Betina Krahn (47 page)

I HOPE YOU
enjoyed Celeste and Titus and the Atlantean Society.

These characters and this story will always be special to me because in the course of researching it, I went to the Florida Keys and “swam with dolphins” myself. My intention was to gain firsthand information about what dolphins are like and what it is like to be in the water with dolphins. I had imagined swimming freely and joyfully with these wonderful sentient creatures … communing mystically … absorbing impressions and ideas for Celeste’s point of view. Instead, I found myself stuck squarely in Titus’s wary and unwilling mind-set … unnerved by how big the creatures are up close … reluctantly being towed around a lagoon by two very patient dolphins named Sherry and Thunder.

I did eventually relax, however, and I have wonderful photos to prove it. One small step for writerly authenticity, one giant step for a wary writer.

My heartfelt thanks to Matthew and Linda Stone, of the Deep Six Dive Shop in Stuart, Florida, whose patience in giving me scuba instruction and in arranging for my dolphin foray went above and beyond the call of familial duty. Much thanks also to my editor, Wendy McCurdy, and my sister, Sharon Stone, for their encouragement and assistance.

Celeste’s experiences with her dolphins are based solidly on current-day understandings of dolphins and on human-dolphin experiences. But that is not to say that many of these characteristics and behaviors could not have been observed earlier. Over the long history of humankind’s adventuring on and in the sea, dolphins have occasionally been curious enough about humans to seek us out. “Friendly dolphins” have appeared in bays and coves in virtually all areas of the world—England, New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Costa Rica, Spain, France, Norway, South Africa, Italy, Ireland, and the Bahamas—to investigate and play with the human residents of the nearby land.

In England in the early 1800’s, people flocked to the seashore to see a friendly dolphin dubbed Gabriel, who played with children, accepted food from humans, and splashed and played with swimmers. Since the 1950’s there have been at least thirty-five documented cases of friendly dolphins, worldwide. Who knows how many more have gone unreported, except in local lore? Thus, it is not beyond imagining that a young woman with a great love for the sea might make friends with such a dolphin, or even several such dolphins, and study them.

In two areas, however, I did take a bit of license. Dolphins in captivity work for food rewards much of the time. For the purposes of the book, I decided against having Celeste carry a bait bucket wherever she went. Secondly, while Titus thought of the dolphins of Pevensey Bay as a family, dolphin groups are loosely structured and often-changing. Such groups are primarily females and juveniles or boisterous groups of “adolescent” dolphins. In the wild, many male dolphins lead fairly solitary lives, temporarily linking up with group-living females for reproductive purposes and social interaction.

Strangely, the Atlantean Society’s success in “calling the dolphins” has a real-life counterpart. Arthur Grimble reported in his book
A Pattern of Islands
that the Pacific islanders of what is now Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands)
have people among them who reportedly can “call” the dolphins. These hereditary “dolphin callers” enter into a dreamlike state where, the story goes, their spirits leave their bodies and seek out dolphins. In a ceremony, which Grimble once witnessed and found quite disturbing, the dolphin dreamer leads the entranced dolphins to strand themselves,
en masse
, on the beach. So it is not unthinkable that the Atlanteans might have found the right combination of sound and “spirit” to call dolphins to the cove of Ashton House … to a more humane end.

And one more bit of information. Like so much of our twentieth-century culture, the ecological movement that burst onto the American scene in 1970 had its roots in the conservancy movement in Victorian England. The “natural world” became a major focus of interest for all segments of society, and for the first time, the delicate ecological relationships of living things to their environment were studied and understood in a larger scientific framework.

And as to what happened to Celeste and Titus and their research …

One year later, the racket of hammers and saws and the noise of workmen filled Ashton House. With the money from Celeste’s book and Titus’s help, the roof of the old house was being replaced and the floors were being reinforced. Celeste and Lady Sophia stood in the front court, discussing the work with the foreman, when Titus came out of the house with his hands over his ears and a look of exasperation on his face.

“I can’t get a thing done,” he declared. “I can’t hear myself think.”

“Well, after all, it was
your
idea to replace the roof and do all the inside work at once,” Celeste said, but with a sympathetic smile.

“Sheer lunacy on my part,” he grumbled. “Must be the salt air. Seeps into my brain and makes me say and do things that don’t make the slightest sense.”

“I’ve never met a person who makes more sense than you
do.” She slipped her arm through his and drew him toward the garden. “You just need a change of pace. Come with me.

“But we still have to prepare that talk for the Wiltshire Conservancy Society,” Titus protested. “And there is a small mountain of correspondence, and our first student will be arriving in three weeks. With the state of the house, I’m not certain we’ll even have a bed for the fel—”

“Titus.” She pressed her fingers against his lips to halt him and dragged him to a seat on the garden bench.

“Who knew that being a mermaid’s husband would prove to be so much work?” he said, as she positioned herself behind him and kneaded his shoulders and neck until he began to relax.

She laughed and her eyes twinkled. “If you think keeping up with a mermaid is hard, however are you going to cope with a ‘merbaby’?”

He straightened, then whirled on the bench to stare at her.

“A baby?”

She smiled and nodded, and he joyfully wrapped both arms around her and held her tight. Moments later she pulled back from his embrace and suggested going for a swim to celebrate. He was more than willing …

“But you have to promise you won’t tell Prospero for a while.” With a wry grin, he placed a hand on her midsection. “The big oaf will probably insist we name it after him.”

A lot had happened in the last year. Together, Celeste and Titus had begun a conservancy newsletter, compiling news, ideas, and discussion of conservation issues and sending it to all of the nature-conservation societies in England. Titus elected to give up his chair in ichthyology, but to keep his position on the faculty of Cardinal College. He intended to teach only selected terms, so that he might collaborate with Celeste to create a curriculum to help carefully screened students gain a broader understanding of the world under the sea.

In addition, they had begun to help citizens in several communities organize conservancy societies of their own. They traveled and appeared together, speaking to groups and helping local people contact whalers, fishermen, land owners, and political figures to lobby for support for better stewardship of the earth’s resources, especially the marine mammals.

P. T. Bentley, as it happened, had taken Celeste’s advice and imported a number of his fellow countrymen and American animals to produce a “Wild West show.” His buffaloes, armadillos, and longhorn cattle had been the curiosity of London for a time, and recently word had drifted back across the Channel that they were an even larger success in Paris. It reassured Celeste to know he was far away and apparently no longer interested in dolphins.

The Atlantean Society continued to meet and to study the old artifacts and perform an occasional ritual. But more and more, their focus had shifted to enjoying the dolphins and helping Celeste and Titus with their conservation activities. It was Celeste’s and Titus’s task, the society had decided, to protect dolphins and the knowledge of dolphins until the world was ready for the lessons the marvelous creatures would bring … about the connectedness of all nature and the interdependence of all living things.

I
T IS MY THOUGHT
that a long time in the future … say, a hundred and fifteen years or so … a pair of dolphin researchers, on their honeymoon in the Florida Keys would stop for a cappuccino at a quaint little bookstore on Taverner Key. While he chats with the proprietor and waits for the coffee, she sorts through a box of old books that the proprietor says were just purchased from an estate sale. At the side of the box is a worn blue-green volume with a faded dolphin embossed on the front. She leafs through it and her eyes widen at what she sees.

“Look at this, sweetheart,” She brings it back to her new husband. “Published in
1884
. Apparently there was a woman in England who swam with dolphins and wrote a book about it.”

And the proprietor gives it to them as a wedding present.

Betina Krahn
lives in Minnesota with her two sons and a feisty salt-and-pepper schnauzer. With a degree in biology and a graduate degree in counseling, she has worked in teaching, personnel management, and mental health. She had a mercifully brief stint as a boys’ soccer coach, makes terrific lasagna, routinely kills houseplants, and is incurably optimistic about the human race. She believes the world needs a bit more truth, a lot more justice, and a whole lot more love and laughter. And she attributes her outlook to having married an unflinching optimist and to two great-grandmothers actually named Pollyanna.