Midnight Dolphin

by James Carmody

  There were great crystals submerged in the water, the like of which Dancer had never seen before and they navigated around them carefully. Dancer felt a sense of peace and tranquillity overwhelm her as they progressed. Her heartbeat slowed, and her movements became calmer.

  ‘It feels… magical in here’ she whispered.

  ‘I know’ replied Spirit, equally as quietly. They swum round slowly with a sense of awe at the beauty of the place. The eerie green light reflected from the ripples on the water and appeared to come from everywhere and nowhere, infusing the caves with a sense of calm.

  At the very end of the second cave there was a lower and narrower opening to what seemed to be the third cave.

  ‘What’s through there then?’ whispered Dancer.

  I’, I don’t know’ replied Spirit cautiously. Dancer expected Spirit to swim right through, but he hung back.

  ‘Aren’t you going to go through there then’ asked Dancer, ‘or would you rather I went through first?’

  ‘I, I don’t feel that I should go through there now, not without Lucy anyway’ said Spirit, cautiously measuring his words. ‘I just have this strong sense that it’s somewhere that only Lucy and I should go when the time is right.’

  ‘That’s if she ever finds this place’ murmured Dancer, more to herself than to Spirit. The two dolphins lapsed into silence as they looked at the amazing crystal formations around them.

  ‘Why haven’t the others followed us into the cave do you think?’ asked Dancer eventually.’

  ‘Well if you and I can only just squeeze through the passage from the sea, there’s no way that the adults will be able to do so’ replied Spirit. ‘They’d get jammed in the hole.’

  ‘I hope they haven’t tried then’ said Dancer, ‘or we’ll be stuck in this cave for ever.’ They swam back into the largest cave and listened for a few moments. They could still hear the sea through the tunnel. No dolphin was blocking the passage.

  ‘I suppose we’d better get back to the others’ said Dancer reluctantly. ‘I’ve lost track of how long we’ve been in here.’

  First Dancer, then Spirit swam back through the dark, tight tunnel out to the sea again. ‘Another few months and I’ll be too big to fit through here at all’ thought Dancer, brushing her flank on the rock as she swam. At least it was smooth and didn’t hurt her.

  The rest of the pod were lounging lazily in the sea when they emerged again.

  ‘You took your time!’ exclaimed Chaser. The rest of the pod came close, and rubbed fins in greeting.

  ‘Well, what was it like then?’ asked Star-Gazer. Between them, Spirit and Dancer explained what they had just seen.

  ‘But what I don’t understand is how Spirit could have dreamt of the cave and his entrance if he didn’t know it was there already’ said Summer, voicing what all of them had been thinking.

  ‘You know that there is a greater consciousness that we are all connected to’ replied Storm thoughtfully. ‘It links all dolphins past, present and future into a larger whole. I think that Spirit knew of the Three Green Caves not because he had been there himself, but because generations of young dolphins had been there over the millennia. The caves were revealed to Spirit because he needed to know about them to realise his destiny.’ Storm turned to Spirit and looked at him calmly. ‘I have thought for many months that you have a special destiny, now I am sure of it.’

  Later on, once darkness had fallen, the clouds cleared briefly and the stars were visible in the cold black sky. Spirit had been dozing lightly and seeing Star-Gazer looking upwards, he joined her.

  ‘What is it that you’re looking at?’

  ‘Oh, I was just looking at the heavens’ replied Star-Gazer dreamily. ‘You see those stars over there? They’re called the Three Sisters. They seem to be coming into alignment.’ Spirit stared hard, but he could make out nothing unusual in the scattering of stars above him. Eventually his mind became clouded with dreams and he slipped back into his waking-sleep.

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Waking up the next morning, Lucy immediately jumped out of bed and pulled open the curtains to look at the white and silent world outside the cottage. Snow had evidently continued to fall during the night and all the lines of the hedges and fences had softened and all but disappeared under a great undulating layer of whiteness.

  Lucy pulled on her jeans, tee-shirt and fleece and went downstairs. She thought that Dad would be in the kitchen drinking his first coffee of the day, but it looked like he was still in bed. Lucy went to the backdoor and pulled it open. A wall of cold air hit her and a small pile of snow fell across the step. It was powdery and soft. This was how Lucy had always imagined Christmas to be. She felt a clutch of excitement in her chest at the crisp beauty of it all.

  There was no food in the cottage but Mary and Darren had told Dad and Lucy to come over to the farmhouse for breakfast at nine o’clock, by which time they would have already been working on the farm for two or three hours, tending to the livestock in the bitterly cold conditions.

  As Dad and Lucy walked the short distance down the lane half an hour later, the snow yielded with a satisfying crunch to their advancing footsteps. In some places it went up to Lucy’s knees, and where the snow had drifted it was deeper still.

  ‘I think we’re going to need skis!’ joked Dad as they walked along, wrapped up in their coats and mittens. ‘There’s no way any cars are going to get up this lane today.’ Lucy frowned to herself. She just had to get to her rendezvous with Rachel Greenwood.

  The farmhouse kitchen was warm and full of the tantalising aroma of frying bacon. Darren was standing over the stove and Bethany and Mary were cupping mugs of tea in their hands to warm their fingers up.

  ‘You’ve got here in the nick of time’ said Darren, frying pan in hand, ‘I’m just about to dish up.’

  Half an hour later the conversation had moved from discussing the sheep and cows to the transport system.

  ‘According to the radio, the local authority are getting their snow ploughs and gritting lorries round all the main roads’ observed Mary.

  ‘What about the country lanes?’ asked Dad.

  ‘Oh they won’t get down lanes like these for days’ replied Darren. ‘They expect farmers like us to look after ourselves.’

  ‘But I wanted to go Christmas shopping in Merwater’ said Lucy forlornly. ‘So did Bethany.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that’ replied Mary brightly. I’ll be running the tractor up the lane after breakfast. Bethany can follow in the Land-Rover with chains on the tyres. We’ll soon have the lane clear again.’ Lucy marvelled gratefully at Mary’s can-do attitude.

  ‘What about you John?’ asked Darren. ‘Are you itching to get into town?’

  ‘Oh I’ve done my Christmas shopping already’ replied Dad. ‘If it’s okay with you I’ll stay at the farm and help out like I did yesterday. After my years chained to my desk it’s a pleasure to do something useful for a change.’ Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. It would have been a disaster if Dad had wanted to come into town too.

  Half an hour later Mary sat in the high cab of the tractor and started its engine. It chugged noisily, sending plumes of exhaust out into the cold sharp air. Bethany sat in the freezing Land Rover but Lucy opted to walk behind until they got to the top of the lane. Darren had bolted some sort of plough to the front of the tractor to shovel snow out of the way as it toiled its way up the lane. Looking around her, Lucy could see rabbit tracks, lolloping across the snow. How could they find grass to eat on a day like this?

  Presently they reached the top of the lane. Mary turned the tractor to go back down the lane and Lucy got into the Land Rover next to Bethany.

  ‘Well Kiddo’ said Bethany now that they were alone, ‘I think we’ve got a bit of a date with destiny.’

  Megan slipped off Jet’s back before they got back to the beach at Old Man’s Cove so that Mum and Dad wouldn’t realise what she’d been doing. She swam the last part of the way back to the
beach. They’d woken up and were playing catch with Bethany. When Megan emerged from the water they told her off for going so far out and talked about the currents and dangerous rip tides, but in the end they let her be and she sat in the sun to warm up and think about what had just happened.

  ‘Was it good then, the swim?’ asked Bethany shyly. Megan smiled and nodded. She wouldn’t complain about her kid sister ever again she thought. How had Jet known about the tunnel into the rock? Did it lead to the Trinity Caves that Owen Davidson had written about in his article all those years ago? As recently as a month ago, Megan would have been able to reach out to Jet with her mind and ask him. Now all she could do was guess. Jet definitely hadn’t known before, or he’d have told her whilst he still could. If it was a tunnel leading to the Trinity Caves, he must found out about it somehow.

  Perhaps thought Megan, it didn’t matter. The most important thing was that now she had an idea about where the caves might be. Even the most determined potholers like Dave and Jane hadn’t been able to figure that out. Megan looked up at tops of the cliffs. Somewhere up there, there had to be a way into the caves.

  ‘Mum, Dad. I fancy going for a walk along the cliff tops for half an hour or so. You don’t mind do you?’ she called to her parents.

  ‘Ooh, can I come too?’ implored Bethany eagerly. Megan looked at her kid sister. She could hardly say no after the help that Bethany had just given her.

  ‘Oh go on then’ she replied.

  Bethany drove very carefully down the coastal road into Merwater, but as she explained to Lucy, the gritter lorries had been out and it was relatively safe on the highway. Dirty snow was piled to each side of the road and Lucy spotted three snowmen on the outskirts of town. Somebody had even built what looked like an igloo in one of the front gardens that they passed. In Merwater itself the Christmas decorations were weighed down by real snow. Lucy half expected to see a sledge with reindeer tied up to a lamppost and Santa emerging from the local newsagent.

  As they got closer, Lucy became more nervous.

  ‘Why do you think that Rachel Greenwood is still here in town?’ she asked. ‘After all, Thelma’s funeral was two days ago. She could easily have gone home to her family by now.’

  ‘Well, she used to live here remember’ replied Bethany. ‘Maybe she was visiting friends or family. Maybe, Bethany thought to herself, she’s waiting here to see you Lucy.

  They parked the car and walked up to the Arts Café. To Lucy’s dismay, the door was firmly locked and on it was pinned a notice ‘Closed due to the weather’.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ asked Lucy disconsolately.

  ‘There she is’ replied Bethany, looking around. Rachel Greenwood stood across the road in a heavy coat with the collar up. She crossed over to greet them.

  ‘I thought we could go to the Anchor since the Arts Café’s closed’ she said. She smiled at Bethany. ‘I can hardly believe you were a child the last time I saw you. Come on.’

  The Anchor was on the other side of the road down some steps. Bethany had to stoop to go through the low crooked doorway and Lucy entered nervously, stamping the snow off her feet and wondering whether the Landlord would tell them that children weren’t allowed in pubs. Despite the flagstones on the floor, the pub was warm and a huge fire had been lit in the hearth. In the summer, the pub’s low ceilings and dark oak beams felt claustrophobic. In the depths of winter it was a cosy retreat from the bitter weather outside.

  Rachel Greenwood offered to buy them drinks and Bethany surprised Lucy by ordering half a pint of bitter. They sat and looked into the glow of the coals as they waited for her to return from the bar.

  ‘This pub can’t have changed much in over a hundred and forty years’ said Rachel Greenwood conversationally, setting down the drinks. ‘Have you heard of Mary Pewsey? I imagine her coming in here as a girl for a jug of ale to carry home to her father.’

  ‘Mary Pewsey?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Oh she’s someone I’ve studied as part of my research’ replied Rachel Greenwood casually. ‘She became quite a well-respected figure in her lifetime. I’ll tell you about her some time if you like.’ Bethany brushed back a few strands of curly blond hair from her face and cleared her throat.

  ‘Rachel. It’s been a long time. But enough of these pleasantries. What is the nature of your interest in my niece?’ Lucy glanced sideways at her aunt. She’d never heard Bethany speak so formally or forcefully before. ‘You’ve been seen standing over Lucy’s bed at the hospital, and then again at Thelma’s funeral. And now you’re inviting her to the Arts Café. Rachel, what’s going on?’ Rachel Greenwood looked at Bethany for a long moment with serious eyes.

  ‘For many years Dolphin-Children such as Mary Penhaligon, Mary Pewsey, your sister Megan and now Lucy have been the subject of my research’ she replied quietly. ‘I am a Reader in Biology at the University, which means I lecture and I carry out research. But I have always been fascinated by local folk lore too. That is part of the reason I started studying Dolphin-Children.’

  ‘You mean you’ve been studying Megan and Lucy?’ asked Bethany incredulously.

  ‘I got to know Megan as you know all those years ago when she was a girl down here on her holidays, and I was an undergraduate. Years later she agreed to help me with my studies, and we worked closely over ten, maybe twelve years.’

  ‘But Mum never mentioned you’ Lucy cut in. Rachel smiled quietly, and Lucy noticed the nest of wrinkles in the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Yes I know. We decided to keep our researches to ourselves. Your father was not exactly … supportive let’s say. But Megan came down to Cornwall once or twice a year and was the subject of tests I carried out at the lab.’

  ‘But tests on what?’ asked Lucy, increasingly confused.

  ‘Well, tests on Megan’s ability to communicate with dolphins, telepathically you might say. Most recently we were using MRI scans to analyse the activity in her brain when she was projecting out with her mind.’

  ‘You mean before she died?’ asked Lucy, her voice trembling slightly. Rachel nodded. ‘Mum never told me any of this. What was the name of her dolphin?’

  ‘Your mother called him Jet’ Rachel replied. ‘She allowed me to swim with him once or twice. He was such a beautiful creature...’

  ‘Is Jet dead now?’ asked Lucy. Rachel nodded again.

  ‘I suppose dolphins don’t live as long as humans…’ murmured Bethany. Rachel turned her gaze to Bethany, as though surprised that she had not grasped some important and obvious fact.

  ‘And you’re studying me now?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Not as such’ replied Rachel. ‘It’s true I came to see you in the hospital when you were in your coma. Megan was my good friend. I was devastated when she died. I couldn’t help but come and see you when I knew you’d been hurt. Your father saw me but there was no reason why he should recognise me as we’d never actually met.’

  ‘But how did you know?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘I also knew Thelma Merryweather. Thelma told me a good deal about local folklore, and people like her sister who also had the gift, though she grew out of it, of course. It was Thelma who told me all about your accident Lucy. She also told me about your own experiences with dolphins. And now poor Thelma is dead.’

  ‘It was Thelma who told Dad that I’d grow out of my gift … that I’d never see Spirit again’ replied Lucy, her voice coloured with emotion. ‘Is that what you think?’ Rachel looked at her quietly for a long moment.

  ‘Listen Lucy. Your mother paid a high price for her gift. Your father loves you and I believe he wants to save you from all that. He does have your best interests at heart you know. All things must pass.’

  ‘But you posted me the book. You wanted me to find out more!’

  ‘It’s true I did’ replied Rachel. ‘But now I think I was wrong. I think I can guess why you were unconscious for so long at the hospital. Perhaps that last time should be your last goodbye to Spirit.’

  ‘But how
did Mum do it? How did Mum keep her gift as a grown up when Thelma says everyone else loses it?’ Rachel Greenwood shook her head slowly.

  ‘I cannot explain it with science’ she replied cautiously.

  ‘But you know?’

  ‘I believe I have an idea’ Rachel answered.

  ‘Then tell me then!’ Lucy implored her. Rachel shook her head again.

  ‘I don’t think I should’ she answered quietly. ‘I don’t think your father would want me to. Besides, anything I can tell you will only give you half the answer.’

  ‘Then why ask me here today?’ demanded Lucy angrily.

  ‘I…I wanted to tell you…’ replied Rachel falteringly, ‘that I was the last person to see Megan alive and that when I did she told me how much she loved you… I wanted to tell you that.’ Lucy felt completely shocked.

  ‘You were the last person to see Mum alive?’ she asked. ‘Before her car accident?’

  ‘Car accident?’ Rachel asked, evidently thrown for a moment by the comment.

  ‘Yes the car accident that killed Megan’ Bethany replied. Rachel frowned.

  ‘Is that what…?’ A look of comprehension broke across her face. ‘I see. Your father told you that…’ Rachel stopped. Bethany could sense immediately that something was wrong. Rachel had no idea at all about the car accident, yet she had just said that she was the last person to see Megan alive. Rachel looked at her watch uneasily.

  ‘Look, maybe this was a mistake. I really should be going. I have to get back home to Exeter.’

  ‘What really happened to Mum?’ demanded Lucy. Her heart was racing and she felt almost dizzy with anxiety. Rachel looked down into her lap, gathering her thoughts.