Dolphin Child (7 page)

Spirit might have dismissed them altogether, like Storm had,
if it weren’t for Lucy. He knew that there was more to them than
met the eye. He wanted to learn as much as he could about humans
and the world above the sea that Lucy inhabited.

As Spirit and Dancer listened to the humans splashing and
playing in the water, something large and plastic floated past
them. It was clear and not easy to spot until it got close. The two
dolphins hung underneath the surface of the water and looked up at
it.

‘
What do you suppose that is?’ Dancer asked.

‘
I expect it’s just some more rubbish that they’ve thrown away’
said Spirit. There seemed to be something on top of the floating
plastic, but he couldn’t make out what. They were well used to
seeing plastic floating along in the water, though not generally a
piece of plastic this big. When he was still a young calf, Spirit
had taken a bite out of something white that drifted past him in
the water and almost choked on a plastic bag as a result. They let
the thing float on past them. It got caught by a gust of wind and
was blown on to the rocks just out of sight of the beach with all
the people on it. The clear floating plastic thing seemed to snag
on something sharp and then crumpled as the air leaked out of
it.

Suddenly there was screaming sound from the direction of the
floating thing and Spirit and Dancer glanced back to look at
it.

‘
What was that?’ asked Dancer in alarm.

‘
I don’t know’ replied Spirit turning back towards the plastic
thing in the water. The airbed sagged and as they looked they
realised that a child had started scrabbling around on top of
it.

‘
Is that a human?’ asked Dancer.

‘
It looks like a child’ replied Spirit. The human was much
smaller than Lucy and Spirit guessed that the child was about half
her age.

In fact the girl on the airbed was about six years old and had
fallen asleep as her brothers had played catch with a ball next to
her. Another boy had stolen the ball and her brothers had chased
him down the beach to get it back. Unattended, the airbed had
floated away from the safety of the shallows, seemingly without any
one noticing. Her parents thought she was with her brothers and her
brothers thought she was with her parents. No one knew that she was
out here at all.

The girl started to shout something and although the two
dolphins could not understand what she was saying, they could
imagine.

‘
She must be shouting for help’ guessed Spirit, overwhelmed
with concern for the young girl. Her face was red with tears and
hot with fear. However the sound of her screams and cries would not
carry far and no one on the beach could hear her over the gentle
slosh of waves around them and the noise of the crowds.

The airbed had got caught on a shelf of rock a few metres out
from the main shoreline, which rose up out of the sea like a small
island. The sea was still coming in though and when high tide came,
the rocks would be fully submerged. They were slimy with seaweed.
The airbed was rapidly losing its air and soon became unable to
support the girl’s weight. She clambered off it onto the rocky
islet. In doing so the airbed got pushed free of the rocks again
and floated away again out of her reach.

‘
Look!’ exclaimed Spirit. ‘The girl’s trapped on those rocks.’
The rocks were so slippery that the girl could not stand upright on
them, but instead clung onto them, tears streaming down her face.
The two dolphins swam over to where she was and put their heads
over the surface of the water in an attempt to whistle
encouragement to her.

‘
Do you think that she will get on your back like Lucy does?’
asked Dancer. Instead of being encouraged though, when the girl saw
the two dolphins, she shrank back in fear. She’d never seen
dolphins before and was too scared and too upset to appreciate that
they were friendly and wanted to help her. He realised that even if
the girl had wanted to, she wouldn’t have the strength to pull
herself up onto his back.

‘
I don’t think there’s any chance of that’ replied Spirit. Just
as he spoke, a slightly larger wave came in and washed over the
legs and feet of the young girl. It wouldn’t be long before the
tide rose higher and larger waves started to batter her. They had
to do something.

‘
Well what can we do then?’ asked Dancer anxiously, looking at
the scared child a couple of metres away from them on the rock.
Spirit shook his head. If only he could reach out to Lucy like she
could reach out to him. He could tell Lucy what had happened and
she could fetch help. He had no idea how to do that
though.

‘
I’d better swim to the beach and find someone who can come
back and get the girl’ said Spirit. ‘You stay here and keep an eye
on her.’

Spirit swam quickly back towards the beach. It was the kind of
beach that shelved away fairly rapidly and so it was possible for
him to get reasonably near to land without fear of grounding
himself. As Spirit swam in close to the beach, his dorsal fin
showed above the surface. Although a dolphins dorsal fin is
completely different to that of a shark and despite the fact that
pretty much only harmless basking sharks patrol the coast round
Britain, someone shouted ‘shark!’ loudly in alarm. Suddenly there
was a clamour of cries and stampede of children as they all tried
to get out of the water as quickly as possible.

Spirit put his face above the surface of the water and reared
up as much as he could to try to click and whistle that a girl was
in danger and needed their help. As soon as people saw the friendly
face of a dolphin, realising that there was no shark in the water,
people turned and stormed back towards him.

‘
Look Mummy a dolphin!’ yelled a hundred children, as they all
rushed towards him, eager to pet him and stroke his side. ‘Isn’t he
adorable!’ replied their parents as they converged on
him.

Spirit was alarmed at all of the humans coming towards him,
each with their hands outstretched to pat and caress him. The noise
and the clamour made him nervous and he retreated to slightly
deeper waters. He put his head up again above the surface and tried
to click and whistle his warning about the girl stuck on the rocks
just out of sight, but none of the humans on the beach knew what he
was trying to say, or cared. The adult humans started to hold
little black boxes up their face, which made clicking sounds. The
youngsters on the beach strained to touch Spirit, but he was
worried that they’d cover his blow-hole and kept just out of their
reach.

Spirit swam a short distance along the edge of the beach, in
the direction of the rocks where the girl lay caught and then
turned again, in the hope that they would follow him. Spirit
realised though that it was no good. He may as well try to
communicate with a shoal of mackerel. He simply could not think of
how to tell them that a girl was in trouble and needed help. He
swam back to where Dancer was waiting in the hope that at least one
or two humans would come off up the beach and round the headland to
try to find him again, but it seemed that none of them did. All he
could hear was shouting and splashing behind him.

‘
It’s not good’ warned Dancer as he approached her again. ‘The
tide’s coming in fast now and that girl is going to get swept off
the rock soon. She’s scared of us. We can’t carry her to safety and
I’m worried that if she falls off that rock, she’ll drown. What can
we do?’ called Dancer in increasing agitation.

‘
Lucy!’ thought Spirit in desperation. ‘Lucy, Lucy,
LUCY!!’

Lucy suddenly sat up with a jolt. She’d been lying in the
grass of the field just behind the studio, looking at a brilliant
green beetle climbing a grass stem and listening to the buzz of
grasshoppers and insects around her. She suddenly felt a sense of
great urgency, but she didn’t understand from where. Then she
thought, ‘Spirit’. There was something to do with Spirit that was
not right. She realised that she needed to reach out and contact
him straight away.

Lucy composed herself and then focused her mind to concentrate
before relaxing, letting her thoughts wander to the corners of her
conscious mind. It was still hard to do and she was never sure when
it would work, but she was in luck and suddenly she found herself
floating in the salty waters next to the two dolphins.

‘
Spirit, what’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘
Lucy!’ he replied. ‘You came! I called out for you and you
came!’ Lucy looked around her, surprised to hear the sounds
emanating from the beach nearby.

‘
But what’s the matter?’ she asked again and then she saw the
scared frightened little girl clinging to the rock, as another wave
rolled in and almost knocked her off.

‘
We can’t get the humans to come and save her. She’s scared of
us and no one seems to know she’s missing’ said Spirit. ‘In another
few minutes she’s going to fall off that rock altogether’. Lucy
nodded. She wanted to emerge from the water to comfort the little
girl, but she knew that when she came to Spirit in this way, she
had left her physical self behind in the field where she’d been
lying just a couple of minutes before. She’d look like a ghost to
the little girl and scare her even more. The shock might make her
fall of the rock by itself. Lucy looked around her.

‘
Where are we?’

A minute later Lucy burst through the door into the farm
office where Mary sat working on a spreadsheet on her computer.
Mary looked up in alarm.

‘
Whatever is the matter Lucy?’ she asked.

‘
We’ve got to call the Coastguard, NOW!’

Lucy had disappeared almost as quickly as she’d come and
Dancer and Spirit were left wondering what good she could do. But
barely five minutes later two lifeguards had come running across
the rocks and plunged into the water before swimming to the spot
where the little girl lay clinging to the rocks, half submerged in
the waters of the encroaching tide. Spirit and Dancer watched with
satisfaction as the life guards carried the little girl off to
safety.

The two dolphins turned away, relieved that the crisis had
been averted and that they could swim away again. They wondered by
what magic Lucy had been able to communicate with the humans on the
beach, but it seemed to Spirit that she must be able to reach out
with her mind to other humans in the same way that she was able to
do so with him. The ways of humans were very strange and he would
never be able to conceive what a telephone was.

What amazed Spirit though was that for the first time, he’d
been able to send her a message. Normally, he would never know when
Lucy might appear and when she wouldn’t. He could never contact her
and had to rely on her coming to him. Yet when he really needed
her, Lucy had the strong feeling that she had to reach out to him.
Together, they had saved a little girl. It was a good
feeling.

‘
But how did you do it?’ asked Dancer, as they swam along
quietly a safe distance from the shore.

‘
I don’t know’ he replied. ‘I just really needed her and
somehow, she knew.’ Suddenly Spirit felt light and happy. They
chased each other round and round and leapt into the air for the
sheer pleasure of it.

An hour or so later they arrived back where the rest of the
pod was basking with the warm afternoon sunshine on their backs.
Dancer soon regaled them with the story of the little girl in
trouble and how Spirit had been able to contact Lucy and get her to
help the little girl. The pod gathered round.

‘
That’s a very useful gift you’ve got there Spirit’ commented
Breeze, eyeing him speculatively. ‘A very useful gift for the
pod.’

‘
What do you mean?’ asked Dancer.

‘
Oh, you know’ replied Breeze. ‘What you’ve got to ask yourself
is ‘how can I help the pod?’’

‘
But I do help the pod’ answered Spirit. ‘All the
time.’

‘
It’s true’ said Summer coming to his defence, ‘Spirit does
help the pod all the time.’

‘
Yes but think what more Spirit could do for us with his gift’
continued Breeze.

‘
Like what?’ asked Dancer.

‘
Well you can help when we’re in danger and you can work with
the humans to help them and then they can bring us more
fish.’

Spirit glanced over at where Storm hung in the water. He
regarded them all seriously, but didn’t say anything. Spirit
wondered why.

‘
Well that’s just silly’ replied Dancer. ‘Why would the humans
bring fish to us?’

‘
More fish to eat sounds good to me’ chipped in Chaser, ‘but we
don’t need handouts from the humans. We can hunt for our own
fish.’

‘
Do you remember seven winters ago when Spirit was still very
young. There were no fish in these waters and we nearly starved.
You’d have been glad of a handout then’ replied Breeze.

‘
That’s true enough’ said Moonlight, who’d been following the
conversation with interest. ‘We’ve got a little one in the pod now’
she continued, looking at Summer’s calf.

‘
I, I don’t know what my gift is for’ said Spirit hesitantly.
‘I just know I have something special. I….’ he trailed away, as
Summer’s calf swam up to him and gave him a friendly nuzzle. Of
course he’d do anything he could to help the pod, wouldn’t he?
There was a pause.