Now that she and Mrs Penhaligon were both back at school, Lucy felt that she had to be careful about what she said to her teacher in case the other kids began to talk. She knew that Mrs Penhaligon couldn’t be seen to treat Lucy like she was a favourite. Lucy felt less open than she had been when they were both in Cornwall. Even so, she would sometimes catch her teacher looking at her with a thoughtful look in her eyes.
At the end of the lesson, Lucy hung back whilst the other children left, scraping their chairs noisily on the floor as they made a dash for the exit and lunch. Lucy was so worried about not having been able to reach out to Spirit these last few days that she was desperate to talk to her teacher about it.
‘Mrs Penhaligon?’ she said warily, ‘Can I speak to you for a moment?’
‘Yes of course Lucy, what is it?’ Mrs Penhaligon replied, turning her full attention towards Lucy.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know who else to speak to. It’s just that, well, I’ve not been able to speak to Spirit for two or three days and I’m getting really worried.’ Mrs Penhaligon leant against a desk and regarded Lucy sympathetically.
‘And you think that you’re losing your gift?’ she asked with a soft voice.
‘Yes, yes I am’ replied Lucy. Mrs Penhaligon paused for a moment to compose her thoughts.
‘You know I’d like to be able to tell you that it’s not true Lucy, and that you’ll regain your gift as before. But I’m not going to lie to you. It might be happening. I really don’t know. I know the stories about Dolphin-Children, but I’ve never actually met one before. I know that most Dolphin-Children do lose their gift at about the age that you are now, but I don’t believe that they all do. You’ve inherited your gift from your mother haven’t you? What was her experience like?’
‘I don’t know’ admitted Lucy. ‘She never spoke about it before she died. I wish she had. I really do. It would make such a difference to me now. Dad just refuses to say anything.’
‘What about your aunt, would she know?’
‘I suppose she would’ replied Lucy. ‘She’s never really told me either though.’
‘I think you need to speak to your aunt or your father’ said Mrs Penhaligon decisively. ‘They’ve got first hand experience of how it was for your mother. I think that you need to be told as much as possible about something as significant as this.’
‘I just can’t talk to Dad’ replied Lucy. ‘I suppose I’ll have to speak to Bethany then.’
‘I think that’s a good idea’ replied Mrs Penhaligon. ‘You know there may be any number of reasons why you can’t communicate with your dolphin at the moment.’ She could see how worried Lucy looked. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions. It might just be a temporary thing.’
‘Thanks Mrs Penhaligon’ said Lucy, trying to put on a brave smile.
‘Now off you go’ said her teacher, ‘or you’ll miss lunch.’
The afternoon passed by in a blur of maths and geography and before Lucy knew it, the bell had rung for the end of the day. She had choir practice after school which she went to with Amy. Lucy loved the feeling of unity and peace she experienced when all the thirty or so children in the school choir sung together. Amy was particularly good and often got to do solos. Lucy was just glad to stay at the back without attracting attention to herself.
Because it was winter, it was already dark by the time that choir practice finished and she and Amy walked home together, glad of each others company. When she got home Lucy let herself into the empty house and switched on the light. There was a pile of post on the mat. Normally the only post they received were bills and circulars which Dad threw in the bin straight away.
Today though there was a slim package wrapped in brown paper which had Lucy’s name and address neatly written on the front. Lucy picked it up curiously. From the look and feel of it, the package contained a thin book. Lucy carefully tugged open the wrapping and pulled out the paperback inside. It was called ‘Flora and Fauna of the Cornish Coast’ and looked really quite old as the pages had yellowed over time where they had been exposed to sunlight. Lucy knew that flora mean plant life and fauna meant animal life. She sniffed it. The book smelt dusty and Lucy was reminded of the kinds of books that her Mum used to like looking through in the second-hand bookshop down the road from them. She looked inside the front cover and could see that it was published in 1976.
Lucy wondered who the book might be from, and she checked the package carefully to see if there was a note or a letter still inside. There was nothing there though, and she didn’t recognise the handwriting on the front of the package either. It was a mystery. Lucy flicked through the book and could see that there were plenty of illustrations of plants and animals within the close-typed pages. It was a lovely book and she looked forward to reading it but Lucy simply had no idea of who had sent it to her.
Inside the back cover there was a scribbled note.
‘I found this brilliant book in the junk shop today all about Cornish wildlife for 15p. A few pages on dolphins, but just scientific stuff, not folklore or the link between dolphins and kids. I know what I’ve been told about what happens to Dolphin-Children, but I just don’t believe it. There must be some way round it. I just know it.’
Lucy felt a shiver go down her spine. It felt as though message was being sent to her from the past.
Chapter Two:
Megan was talking in her sleep again. It woke Bethany and she sat up to watch. Megan was deep in her dream and Bethany thought it looked as though she was trying to swim through her sheets. Megan was muttering under breath and at first Bethany couldn’t make out what her sister was saying. Then Bethany could hear more clearly.
‘I don’t want to lose you Jet. Don’t leave me’ Bethany heard her say. Megan seemed to be clutching at her pillow as though it was another person, holding it tight to her chest. Megan went quiet for a few moments but then she heard Bethany again.
‘No, I’m coming too!’ she called out in her sleep. Bethany slipped out of bed and padded across the room. She shook her sister by the arm.
‘Wake up, wake up silly!’ she whispered insistently.
‘What, what is it?’ Megan mumbled blearily.
‘You’re dreaming!’ whispered Bethany. ‘Very loud. You woke me up!’ Megan looked around her again. She looked at her younger sisters’ pale face and big eyes. There was a nightlight in the room because Bethany was still afraid of the dark so Megan was just about able to see her. Her younger sister furrowed her brow.
‘Stop dreaming!’ she said to Megan very seriously. Megan smiled, fully aware of where she was now.
‘Sorry Bethany. I didn’t mean to. It was just a silly dream but I’m out of it now. You get back into bed.’ Bethany looked at the illuminated hands of her travel alarm clock that she’d been given for Christmas. It was half past three in the morning. ‘Do you want me to tell you a story to help get you off to sleep?’
‘Yes please Megan’ Bethany replied. Megan started telling Bethany the story of Goldilocks and the three bears for the hundredth time, and was rewarded a minute or two later by the sound of rhythmic breathing. Bethany had fallen back to sleep. Megan finished the story anyway because somehow it didn’t seem right to stop a story before it got to the end.
Megan was wide awake now though. She thought about going downstairs to get herself a glass of milk but lay on her back and stared at the ceiling instead. She’d been dreaming about Jet. Jet was her dolphin. She had dreamed about dolphins all her life and they’d always been beautiful and relaxing dreams in which she could drift effortlessly alongside a pod of dolphins. Then a couple of years ago she’d realised that they weren’t just dreams and that she was able to communicate with them, and Jet in particular. It was utterly amazing.
Megan spent all the time she could to stretch out with her mind to communicate with dolphins. It used to be really hard to do it for more than a couple of minutes, but as she became more accustomed to it, she’d learnt how to keep it up for as much as twenty m
inutes or so, although she always felt exhausted afterwards.
Her grannie used to live in a small fishing village in Cornwall called Merwater and the family had often gone down to visit her when Megan was younger. Megan loved to hear Grannie’s stories about fishermen and the sea. Now Grannie had passed away but the family still came down to Cornwall on their summer holidays, staying in a holiday cottage when they did. They were in one now, just a short walk from the sea across the dunes. Megan was in her element here and she would sneak off in the early morning to swim with Jet.
The trouble was that her dreams weren’t as beautiful and reassuring as they used to be. She couldn’t glide along next to Jet as she had before. When she dreamt about the dolphins it felt as though the water around her was getting thicker somehow and harder to swim through. All too often when she dreamed about Jet, all she could see was his tail as he swam off into the deep blue void.
When she reached out to Jet with her mind, it was getting harder and harder to do so. Megan didn’t know why. She didn’t really have anyone to talk to about it and she didn’t think Mum and Dad would understand either.
There was a kind of invisible barrier between Megan and her parents since the previous summer when they were holidaying in Cornwall. Megan had gone out to play with the local friends that she had made as usual, away from the cottage where they were staying half a mile or so in from the sea. Megan hadn’t come home though and eventually her parents had called the police who in turn had contacted the coastguard.
By ten at night, the long summer day had given way to darkness. Patrol cars were checking the local roads and there was talk of organising a search of the nearby woods and fields at first light. It was the next morning that Megan had been found alive and well.
A young policeman had been in his patrol car driving along the sea road going west out of town. He’d seen Megan just sitting there, on a rock a few metres off, staring out to sea. He called to her and clambered over the rocks to get to her, but Megan hadn’t seemed to hear. When he got close he could see that she was wet through, as though she’d been in the sea, but she wasn’t shivering and didn’t seem cold. He said that he was cold though and he was wearing a dry uniform. He scooped her up off the rock where she was sitting and brought her home to the cottage.
Megan’s parents had been both furious and desperately concerned when Megan reappeared. Try as they might though, they simply could not get Megan to tell them what had happened. The more they pressed her, the less inclined she felt to tell them anything at all. They’d watched her like a hawk for the rest of the holiday to make sure nothing else happened, yet here they were back in Cornwall barely a year later. Maybe they thought she’d grow out of it or something.
That morning was overcast and damp and the family decided to squeeze into their small car with its leaking windows and squeaky plastic seats and head into the local town to wander around and do some window-shopping. Megan looked in her purse and counted up her money. She had seventy six pence in total. It wasn’t that much, but maybe enough to get something nice if she was lucky.
The local town was built around a small harbour that was packed full of fishing boats and seemed to bustle with energy and life. Crates were piled up to pack fish into and the strong fishy tang seemed to fill the air wherever you went. Vans were ready to take the fish to the nearest train station ten miles or so away and carry them off to market in London and other big cities. When they got there, her dad wanted to go into an angling shop, and her mum took Bethany to find the sweet shop. Megan was left to her own devices and wandered off up the backstreets that snaked up the hill.
Megan found herself turning into a cobbled yard off a quiet street just where the shops petered out. On the other side of the yard was a small second-hand bookshop. A cat dozed contentedly in the window and a bell clanged above the door when she pushed it open to enter. The shop was packed with tall bookcases and more books were piled on the floor where there was space. A smell of dust hung on the air and it was so cramped that she almost felt as though she would have to breath in to let anyone pass. There were a couple of other people browsing the books and she joined them. Megan was eager to find the natural history section. She was a keen ornithologist back home, but here she was fascinated by the life that could be found, in, under and on top of the sea.
There were only a few books on wildlife on a shelf that was uncomfortably close to the floor and Megan had to bend to see them, craning her neck to read the titles on the spines. Some of the books were cloth-covered hardbacks from the nineteen thirties and others were more recent editions that had fallen out of favour with their original owners. Megan leafed through several books and then one in particular caught her eye. It was called ‘Flora and Fauna of the Cornish Coast’ and inside the front cover, written in pencil she could see that it had been put on sale at only fifteen pence. Even Megan could afford that from the change that she had saved up. She walked up to the counter by the window to pay.
Megan always expected the people that worked in libraries and bookshops to be tall, thin and grey but the young woman at the counter was petite, with jet-black hair and an infectious smile. Megan said that she wanted to pay.
‘Yes, of course. Let me see’ replied the girl, looking for the price. ‘Ah yes, that’ll be fifteen pence.’ She smiled at Megan. ‘Are you interested in natural history?’ she asked conversationally. Megan said that she was.
‘And local wildlife at that’ the girl observed. ‘We’ve got a good section on local books here actually’ she continued. ‘Local dialect, local cooking, local history…’ She smiled at Megan again. ‘I guess you’re just interested in local wildlife though. I hope that it helps you with your studies.’ Megan mumbled shyly that she thought it would.
‘Do drop by when you can’ added the girl cheerfully. ‘This is my mother’s shop. I’m just helping out over the summer holidays.’ She leant forward conspiratorially. ‘It’s nice to see someone in here who’s aged under fifty for a change. All I’ve got to talk to all day is Bilbo Baggins here!’ she added, nodding in the direction of the cat still sleeping in the shop window. We call him that because of his big hairy paws.’ Megan said that she would and left.
Last year when she was in Cornwall, Megan had made friends with a couple of local children, but one had moved away and the other girl seemed to be on holiday herself at the moment. If she hadn’t had Jet to spend time with, she’d have felt a bit lonely. It was fun to spend time with Bethany, but her sister was almost half her age and couldn’t share her own interests. The girl in the shop was years older than she was and was even studying at university thought Megan, but it would be nice to see her again. Megan walked happily back to the café up the street where they’d all agreed to meet for a cup of tea and a slice of cake.
Spirit fretted restlessly. He simply couldn’t settle like the others and swam backwards and forwards, round and round while the rest of the pod settled down to sleep.
‘What ever is the matter Spirit?’ asked his mother Star-Gazer. ‘Come and relax over here with the rest of us.’ As ever she had her eyes above the water when ever she could, looking up at the stars. Now she was looking down at Spirit.
‘It’s Lucy’ he replied. ‘She hasn’t come to me in the last three days. It feels strange.’
‘Maybe she’s been busy’ replied Star-Gazer sympathetically.
‘It’s not just that’ replied Spirit. ‘I have this feeling inside me that things aren’t right. Do you know what it could be?’
‘I don’t know’ said Star-Gazer. ‘She might be unwell, or life might be stressful for her. You’ve told me before that it’s difficult for her to contact you if she’s not calm and relaxed.
‘That’s true’ replied Spirit, pondering a moment. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to wait a bit longer. Hopefully she will get through to me eventually.’
‘Don’t worry Spirit’ said Star-Gazer, nudging Spirit’s face affectionately.
Life was getting back to normal now
after Star-Gazer’s return to the pod a few months before. Spirit had thought that she was dead; the whole pod had. She’d disappeared twelve full moons before that and they had no idea what had happened to her. It had been Lucy who had discovered from her friend Paul that she was imprisoned in a lagoon off the narrow estuary that came in from the sea. Spirit and Dancer had swum up the estuary to try to free Star-Gazer themselves, but there had been a closed-link fence that blocked their way and try as they might they could not get through it or over it.
If it had not been for Lucy and Paul, Star-Gazer would never have escaped. She was being kept prisoner in that muddy lagoon by a woman called Mrs Penrose who believed in some strange way that keeping Star-Gazer there would help her husband get better after his stroke. Spirit remembered the night of the summer storm. Lucy and Paul cut through the wire of the fence which separated the lagoon from the rest of the estuary and Star-Gazer was able to swim to freedom. Star-Gazer was weak and unhappy from the time that she had spent there but her strength and determination had returned to her in that swim down the narrow channel full of storm water to the open sea and freedom. Lucy and Paul had climbed onto Spirit and Dancer’s backs and they had all swum down together. It had been exhilarating and strange and Spirit had felt full of excitement and joy when they set Lucy and Paul down next to a building before returning to the open sea.
The whole pod had celebrated Star-Gazer’s return and Chaser, Moonlight and Summer had sung them the Welcome Song that was always sung to dolphins returning from faraway places or dangerous waters. They all nuzzled Star-Gazer in greeting. News of her return soon spread to all the neighbouring pods and after that they had many visitors to greet Star-Gazer and to congratulate Spirit and Dancer.
Midnight Dolphin Page 2
