by Tui Allen
‘You were right to tell my mother. She . . . helped me on that day.’ (She’d almost said ‘saved.’)
‘Were you warning me off?’
‘No. I was trying to show you music, but that was how I first found that others cannot hear it; they hear only chaos.’
‘What’s music? Why can’t I hear it?’
‘Music is sound. Thoughtstreams are ideas not sounds. I searched for music all my life but it was only when you came that I found it at last. I wanted you to hear it first.’
He leapt over a wave and she followed. Then she moved forward to give him her slipstream.
‘I wish I could hear the music as you do. I prefer to fight a hundred starving sharks than hear chaos from an intelligent mind, so it’s good to know it’s not chaotic to you.’
Cosmo was enjoying her lead style, the graceful almost flickering movements he’d seen in the surf, and the way her emerald skin glowed deeper underwater and flashed brilliantly in the sunlight.
The gannets finished hunting and moved away towards the west. White clouds drifted east sending patches of shade across the ocean.
‘Will you return and work near the astronomy team again?’
‘I’m happy to work alone.’
‘I want you to come back.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Will you be safe to work alone?’
‘I’ll be careful.’
‘Ripple, will you promise me something? If ever you find a way to communicate your music, will you show it to me first, as you intended before?’
She tensed and there was a very long pause as she considered her reply.
He doesn’t know what he’s asking. Could I ever try again with him?
She stared at the ocean, seeking a guiding signal. Eastward, a blue whale surfaced and blew, its great back arching from the sea. The tail rose and Ripple saw the sunlight glinting from the waterfall that drained from the trailing edges of the vast flukes as they swept forward, then back and propelled it downwards, a harmony of power. She saw the spreading smoothness on the surface at the place where it had been and followed its magnificent descent. Her spirit calmed at the vision. Her muscles relaxed.
‘I promise,’ she whispered at last.
~~~
Ripple worked alone, away from the main school where she hoped her thoughtstreams would not bother anyone. A few days passed and she encountered no danger, so her confidence grew. She continued skipping lessons, except those that provided her with musical inspiration: poetry, history and home-based astronomy. One exception was gymnastics which she attended because she enjoyed sharing her dance moves with others.
They love my moves. If only they knew how much better it is when the music plays.
Ripple set many poems to music and created some herself. Others came from her favourite Azuran poets and some from distant worlds, including the Fragrant Planets.
~~~
Even though there are dozens in your own galaxy, you humans know nothing of the Fragrant Planets, where flowering plants have evolved beyond belief. But even in Ripple’s day, the dolphins of Azure knew of the millions of whale-sized, long-lived flowers, all with intelligent minds, sharing and blending their essences and intellects to create perfumed poems powerful enough to heal epidemics, create wealth, and prevent wars. The flowers loaded their aromatic songs daily onto the winds for distribution throughout their worlds.
Ripple’s music was like the perfume building inside the closed night-time flowers of the Fragrant Planets, but she could find no way to release her own gifts on the morning wind. ~~~
Read on, or if desired . . .
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Chapter 19: Knowledge Lost to Memory
The seraphim were restless that day. They darted around, invading our auras and dragging at our aural wings in a most annoying manner.
~~~
Ripple followed the flight of a wandering albatross as it rode the steady easterly. She called and it cried back. It wheeled to see if she herded fish and then soared away.
This bird is alone like me. How suited he seems to his solitude. I long for such strength.
She felt the internal stirring which she now recognised as the impetus for the creation of new music. The bird evoked continuous soaring sounds, pure and strong, with a slow underlying wing-beat. Ripple concentrated, forgetting the ocean. She transformed a bird in the sky, into music she could carry with her everywhere. It was a song of searing loneliness but it imparted the bird’s strength as solace to the lonely.
~~~
The seraphim gathered above the sea between Ripple and the bird. Deep beneath her we could see a shadow stirring; vast tentacles slowly coiling, flickering blue. Ripple, lost in albatross music, was unaware the shadow had detected her.
The Shadow Queen hung there, bag-like, hungry and calculating, red eyes staring upwards.
The seraphim radiated a frantic hysteria which the dolphin could never detect. Did they think they could warn her? Why did her fate bother them? They were never anxious seeing other creatures of Azure approaching violent death.
~~~
‘What is that I see above us,’ asked Erishkigal.
‘It is a young female dolphin,’ replied Vipa. ‘The very one we were cheated of once before.’
‘Quiet, you fool!’ hissed Lashette. ‘She will hear you. Do not even think too loud or she will be gone.’
‘No,’ said Malevine. ‘She is unheeding; lusting for some bird in the sky. She does not notice us. But we must be stealthy if we are to provide our Queen with the meal she deserves.’
‘So my daughters,’ whispered Erishkigal. ‘We shall rise as silently as poison moves through blood. Allow not the slightest vibration to disturb her reverie. I shall not exude one drop of ink lest she detect us by our delicate perfume. Veil your very thoughts, as Lashette has suggested. If we are patient I shall feed on warm flesh this day and all of us will be stronger for it.’
‘My Queen,’ whispered Vipa. ‘Let me make the strike. I will not let you down.’
‘You may, O Most Murderous of my deadly daughters. Keep your timing razor-sharp and be generous with your sweet venom.’
So the Shade Erishkigal, Nightmare of the Southern Seas, with her tentacles floating silently around her, stole upwards from the darkness towards her prey.
~~~
Again and again, the seraphim trailed their electric veils over Ripple’s rostrum, her eyes, her dorsal fin, her flukes, but they could never reach her.
~~~
If she’d focused her mind downwards, Ripple would have easily detected Erishkigal and her minions rising, hairsbreadth by hairsbreadth, towards her. She would’ve caught the red glare skewering her in their sightline. She might even have seen the blue tips glowing, though they were fainter than phospho-slime.
But Ripple looked up.
Clouds, she thought, their thunder could add drama to my albatross. She played with thunder for a while but found it too dominating for the mood she was trying to express. She moved on to the hundreds of different sounds of wind interacting with water and worked with some that had suggestions of the land, hoping she might find one to suit the bird. On and on she worked, absorbed in the creation of music, oblivious to the danger.
Vipa’s tip was closer now.
Fifteen metres . . . twelve . . .
Rain on rocks, thought Ripple, and held that sound in her head; then moved the falling rain from hard rock to wet seaweed, comparing and blending the sounds, trying them against the bird like a colour to see if it matched.
Ten metres . . . seven . . .
Ripple’s mind focused on a single feather pressed on the wind, effecting a sweeping turn among the hissing spray against a backdrop of tumbling clouds.
~~~
In the space above the dolphin, the electric particles of the seraphim’s bodies began quaking. The quaking gradually accelerated into a shivering vibration.
~~~
Four metres . . . three . .
. Erishkigal almost had Ripple in her grasp. Digestive juices pumped into the cave behind the double row of dagger teeth where the monster anticipated ripping flesh. Vipa reached out towards the prey, her tip stretching like an evil finger delivering a curse. Venga and Lucifina followed her closely. Venom engorged the fangs creating a blue shimmer on the tips of each tentacle.
~~~
Sterne could barely bring herself to watch. Looking back on that moment, I sometimes wonder if she might have been tempted to make the grave error of interference if I had not passed my restraining wing within her aura. Ripple had uttered no prayer, had made no demand upon us; this was no time for divine intervention. The nearest thing to prayer I detected from that ocean came from the tentacles of the Shade but Sterne wasn’t inclined to answer such ‘prayers’.
~~~
The bird rested on pillows of wind, almost asleep. Ripple wondered what the sea would sound like coming up to it from below. The thought made her switch her own attention to the sounds of the surface.
Two metres . . . one metre…
~~~
The seraphim froze above the sea like a suspended iceberg.
~~~
‘I will have you soon my darling . . . . I will take you now!’ Erishkigal lunged. Vipa’s tip, loaded with venom, slid backwards to gather force, then flicked forwards to strike at the target; Venga and Lucifina followed.
~~~
The seraphim scattered. They darted into the Hereafter and hid themselves among the most distant constellations of Koru. Sterne half-closed her evergreen eyes and groaned.
~~~
Shwsst! It was no louder than any other wave swishing by. The whipping sound was so faint Ripple almost missed it, but she heard it and erupted skywards on a lucky diagonal as Vipa, Venga and Lucifina lashed in, fangs extended, venom pumping.
Venga and Lucifina missed by hairsbreadths, but Vipa’s tip made contact as Ripple descended from her upward leap, spinning madly. The tentacle touched Ripple’s face and glanced off, one fang scratching her slightly leaving a film of poison-blue slime over the scratch. The sea washed it off as she re-entered the water.
As though attempting to stay out of the same ocean that held Erishkigal, Ripple departed flying-fish style. She was passing out from suffocation by the time she remembered to breathe. She looked back once only; to see two red orbs surrounded by a boiling mass of blue-flashing tentacles stabbing at sea and air. She didn’t look back again, afraid the fiend was somehow following supernaturally at her flukes. But that glimpse showed her the one vengeful corner of the monster’s brain still giving it satisfaction; Vipa knew she’d made a contact so Erishkigal believed they’d made a kill.
Ripple did not stop leaping and swimming until she’d returned to the school and the comfort of Pearl and Echo.
I’ll never leave my mother’s side again. If I live, I’ll forget music and become an ordinary good dolphin.
Pearl and Echo were among a group feeding co-operatively on a vast sphere of anchovies.
‘The Shade has touched me!’
The dolphins stopped feeding. The anchovies escaped. Suddenly the world went dark, sounds drifted into the distance and the pain came. Pain as though the sea around began to boil. She cried out, ceased breathing and writhed, longing for the coldness of the deep. She tried to dive down but Pearl prevented her.
‘Call Nimbus!’ cried Pearl.
Ripple could feel them stimulating her to breathe. She felt Echo tracing the scratch on her skin on the left side of her rostrum where it joined her cheek.
‘It’s inflamed,’ said Echo, ‘and the skin is peeling.’
Ripple had been touched by the Shade; nobody in living memory had survived any brush with that monster. Nimbus arrived, looked at the suppurating scratch and immediately sent helpers to collect special seaweeds. Rev was among those on the medication mission and was the first to return with long green streamers trailing from his mouth. He passed them to a dolphin standing by and gave one to Nimbus. She crushed it in her teeth to release chemicals then draped it over the wound while Pearl supported Ripple. Echo pressed the weed gently against the wound with her rostrum to encourage the release of the cooling chemicals.
Pearl, Nimbus, Echo and others, applied the herbs to soothe the scratch. They worked in shifts, keeping Ripple at the surface, stimulating her to breathe, but she remained semi-conscious. She took no food and faded with dehydration.
The pain continued, coming in waves as though all the fluid in and around her kept heating up, then slowly cooling. At first the intervals between each wave was long – several minutes of coolness – until the next wave sent her spiralling into torment. At the pinnacle of each wave she writhed and cried out. The pain waves lengthened and the intervals between them shortened. Ripple was tiring.
Nimbus read Ripple’s pain. Never, in all her years of tending sick and injured dolphins, had she seen such pain.
~~~
We deities heard Pearl praying that every particle of poison and every shred of pain could pass from her daughter’s body to her own.
‘She cannot really want that pain! Why does she pray for it?’
‘It is a negative prayer surely? You could ignore it.’
‘No. It is mother love. Nothing could be more positive. She has spread much light during her life on Azure; perhaps her spirit deserves release.’
‘Not yet. Not yet. The time is not right.’
~~~
In a moment of clarity, Ripple felt vibrations of escalating fear from Pearl, Echo and Nimbus. They think I’m dying she thought. Perhaps I am. The clarity faded as the fluids boiled within her again, blurring everything around her, voices calling, fading, drifting in and out of focus, bodies coming, going, actions, orders, desperation, while the heat continued.
Then came the heat that did not fade, searing beyond boiling; a wave of intensifying colour, white, yellow, orange, to a red which darkened to the colour of the throat of the megalodon where stars the size of a thousand suns consumed her to blackness.
And she was dragged up through the dark, up away from her home on the sea, looking down at the ring of dolphins far below, surrounding her dead body.
‘Breathe Ripple,’ she heard them from afar, ‘breathe . . .’
~~~
But she left them behind, left herself behind and stumbled out alone into our divine presence. Sister Sterne reached out and captured the scattered ellipse of Ripple’s spirit as it spun towards us. She cradled it, soothed it, unified it. I watched a disappointed Sister Sterne regarding the little spirit.
‘She has failed again,’ I said.
‘She hardly had much chance; she was barely full grown. She at least achieved a partial success. She believed she had found what she was looking for.’
‘What use was that if she never communicated it? It has not helped the universe one jot. But no more lives, Sister Sterne. She is completely spent.’
‘Are you sure she has finished this one?’
‘Her body on Azure is no longer breathing. Her heart has stopped. She is dead! Her sentence is over. Her spirit is here with us. It is like a worn-out rag.’
‘I disagree, Father. Her spirit light is very different from when last it rested here within my aural wing.’
‘You must not re-sentence her; not to Azure, nor any other world. This time I insist she be granted however many aeons of rest she needs for complete recovery.’
‘Shall we ask her?’ said Sterne. ‘To be sure that is what she wants.’
‘I will ask her myself. She will beg for rest. She has begged before and you have always ignored her. We will give her what she asks this time.’
‘I will do as you say.’
‘Ripple,’ I said, ‘If you wish to be released from pain we will release you. You need no longer struggle with your music. We will find you a place where you may rest long, in coolness, peace, and beauty, surrounded by love. Is this what you want my dear?’
‘I want to go back.’
&nbs
p; Sterne responded. ‘Are you aware of the pain still to be endured back there?’
‘I am.’
‘Your struggle will continue. It is far from over.’
‘I know.’
‘You have lived many lives since you last wished to return to any of them, little one,’ I interrupted, ‘even when there was no pain awaiting you there.’
‘This time, I want to go back.’
‘Sterne, I am astounded! She truly deserves to succeed.’
‘Well, Father? Do we still agree to give her what she asks?’
‘She has chosen Sister. She has a will of iron. Send her back, poor spirit, though it is hard to see her suffer.’
Ripple screamed in agony as she descended to the ocean into the heart of her fire once more.
‘Her spirit, it seems, will survive anything,’ Sterne said, ‘but I must provide powerful medicine to help her physical body through this ordeal.’
‘Your compassion is blossoming at least,’ I replied, ‘I will be interested to see how you manage it.’
I continued watching, as Sterne’s revolutionary work with her Azuran charge continued.
~~~
Squelch’s alien mind worked overtime as he watched the dolphins desperately trying to save Ripple. He floated star-like, with only a few suckers of one tentacle attaching him to Rev’s dorsal fin.
‘I saw her heart beat.’ cried Echo.
‘There it goes again,’ said Nimbus. ‘Incredible!’
‘Thank the stars and the planets and every atom in the universe,’ said Pearl. ‘I thought she was dead.’
‘But she might die any moment,’ said Nimbus, ‘She can’t continue like this. The heartbeat is very faint.’
Squelch knew there was nothing his clever tentacles could do for Ripple, but was there perhaps some vital piece of information in his five-day memory that might help? He trawled through every cell in his limited supply, searching for some fragment that could be of use.
Suddenly his eyes lit up. ‘I have an idea,’ he said to Rev, ‘I don’t know what made me think of it. Take me to Nimbus.’
The pair approached Nimbus and Squelch communicated his idea to her. Nimbus listened intently, then questioned the octopus briefly. Echo listened.
