by Tui Allen
Cosmo was scarred for life. The triple slash was long and livid. It bled freely, slowing his recovery.
~~~
We deities, watching from the Hereafter understood that the scars on his skin were not his only scars.
~~~
The shark returned a few days later. It had developed an appetite for dolphin flesh and showed signs of further intent to prey on the school. A group of carefully trained fighter dolphins, including some who had been in Cosmo’s rescue mission, were despatched to remove the threat. The team chose their spot carefully, approaching the monster by echolocation in clouded waters and from many directions at once, to confuse it. It fought back hard, but while dodging its razor-teeth, they attacked its gills and its ribless body with their hard rostrums, mashing its internal organs until it was dead.
Once again the small Southern Islands School had proven their reputation for training the best fighters in the oceans.
~~~
Baby Cosmo remained uncommunicative for many days after his parents died. He was never without milk, thanks to the many lactating females in the school, willing to provide for him. He was valued as all young dolphins were and well-cared-for by friends and relatives, but still he was alone in a way that was rare among his kind. He was bereft of parents but also doomed to life without siblings, though there were cousins and friends aplenty to partially fill this void.
My own mother’s milk, thought Cosmo, was sweeter than any milk from other mothers. I want to catch my own food.
So, before he was three months old, Cosmo was hunting and catching his own small prey. He freed himself early from other dolphin’s mothers, and freed them from him. He carried his mother in his memory; every detail of her appearance, every shade of her personality, every thought she had ever shared with him, both before and after his birth.
But his father was no more than a shadowy shape on the edge of his early memories. To Cosmo, Kismet was just a loss; the loss that had ravaged the last few minutes of his mother’s life.
~~~
Sister Sterne and I now took as much interest in the famous fighter dolphins of the south as we took in those of the northern school where Ripple swam with Pearl and Echo.
~~~
Read on, or if desired . . .
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Chapter 5: Tentacles
Rigel appeared only twice in the first three months of Ripple’s life. He swept through with barely time to notice his latest offspring. Each time, Ripple’s awe of the God-like golden stranger, sent her scurrying into her mother’s shadow. She hid there and peeped at Rigel from under her mother’s flipper.
On the second visit, Rigel spoke briefly with Pearl and then stroked Ripple absently with his flipper before leaving. Ripple expanded with pride and basked in the glow of his touch for days.
By now Ripple had developed the independence to venture from the safety of her mother’s slipstream, usually in the company of her sister Echo. The two would race off on side trips to hunt or play-hunt for small fish, play with bubbles or seaweed or to meet up with other young dolphins of the school. They gradually increased the time and distance they strayed from Pearl’s side as the months passed and Ripple’s confidence grew.
Echo proudly showed her new little sister to all her friends in school and looked forward to the day when Ripple could join her there for lessons.
Once, when the two young females had ventured off together, Ripple felt a strange vibration in the water.
‘It’s the Shade, Erishkigal.’ warned Echo, ‘She’s trying to attract you so she can eat you.’
Ripple leapt twice her body-length out of the water. She crashed back to the surface and cowered behind her sister.
‘Take me away. I don’t want to be eaten.’
Echo laughed. ‘You jellyfish! She can’t hurt you unless she touches you. She can’t reach us here and even if she tried, we’d be long gone. The only dolphin she could catch is one who’s alone and careless.’ Ripple calmed a little but stayed close beside her sister.
‘I’ll teach you how easy it is to keep safe from her. Look down. What do you see?’
Ripple peered down at a shadow in the water.
‘Nothing, just a funny dark patch. Is that the Shade? What’s that smell?’
‘The stench of Erishkigal and that shadow is her ink. She’s hiding inside it so the fish can’t see her. But we can see her with our hearing. Look inside that shadow now.’
Ripple scanned the cloud of ink, and clung closer than ever to Echo.
‘She’s the size of a whale! But she has no bones - just teeth ripping fish to pieces, and wriggling snakes of muscle. She is like . . . many creatures, not just one.’
‘Those ‘snakes’ are her tentacles; she’s one creature with many arms,’ explained Echo. ‘But you’re right in a way. Each tentacle thinks for itself and each one is tipped with poison. Keep watching and listening.’
Then Ripple noticed that fish were swimming straight towards the shadow in the water. They were disappearing into the cloud of black ink.
‘She’s stuffing fish in by the ton, but why don’t they swim away?’
‘They can’t see her by listening as we can. Her pleasure signal is stronger to them than her death stench. You’ll know her by the ink smell and her vibration in the water. She’s at her most dangerous to dolphins when she does not give off ink and when she does not make vibrations. But since she always does both when she’s hungry, the danger’s rare.’
Ripple, still keeping her sister’s body between herself and the monster, peeped around Echo. She saw more fish swim willingly towards the shadow and never re-emerge.
After a long time, the stream of fish slowed as Erishkigal satisfied herself.
‘She’s so gorged she’s stopped drawing them in,’ explained Echo. ‘Now, watch carefully.’
Ripple saw the gentle current dragging at the cloud of ink, wafting it away in veils of black, like clouds at midnight blown from the face of an evil moon. The monster was soon visible, her red eyes glaring up at them. Ripple noticed the soft pulsing of electric blue at the end of each writhing tentacle. Erishkigal’s body was a great bloated bag stuffed with rotting fish bodies. A few live fish were still dying in agony on her tentacles, and she seemed to be enjoying their pain even though she no longer needed them as food.
Ripple looked into the monster’s mind.
Her silence is blacker than the silence of the universe. Perhaps she’s swallowed what I seek and silenced it.
‘Where’s her sound, Echo?’
‘She’s deaf as a stone.’
‘Deaf?’
‘She can’t hear,’ Echo said.
How can she live if she can’t hear?
Ripple’s fear attracted Erishkigal. The monster moved slowly towards them.
Ripple nudged her sister, imploring her to come away.
‘She can’t hurt us,’ repeated Echo. ‘She may be intelligent, and she may dream of eating warm flesh, but we know the names of all her tentacles.’
‘I want to go home to Mother.’
‘Calm down, Mummy’s girl. Trust me.’
The Shade moved closer, staring up with red eyes blazing. Ripple clung closer than ever to her sister.
Echo coolly blasted the monster and her eight minions with one scorching thoughtstream:
Erishkigal - Shadow Queen
Vipa, Venga, Malevine,
Lucifina, Sadistine,
Fera, Lashette and Clawdine,
Go down now!
There was one mind-splitting thought-scream from the monster, but, at the command of one young dolphin, she turned and sank into the depths, dragging her slithering servants, lashing and silently howling behind her.
‘Nothing to it,’ said Echo,
Then Echo taught Ripple the names of the tentacles to give Ripple power over Erishkigal. Ripple repeated them until she could never forget.
It was a long time before she could stop thinking of the Shade. She
stuck to Echo as they swam back and would not leave Pearl’s slipstream for two days after the encounter.
~~~
‘Look at your stomach Ripple. It’s bulging with milk and fish!’ laughed Echo one day. ‘No wonder you’re growing so fast. How does my stomach look?’
‘I don’t want to look in your stomach!’ Ripple did a quick back-flip to avoid seeing it.
A light breeze from a blue sky covered the sea with glittering ripples. Lazy swells left over from the stronger winds of a day before heaved the ripples up and down. Echo whacked into the side of a swell scattering sheets of spray over her sister.
‘Go on. Have a look! Tell me what I had for lunch!’
‘Disgusting! You had squid. I can see the poor things all munched up and half digested. Can I look at the birds in the sky now instead of at your insides?’
‘Insides are more interesting than outsides. Brains, hearts, skulls, kidneys; I love them all.’
Ripple, turned her back, leapt a passing wave and changed the subject; ‘What’re you going to be when you grow up? Mother says you ought to know by now.’
‘Don’t you start, Ripple! Why does she worry about it so much? It’s not that I don’t want to do anything; it’s more that I do want to do everything and I can’t settle on just one. Last week I thought I’d be a home planet adept and study the volcanoes and tides. The week before that I wanted to be a natural historian like Mother. A month ago I wanted to be a mind adept like Aroha. Before that a gymnastics teacher, a poet, or a fossil adept, a weather adept, a plant adept, a mathematician, an animal adept, or an astronomer. . . . Ripple I don’t have a clue! How will I ever decide? Aroha knew her vocation when she was much younger than me. Did you know our father is a famous astronomer?’
‘Yes, mother told me. I’ve seen him twice now. He stroked me . . . just above my flipper.’
‘Mother says we are all as clever as we are because we’ve inherited his brains, but Mother is the cleverest female I know, so it could just as easily have come from her. Do you have any idea what you want to be, Ripple?’
‘All I want to do is listen to sounds and arrange them in my head,’
‘A sound-arranger huh? That’s a new one. You’d better think of something quick before Mother decides you’re as bad as I am.’
~~~
A few weeks later we were again observing the Northern Islands dolphins from directly above them. As usual seraphim drifted in the vicinity.
‘Ripple, shall we play with seaweed today?’ suggested Echo.
‘We did that yesterday.’
‘How about animal seaweed?’
‘How can seaweed be animal?’
‘Can you keep a secret?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Follow me.’
They swam towards the nearest island and Ripple followed when Echo dived. Rocks tumbled steep and jagged to the west. The sea filled the void to the east. The water was so clear, that from our viewpoint, the two dolphins looked to us like birds flying in the air beside a mountain. A fantasy of seaweed decorated the rocks beside them. Eels lurked and crabs scuttled into holes and crannies.
Echo slowed, scanning a dark hole in the rock-face.
‘Shhh,’ said Echo, ‘He’s in here . . . Wait.’
Echo turned around until her tail pointed at the hole, flukes positioned across its entrance. Ripple hoped no moray eel lived in there. They waited.
‘Time’s passing,’ she thought. ‘We’ll need to breathe soon.’
Then she noticed green seaweed drifting from the hole. But while all the surrounding weed was bending northwards in the current, this weed flowed first south, then east, then in all directions around her sister’s waiting flukes. There were suckers on it! It was not seaweed but tentacles.
‘Echo. It’s alive. ’
‘It’s an ordinary octopus.’
‘It looks like the Shade. I’m scared of it.’
One tentacle touched Echo’s fluke and sucked on firmly, then another. Ripple backed off, about to dart away. How could Echo let it touch her?
‘Ripple, you’re being a jellyfish again. It’s only Squelch; he’s harmless.’
The octopus climbed on while Echo held herself steady. Its weight dragged her down slightly at the tail.
Ripple kept her distance. The octopus flowed like a cloud-shadow over Echo’s tail and up onto her back. It wrapped itself all the way around her body just behind her dorsal fin. Echo headed for the surface with the load attached.
About time too, thought Ripple, She burst through the surface and breathed.
‘Ooh - that air’s sweet!’
‘Meet Squelch!’ He’s a five-day octopus. Squelch this is Ripple.’
‘Hi Squelch. What’s a five-day octopus?’
‘An octopus with a five day memory,’ explained Echo. ‘That’s pretty good for an octopus. Want him to remember you? You’ve got to visit lots.’
Ripple stared inside its body seeking audio-processing functions. She squealed at it in high frequency, but saw no reaction.
‘Is he deaf like Erishkigal?’ she asked.
‘He can hear very few frequencies and not the one you just used.’
His silence is not evil like Erishkigal’s - only calm and blank. How sad to miss so much sound. But those eyes of his! Are they reading my heart and soul? Perhaps he can see as deep as I can hear.
He thought-streamed a question, as efficiently as any dolphin.
‘Are all you dolphins female?’
‘We have a brother –boys are nuisances.’
‘I’m male.’
Ripple saw waves of opalescent colour shimmering over the creature’s skin as it writhed and swirled on her sister’s body.
His colour changes every second!
As though encouraged by her admiration, it dazzled her with colour changes from bright orange to dappled blue-green to black to soft pink to burgundy to brilliant gold spots on green to mottled red with purple stripes and finally back to speckled seaweed green.
Then he lifted each tentacle one at a time and waved at her, flooding each with a new colour as he did so until every tentacle was a different colour.
‘A rainbow of tentacles! How does he do that?’ she asked.
‘He’s like the Shade in more than just shape. Each tentacle can think separately from the main brain – his nervous system’s so different from ours, he’s really closer to some aliens than he is to dolphins. If he loses a tentacle, he can carry on his life while growing a new one. If you lose your tail, you’re shark fodder.’
Ripple shivered. ‘Don’t say that Echo.’
Ripple watched the rainbow tentacles swirling in air and water. Squelch’s great eyes stared at her, as though awaiting his moment. Suddenly he reached for Ripple with one tentacle, attached himself and flowed from Echo’s back to hers. She felt the suckers latching and unlatching on her skin as he moved himself into position. By now she was brave enough to giggle at the tickle it made. A powerful octopodean command swept through Ripple’s brain,
‘Let’s go!’
‘Shall I take him?’ she asked.
‘Go! I’ll follow,’ replied Echo.
Ripple swam away with the octopus, with Echo in her slipstream. The bulge on her back altered her hydrodynamics and slowed her slightly, yet she was surprised at how easy he was to carry. The girls could feel the pleasure he took in riding them. When Echo took her turn in front to allow Ripple a rest in her slipstream, Squelch immediately transferred himself to the leading dolphin.
‘Jump higher!’ he commanded, ‘Go faster! More cartwheels!’
~~~
We smiled down on them and I wished I too could ride a dolphin over that dazzling ocean. Inspired by what they saw, the seraphim moulded the electric particles of their bodies into octopus and dolphin shapes. The seraph-octopuses mimicked Squelch by leaping on the backs of the seraph-dolphins who imitated the real dolphins’ cartwheels and leaps. I found the seraph-antics mildly entertaining. It was true th
at they diminished the decorum of the Hereafter, but a little laughter is good for one. Sterne of course, soon tired of their nonsense and banished them from her presence so she could concentrate on observing the dolphins below.
~~~
Two days later, I watched Squelch ‘cloud-catching’ with Echo and Ripple. The seraphim were mimicking the action again. Ripple aimed for the clouds with Squelch aboard.
‘Up . . . up.’ Squelch commanded. ‘Higher . . . higher!’
Squelch could go higher than his mount by jumping upwards off her back when Ripple was at the highest point of her leap. They tried positioning the take-off at the top of a large swell to get even more height.
‘I’m a flying octopus. I’m truly alive.’
SPLOOSH! He and Ripple crashed back into the sea.
‘Your turn, Echo,’ said Squelch.
~~~
Sister Sterne could see little point in such diversions and did not join us. I left the seraphim engrossed in impersonating the three playmates and rejoined Sterne who was observing a group of twelve dolphins, swimming near Akarana Island, not far off to the west.
A storm had recently tossed a lot of land debris into the sea there. The younger ones among the dolphins were playing with tree-branches, pushing them through the water and admiring the strange stiff shapes, so different from seaweed.
A baby dolphin called Whirly took fright at a sudden shadow and surfaced quickly in the middle of the debris. He inhaled a scrap of bark deep into his blowhole and tried to eject it but it was wedged in tight. His panic spread through the group at once. The adults, including his mother, surrounded him, supporting him at the surface. He writhed and struggled to breathe.
‘Call for help!’
‘What help can anyone give?’
‘Whirly can only help himself.’
‘Cough it out Whirly.’
Whirly tried but it would not budge.
Seconds became minutes and his mother knew that Whirly’s time was running out. He was losing strength by the moment. If he’d been unsupported he would have been sinking by now. The dolphins prayed for help and Whirly’s mother turned her spirit to the Hereafter and begged the universe to intervene.
