Midnight Dolphin

by James Carmody

  Megan felt a knot of excitement in the pit of her stomach. She took the dust cover and the remaining half of the book up to the counter and offered the librarian two pence in payment.

  ‘You don’t want to waste your money on that’ said the middle-aged lady sympathetically. ‘That should have been thrown out with the rubbish.’

  ‘No really I do’ replied Megan, worried suddenly that the librarian would not allow her to buy it.

  ‘Well you can just have that one if you really want it’ the librarian went on. ‘It’s certainly not worth tuppence.’

  Delighted, Megan took her prize outside into the sunshine. There was a bench just across the road and Megan sat down to read. The Reverend Jeremiah Smith had written his book sometime in the mid-nineteenth century but Megan seemed to have a reprint from the early nineteen fifties. The words were crowded close together on the pages which were yellowed and dusty. There was no index to consult because that was in the missing part of the book and the chapter titles gave little clue as to where she could find out about dolphin-children because they simply referred to different towns or villages in the county. All Megan could do was to leaf through the book and hope that she would spot something interesting. She found the style of writing old fashioned and stuffy.

  Flicking through, Megan came across the chapter concerning Merwater towards the back.

  ‘I will now record the accounts of dolphins and their strange connection with the inhabitants of Merwater. Though having the appearance of fish, dolphins are mammals and must breathe air if they are to survive. They may remain submersed in the sea for several minutes, however observations suggest that they must resurface again to take in air through their blow hole.

  Several fishermen of the parish claim that in the time of their great-grandfathers, dolphin and fishermen alike cooperated together. It is said that the fishermen would arrange their nets in the shallow waters of a cove named Coxcomb Reach at low tide. I interrogated a retired mariner by the name of Tobias Griffin, a grizzled fellow with neither teeth nor hair. He claimed quite resolutely that the dolphins would drive shoals of herring from the high sea into Coxcomb Reach, whereupon the people from the cottages along the Reach would lift up their nets and trap the herring in the shallow waters, from which point they could easily be gathered in. He claimed that the fisher-folk would return a fifth of the catch to the waiting dolphins and that by this method both parties gained mutual benefit from this unusual practice.

  I challenged Mariner Griffin’s account, asking how these sea creatures and man could possibly reach such an accord. He said that he did not know but that this had occurred for several generations until the land behind Coxcomb Reach was enclosed and the cottages cleared to make way for farming. He claimed that this ancient knowledge was lost when the cottage folk were dispersed.

  I considered it to be clearly fanciful to suggest that one of God’s creatures from the sea could communicate with humans in this manner. However this is not the only account of cooperation between man and this beast of the waves.There are many rhymes handed down from parent to child within the parish that attest to such a link. One such rhyme, the origin of which appears lost, is told as follows:

  The dolphin shall come from May to September

  Then you my sweetheart will be all I remember;

  Come away back from your home on the waves

  And stand by my side as I weep at your grave

  There are several accounts of children falling under the thrall of dolphins. A boy named Arthur Trescothick is said to have swum with dolphins regularly until his twelfth year. According to accounts a girl by the name of Mary Glendow and three dolphins saved eight men from rocks of Widows Point when their vessel foundered and sank in a storm in the year eighteen nineteen. She continued to swim with dolphins until her thirteenth year when the muse left her. A Gideon Belcher was last sighted aged ten on the back of a dolphin and never returned to his family. He is said to have disappeared two years before my arrival in this parish in eighteen forty five. In the celebrated story of Susan Penhaligon, which I shall return to in the next chapter, this young girl led a group of her equally juvenile but deluded followers to a watery grave.

  The common factor in such accounts is that when the association with dolphins did not lose the child its life, dolphins ceased to have any hold over children by their twelfth or thirteenth year.

  The clergy of the local parishes preach against such unnatural infatuations from their pulpits and strive to stamp out these last vestiges of superstition and ungodly ways. However it is said that in every generation of children from Merwater there will be at least two so-called ‘Children of the Mer’, or ‘Dolphin-Children’ and the stories still persist to the present day.’

  Megan looked up from the yellowed page. ‘That’s what I am’ she thought to herself. She returned to the book.

  ‘I have determined to trace and interview a dolphin-child myself however whether by dint of my calling or because of a natural reticence of the parishioners, my quest has so far proved unsuccessful….’

  Megan turned over the page to read on, but found to her dismay that several pages had fallen out and the next page that she came to was a description of local folk songs. She continued to flick back and forth through the book but Megan could find no other references to dolphins. Even as she did so more pages came loose from the spine and she had to bend down to pick up a couple that had fluttered down to the ground beneath her. The remnants of the book were literally falling apart in her hands as she looked at it.

  It was tantalising to sit there holding the Reverend Jeremiah Smith’s book, yet Megan felt that its discovery was of very little help to her. This book was evidently written and published before the Reverend had found out anything about the girl who retained her gift as a dolphin-child into her fifteenth year, as he had mentioned in his journal. If he found out anything more it was certainly not recorded here. Megan passed half an hour making notes in her diary until, glancing up she realised that the bench she was sitting on would soon slip into shadow.

  There was one respect in which reading the Reverend Smith’s book really struck her though; she was not alone. There had clearly been many Dolphin-Children over the years and he had written that one or two were born in each generation. To know that other children had experienced the same joy as her comforted Megan; yet knowing that they all lost their gift did not. She needed to find out what was the secret of that fifteen year old girl all those decades ago. Megan sat there, staring at the open page of her book as if by doing so she would suddenly receive inspiration.

  ‘Oh hi there Megan’ came a voice above her head. Megan looked up from the page she had been looking at. Looking down at her was the friendly smiling face of Rachel, the girl from Owl Books. ‘What are you up to then?’ she asked.

  It was a green windswept sea that the pod swam in that morning. Spray was blown up from the restless waves which ran with foamed tips towards the distant shore.

  ‘Strange weather’ observed Storm as they swam along. ‘I sense that something is going to happen, but I simply cannot say what it might be.’

  Everyone in the pod felt unsettled and there was a sense of disquiet within the small group. They lapsed into silence. Only Summer sang comforting words to her calf No-Name, who though bigger, was still an infant at his mothers’ side. Eventually the winds calmed, and the pod rested awhile.

  ‘Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be on land?’ Dancer asked Spirit thoughtfully. Spirit was only half surprised by the question.

  ‘You’re thinking about Lucy again aren’t you?’ he replied. Dancer nodded. ‘Yes I often try to imagine what living on the land must be like’ Spirit continued, ‘you know when you swim over a shallow sea bed near the shore, and you see a crab scuttling along the sand from one rock to the next? Well I imagine that humans scuttle over land in the same way that crabs scuttle over the sand.’

  ‘It would be funny if humans walked along sideways like crabs do’ laugh
ed Dancer.

  ‘Once I had a dream that I was floating in the air above the land and looking down on the greenness below over the, you know, trees and things. I saw the long black paths that humans like to follow and those metal things that they like to travel in. It felt so strange, I was glad when I woke up again.’

  ‘What are you two up to?’ asked Star-Gazer swimming up to them. Spirit turned to face her.

  ‘Oh just talking about dreams and things’ Spirit replied. Spirit had a strange feeling that ever since his mother had returned to them, she had been both happy and sad at the same time. It wasn’t the same as before she had been taken away from them. He could not turn back time though. ‘What do you dream about?’ he asked her.

  ‘You know me’ she replied. ‘I dream about swimming between the stars and chasing meteors back to the earth. I dream about you when you were just a newly born calf. I look at Summer and No-Name and all those memories come flooding back to me.’

  They talked for a while longer and then Star-Gazer swam back over to Summer to chat to her.

  It was then that Spirit felt a strange sensation run through his body. Dancer felt it too. It was a feeling that he thought he was beginning to forget. As they both watched, the swirls and eddies of the current seemed to coalesce into a human form, then before they knew it, there was Lucy floating in the water in front of them.

  ‘Lucy!’ called Spirit happily. ‘It’s so good to see you.’ Lucy turned her head slowly to look at them both.

  ‘Hello Spirit, hello Dancer’ she smiled. Spirit looked at Lucy. She had come to them as an apparition, but her body was encased in a dark blue swim suit but her arms and legs were pink and bare. Her loose hair floated around her in a cloud.

  ‘How are you Lucy?’ asked Spirit. ’I’ve missed you.’ Lucy looked around her with a distracted air.

  ‘I don’t really know how I am’ she replied absently. ‘I was in the swimming pool …. Then I was here…’ Lucy trailed off. Spirit didn’t understand.

  ‘What do you mean Lucy? What brought you here this time? It’s been so long.’ Spirit knew that when she came to him normally, Lucy glided along in a very purposeful way. This time Lucy was just hanging there in the water and she hardly seemed to know what she was doing with her arms and legs.

  ‘Spirit’ whispered Dancer. ‘She’s sinking.’ Dancer was right. As they watched, Spirit could see that Lucy was starting to float downwards. Lucy seemed quite unaware of what was happening to her.

  ‘Hey, come back up to us’ said Spirit, half joking but half worried.

  ‘What?’ asked Lucy. She seemed barely aware that she was actually there in front of them. She made no attempt to glide back up to them as she normally would and instead sank further down in the water.’

  ‘There’s something wrong!’ whispered Dancer to Spirit under her breath.

  ‘Lucy, are you alright?’ asked Spirit, starting to get worried.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, I just feel sleepy’ she replied drowsily. ‘I’d like to close my eyes now.’

  ‘No don’t!’ Spirit replied quickly. He didn’t know why exactly, but he had a strong feeling that it would be dangerous if she did. Lucy continued to drift downwards.

  ‘What can we do?’ he asked Dancer with a growing sense of desperation.

  ‘You stay there’ she replied decisively, I’ll be back in a moment with Storm and Star-Gazer. They’ll know what to do.’ So far only Spirit, Dancer and Star-Gazer had been able to speak to Lucy with their minds when she came to them as a vision. Storm could see her but could not pass his thoughts to the girl and needed Spirit or Dancer as an intermediary to translate what he said.

  Dancer quickly came back with Star-Gazer. Storm and the rest of the pod were not far behind.

  ‘You were right to be concerned’ said Star-Gazer, ‘there’s something seriously wrong with her. Do you know if she’s been injured at all?’ Spirit shook his head.

  ‘Lucy, Lucy! Pay attention. Has anything happened to you dear? Have you been hurt?’ Star-Gazer asked urgently.

  ‘Well,…I,…I’m not sure’ Lucy replied eventually, gazing around her as though she wasn’t aware the dolphins were there at all.

  ‘What’s she saying?’ asked Storm, unable to comprehend her answer.

  ‘Nothing really’ said Dancer. ‘She seems dazed and confused. It’s a bit like that time that Summer got hit by that plank of wood in the storm.

  ‘That’s right’ said Summer. ‘If you hadn’t held me upright in the water, I’d have drowned.’

  ‘Do you think that’s what’s happened?’ asked Spirit anxiously as Lucy continued to drift down slowly through the water.

  ‘Let’s pick her up and take her to the surface then’ said Chaser, moving towards Lucy.

  ‘That’s just the thing’ said Spirit. ‘She’s not physically here. We cannot touch her or move her.’

  ‘I feel so peaceful’ murmured Lucy to no-one in particular. Chaser swam up to her and tried to nudge her with his beak. He seemed to pass right through her.

  ‘Lucy, swim to us. Come back to us!’ urged Dancer. She didn’t respond.

  ‘I don’t believe she can hear you now Dancer’ said Star-Gazer quietly as Lucy’s eyes quietly closed.

  ‘It’s as though the life is ebbing away from her’ observed Storm. Spirit turned to him in desperation.

  ‘How can you just float there and say that? There must be something we can do. We can’t just let it happen.’

  ‘Storm’s right though’ said Star-Gazer sadly. ‘I can feel the energy flowing away from her. I can almost see it.’ Spirit looked at Lucy again. He realised that what Star-Gazer said made sense. He could feel it too. He didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Hang on’ said Dancer after a moment. ‘Energy passes from her to us, from us to her. Why can’t we give her energy back.’

  ‘That’s right’ said Spirit, seizing upon the idea. ‘If we all focus….’

  ‘But I don’t have that connection with her that you do’ replied Chaser. ‘Neither does Summer or the rest of us.’

  ‘Well Dancer, Star-Gazer and I do’ replied Spirit. ‘We’ve got to make it work.’

  He started to focus and could see that Dancer and Star-Gazer were doing the same. Lucy seemed oblivious, but her slow descent steadied and then stopped. Spirit could almost see the energy flowing from him and the others back into Lucy, but he was unable to tell whether his mind was simply playing tricks on him. The rest of the pod fell silent as they watched.

  ‘Is she getting better?’ asked Moonlight.

  ‘I’m not sure’ answered Storm. ‘The question is; how much energy does she need?’ Spirit was unable to pay any attention to what the others were saying. All he could focus on was Lucy. Then with a jolt he realised that she was slipping down again.

  ‘Try harder!’ he implored the other two.

  ‘I’m tired’ replied Dancer. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.’ Lucy’s hair was floating up around her face as she sank downwards again. She looked beautiful, thought Spirit, but the idea that this might be the last time he saw her was almost too much to bear.

  ‘Listen’ said Storm. ‘I think that you need to reach into her mind Spirit. You’re the only one that can do that.’ Spirit broke his gaze away from Lucy and looked at Storm.

  ‘But she needs our energy’ he replied.

  ‘Lucy needs you more’ Storm went on. ‘The rest of us here can focus our thoughts to support Lucy. Spirit, you have a more special task, a more special destiny. I think you always have had.’

  ‘But I don’t know how’ said Spirit plaintively. The thought that he could do more to help Lucy excited him, but the idea that he might fail filled him with fear.

  ‘Trust in yourself young Spirit’ said Storm. ‘Believe in yourself.’

  ‘That’s right’ said Star-Gazer. ‘Let your mind flow through the water to her.’ During the summer Spirit had become aware that if he needed Lucy urgently enough, she would realise and wo
uld come to him. He’d never actually reached into her mind though. There was nothing for it but to try.

  The rest of the pod fell silent again as they focused all their energy upon her. Lucy stopped sinking and gradually began to float upwards again. Spirit did not know where to begin but then, without consciously trying, it felt as though there was no distance between him and Lucy at all. Everything else he could see around him swam out of focus. Spirit started to look more deeply than he had ever looked before.

  It was a shock to Spirit to find himself floating in the air in one of those tiny white rooms that humans liked to inhabit. There was Lucy below him, lying with her eyes closed on a flat thing. Filaments, like strands of fine seaweed, connected her to a mechanical thing that beeped. Looking down he could see a man holding Lucy’s hand and a figure in white. ‘Lucy’ he murmured.

  Then everything was dark around Spirit and he didn’t know where he was.

  ‘Lucy’ he whispered again, more loudly this time. There was silence for moment.

  ‘Where are we Spirit?’ a voice replied.

  ‘We’re inside your mind’ he replied gently. ‘Something’s happened to you. I don’t know what but you’re hurt. You’re fading. In our world you’re floating downwards, and if you don’t fight back, I’m afraid that…. Well, I’m afraid for the worst. Can you fight it Lucy? Can you do it for me?’

  ‘I don’t know Spirit. It’s hard.’ Lucy’s voice seemed to be nowhere and everywhere around him at the same time.