Dolphin Child (13 page)

‘
Hey, leave him alone!’ Lucy called angrily. The two boys
either didn’t hear her or didn’t take any notice. Quickly she found
the rusted iron ladder fixed to the side of the wall and climbed
down onto the beach. She ran across to them.

‘
I said leave him alone!’ she yelled, this time trying to pull
one of the boys away, so that Paul could run away. The thick sludge
squelched up over her sandals and onto her feet. It felt horrible.
One of the boys turned to face Lucy.

‘
Ooooh’ he taunted, ‘Paulie’s got a girlfriend!’ The other boy
sniggered. Lucy’s heart was thudding in her chest now. She scooped
up a handful of foul-smelling sludge herself now and made as if to
fling it at them.

‘
You want it too then?’ Lucy said, referring to the sludge. The
boy leered at her, but started backing off.

‘
Come on’ he said to the other boy, ‘let’s leave Paulie to his
girlie. They’re mud for each other.’ They laughed again at their
weak joke and swaggered off. Lucy dropped the sludge and looked at
Paul. They’d managed to splatter sludge down the back of his
tee-shirt, in his hair and over his face.

‘
You look terrible’ Lucy told Paul as he straightened up. ‘Come
on, let’s clean ourselves up. Paul didn’t say anything as they
walked back to where the pebbles edged directly onto the sea. Lucy
had muddy feet and one muddy hand. They could soon be washed clean
in the sea though. For Paul it wasn’t so easy. He resolved the
problem by dunking himself in the clean salt water so that the
sludge washed off him.

Lucy looked at him. He was wearing shorts and a tee-shirt and
so although his clothes were now soaked in salt water and his hair
was dripping wet, at least the worst of the stinking wet mud had
washed off him. It was sunny and warm, thought Lucy. He’d dry out.
Paul avoided her gaze though and seemed embarrassed and upset. She
wanted to know why they’d picked on him, but in her heart she knew
there was probably no reason at all. They didn’t need an excuse to
make his life miserable. He was probably too easy and convenient a
victim.

Instead of approaching the subject directly, Lucy thought
she’d find out if there was anyone who would stick up for
Paul.

‘
You got any brothers or sisters then?’ she asked.

‘
I got a sister, but she’s only five’ he replied. So there was
no older brother or sister to help him she thought.

‘
What’s your dad like?’

‘
Can’t remember. Haven’t seen him for a long time’ Paul
replied.

‘
Who’s your best friend?’ she asked.

‘
He moved to Bristol at Easter.’

‘
Who else then?’

‘
No one. You know, they all have a go at me’ he said. If he was
at school the teachers should stop the bullying Lucy thought. But
it was the summer holidays now and maybe there was no one he could
turn to. No wonder Paul preferred to go off on his bike into the
countryside alone.

‘
How come they’ve all got it in for you?’ asked Lucy. Paul
shrugged.

‘
Dunno’ he said.

‘
Who are those kids anyway?’ she asked instead.

‘
They’re Baz and Mike’ he replied. ‘They live round the corner
from me. Think they own the place. They don’t know nothing
though.’

There was a big rock just under the sea wall. Lucy gestured
towards it.

‘
Let’s go sit over there till you dry out a bit’ she said. Paul
was hardly chatty, but neither was he keen to get away from her. He
followed her over to the rock and sat down. They perched there for
a while in silence, looking out at the sea. A couple of gulls
strutted stiff-legged across the rocks a few metres away. A bit
further along a small wader bird was probing the sludge with its
long slender beak.

‘
You always lived here?’ she asked.

‘
Yeah. Us Treddinicks have lived round these parts for just
about forever’ he replied with a hint of pride.

‘
What does your mum do?’ Lucy asked as much for something to
say as anything else.

‘
She says it’s too hard to get a job, what with one thing and
another. She’s not worked for a year or two. She gets down. That
doesn’t help.’

‘
What’s your mum got against me then?’ Lucy was afraid of the
answer, but still needed to know. Paul shrugged.

‘
She doesn’t like you coz you’re a Dolphin-Child. You know,
like you’ve got a special thing with them. I told her about seeing
you at Old Man’s Cove. She says that from way back the Treddinick’s
don’t hold with dolphins and all that. She says we’ve been hurt
once already and that it’s bad and dangerous. She says never
again.’ Lucy could not understand how anyone could think that a
dolphin could be dangerous, but then she remembered the story of
Susan Penhaligon.

‘
What do you think then?’ asked Lucy shyly. Paul
paused.

‘
I don’t know. You seem okay to me’ he replied eventually. He
looked her in the eye. Like, I don’t think you’re bad. And…’ Paul
broke off again. He seemed to want to say something more, but
appeared to be battling with conflicting feelings which he could
not put into words.

‘
Yes?’

‘
Well. Like I said. I’ve seen one in that lake, all trapped and
sad looking. It saw me. I… Well, I can’t get its eyes out of my
head. No one believes me, but it’s true.’

‘
I believe you’ replied Lucy. ‘You can take me there’ she
exclaimed, the thought suddenly striking her. ‘We can do something
together.’ Paul seemed to half shake his head and shrink back into
himself.

‘
I don’t know. You’ve got dolphins. You’ve got everything. Why
do you want my one too?’

‘
So we can help her of course!’ Lucy didn’t have any idea how
they might help, or even why she thought the dolphin was a she. It
just came out before she thought about it. Paul stared at the
ground.

‘
My Mum says we Treddinicks don’t hold with anything to do with
dolphins and all that. Never have. But since I saw that dolphin,
well I…’ Paul trailed off again. Lucy felt she knew what he meant
though. He couldn’t turn his back on the dolphin, not now that he’d
seen her.

‘
Let me help you help that dolphin’ she urged him, trying to
press home her point. Paul just gave another half shake of his head
though. It seemed as though he wanted to confide in her, but was
mistrustful at the same time.

‘
You’ll take her away from me’ he replied. ‘You’ll go away and
I’ll be on my own again with nothing.’ Lucy didn’t know what to
say. She couldn’t say that she wouldn’t. If they could save that
dolphin, it might swim off and away from Paul forever.

‘
But you don’t want to leave that dolphin trapped in that
lagoon do you?’ He shook his head more firmly now.

‘
No, no I don’t’ he said. He looked out across the mud towards
the sea, as though he was expecting to see a dolphin appear in
front of him there and then. The tide was coming in now and the mud
was quickly disappearing under the incoming sea. Paul’s clothes
were still heavy with the salty water and he smelt slightly as the
sun slowly dried him.

‘
What if I did?’ he asked after a moment. Lucy didn’t quite
understand.

‘
What if you did what?’

‘
What if I showed you the lake with the dolphin in it?’ She
still didn’t follow what he meant. ‘Well, could I meet your
dolphin, like?’ Finally Lucy realised what he was getting
at.

‘
Oh, I see!’ she exclaimed. ‘You want to meet Spirit. Well, yes
sure. Why not?’ she said hesitantly.

‘
Let me see him first’ Paul said quietly. It was half a demand
and half a plea. ‘Let me meet your dolphin first and then I’ll take
you to the lagoon.’

Chapter Eight:

Spirit was troubled by what Sunlight had told him about her
pod and the human children that had died in the sea so many years
ago. What he still needed to know was; what was the point of his
gift at all? He thought that maybe he had discovered the answer
when he’d been able to reach out to Lucy and help the little girl
that was stranded on the rock. Now he wasn’t so sure. Susan
Penhaligon had led those other children out to their deaths. Her
Child-Seer Midnight had not been able to save their
lives.

He wondered whether children really could turn into dolphins.
A whole pod believed that it actually had happened. The dolphins of
his pod and others in the area though did not. Spirit himself would
ordinarily be equally sceptical. However it was already
inexplicable and magical that he could communicate with Lucy, a
human that lived far away on the land. How could that be? And if
that was possible, why couldn’t children turn into dolphins? Spirit
didn’t know what to believe.

It had been fun to visit the pod near the islands. Dancer in
particular had played with two other young dolphins there called
Twister and Singer. When they left Twister said that he hoped that
he would see Dancer again soon and Spirit had been amused to see
how she was both pleased and embarrassed by the attention he gave
her. He was happy for his friend and she chatted excitedly as they
swam back to their own pod. Spirit only half paid attention to what
Dancer was saying though and was lost in his own
thoughts.

What should he say to Lucy? She had asked him if he knew about
any stories of human children turning into dolphins. Now he knew
that there were indeed such stories, but would it disturb Lucy as
it had done him if he told her? Then again, if he kept secrets from
her, it would weaken the bond between them. He tried to imagine
Lucy now, in a little box somewhere, looking out of one of those
small translucent squares they called windows onto the greenness
beyond. Or maybe all she could see were those grey little boxes? He
thought about Susan Penhaligon again, leading those children out
into the stormy sea. When he did so, Lucy’s face came irresistibly
into his mind. Was that girl Susan all those years ago like Lucy?
Yet he could not believe that Lucy would ever do such a thing. What
was it that Storm sometimes said? ‘If we do not learn from the
past, we never learn at all.’ It was far better that he share what
Sunlight had told him so that they might both learn from
it.

As they swam back Dancer and Spirit occasionally broke the
surface of the water, taking in the view of the world above the
waves as they did so. The sun seemed particularly large today and
was tinged with orange and red as it made its slow descent towards
the horizon. Sunlight sparkled off the gentle lapping waves,
dazzling them as they made their steady progress back to their home
pod. When he was younger, Star-Gazer had told him that she thought
that the sun was like a big ball of fire in the sky and that it was
their world that went around the sun, and not the sun that went
around them.

Moonlight had said that it was a ridiculous idea. He said that
it was a disc of fire that the dolphins at the edge of the world in
the East set aflame every morning and then flung up into the sky.
He said that when it came down again it would fizzle out in the sea
and the world would turn dark again for another night.

Star-Gazer told Spirit that there was no edge to the world and
that if you swam far enough in any particular direction, then
providing there was no land in the way, you would eventually come
back to the same spot. She asked how dolphins could set anything
aflame, as they lived in water and did not have the power of fire.
Moonlight tried to stick up for his theory, saying that perhaps it
was humans or some other creature that set the disc alight every
morning, but that that was definitely what happened.

Another time when Spirit was young, Chaser tried telling him
that the world is contained in a huge shell and that every night
the lid of the shell simply closes. The stars you can see are
nothing more than pricks of light that penetrate through the
ancient shell where it has worn thin. Then Star-Gazer asked why you
could not see the edge of the shell as it came down. She said that
the world went dark when the Sun disappeared over the horizon and
that if Chaser’s theory was right, the Sun would always stay in the
same place in the sky.

It was Star-Gazer that pointed out to him that when the Moon
is at it’s fullest, the tides are at their highest. She spent many
hours trying to understand the power that the Moon exerted over the
waters of the seas, but she never could make sense of it. ‘It’s as
if the Moon was pulling the sea’ she would say, ‘but how can that
be?’ Even Moonlight, despite his name, was unable to offer an
answer to that question.

There was much that dolphins did not understand. Spirit had
asked once whether humans knew more than they did. Storm said that
humans might know more about certain things than dolphins, but that
they understood much less. He said that it was their lack of
understanding of the harmony of all living things that made them so
dangerous. Occasionally he wondered whether it was humans that had
caused his mother Star-Gazer to be taken from him. Perhaps he would
never know for certain.

Spirit and Dancer reached their own pod just as the Sun
descended into the west, glad to play awhile before
resting.

‘
Paul, have you tidied up your room yet?’ Mrs Treddinick called
upstairs.