Dolphin Child (2 page)

‘
Do you go out on the sea much Mary?’ she asked.

‘
Oh the sea’s a beauty all right, but she doesn’t like me much’
laughed Mary. ‘I go as green as this grass here when I’m on a
boat’, she said kicking a tuft to prove the point. ‘I prefer to
have my feet on firm ground. But then I’m not actually from round
here you know’ she went on, ‘I’m a city girl that ran away to the
country. My Darren’s the local boy and he knows all about the tales
of the fisher folk of Merwater. You should ask him
sometime.’

When they got back Mary went through to her office to do some
paperwork and Lucy strolled over to the studio to find
Bethany.

‘
You ready to hit town?’ asked her aunt. She’d been cleaning
her brushes in turpentine and was wiping them dry with a cloth.
Lucy hated the smell and pulled a bit of a face. ‘Oh I know these
turps do smell don’t they?’ Bethany added sympathetically, ‘let’s
get on the road.’

They climbed into Bethany’s Land Rover. It was an old, rusty
and uncomfortable vehicle and had a bewildering number of gears.
Until last week Bethany had had to prevent the exhaust from falling
off by tying it on with a pair of old stockings. She grumbled about
how much it was costing her in the garage but Lucy knew that
Bethany loved the old car really.

Bethany would have preferred a studio overlooking the sea, but
places with a sea-view were far too expensive to rent. Her studio
on the farm was a bit basic and icy in the middle of winter, but it
wasn’t far from the sea and Bethany liked it there. She and Mary
were now firm friends. They drove up the hedge-lined track that
Lucy had free-wheeled down on her bike barely an hour and a half
before.

Up at the top of the lane, the main road was busy. It was high
season now and there were plenty of tourists around at the moment.
They soon got stuck behind a car pulling a caravan, but luckily it
turned off down the road leading to a campsite just before
Merwater.

Merwater had originally been a fishing village, with a small
harbour built at the base of a steep hill that reared up from the
sea. Its fishing cottages had mostly been bought up by rich city
types as second homes and its shops turned into trendy cafes,
boutiques and gift stores. There were only a few fishing boats left
now and there were more boats taking tourists on tours of the
harbour.

On a winter’s day when there were no sight-seers around, the
place looked half dead. Most of the local people were forced to
live in the new part of town built over the ridge of the hill where
houses were more affordable. They drove slowly down the main road
of the town and pulled into the small car park just behind the
harbour. They were lucky to find a parking space.

Lucy caught sight of the bus stop. A few months before she’d
run away from Dad and turned up here on the bus unannounced at the
beginning of half term. She hadn’t even had Bethany’s address and
it had only been with luck that she’d found her aunt at all. Her
life hadn’t quite been the same since. In a way it seemed ages ago
now, but in another sense it was as though she’d only just arrived
on the bus.

Bethany said she needed to pop into one of the local galleries
on the High Street. They’d sold one of her pictures and she was
going to pick up the cheque and take it straight to the bank. Then
she had some chores to do before she went to the grocers to get
some food.

‘
It’ll be pretty boring for you though. Maybe you’d rather hang
out by the harbour instead. I’ll catch up with you here in say
forty five minutes?’ She set off.

The sun was high in the sky now. It was going to be a hot day.
Lucy idly kicked a pebble and looked out at the sea. If only she
were in the cold salty water again, not just looking at it. It was
great here in Cornwall, but sometimes Lucy wished her best friend
Amy was here with her too. Lucy had lots to tell her and you could
only fit so much onto a postcard. She hadn’t really met any other
kids of her own age down here and the children of Bethany’s friends
were all too young for her to really get on with.

Lucy walked over to the sea wall, just to the left of the
small harbour. The tide was out now and she thought she might spot
a crab or two scuttling along over the rocks below. She could hear
the noise of chatter and as she looked over the sea wall she saw a
group of children on the rocks below, messing around at the edge of
the sea. Lucy felt shy but she kept looking. There was a group of
about eight girls and boys. Some were her age and one or two were
much younger. Probably someone’s brother or sister she thought,
hanging around with the big kids.

As she looked on, trying not to seem conspicuous, she realised
the atmosphere amongst the group of children was turning ugly. It
seemed that a couple of the older children were picking on a thin,
younger boy with curly hair. With a start, Lucy realised that she
recognised him. It was the boy she had seen running away from her
up the path from Old Man’s Cove earlier that morning. She thought
that he had been a tourist from one of the nearby holiday cottages.
Yet here he was in what looked like a group of local
kids.

Lucy could hear one of the girls calling ‘Liar!’ at the boy
and then another kid threw a slimy length of seaweed at him. It
caught him with a wet slap across the face. She could see that the
boy was upset and out of his depth amongst the group of aggressive
children. His face turned red and Lucy thought he was going to
start to cry. She felt anxious. The boy with the curly hair started
moving away from the group as the children continued calling him
names. Lucy had to crane over the sea wall to see where he was
going. Another kid threw a wet length of seaweed at him and it
stuck to the back of his head. The children laughed.

Lucy began to feel angry. She hated bullying. She had a strong
sense of justice and simply could not just stand there and watch it
happen. She called out but none of the children seemed to notice
her. It looked like they were starting to chase the boy. She had to
get down there. She glanced over the edge of the sea wall. There
was a rusty old iron ladder fixed into the stones of the wall
leading down to the stony beach below. Lucy straddled the wall and
clambered down the ladder quickly.

Most of the children were still milling around but the boy
with curly hair and a couple of the older kids seemed to have
disappeared. Lucy suddenly felt shy again now she was near the
group but strode across towards them anyway. A couple of the kids
were shouting something and she turned to look at the direction
they were shouting towards. To her surprise there was what looked
like the opening to a tunnel in the sea wall which led back into
the town. What seemed like a stream was trickling out of it over
the rocks and into the sea. She guessed that the kids had
disappeared into the tunnel and made her way quickly to the
opening. She peered up into the tunnel’s dark mouth
nervously.

The tunnel ran a short way under a building and then opened up
into the light again. The stream tumbled down over boulders and
stones whilst old stone walls were built up on each side. Buildings
lined the stream on each side at the top of the stone walls. Lucy
could see the kids chasing the boy up the stream, jumping from rock
to rock to avoid getting their feet wet. Lucy made her way after
them, gingerly at first, trying to catch up and curious to know
where they were going. They were still yelling insults at the boy
who was running fast up the stream. He wasn’t bothering about
trying to keep his feet dry and was just running through the water,
his trainers sodden with water. The other two kids were more
careful and so was Lucy. Up ahead the stream went under the High
Street and she could hear the rumble of traffic and see one or two
people walking past at pavement level overhead and glancing down at
them curiously.

Lucy kept going under the road. On the other side in the
daylight again, she could see that the stream went up sharply,
following the line of the hill. Then on the right there was a
narrow channel where a smaller stream joined the main one. She
paused. The two older kids had continued up along the main channel
and disappeared around a bend, shouting as they went. Lucy had a
feeling that the boy with curly hair might have slipped away up the
smaller stream to shake them off. She decided to give it a
go.

The stone walls built up on each side of the smaller channel
got very narrow really quickly, barely wider than her shoulders.
The stones Lucy was walking over were also very slippery, with
green algae and slime growing over them. Fortunately the stream
here was barely a trickle and so her feet did not get wet. She
glanced up. There were no buildings above them now and grass was
growing over the edge of each side of the walls. The stream and
walls curved round to the left and Lucy thought she could hear the
boy ahead of her, though she wasn’t sure. Suddenly a stone hurtled
past her head, banging noisily into the water at her
feet.

‘
Go away and leave me alone!’ the boy shouted down at her. Lucy
looked up and could see him standing on the edge of the walled
stream above her, with another stone held threateningly in his
clenched fist.

‘
It’s all right’ called Lucy quickly. ‘I’m not with them.’ The
boy lowered his fist and let the stone drop. She could see that he
had recognised her.

‘
What are you doing here?’ he asked warily.

‘
I didn’t want those kids to get you’ Lucy replied. ‘What was
that all about anyway?’ She could see now where a stone wall on the
left had tumbled down and she clambered up a steep grass bank to
where the boy was standing. She was out of breath and sat down on
the edge of the wall next to him, panting slightly.

The boy didn’t answer but stared at her directly.

‘
You’re a Dolphin-Child’ he said after a long pause. It was
more a statement than a question. Lucy was nonplussed. She hadn’t
expected him to say that. She’d never heard the term before and she
could only guess what he meant by it.

‘
What’s it to you anyway?’ she replied guardedly.

‘
I saw you this morning. You were swimming with two dolphins.
Only a Dolphin-Child can swim with them the way you
did.’

‘
What about you then? Are you one too?’ Lucy half hoped he was,
but she didn’t even know what a Dolphin-Child was supposed to be
though, not really.

‘
No, well, I mean….’ He became unsure of himself. ‘I don’t
know.’

‘
Do you dream about them?’ Lucy asked.

‘
Yes, yes I do’ he replied hesitantly.

Chapter Two

It was a bright calm day. Sunlight sparkled on the surface of
the windless sea. Spirit broke the surface of the water to breath
through his air hole and could see that the sun had almost reached
its highest point in the sky. He sliced back through the low waves
and continued to swim just below the surface.

He was alone, returning from a pod of dolphins that lived
beyond the islands to the south. Spirit felt a sense of
independence and freedom at being away from the other members of
his own pod for a while. A few moons ago, he had left the pod for
his own coming of age swim in the same way that his best friend
Dancer had a year before that. Unlike Dancer though, he had stolen
away in the middle of the night because Storm, the oldest dolphin
in their pod, had forbidden him from going. He’d got into trouble
and he knew that he was lucky to be alive and well today. Spirit
had got trapped in a loop of steel cable from a discarded sea buoy
and had thought that he was going to die there. He could never have
imagined how he would end up being saved. The wounds where the
steel cable had cut into his tail had healed now, but he would
carry the scars for the rest of his life.

Spirit used the be the smallest dolphin in the pod, but he was
growing fast and soon he’d be bigger than Dancer he reckoned,
though she joked that he’d have to catch himself a few more herring
before that happened. Spirit had a small star-like mark on his
chest and it was that identifying sign which Storm had said first
hinted to them that he was in some way special and out of the
ordinary. Spirit felt pretty normal really, but some extraordinary
things had happened to him over the last few months and he knew
that his life would never be the same again.

Since then Spirit had learned much more about the lore of the
sea and was confident to swim alone, even if it was always safer
with the rest of the pod. Spirit was careful to use his ability to
echo-locate using clicking and monitor what was in the sea around
him. He didn’t want killer whales to ambush him like they had done
once before when he was with Storm. Spirit like all dolphins was
able to emit high-pitched clicks from his head without even opening
his mouth. When water visibility was poor, which was often the
case, the high-pitched clicks would bounce off any fish or rocks in
the water and return to him, enabling him to construct a mental
picture of what was in front of him, even when he could not
actually see with his eyes. This echo-location was a valuable tool
and he had learned to rely on it much more over the past few
months.

Spirit listened as he swam. Across the vast expanse of ocean,
he could hear whales calling to each other in the far distance,
their eerie and haunting songs travelling tens of miles between the
great mammals of the deep. Spirit could not yet hear the whistles
and clicks of his own pod, but he knew that he soon would. His pod
used to live much closer to islands but now, though they never
stayed in one part of the sea for too long, they had moved nearer
to the mainland and that suited Spirit well.