by Sulin Young
She remained under water, using minimal movements to keep herself submerged, and gazed ahead. She hovered on the edge of the lagoon where the light blue waters gave way to the looming darkness of the majestic ocean. One stroke too many and she would be swept away by the currents. But, as usual, the dolphin was watching out for her. There was a sharp pain in her ribs as it prodded her with its snout.
“Ooooooor!” That was underwater talk for ‘ouch.’ Terrana glared fiercely at the dolphin but backed away hastily when she saw he intended to repeat his scolding. Four kicks and she was back in the arms of the shallow lagoon, close to the small reef she had swum through. The dolphin appeared satisfied with this and swum around her happily.
Puddy — that was what she called him — was the largest bottle-nosed dolphin she had ever seen, and he was always alone. The other dolphins that visited the lagoon from time to time were curious about the lonely dolphin; they had tried on many occasions to embrace him into their pods but always left bewildered and without him. No one knew why he did not want to join others of his own kind. Instead, he chose to swim only with Terrana, and avoided all the other people on the island.
She broke through the surface and turned onto her back, releasing a contented sigh. This was the absolute best — swimming alongside her best friend with nothing to disturb them.
“I had that strange dream again, Puddy,” she said after a few minutes had slipped by. The dolphin was almost unmoving by her side, seemingly listening to what she had to say.
“I was floating in that darkness again. I know it wasn’t the sky because there weren’t any stars and it wasn’t in my head coz it was too quiet. There wasn’t any noise at all and even when I screamed I couldn’t hear myself.” She paused and reached out to stroke Puddy. “And then I was at that school again looking at it from the outside. I wanted to go in, and this sounds weird I know, but something was keeping me out. I could only watch from the school’s perimeter. I could see the students — they were so cool!”
A smile played about her mouth as she recalled her dream. “One of them had two antennae on his head and his skin was blue. Another was floating by on his buta, I mean ass, sorry, butt, and he looked like a giant cockroach. Eew, I hate cockroaches!” She shuddered. “It reminded me of the movie Star Trek you know.”
There was a splash as Puddy used his flipper abruptly. “Oh sorry, you don’t know Star Trek.”
She turned over and put as much of her right arm around Puddy as she could. He was, she guessed, around four metres in length and probably weighed close to four-hundred kilos. She rested her face against him, close to his head, and smiled. She could sense his big brown eyes looking at her and she gave him a peck on the side of his face.
“I wish I could stay in the water forever with you! Then we could go exploring the ocean together all the way to the North Pole and meet whales and seals and see everything on the ocean floor! And we could also sabotage those ships that try to catch you for food.”
It didn’t matter that she had said it a million times before. The sea was her home and she wanted to live her life in it with Puddy, exploring the watery world away from humans. And it didn’t matter that he’d done it a million times before — Puddy still raised a flipper and pushed her away as if to say, “Don’t be stupid.”
The push sent her tumbling towards the seabed and she spread out her arms to stop her rapid descent, striking for the surface. She broke through, gasping water.
“Fine,” she said sullenly, “be that way. But just you wait, one day I’ll find a way to spend all my time in the water and then you won’t be able to get rid of me!”
Puddy released a chatter of noises, seemingly laughing. He flipped upright in the water and wagged a flipper. He was pointing to the beach.
“Urrrgh fine! I’m going then! How could you tell it was lunch time?”
They swam towards the shore, but this time bypassing the little reef that Terrana had swum through. It was good exercise for her as she worked on her freestyle, her arms and legs propelling her forwards with the gentle waves that rolled into the lagoon.
She raced the last hundred metres underwater with Puddy, losing as usual, and emerged from the sea. As always, the dolphin turned and left, performing his signature flip before disappearing into the distance. Terrana walked back to where she left her clothes and slipped them on. Then she headed home.
Her feet swept the sandy footpath dotted with lime-washed rocks and withered rose bushes, past the large frangipani tree on the right and finally stood before the weathered, wooden door of her yellow rectangular house. The smell of frying fish, sausages and boiled cassava filled her nostrils and she inhaled it appreciatively. Turning the cheap plastic doorknob, she sauntered into the house.
The sound of her brother’s whining greeted her first.
“Oilei! Where were you, man? Mum’s been looking for you to scrape the coconuts!”
Archie was sprawled out on the sofa watching a video. Three years older than Terrana, he was the bane of her life. Like his sister he was lean, but his eyes were green and his shoulder-length hair was brown and wavy. He possessed a devilish smile that made all the girls on the island laugh strangely.
A natural star in school, he excelled in schoolwork, sports, and dancing — a fact he never failed to rub in. But one day it had all changed; Terrana had thrashed him in swimming and tree climbing, and, ever since, everything had become competition between the two.
Terrana rolled her eyes and huffed. “Why couldn’t you do it?”
“Uh uh, I’m not allowed to.” He grinned. “I’m learning to play the piano.”
“What! Since when?” Terrana was pretty sure that Archie had the musical sense of a farting monkey with bananas for fingers. Crabs were more musically gifted than he was.
“Master Manoa offered to teach me and Mum agreed, but first I have to take it easy on my hands. He said I had too much crescendo!”
A sly smile came over her face. “You mean Father Manoa. The only free time he has is on Saturdays so there goes your weekends. Because it’s Mum agreeing to it, there goes your Sundays too coz she’ll expect you to play in church.”
She watched with satisfaction as Archie’s face changed from smugness to horror. She nodded sympathetically. “Yep, Mum finally got you,” she said in a way that was not at all sincere. “Don’t know how you didn’t see that one coming.”
Archie screamed. “MUUM! You didn’t tell me that Master Manoa was a priest!”
The sound of softly padded footsteps entered the living room. The plump form of their mother appeared, complete with her pink slip-on dress that fell just above her knees, curly dark hair, dark eyes and ruby red lips. She loved lipstick.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” she said innocently. “He’s just come down from the next island and will be serving God here for a year.”
“Eeh? God doesn’t live on this island, Mum! He’s on the other island with all the ulukaus. You tricked me!”
Terrana sniggered. Ulukaus was Fijian slang for village idiots. It resulted in a slap on the head from her mother. “Oouu — what did I do?” she said, rubbing her sore head.
“Go scrape the coconuts. I need some lolo for the fish and bele.” Lolo was coconut milk and bele was a leafy green vegetable rich in iron, two of the most common ingredients for cooking on their island. She looked at Terrana and her eyes twinkled. Terrana had inherited her brown eyes and black hair from her mother, whereas Archie had his father’s colouring.
“All right,” she grumbled, turning to leave. “Guess I’ll be stuck scraping coconuts for the rest of my life now that Archie’s playing the piano. I’m a young girl with dreams you know.” She gave her mum a pointed look. “I plan to be a marine biologist, saving the ocean, and I need to be in the sea looking at sea stuff but nooooo — instead I’m doomed by my mother to scrape coconuts. Where is the love?”
She received only a raised eyebrow in response. “I’m gonna have coconut hands like you, and men wi
ll think that I work in the kitchen.” That didn’t work either. Her mother just shook her head and walked back to the kitchen. Terrana scowled and glared at her brother, whose turn it was to snigger.
“Still, it beats spending my weekends in church playing the piano just to impress some stupid girl.”
She succeeded again. Archie was just too easy.
“Akanisi is not stupid! She’s tall, smart and beautiful and she can dance too! Not like you, flapping like a dying fish on the sand.”
“Fine then. I’ll scrape the coconuts and you’ll play the piano every weekend — in church. Did I mention that Akanisi is leaving for Suva next week and will be away for the rest of the holidays?”
Her brother’s face twitched.
“Guess not,” she said, smiling sweetly before walking away. A few seconds later Archie followed, screaming.
“Don’t you dare touch those coconuts!”
3
The dream that started it all
That night, Terrana went to bed early. As she lay there fiddling with the pearl around her neck, she wondered whether she would have the same dream again. She hoped so! Like a giant TV in her head, she would get to see strange people in weird worlds doing different things.
The pearl gleamed in the candlelight, distracting Terrana from her thoughts. A memory came to her. Black pearls were pretty common on her part of the island, and the women from the nearby village would gather and sell them at the market every week. They weren’t very expensive because most of these pearls were tarnished in some way or another, marked by a ridge, hole, or bump.
Terrana didn’t particularly care for them either, but the one around her neck was special. Puddy had given it to her. It was quite large, covering her thumbnail easily. The dolphin had dropped it into her hand one day and, without knowing why, she had asked her father to make a clasp for it. She liked the way it had formed into a teardrop and no matter which way she turned it, it always caught the light. Because it was from Puddy, it was especially sentimental.
Even as she admired the pearl in the candlelight, she was already falling asleep. Eventually, her head fell to one side and drool trickled down the corner of her mouth and onto her pillow.
Images flashed by, one after the other. A beautiful, alien woman sitting astride a strange, winged animal. A city where colourful and outrageously designed buildings reached the clouds. There were trains that were sleek and white, running on different levels above the ground. Footpaths moved on their own so people didn’t have to walk, and tiny islands floated in the sky.
Terrana studied the people with something akin to awe; never in her life could she have imagined such a melting pot of alien races. She was looking at large insects wearing helmets, dodging air traffic. A frog twice her height whirred by, a jetpack strapped to its shoulders. She could have also sworn she saw a jellyfish drive by in a car without wheels on the road below her.
A strange feeling dogged her — something didn’t feel right about the dream on this occasion. She didn’t feel like an outsider as she usually did, looking in from another world. This time she felt included in the dream, and as she dangled high above the city watching everything go by, she experienced another strange sensation. She could feel the wind. She could feel the exhaust coming from the flying cars. Her heart clenched. Suddenly, she didn’t feel very safe.
“It’s just a dream, you won’t really fall,” she told herself. She inhaled deeply to quell her rising panic. A sound, unlike any she had heard before, almost withered her insides to jelly.
“GET OFF THE TRACKS YOU MORON!”
Terrana nearly dropped to the ground then. Wobbling around like a beginner on skates, she spun around and saw a train bearing down on her. Even though it was far away, it was travelling really fast. Terrana felt her heart flee her body, most likely to search for her stomach.
In her head, she could imagine the horrified faces of the train drivers who were frantically depressing the horn in a desperate attempt to alert her to the danger. They didn’t just alert her, however, but probably everyone else in the entire city.
Cars and their startled drivers came to a screeching halt on all levels of the city as the alarm sounded. Train passengers on the surrounding tracks pressed their faces up against the glass, hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of the perpetrator; some even pulled their cameras out, hoping to record something.
A few bystanders spotted her and pointed.
“MOVE, STUPID GIRL, MOVE!” they yelled.
It was all too much for Terrana. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to wake up, but it wasn’t any good. She could hear the screaming, the blaring horn, and she opened her eyes again. The train was almost upon her. Desperately, she tried to lurch out of the way. As her limbs flailed wildly in the air, she realised with a sinking heart that it wasn’t helping. She was stuck.
Dinz and Bob, the two train drivers of the M71 bullet train, had been laughing over something when Bob noticed the early detection signal. He stood up and walked over to the main control panel, pulling up the track screen. His eyes widened when he spotted the girl hovering beneath the fluorescent lit tracks.
“Ey, Dinz — we got a hoverer! Better flash her to the cops. They’ll soon be on her.”
“Yer have it. Initiating scan of the soon-to-be jailbird.” Dinz pressed a bright yellow button on a smaller control panel next to him.
A three dimensional image of Terrana popped up in front of them and as Bob leaned in for a closer look, he noticed something wasn’t right. The girl lacked shoes; her attire was strange and out of place, and she seem terrified.
“Hey Dinz, is it me or is she missing a hover-board?”
His partner took a closer look and his eyes widened. “She ain’t got no stizmo either! Dunt say she’s caught in an anti-grav bub!”
By stizmo, Dinz meant a flight-pack capable of carrying a single person over short distances. However, teenagers tended to fit them with additional boosters that allowed them to fly through the many levels of the city. This was illegal and caused endless headaches for the city’s transport department and, as such, heavy fines and even jail terms were levied on all offenders.
The colour drained from the conductors’ faces as they realised the girl on the track was helpless and incapable of moving.
Bob was sweating. “Dinz,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper, “We gotta deploy the bot.”
“De-deploy the bot?” Dinz looked scared. “But we ain’t dun that before! Will it work?”
“We don’t have a choice. It’s either that or splat!”
“Yer right, Bob. We gotta do it now.” Dinz flipped over the glass cover on the emergency panel where a line of coloured switches blinked rapidly. Then swallowing nervously, he depressed a grey switch. A whole second went by before the train shuddered and a panel on the outside slid out of position to reveal a chute.
Something shot out of the chute and sped for the helpless girl. At the same time, the entire alarm system went off and the conductors were forced to cover their ears.
“GET OFF THE TRACKS YOU MORON! WHAT DO YOU THINK THIS IS? A FRIGGING CLEANING SERVICE?”
“They should really change the message,” said Bob, flinching.
“Bob, it ain’t gonna make it!” Dinz could hardly hear himself over the alarm as he watched the rescue bot veer off course. “And we ain’t gonna stop in time either. Bob, this is gonna be our first rail kill in the history of this city!”
They could only watch in horror as their train bore down on the girl.
4
When the dream becomes a nightmare
Splat!
Both men screamed as they heard the unmistakable sound of the train colliding with a soft body. When it finally rumbled to a stop, the rescue bot appeared at the window. It was an old model, manufactured over fifty years ago, and yet the city had not seen fit to replace it because of its utmost confidence in the bullet trains to stop in time. Therefore, the rescue bot resembled something out of a
junk yard, with its scratched black coat of paint and conical shape. It gave a polite knock on the window. The drivers noted with much despair that there was no girl with it.
“Status report,” said Bob, rather shakily.
“I missed,” replied the bot. “But not to worry, the train didn’t.”
Dinz swooned and fell to the floor.
Terrana could have sworn that she had been millimetres away from being hit by the train when she experienced a gut wrenching feeling of having every cell sucked out of her body. Poof! She was in another place and, unfortunately, high up once more. So high that she could see clouds drifting below her feet.
“Dream, dream, dream. This is just a dream,” she told herself. She inhaled deeply several times, trying to build up the air in her lungs before releasing it in one go. “I WANT MY MUMMY!”
When she screamed, her body tensed. When she tensed, she fell through the air like a sack of potatoes. Course of logic was surprisingly quick with Terrana and she stopped screaming. Almost immediately she stopped falling, which was a Newton moment for her, accompanied by opportunistic thoughts of pure potential.
Just what else could she do in the air? She blew out gently and found herself drifting back. She adjusted her position so that she was standing, and then she exhaled. As expected, she dropped several metres. She held her breath and found herself plummeting, something which she quickly rectified. After attempting a few swim strokes and glides, she became impatient. Except for the sky and clouds she couldn’t see much of anything, which wasn’t fun, so she decided to take a risk. She inhaled several times to open up her lungs and then held her breath. She plunged instantly.
With Herculean effort, she forced her eyes open during the breakneck descent. She instantly regretted it as the wind tore at them, causing her eyes to water. However, something caught her attention and she kept them open. A never-ending lake, mountains covered in forest, and buildings came into view.
