Dolphin Child (21 page)

After a minute or so, he pressed on through the wood, dodging
the imaginary guards.

At the edge of the pine wood was a huge tangled wall of
rhododendron bushes that had spent the last hundred years or more
growing to enormous proportions.Paul dived in amongst the
rhododendron branches and started climbing up through them until he
was two or three meters above the ground. Paul pulled himself up
until he was almost at the top of great sprawling rhododendrons. In
the distance to the left he could see the roof of the house at the
end of the lake.

The lagoon was as broad as two football pitches and four times
as long. To his left it tapered to the point where the house stood,
its grey stone walls set off by the redness of the roof tiles
above. On the other side of the lagoon were low reed beds where
Paul guessed that wading birds probably nested. Beyond that was
another wood rising up a hill. To his right though was a sort of
close-linked fence that rose to about a meter above the surface of
the water. The submerged part of the metal fencing let the tidal
waters through but cut it off from the river estuary beyond. In
truth the lagoon was simply an inlet from the estuary that had a
metal fence stretched across it so that no boat, or indeed any fish
longer than a hand could get through.

The estuary itself was sheltered from the winds and the waves
of the open sea, but was still subject to the tides that flowed in
and out. Hills rose up on the other side and gave it a sheltered
aspect. Its water was brackish and muddy.

Paul wondered why there was a fence across the inlet at all.
He glanced back at the big house. It was completely
quiet.

Paul sat on the bank of the inlet and trailed one hand in the
water. Barely without him having noticed, clouds had obscured the
sun and now light rain played upon the surface of the water and the
musty smell of warm raindrops rose up from the ground. It wasn’t
raining heavily enough to make him wet, but Paul idly started
wondering whether dolphins minded the rain even though they were in
the water anyway. He scanned the surface of the lagoon for any sign
of the dorsal fin of a dolphin, but he could not see any. He patted
the surface of the water to attract its attention.

‘
Come on dolphin!’ he called quietly. ‘Come here!’ No dolphin
came. It was a big enough lake for him to have difficulty spotting
anything that might have swum there, so it did not surprise him
that he could not really see anything. It could easily have been
hiding behind some reeds or an overhanging bush.

Sitting there and looking at an empty lake was no comparison
to swimming with Spirit the day before. Paul began to imagine what
it would be like if the dolphin actually did come up to him now,
poking its nose out of the water at him and clicking in greeting.
He’d stare long and deep into its eyes and then he’d be able to
understand what the dolphin’s clicks and whistles meant, he
thought. Then he’d be able to communicate with it, just like Lucy
could with Spirit. He’d be a Dolphin-Child, the same as that girl
Susan Penhaligon so many years before.

Paul visualised his own legs and arms becoming flukes and
flippers, until he too was a smooth graceful dolphin slicing
through the waves. He pictured the children who swam out into the
sea with Susan Penhaligon all becoming dolphins as well before
swimming off to a new life of freedom and happiness. Paul wished
that he could shed all his anguish and unhappiness like a skin and
swim off to adventures under the waves like them.

Still there was no sign of the dolphin. Instead of calling, he
tried sending it a message with his mind. He strained his thoughts
to transmit the message ‘I am your friend. Please come to me’, but
there was no response whatsoever. In truth he had no idea how you
could send a telepathic message to the mind of a
dolphin.

The rain shower had stopped now and the surface of the water
looked as still and unbroken as before. There was the smell of damp
dust in the air. Paul wondered if he could catch a fish to tempt
the dolphin to come over to him. He looked down into the water
immediately in front of him. Something moved in the murk and he
splashed his hand in noisily, hoping to scoop up whatever it was.
His hand came up wet but empty. Catching a fish would be an
impossible task.

Just then a figure emerged from the big house at the end of
the inlet. Paul immediately tensed himself and hunched down so that
he was hidden behind a clump of nettles growing at the waters edge.
He peered carefully round them to see what the figure was
doing.

The figure was thin and moved with slow, deliberate movements.
He couldn’t see quite well enough to decide whether it was a man or
a woman. The figure walked around the side of the house and Paul
took the opportunity to move along up the bank towards the house to
get a better view, ducking low as he did so. As he did so he
tripped over a root and sprawled headlong into another clump of
nettles. He protected his face but his fore-arms were badly stung.
Fortunately some dock-leaves were growing nearby and he grabbed a
couple to rub on his arm as he crept up to get a better view of the
house.

The figure came round the side of the house again and Paul
crouched down. To his surprise it was a woman. She looked old he
decided and she had gray hair. She was carrying a bucket and made
her way down to a small landing stage at the water’s edge.
Unfortunately Paul did not have a clear view of what she was doing
as there were some reeds growing at the edge of the landing stage
and they obscured her. If anything Paul would have had a better
view where he had been before, but it was too late to go back there
now. Paul scanned the water again for signs of a dolphin, but could
see no sign of one.

Eventually the woman came into view again and walked stiffly
back to the house. It looked like the bucket was empty now. He
wondered what she’d deposited in the water.

Paul sighed. It was a good thing that Lucy hadn’t come he
thought. She’d have just said that he was a liar and made it all
up. He began to doubt it himself. Maybe he’d just seen a log or
something in the water the last time and had been mistaken. He’d
read stories about people believing they’d seen the Loch Ness
monster, but that they’d probably just seen a branch or something
in the waters of the Loch instead. Maybe that was all that he’d
seen. He sighed again. Even if he saw Lucy again and even if she
were to come with him out here, they’d see nothing and she’d never
speak to him again. He’d probably never get to swim with Spirit in
the sea again either.

Paul glanced at his watch. It was much later than he’d thought
and Mum had told him that he’d better be back home by five o’clock.
He wouldn’t make it he realised. Reluctantly he turned his back on
the lake and made his way back to the spot where he’d left his
bike.

Once the small human had turned and left, the dolphin allowed
herself to break the surface of the water and swam slowly round the
edge of the lake to where he had been. She didn’t trust humans,
especially not one that lurked around behind bushes. She owed her
life to humans, but equally she was held as a prisoner here by
one.

The lagoon was muddy and it was hard to see more than a meter
or so in front of her under the water. Even with her sonar clicking
it wasn’t much better. The few fish that got through the links of
the fencing that divided the inlet from the rest of the estuary
were small and insubstantial. She had no choice but to accept the
hand-outs from the old lady when she came down to the water’s edge
twice a day. The fish were dead though and sometimes they were
frozen in the middle. She would look up imploringly into the eyes
of the woman on the little wooden landing stage above her, but the
woman didn’t seem to realise what she was trying to say. She’d
attempted to find a way through the fence and to escape, but it had
proved impossible. It was too high for her to leap over, though she
may have been able to do so before the accident. The dolphin swam
on slowly and disconsolately, with nothing to do but to endlessly
circle the edge of the lake.

Chapter Thirteen:

It was light beyond the curtains of the little room in the
cottage when Lucy awoke. She turned restlessly, half aware of Dad’s
sonorous snoring from the next room. Lucy glanced at her watch; it
was only half past five in the morning. It was still way too early
to get up.

Lucy dipped in and out of sleep. When she closed her eyes, in
her dreams she was swimming effortlessly alongside Spirit and
Dancer, leaping through the waves and chasing fish through clear
waters. Then she dreamt of Paul’s mother, telling her to keep away
and the feeling of anxiety and rejection crept over her. In her
dream Paul’s Mum turned into a raven and flapped away mournfully,
cawing as it went ‘Dolphin girl, dolphin girl, stay away from the
dolphin girl.’ Lucy woke up again at this point, a knot of sheets
twisted around her. She tried to keep herself from slipping back
into the same dream, but eventually the desire to sleep overcame
her once again.

Lucy was immediately transported back to the murky waters of
the lagoon that she had so often visited in her sleep these last
few days. She could not see the dolphin, but sensed that it was
somewhere nearby. In the distance she could just make out the
restless beating of the dolphins tail as it swept to and fro,
backwards and forth along the shore line of the lake.

Lucy had visited a zoo once and seen a polar bear endlessly
pacing backwards and forwards the few steps it took to get from one
side of its small enclosure to the other, before turning and pacing
back. She had a sense that the dolphin was doing the same thing. As
Lucy watched she glimpsed it better occasionally as it came past.
The dolphin looked stressed and unhappy. ‘This is no way for a
dolphin to live’ Lucy thought to herself.

She tried to approach the dolphin, as if by doing or saying
something she could make the creature feel better. The more she
tried to swim forward though, the less she seemed to be moving.
Thrashing about with her limbs seemed to do no good at all. Then
the dolphin came towards her and blind to her presence, paused a
moment just by her. ‘I need to be free, I need to be free’ the
dolphin muttered to herself. ‘Why are those humans keeping me here?
What have I done to them?’

In her dreaming state, Lucy stretched out her hand towards the
unhappy animal, but the dolphin turned again and swum off out of
sight into the murky void. Of course the dolphin was unable to see
her. Spirit never saw her when she dreamt about him.

The last time she had reached out to him with her mind, Spirit
had asked Lucy whether humans took dolphins captive. She hated to
tell him the truth that they did and that indeed she had seen
dolphins at a dolphinarium, but she had had to. How could she
explain it to him? There was no good explanation why humans did so.
It may be marginally better than catching dolphins in fishing nets,
as she knew happened with some deep sea trawlers, but separating a
dolphin from the wide openness of the sea was like cutting out a
dolphin’s soul. It cut them inside to be so confined and Lucy could
see that the dolphin in this muddy lagoon was equally badly
affected.

‘
If I don’t do something soon, that dolphin’s going to go mad’
she said aloud to herself in her dream. Her own words shocked Lucy
into consciousness and she sat up suddenly, caught in the tangled
mess of sheets, her eyes wide with fear for the creature trapped in
some place that she didn’t know how to find.

Now that she was awake, Lucy’s thoughts turned to Paul. If
only she had been able to go out cycling with him the day before.
She didn’t blame Dad for wanting to spend time with her, she was
his daughter after all, but she wished with all her heart that
she’d been able to cycle along the country lanes with Paul by her
side and find that lake and the dolphin within it. She didn’t know
what she would do when she did, but she felt strongly that
something would happen. Something had to happen.

Lucy didn’t know whether Paul had got her message via Bethany
and Thelma that she was not coming yesterday. If he didn’t, he’d
never want to talk to her again, Lucy thought. He’d probably think
that she was some arrogant out-of-towner. She’d had her doubts
about how much of what Paul told her was true, but he was her only
chance of finding that dolphin before it was too late.

As Lucy was sitting in bed, she decided to stretch out with
her mind to speak to Spirit. That usually made her feel better. Try
as she might though, Lucy simply wasn’t able to find that door in
the corner of her mind that would allow her to plunge into his
world of water. Sometimes, when she was feeling anxious about
something, she’d had this problem before. Lucy kept trying for
almost fifteen minutes, but it was no good. Lucy knew that the best
thing to do would be to stop trying and come back to it later.
Often things seemed easier if she put it to one side for a
while.

Lucy opened the curtains a crack and peeked out. It was going
to be another beautiful day. The early morning sky was blue except
for a few wispy clouds that almost seemed to glow with rays of
sunlight that caught them.

She listened to the dawn chorus of birds and imagined that in
field after field after field, all the birds of Cornwall, Devon and
then the whole of England were joined together in one united
chorus. Lucy listened intently, seeing if she could hear the
blackbird that she’d heard singing outside the cottage the day
before. Try as she might though, she just couldn’t detect
it.