after he and Bethany had argued about that very thing, Dad must be wondering how much Lucy did hear of their conversation the night before. She’d not let on that she’d heard most of it, but Dad would soon put two and two together. Would he say anything and would he explain what Bethany had been talking about? Lucy doubted it.
Lucy looked out of the window. High in the sky she saw the full moon, shining brightly. The moon made her think of its reflection in the water and water made her think of dolphins. She thought of the little dolphin of her dreams and the anxious, far away look in his eyes. In her dream she had tried to swim to him, but he had just seemed to get further and further away.
Lucy took up a pencil and idly drew a dolphin swimming on a spare piece of paper. She was quite good at drawing dolphins. She could draw dolphins leaping, dolphins playing, dolphins riding the waves. Mrs Pancaldi, her art teacher, said she had a ‘distinctive way of bringing them alive.’ Lucy was very pleased when she told her this. Well, she thought to herself, I do dream dolphins pretty much every night. It’s not surprising that I should be able to draw them as well. Dad really never asked much about all her dolphin drawings even though they were everywhere in her room.
Lucy had a CD of whale song that Bethany had given her for her birthday. It wasn’t dolphin song, but to be honest whale song sounded more beautiful. She put it on her CD player and turned the volume up loud. She knew Dad didn’t like it, but really, she didn’t care that much tonight. He just said he didn’t have any time for that hippy dippy stuff. The whale song CD was full of the whale’s eerie, melancholy calls and made her feel as if she actually was in the ocean, floating in the currents, gently buoyed along in the salt water.
She imagined a great, enormous blue whale the size of a double-decker bus slowly beating its great tail fin as it swum from one side of the world to the other in search of feeding grounds. She thought about Giapetto, the wood-carver who’d made Pinocc
hio, trapped on his little raft in a great whale’s stomach and wondered if that could actually happen in real life.
Then her thoughts turned to orcas, otherwise known as killer whales and she knew that they could be dangerous to dolphins. She wondered if the dolphins of her dreams could be in danger from orcas. But then she thought, her dolphins existed only in her dreams. Surely, she reasoned, if they were her dreams, she could influence what would happen in them. Maybe tonight she could dream her little dolphin somewhere nicer, she thought. And so Lucy day-dreamed on.
‘Lucy, do your homework.’ Dad had put his head round the door interrupting her thoughts, half a sandwich in his mouth. Lucy emerged reluctantly from her reveries.
‘Okay Dad’ she said, picking up her pen and pulling her school bag towards her. Maths didn’t exactly fill her with joy, but she didn’t mind it either. Sometimes when you got into it, it could be quite satisfying. Soon it was time for bed. Showered and clean, she sunk in between the sheets and quickly fell asleep.
Chapter Four:
The wind played on the surface of the sea the next morning as Spirit stirred from his sleep. It whipped up into little whirlwinds and pulled the sea up into plumes. It licked the tips of the waves that peaked, white and frothy, in this direction and that. Stone grey clouds scudded above and coloured the water below. Spirit slowly realised that the day had broken. He had slept later than the others, as usual and became aware of their restless circling in the water.
‘Wake up Spirit!’ Summer nudged him with her muzzle. ‘Let’s chase sardines.’ The fish, in the depths, were as disturbed by the strange weather conditions as the dolphins, but the mammals weren’t about to let the opportunity to catch fish flash past them. Summer, Dancer and Spirit slipped down into the deeper waters where Moonlight, Storm, Chaser and Breeze had already been corralling the fish. Fish swim together, instinctively knowing that there is safety in numbers. However this is not always right. The dolphins worked together to surround the shoal of sardines and get them tighter and tighter until the sardines became a silver, flashing ball of life. The dolphins were experts and soon Storm clicked the signal. He dove into the centre of the ball of sardines, taking a mouthful of fish as he did so. Quickly, in turn the other dolphins followed suit, plunging in and through the sardines. Breeze, Chaser, Moonlight, then Summer, Dancer and finally Spirit, each in turn took a mouthful of fish as they passed through.
Then they let the shoal disperse into the waters around them and flash away into the gloom below. Dancer and Spirit had asked Chaser once why they let the rest of the shoal get away. ‘Take only what you need’ Chaser had told him. ‘We must live in balance with the fish around us.’ ‘If we eat too hungrily today, we will go hungry tomorrow. Once there was a great famine. The men in their boats came with their nets and fished and fished. They raked up the sea bed. They took all the shoals. There was nothing left. We were hungry for days and weeks. We had to swim many leagues with hollow stomachs before we came to good fishing grounds again.’
‘But the men’ Spirit and Dancer had asked, ‘did they not know that if they took and took, there would be nothing left?’
‘They may seem clever in some ways’ replied Chaser sagely ‘but they are not really intelligent. They are like children. They have never truly learned the ways of the sea. They need to be taught, but there is no one to teach them.’
The dolphins lazed after their meal, watching the weather and the squall playing across the surface of the water. Summer leapt high to see what was happening above. Grey mists swirled and the islands beyond were barely visible. No boats were evident. Rain broke above them and drummed the water with thousands of tiny blows.
Storm came up to Spirit’s side. Spirit was the youngster of the pod and Storm the most senior. Storm did not generally spend time with him. Spirit was surprised and a little bit in awe of the older dolphin.
‘Swim with me’ said Storm in a tone which invited no disagreement. ‘The squall will soon pass and we can join the others later.’ The young dolphin swam off with the elder, curious as what he wanted to say. Storm was silent and for a while they swum without words passing between them. They passed into a current of colder water. Spirit knew that the seabed tumbled down deep, deep below them to where strange creatures lived in the dark zones, where the water pressure was so great that no dolphin could swim there.
Spirit worried about what Storm might say to him. Yet when Storm broke his silence, his tone was warm.
‘You are a young dolphin’ he said ‘but you will soon come of age.’ Spirit whistled his agreement. ‘As with every dolphin in the pod and every dolphin in the wide seas, there will come a time soon when you must swim alone. You must find yourself out here, in the vastness of the ocean. You will experience fear, but you should not feel hunger. You will be alone, but that will bring you closer to all dolphins and to every living thing. And when you come back after your journeying, you will swim into brighter waters with all of us.’
Spirit knew of this rite of passage and was eager to undertake it himself. He wanted to catch up with Dancer who had passed through hers the year before. Only then, Spirit felt, would he be an equal among the rest of the pod.
‘You have a special destiny’ said Storm quietly, ‘your test will come sooner than for others.’ Spirit swam on, disturbed and wondering at Storm’s words.
‘But how?’ he asked simply.
‘Your destiny is not yet told’ replied Storm calmly. ‘I do not know your story.’
‘Then how can you know that I have a special destiny?’
‘You were born on a moonless night, under a windless, starry sky on the longest night of the summer. You have a small white star under your chin. You cannot see it, but we can. Stars fall from the sky you know’ he added, ‘and we dolphins believe that a new-born with a star on his body is born of his mother, but born of the stars as well. These are all signs that we look for in every dolphin that is born, anywhere.’
‘Well, no one’s ever treated me in a special way before. I’m always the last to eat and no one listens to what I have to say,’ Spirit complained. ‘I don’t feel special at all.’
‘Well we wouldn’t want you to treat yourself too seriously, would we?’ Storm smiled.
He gave Spirit a playful nudge and the two chased each other through the water, twisting, turning and then leaping high over the spray tipped crests of the waves. The dark clouds had been swept away and blue sky and sunshine illuminated the water. The wind had calmed down and the waves were lapping more gently than before.
The two dolphins slowed and lolled under the rays of the sunshine. After their playing, Storm became serious again.
‘Not all dolphins pass their test. They are not all ready to meet their destiny. Neither will you be if you lose your playfulness, your sense of curiosity, your sense of adventure. You must learn. That is what makes you. We will not treat you too differently either; not till you have learned our ways and earned our respect. You are still a young dolphin and that is the way of things. You are the baby of the pod. Come!’ Storm swam on and Spirit followed. The greyness of the early morning had by now almost entirely lifted. It was going to be a beautiful day.
A mile away, shapes moved through the water. First one, then two, then three hulking forms moved silently, their bulk held lightly in the water, their great fins propelling them quietly onward. They could hear the clicking, the whistling of the two dolphins north of them and they turned and swam towards the sound.
In her bed, far away, Lucy moved restlessly, her bed-clothes crumpled up around and on top of her. She was dreaming of dolphins again, of two dolphins ploughing through the seas and of the warmth of feeling between the two animals at that moment. Yet at the same time she felt uneasy, though her sleep shrouded brain could not tell why. One leg kicked out in her sleep and she turned, bringing a slew of bedding with her.
As they swum on, Storm told Spirit again some of the stories that all dolphins tell each other. He started off with a si
lly story he used to tell Spirit when he was very young indeed.
‘Sometimes, if you are close to the shore, you may see a hairy thing, with four legs, kicking about in the water. They are called dogs and they are often seen with man. We dolphins of course, should never venture into too shallow water, as you know very well, for the tides might turn and you will be stranded. Do not be led there by your curiosity. Most creatures on the land, so it is said, propel themselves with four legs. They breathe as we do and cannot dive about in the water for long without surfacing for air. They are not like the fish and sharks of the seas, but neither are we.’ He paused briefly.
‘Of course those animals known as dogs are land animals and know little of the seas. Four legs are not good for swimming and they have four claws, which are little help in the strong currents away from the shore. Even sea otters, which are found in the north and which can frolic and play in the water, must stay close to the land’s edge if they are to feel safe. Dogs are the cousins of otters, so it is said and they live together on the land. Long ago, dogs wished to conquer the seas and looked down from their cliffs, dreaming of eating the fish, which leapt and boiled the water in the shallows.
The dogs were not brave, so they said to their cousins the otters “Swim out and catch us some fish and bring them back to the rocks for us to eat”. But the otters just lay on their backs in the water and ate fish and laughed at the dogs on the shoreline. So the dogs came up with a clever plan. “Cousin otters” they said “We have discovered that in the shoals of fish there is a fish of gold, that can only be found by laying the fish on the dry stones at high water. On the break of day, the light from the fish of gold will spill forth, hitting the creature that caught it and who will be declared king. We dogs have divined a plan to capture the fish of gold and soon a dog will be king of all creatures of the land.”
The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins Page 4
