by Imogen Tovey
‘There’s Indigo,’ CJ shouted, pointing in front of them; but that’s not all Maddy saw when she looked up and followed CJ’s finger out into the lake.
‘Is that a whale?’ She gasped. CJ, at this point, was just standing still, catching flies with his mouth wide open.
‘Yes, Maddy, it’s a whale,’ said Indigo.
Lunar and the Noise
Indigo had been fishing the night before, well out into the Gulf of Corinth. He had his special areas of the sea where he fished and didn’t mind swimming a good distance for it. Just as he was about to come in for the final lunge and grab at the flatfish he had been trailing with his sonar as it swam, concealed, under the sand, his attention was drawn by a sperm whale’s call.
It couldn’t be, though, he thought, as the flatfish swam away out of his reach. Sperm whales don’t come into the Gulf of Corinth and, although their song could travel a long way through the seas, he had not heard it here before. Just as he had convinced himself he was wrong, he heard it again, and this time he heard what it was saying. ‘Lunar, Lunar, Lunar.’ It was being repeated over and over again.
This meant the whale was in trouble. It also meant that the whale was called Lunar. Whales and dolphins, when they are distressed or need help, will repeatedly call out their own names. Indigo didn’t know why they did this; it had just always been the case…
The call was coming from the direction of the lake. Indigo forgot all about food and swam off as fast as he could. As he had approached the entrance to the lake, he was just in time to see the sperm whale being battered from side to side as it passed thorough the small gap into Lake Vonliagmeni. The channel into the lake is only about five metres wide and the water at its deepest is only two metres. The tidal forces of the water passing through this small gap make it very dangerous to pass.
‘Lunar, Lunar, Lunar,’ she called, as she collided with one side and then the other, raking her skin across the jagged rocks. Then she was through and into the lake, but she kept calling her name over and over. Indigo didn’t understand why she was so upset and why she had even tried to enter the lake. Sperm whales like really deep water; they can dive for an hour at a time, going deeper than Indigo had ever gone down, in search of food like squid. The Gulf of Corinth wasn’t deep enough. There were a lot of groups of sperm whales who lived in the seas of southern Greece, but not here.
Indigo had swum into the lake a number of times before. It was dangerous even for him, but if he read the water right and picked his time he could get through easily. He waited there at the edge, waited and waited, and then, when the time was just right, he flicked his tail with as much force as he could and he was off, powering his way through the gap into the lake.
‘Lunar, calm down; I am here to help you, calm down.’ Indigo positioned himself directly in front of Lunar’s left eye, making sure she could see him, and repeated himself over and over again. Slowly Lunar’s calls became quieter and less frequent until Indigo could hardly hear the pathetic call she made every couple of minutes. It was only then that Indigo moved out of her vision and took the opportunity to swim around her slowly, looking for injuries.
Looking at her size, Indigo worked out that Lunar could only be about three years old. She should have been in a nursery school, with her mother, aunts and the calves and adolescent whales. She should never have been on her own. From the external examination, she appeared quite thin, with a few rake marks to her sides from the rocks, but apart from that she appeared fine.
About an hour after first meeting her, Lunar stopped calling her name. At that point Indigo asked what had happened. It took a while, but he finally found out that Lunar had been with her group when she had gone down for a long dive. She had just caught a good-size squid when she heard a sound so terrible that she became totally blind. At the depth she was, there was no light, but whales use their inbuilt sonar to ‘see’, and they can see as well as they do in daylight, even better, with their sonar.
The noise was too loud, and at such a frequency that she could not hear her own sonar, so she was in total blackness and the noise hurt her. She thought that she had lost consciousness. Well, she couldn’t remember getting to the surface. On surfacing, though, her family was nowhere to be seen. She felt sick and very disoriented. Lunar didn’t have a clue as to how long ago this had happened. The noise had finally stopped, but she couldn’t get her sonar working properly yet and still felt awful.
Indigo thought about what the Keeper had said, that other dolphins and whales had come across this noise before and not all had survived. Lunar had been lucky not to have stranded herself on a beach. He knew Lunar was worried about her family, so he didn’t mention it to her.
‘You will be safe here for a while. We need to get you some food first and then you need rest. He explained that she was in a saltwater lake in the Gulf of Corinth.
‘Are you the Chosen One who lives there?’ she asked in awe.
‘Yes I am; I am working with my friend, a human child, to make the seas safer, but it is hard work and we don’t seem to be getting anywhere at the moment.’
Indigo spent the rest of the night fishing for Lunar, who ate and rested fitfully. Indigo had then raced off in the morning to call for Maddy to join them and returned immediately to Lunar’s side to await their arrival. He was happy to hear Maddy and CJ calling to him as they walked to the edge of the water.
The President’s Daughter
‘Wow, you’re a sperm whale! What are you doing here? Indigo, what’s he doing here?’ cried out CJ as he slowed down at the lake’s edge and stood still, looking at Lunar in wide-eyed amazement. Maddy looked on in awe too, but she couldn’t speak; she was too surprised at what she saw.
Indigo quickly explained to Maddy what had happened and Maddy told CJ. CJ asked if Lunar would mind if he approached. He had a couple of fish that he had bought before leaving Loutraki. On being given the go-ahead, he slowly walked forward into the lake, approaching Lunar from where she could keep a wary eye on him. She had never been this close to a human before. Although she felt no threat from this girl or boy, she had heard some terrifying stories of what humans were capable of.
CJ unwrapped the fish. He was now standing in the lake in a depth up to his chest. In his haste to approach the whale, he had not taken off his clothes. But it was a hot day and they would soon dry. He placed a fish in front of Lunar, who slowly opened her mouth and tilted her head slightly. CJ placed the fish head first into her mouth. His aunt had told him that this was the way to feed dolphins so that the fins don’t stick and get lodged in the throat. Lunar gulped and the fish disappeared down her throat. CJ had a huge grin on his face as he repeated the process another four times until the bag was empty.
Meanwhile, Maddy was talking to Indigo. On the news last night they had mentioned that a number of sperm whales had stranded themselves on a beach in the south of Greece, but volunteers had managed to get them all back into the sea at the next high tide. ‘Do you think it was her family?’ asked Maddy. Indigo immediately said that it most probably was, and asked what had happened to the whales once back in the sea. Maddy didn’t know because the news had then moved on to the NATO conference which was about to start in Athens and she had been sent to bed, so she hadn’t had a chance to go on the Internet. They agreed that she would have to do that in order to try to find out what had caused the whales to strand themselves, to see what had happened to them, and to find out if there were any mention of the noise.
By this time, CJ was further out in the lake, swimming around slowly with Lunar, who was starting to feel a little more like herself. He was swimming under her, around her, and was petting her. They had really hit it off. He was giggling and she even made a bit of a song for him. She loved the interaction and it was doing her good.
Maddy took off her clothes, revealing her swimsuit, and joined them. CJ shouted over, ‘Isn’t she fantastic? She is huge. Sperm whales are the largest of the toothed whales, and she is only three years old and
a female, so just imagine how big the adult males are.’ CJ had always been interested in whales and dolphins. He was always reading up about them and knew all the facts and figures. He knew more about these types of facts than Maddy did.
Having dried off in the sun, they spotted Jorgos’ jeep, towing the Barefoot behind, as it turned into the road by the bottom of the lake. ‘Look, there’s Dad. I had forgotten that he was coming. What do we do?’ asked CJ.
Maddy said they would have to race over to him and ski with him, or he would know that something was up. They could keep him away from this area of the lake, but Lunar would have to be quite still. They all agreed that the fewer people who knew Lunar was there the better and they wanted her to regain a little more strength before she left the lake. With that, they grabbed their bikes and raced off to go skiing.
Maddy was driving the boat and CJ was skiing when Jorgos finally noticed the water spout coming from Lunar. Sperm whales’ spouts are easily identifiable as they blow out a little to the left of centre. Luckily Jorgos didn’t know this and Maddy just said that Indigo was over there. Jorgos wondered why Indigo wasn’t coming over to play like he usually did, but then he saw CJ do a jump and he lost his train of thought about the water spout altogether.
They were all skied out. All three of them had had a great ski and had really enjoyed themselves. They loaded the Barefoot up onto the trailer and Jorgos loaded their bikes inside the boat. Maddy turned and gave a wave to Indigo and Lunar before she hopped up into the jeep and they all drove off towards Loutraki with the CD of Robbie Williams turned up high and all three singing along to Jorgos’ favourite song, ‘Me and my Monkey’.
On getting to the top of the hill outside Loutraki, Jorgos stopped and Maddy and CJ got their bikes to cycle home down the hill. They always did this, leaving Jorgos time to drive to the garage and unload the trailer himself. They waved as he drove off, still singing along to Robbie Williams.
This was a great hill to cycle down and they always raced each other. Maddy had won every time so far, but CJ was determined to beat her soon. Both went as fast as they dared. It was just as well their mum didn’t know how fast they went.
They were nearing the bottom. They had just pulled round the last of the hairpin bends and were accelerating fast. CJ was just behind Maddy. The air was flying through their hair and whistling past their ears. BEEP! They both immediately took evasive action, Maddy moving to her right and CJ to his left as a very posh jeep with blacked-out windows pulled out from the hotel entrance onto the road. They pulled to either side of it, just missing it by a hair’s breadth. They both wobbled, travelled on about another fifteen metres or so, wobbling more and more as they slowed down, and then both fell from their bikes. The jeep had slammed on its brakes in the middle of the road and skidded to a halt.
‘Hey there! What are you two doing? Trying to kill yourselves or something?’ It was an American accent, and it was a very big and imposing man who got out of the posh jeep. Both Maddy and CJ started saying that they were very sorry, they had been racing each other and were perhaps going a bit too fast. They picked themselves up from the edge of the road.
Lucy sat in the passenger seat and heard the two children speaking in English, so opened her door to see them. CJ was explaining that he was trying to beat Maddy and that he had never beaten her yet but that he would one day. On hearing the name Maddy mentioned, Lucy jumped out.
She asked, ‘Did you two write to my dad?’ Both Maddy and CJ looked blank. ‘About the noise pollution and the dolphins? About the dolphin who lives here in Loutraki?’
CJ was silent – this was a first for him. ‘Is your dad the President of America?’ asked Maddy.
‘Yes,’ replied Lucy.
Explanations
CJ walked onto the balcony where Maddy and Lucy were sitting in the late afternoon sun, overlooking the sea, huddled around the laptop computer. ‘What’s the big guy doing stood out in the corridor?’
Lucy turned, saying, ‘Oh, it’s just his job; James is my bodyguard and he goes everywhere I go. You can sometimes forget he’s there.’
‘How’s he so big?’ said CJ as he put the three portions of pastichio down on the stool near to where they sat.
Having picked themselves up off the road and made their introductions, Maddy had found that her bike had a puncture. Lucy had said that they would give them a lift home. They had chatted away and, on getting to their building, Maddy invited Lucy up. CJ had been hungry as usual, and Ishbel wasn’t going to be in, so he volunteered to go to the taverna and get them his favourite meal from Vangelis to take up for them all.
They all sat round the computer and Maddy read out:
On Thursday about twelve sperm whales beached themselves on the shore to the shock of tourists and locals alike. Everyone pulled together for almost twelve hours, keeping the whales hydrated and digging around them, and on the next high tide all the whales made it back to the water. The big question scientists are now asking is why they beached themselves. One school of thought is that, with the NATO conference being held in Greece, there is a lot more security in the area, including the use of sonar by submarines. The sound waves emitted by the low- and mid-range frequency sonar being used by the military is believed to cause confusion in whales and dolphins and can give them symptoms similar to the symptoms suffered by divers with the bends. The military are denying that they are to blame.
‘Our aunt told us about the sonar – yes, and it fits with what happened to Lunar,’ said Maddy.
‘Who’s Lunar?’
Maddy and CJ turned and looked at each other in silence. Lucy looked on in expectation. Maddy nodded and CJ shook his head. Maddy grabbed his arm and pulled him away to the corner and whispered, ‘I trust her. I know we said we wouldn’t let anyone know, but how else can we save the whales? Her dad’s the President.’ CJ thought about it, then nodded. Maddy was right. She usually was. Not that he was going to tell her, of course.
They all sat down on the balcony and Maddy started. ‘You know about Atlantis, don’t you?’
‘The lost city,’ said CJ.
‘Yes, it vanished way back in history and has been a bit of a mystery ever since.’ As they sat in the evening sun, eating their pastichio, Maddy, with a few interruptions from CJ, told Lucy the story that Indigo had told her over and over again since she was just a baby.
Atlantis was an island way back before the Ancient Greeks and Romans, before Jesus was born. It was set up with lots of waterways through it and these waterways were used by the pod of dolphins which lived there. Both humans and dolphins lived together and helped each other with fishing, building work and education. All the dolphins could talk to and understand all the humans. They talked to each other like Maddy and Indigo did, through their minds.
There were waterways into all the main public buildings and the big sports stadium. Sport and competition was very important to all the inhabitants of Atlantis and that included the dolphins. They had games which are like our Olympic games, with dolphins and humans in each team. The island was split into teams from north and south, and the two teams always wanted to win.
By working together, fishing was easy, so their food supply was never a problem and didn’t take long to prepare. This meant that they had lots of time to build the most magnificent buildings and statues, to enjoy sport and to develop. They had books; they played music and understood about the seasons and weather.
Then disaster struck. There was a massive volcanic explosion on a nearby island which caused a massive tidal wave to hit Atlantis. Both of these events resulted in the island of Atlantis crumbling and sinking beneath the waves. Only a handful of the humans from Atlantis, and about ten of the dolphins of Atlantis, survived.
As there was nowhere for them to live, they all had to move away and the dolphins became separated from the humans. The dolphins could not find any other human who could talk with them and no other dolphin could talk with the humans. The dolphins had a very hard time. They had
never had to fish without the help of humans before, so they had new tactics to learn. It was a very difficult time, but amazingly they survived and joined in with other pods of dolphins. They mixed with other pods of dolphins and time went by.
From these Atlantis dolphins, the gift to speak to humans remained, but as the generations went on, fewer and fewer of the dolphins were born with this ability. When one was born they were identified as a Chosen One. The Chosen Ones led very solitary lives. They had to try to find an ancestor of the Atlantis humans, and the only way of doing that was by getting close to humans. They were given different areas to stay in and they had to live without the support of a pod, close to shore, so that they would come into contact with humans.
Indigo had been sent to this area by the Keeper, who was the Keeper of the ruins of Atlantis. He was a very old dolphin, one of the Chosen Ones who was very clever and was entrusted with the stone scrolls of Atlantis’s knowledge. He was the dolphin who directed the Chosen Ones to different areas and coordinated how all dolphins and whales could help protect each other from various hazards.
There were chosen dolphins documented all through history: solitary dolphins who loved interacting with humans. More recent ones are Fungi, who is based at Dingle Bay in Ireland, and Olin who lives in the Red Sea.
Indigo had been given the Gulf of Corinth and had found Maddy, who was an ancestor of the Atlantis people. Obviously so was CJ, but not all of the ancestors had the ability to communicate – only very few. CJ and their Aunt Imogen were nearly there. The Chosen Ones could feel them, although they couldn’t speak. Ishbel and Jorgos, however, had no connection with the dolphins at all.
