Dolphin Child

by James Carmody

  Paul wondered why Lucy was a Dolphin-Child and not him. It wasn’t fair, like the way it wasn’t fair that some kids were brought up in big comfortable homes with everything they wanted, while other kids felt miserable, neglected and poor. Maybe he could learn how to become a Dolphin-Child too he thought. He wanted to find out more about it from Lucy and then perhaps he’d learn the secret too.

  Mum was weird about Lucy and told him to keep away from her, but after he’d swum with Spirit yesterday he knew that he couldn’t. He just wouldn’t tell Mum. That meant he couldn’t tell anyone else either and that was something that was going to be really difficult for him. He was just dying to show off to someone about it, but he knew he had to keep it to himself.

  By a quarter past one he decided that Lucy was not going to turn up after all. He felt lonely and let down. He thought he’d just embarked on a special adventure with a new friend, but now it seemed that maybe it had ended before it had even properly begun. Perhaps even now Lucy was laughing about him with the other kids.

  He wondered what he should do now. After what had happened with Baz and Mike that morning, he certainly couldn’t face going back home and risk encountering them again. He decided to head on out to the lagoon all by himself. He’d show Lucy.

  Paul climbed on his bike and pedalled off slowly down the road. It dipped down at first and Paul was able to free-wheel, the wind fresh on his face. Then at the bottom the road narrowed into a lane. A small hump backed bridge carried the lane over a stream and up a wooded hill on the other side. Paul panted as he cycled up the hill, but the trees provided dappled shade as he went. Once he got to the top the lane flattened out and Paul came out into the bright sunlight again as it proceeded through fields. Cows grazed on one side of the hedge and horses ambled in the field on the other side of the road. A farm track peeled off to the left and Paul cycled on, swerving to avoid the occasional pot-hole as he went.

  Eventually Paul came to the point where the lane passed through a short narrow tunnel under a raised railway track on an earth embankment. As far as Paul knew, trains hadn’t run along here for decades and the slope and verge was like a long green wall linking one hill to the next.

  On the other side of the short tunnel Paul got off his bike and turned off on to a path that led up to where the railway tracks had once been. A track ran along the top between saplings and small trees that had established themselves there. He left his bike hidden behind a bush and walked on until he left the railway track and plunged down a slope, past the stinging nettles to a long stone wall. It stood, taller than a full grown man and ran along the edge of the railway for as far as the eye could see before it curved round out of sight. The wall enclosed a private estate and was half overgrown with ivy and had ferns growing out of it periodically along the top. Paul could see that at one time the wall had crumbled and fallen down in a couple of places, but in recent years it had been repaired with fresh concrete and stones.

  Along the top of the wall was sprinkled broken glass, set into the render, but the last time he had come he had climbed a tree to where he had access to the top of the wall and then beat the glass flat with a stone he’d found at the base.

  It was up the same tree that Paul climbed again. He inched along the branch towards the wall. It bent alarmingly under his weight but he was soon standing on the top of the wall. There was nothing for it but to jump. It felt scarily high at the top but the ground below was thick with pine needles. He imagined there were guards patrolling the grounds that he had to evade.

  After a minute or so, he pressed on through the wood, dodging the imaginary guards.

  At the edge of the pine wood was a huge tangled wall of rhododendron bushes that had spent the last hundred years or more growing to enormous proportions.Paul dived in amongst the rhododendron branches and started climbing up through them until he was two or three meters above the ground. Paul pulled himself up until he was almost at the top of great sprawling rhododendrons. In the distance to the left he could see the roof of the house at the end of the lake.

  The lagoon was as broad as two football pitches and four times as long. To his left it tapered to the point where the house stood, its grey stone walls set off by the redness of the roof tiles above. On the other side of the lagoon were low reed beds where Paul guessed that wading birds probably nested. Beyond that was another wood rising up a hill. To his right though was a sort of close-linked fence that rose to about a meter above the surface of the water. The submerged part of the metal fencing let the tidal waters through but cut it off from the river estuary beyond. In truth the lagoon was simply an inlet from the estuary that had a metal fence stretched across it so that no boat, or indeed any fish longer than a hand could get through.

  The estuary itself was sheltered from the winds and the waves of the open sea, but was still subject to the tides that flowed in and out. Hills rose up on the other side and gave it a sheltered aspect. Its water was brackish and muddy.

  Paul wondered why there was a fence across the inlet at all. He glanced back at the big house. It was completely quiet.

  Paul sat on the bank of the inlet and trailed one hand in the water. Barely without him having noticed, clouds had obscured the sun and now light rain played upon the surface of the water and the musty smell of warm raindrops rose up from the ground. It wasn’t raining heavily enough to make him wet, but Paul idly started wondering whether dolphins minded the rain even though they were in the water anyway. He scanned the surface of the lagoon for any sign of the dorsal fin of a dolphin, but he could not see any. He patted the surface of the water to attract its attention.

  ‘Come on dolphin!’ he called quietly. ‘Come here!’ No dolphin came. It was a big enough lake for him to have difficulty spotting anything that might have swum there, so it did not surprise him that he could not really see anything. It could easily have been hiding behind some reeds or an overhanging bush.

  Sitting there and looking at an empty lake was no comparison to swimming with Spirit the day before. Paul began to imagine what it would be like if the dolphin actually did come up to him now, poking its nose out of the water at him and clicking in greeting. He’d stare long and deep into its eyes and then he’d be able to understand what the dolphin’s clicks and whistles meant, he thought. Then he’d be able to communicate with it, just like Lucy could with Spirit. He’d be a Dolphin-Child, the same as that girl Susan Penhaligon so many years before.

  Paul visualised his own legs and arms becoming flukes and flippers, until he too was a smooth graceful dolphin slicing through the waves. He pictured the children who swam out into the sea with Susan Penhaligon all becoming dolphins as well before swimming off to a new life of freedom and happiness. Paul wished that he could shed all his anguish and unhappiness like a skin and swim off to adventures under the waves like them.

  Still there was no sign of the dolphin. Instead of calling, he tried sending it a message with his mind. He strained his thoughts to transmit the message ‘I am your friend. Please come to me’, but there was no response whatsoever. In truth he had no idea how you could send a telepathic message to the mind of a dolphin.

  The rain shower had stopped now and the surface of the water looked as still and unbroken as before. There was the smell of damp dust in the air. Paul wondered if he could catch a fish to tempt the dolphin to come over to him. He looked down into the water immediately in front of him. Something moved in the murk and he splashed his hand in noisily, hoping to scoop up whatever it was. His hand came up wet but empty. Catching a fish would be an impossible task.

  Just then a figure emerged from the big house at the end of the inlet. Paul immediately tensed himself and hunched down so that he was hidden behind a clump of nettles growing at the waters edge. He peered carefully round them to see what the figure was doing.

  The figure was thin and moved with slow, deliberate movements. He couldn’t see quite well enough to decide whether it was a man or a woman. The figure walked around the side of the
house and Paul took the opportunity to move along up the bank towards the house to get a better view, ducking low as he did so. As he did so he tripped over a root and sprawled headlong into another clump of nettles. He protected his face but his fore-arms were badly stung. Fortunately some dock-leaves were growing nearby and he grabbed a couple to rub on his arm as he crept up to get a better view of the house.

  The figure came round the side of the house again and Paul crouched down. To his surprise it was a woman. She looked old he decided and she had gray hair. She was carrying a bucket and made her way down to a small landing stage at the water’s edge. Unfortunately Paul did not have a clear view of what she was doing as there were some reeds growing at the edge of the landing stage and they obscured her. If anything Paul would have had a better view where he had been before, but it was too late to go back there now. Paul scanned the water again for signs of a dolphin, but could see no sign of one.

  Eventually the woman came into view again and walked stiffly back to the house. It looked like the bucket was empty now. He wondered what she’d deposited in the water.

  Paul sighed. It was a good thing that Lucy hadn’t come he thought. She’d have just said that he was a liar and made it all up. He began to doubt it himself. Maybe he’d just seen a log or something in the water the last time and had been mistaken. He’d read stories about people believing they’d seen the Loch Ness monster, but that they’d probably just seen a branch or something in the waters of the Loch instead. Maybe that was all that he’d seen. He sighed again. Even if he saw Lucy again and even if she were to come with him out here, they’d see nothing and she’d never speak to him again. He’d probably never get to swim with Spirit in the sea again either.

  Paul glanced at his watch. It was much later than he’d thought and Mum had told him that he’d better be back home by five o’clock. He wouldn’t make it he realised. Reluctantly he turned his back on the lake and made his way back to the spot where he’d left his bike.

  Once the small human had turned and left, the dolphin allowed herself to break the surface of the water and swam slowly round the edge of the lake to where he had been. She didn’t trust humans, especially not one that lurked around behind bushes. She owed her life to humans, but equally she was held as a prisoner here by one.

  The lagoon was muddy and it was hard to see more than a meter or so in front of her under the water. Even with her sonar clicking it wasn’t much better. The few fish that got through the links of the fencing that divided the inlet from the rest of the estuary were small and insubstantial. She had no choice but to accept the hand-outs from the old lady when she came down to the water’s edge twice a day. The fish were dead though and sometimes they were frozen in the middle. She would look up imploringly into the eyes of the woman on the little wooden landing stage above her, but the woman didn’t seem to realise what she was trying to say. She’d attempted to find a way through the fence and to escape, but it had proved impossible. It was too high for her to leap over, though she may have been able to do so before the accident. The dolphin swam on slowly and disconsolately, with nothing to do but to endlessly circle the edge of the lake.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  It was light beyond the curtains of the little room in the cottage when Lucy awoke. She turned restlessly, half aware of Dad’s sonorous snoring from the next room. Lucy glanced at her watch; it was only half past five in the morning. It was still way too early to get up.

  Lucy dipped in and out of sleep. When she closed her eyes, in her dreams she was swimming effortlessly alongside Spirit and Dancer, leaping through the waves and chasing fish through clear waters. Then she dreamt of Paul’s mother, telling her to keep away and the feeling of anxiety and rejection crept over her. In her dream Paul’s Mum turned into a raven and flapped away mournfully, cawing as it went ‘Dolphin girl, dolphin girl, stay away from the dolphin girl.’ Lucy woke up again at this point, a knot of sheets twisted around her. She tried to keep herself from slipping back into the same dream, but eventually the desire to sleep overcame her once again.

  Lucy was immediately transported back to the murky waters of the lagoon that she had so often visited in her sleep these last few days. She could not see the dolphin, but sensed that it was somewhere nearby. In the distance she could just make out the restless beating of the dolphins tail as it swept to and fro, backwards and forth along the shore line of the lake.

  Lucy had visited a zoo once and seen a polar bear endlessly pacing backwards and forwards the few steps it took to get from one side of its small enclosure to the other, before turning and pacing back. She had a sense that the dolphin was doing the same thing. As Lucy watched she glimpsed it better occasionally as it came past. The dolphin looked stressed and unhappy. ‘This is no way for a dolphin to live’ Lucy thought to herself.

  She tried to approach the dolphin, as if by doing or saying something she could make the creature feel better. The more she tried to swim forward though, the less she seemed to be moving. Thrashing about with her limbs seemed to do no good at all. Then the dolphin came towards her and blind to her presence, paused a moment just by her. ‘I need to be free, I need to be free’ the dolphin muttered to herself. ‘Why are those humans keeping me here? What have I done to them?’

  In her dreaming state, Lucy stretched out her hand towards the unhappy animal, but the dolphin turned again and swum off out of sight into the murky void. Of course the dolphin was unable to see her. Spirit never saw her when she dreamt about him.

  The last time she had reached out to him with her mind, Spirit had asked Lucy whether humans took dolphins captive. She hated to tell him the truth that they did and that indeed she had seen dolphins at a dolphinarium, but she had had to. How could she explain it to him? There was no good explanation why humans did so. It may be marginally better than catching dolphins in fishing nets, as she knew happened with some deep sea trawlers, but separating a dolphin from the wide openness of the sea was like cutting out a dolphin’s soul. It cut them inside to be so confined and Lucy could see that the dolphin in this muddy lagoon was equally badly affected.

  ‘If I don’t do something soon, that dolphin’s going to go mad’ she said aloud to herself in her dream. Her own words shocked Lucy into consciousness and she sat up suddenly, caught in the tangled mess of sheets, her eyes wide with fear for the creature trapped in some place that she didn’t know how to find.

  Now that she was awake, Lucy’s thoughts turned to Paul. If only she had been able to go out cycling with him the day before. She didn’t blame Dad for wanting to spend time with her, she was his daughter after all, but she wished with all her heart that she’d been able to cycle along the country lanes with Paul by her side and find that lake and the dolphin within it. She didn’t know what she would do when she did, but she felt strongly that something would happen. Something had to happen.

  Lucy didn’t know whether Paul had got her message via Bethany and Thelma that she was not coming yesterday. If he didn’t, he’d never want to talk to her again, Lucy thought. He’d probably think that she was some arrogant out-of-towner. She’d had her doubts about how much of what Paul told her was true, but he was her only chance of finding that dolphin before it was too late.

  As Lucy was sitting in bed, she decided to stretch out with her mind to speak to Spirit. That usually made her feel better. Try as she might though, Lucy simply wasn’t able to find that door in the corner of her mind that would allow her to plunge into his world of water. Sometimes, when she was feeling anxious about something, she’d had this problem before. Lucy kept trying for almost fifteen minutes, but it was no good. Lucy knew that the best thing to do would be to stop trying and come back to it later. Often things seemed easier if she put it to one side for a while.

  Lucy opened the curtains a crack and peeked out. It was going to be another beautiful day. The early morning sky was blue except for a few wispy clouds that almost seemed to glow with rays of sunlight that caught them.

  She l
istened to the dawn chorus of birds and imagined that in field after field after field, all the birds of Cornwall, Devon and then the whole of England were joined together in one united chorus. Lucy listened intently, seeing if she could hear the blackbird that she’d heard singing outside the cottage the day before. Try as she might though, she just couldn’t detect it.

  It always amazed Lucy that in day to day life, you could hear the sound of birds singing around you, but not truly hear them. You just had to focus. After a while Lucy dozed off again.

  ‘Wake up Luce’ called Dad upstairs from the tiny kitchen of the holiday cottage. ‘I’ve got your chocolate milk ready!’ Lucy awoke with a start. She glanced at her watch. ‘Ten to nine already?’ she thought to herself. She stretched for a moment and then tumbled out of bed and padded downstairs. Dad was sitting at the tiny kitchen table, nursing a mug in his hands.

  ‘Hey pyjama girl!’ he greeted her. ‘How did you sleep?’ Lucy mumbled something about not having slept so well and then took her mug of chocolate milk and sipped it, still sleepy and bleary eyed.

  ‘I saw Bethany drive off up the lane in her Land Rover a bit earlier’ said Dad conversationally. ‘She’s up with the lark, that one.’ Lucy smiled.

  ‘Actually she’s not very good at getting up early at all’ she replied.

  ‘It’s so lovely down here among the fields and the lanes and the sea. I’ve only been here a day and already I feel so much more calm and relaxed than when I’m back home’ Dad continued. ‘I feel like the peace and quiet is seeping into my bones.’ Lucy smiled and Dad paused, collecting his thoughts.

  ‘You know it’s at times like this, when I feel more relaxed and happy, that it comes home to me that Mum isn’t with us anymore. I feel bad that she isn’t here to enjoy all this with us.’ Lucy looked up at Dad. The emotion was written across his face.