Gods and Warriors (17 page)

A distant rumble of voices. The dolphin felt a flicker of hope. Had the humans come at last? He tried to squeak for help, but he was too weak. Every breath was becoming a struggle.

He couldn’t see them because his eyes had dried shut, but he heard the clunk of pebbles as they raced toward him. He sensed the girl’s anxiety, and the boy’s terror that they’d come too late.

A sudden blissful shock of cold water splashing over his back, soothing his hot, sore fin. Dimly, he heard them running into the surf. Now more water was washing over him, and small gentle flippers were patting his flanks, and carefully keeping the water out of his blowhole. The
dolphin tried to tell them how glad he was that they’d come, but he hadn’t the strength to stir a fluke.

For a while, the water made him feel a bit better; but he was still hot, and the Above was still crushing him to the sand.

All at once, it came to him that the water they were pouring over him wasn’t enough. It wasn’t the Sea—and without the Sea, he would die. The noises of the humans began to blur. The dolphin sensed that they were still with him, but their voices seemed to be drifting farther and farther away.

Hope fled. He was going to die out here in this terrible, burning sand.

He would never see his pod again.

T
he dolphin had seemed to revive a little when Pirra emptied the waterskin over him, but now he’d stopped moving. His eyes were closed and his hide had gone from bright silver to lifeless gray.

“Is he dead?” she whispered.

The boy turned on her. “Shut up!” But she saw the terror in his eyes, and she knew that he thought it too.

Falling to his knees, he put his ear to the dolphin’s blowhole.

“Anything?” she breathed.

He motioned her to silence.

She raced to the shallows to refill the waterskin. When she returned, he was still listening. He met her eyes without seeing. Then his face worked. “He’s alive. But only just.”

Shakily, Pirra sloshed seawater over the dolphin’s back. Some trickled near his blowhole and she shielded it with her palm—but warily, for she was touching a creature of the Goddess. She noted with awe that when its blowhole was open it was the shape of the full Moon, and when
shut, a perfect crescent; and beneath her hand the flesh wasn’t soft, as a person’s is soft, but smooth and hard, like polished marble.

“Careful,” warned the boy. “Don’t let any in his blowhole or he’ll choke.”

“I know, I’m not.”

“I’ll do it.” He elbowed her away. “You fetch more water.”

“I was going to,” she muttered.

He wasn’t listening. He was stroking the dolphin’s flank and murmuring, “You can’t give up, I won’t let you. We’ll get you back to the Sea. Just don’t give up!”

It was hard going, stumbling back and forth to the Sea. The dolphin was stranded only a couple of paces from the surf, but the sand was hot, and Pirra floundered ankle-deep. When she started to tire, the boy snatched the waterskin and took his turn, while urging the dolphin constantly to
hold on.

The Sun rose higher. Pirra felt it beating down on her head, and imagined how much worse it must be for the dolphin. She looked at his constant smile and thought in horror, He’s not smiling. He’s dying.

“The Sun’s getting stronger,” she said.

The boy glared at her. “So?”

“I mean, we’ve got to keep it off him, or he’ll die.”

He made to retort—then shut his mouth with a snap. “You’re right. How?”

Silence while they thought about that.

“The
sail,
” they said together.

“I’ll fetch it,” he said. “You stay and keep him wet.”

He was back astonishingly quickly, scrambling over the headland with the rope coiled over one shoulder, the sailcloth in his arms, and a pile of driftwood from his shelter on top. He threw the lot down the slope, and Pirra scrambled to collect it. While he worked at building the shelter, she went back to keeping the dolphin wet.

She asked if the dolphin had a name, and the boy said he called him Spirit; he shot her a glance as if he expected a sneer, and she said it was a good name for a dolphin.

In no time he’d planted the driftwood crosswise in the sand on either side of Spirit, and lashed it together to make a support. Pirra helped spread the sailcloth over the top—and they had a rickety tent. It wasn’t big enough to cover Spirit completely—about a cubit of his tail stuck out—but the close-woven wool kept the Sun off his head and most of his body, and he rewarded them with a feeble twitch of his flukes.

Now they had to haul him back to the Sea.

Without a word they took up position on either side, grabbed a flipper each, and pulled. It was like pulling a mountain. Spirit didn’t budge.

The boy seized what was left of the rope and tied it around the dolphin’s tail. “One, two, three—pull!”

No effect.

“We’re hurting him,” panted Pirra. She pointed to where the rope was chafing the thin skin raw. “It’s not going to work.”

The boy didn’t answer. He’d untied the rope from Spirit’s tail, and now he was scowling down at his footprints in the sand. Those nearest Spirit were dry hollows, but the ones closer to the surf were full of seawater…

In a flash, Pirra grasped what he was thinking. “We dig under him,” she said, “and—”

“And the Sea comes in and floats him free.”

Grabbing sticks, they started scooping the sand from beneath Spirit’s tail, taking turns to race down and fill the waterskin to keep him wet, then hurrying back to continue the trench to the Sea. At last they broke through, and water rushed foaming and splashing under the dolphin’s flukes. Pirra saw a shudder run through him. She thought how good it must feel for even part of him to be cool.

She glanced at the boy and smiled, but he didn’t smile back. This mattered too much to him to smile. It mattered so much that it hurt.

The tail turned out to be the easy part: digging under Spirit’s belly was much harder. He was far too heavy to lift, so the boy tried rolling him to one side to let Pirra dig underneath, but it didn’t work, and he worried about squashing the dolphin and making it even more difficult for him to breathe.

“Careful with that stick,” he gasped. “You’ll give him splinters.”

“What’s a splinter?” panted Pirra.

“Ow,” she said a bit later, when she got one in her thumb.

By now they were both on their knees, clawing at the sand with their bare hands. But although they’d dug about a third of the way under the dolphin’s belly, they couldn’t reach any farther up. Water was seeping beneath him, but not nearly enough to float him free.

Sitting back on his heels, the boy wiped the sweat from his forehead. “It’s not working, he’s too heavy.”

Pirra nodded. They stared at each other across the dolphin’s back.

Pirra glanced at the sailcloth shading the dolphin from the Sun. “If—if we could pull that sail far enough underneath him,” she said, “we might be able to drag him a bit farther into the trench.”

Slowly the boy nodded. “Although he’ll be in the Sun again and it’s nearly noon. We’ll need another shelter.” He snapped his fingers. “Juniper.” He yanked the knife from its sheath, then hesitated. Pirra guessed that he didn’t want to leave Spirit and cut the juniper himself, but if he stayed, he’d have to trust the knife to her.

“Hylas,” she said urgently, “Spirit needs you to stay close. Give me the knife.”

He threw her a narrow look, then tossed the knife to her. She caught it one-handed—she was quite pleased about that—but he didn’t notice. He was already splashing water over Spirit and scooping out the trench to stop it filling with sand, while talking constantly in a low, encouraging voice.

The juniper was tough and Pirra got liberally scratched,
but she managed to hack off some branches and toss them over to him. He didn’t seem to feel the prickles as he wove them deftly into a roof that kept off the worst of the Sun. Then she helped him manhandle the sail about halfway under Spirit’s belly, tilting him first one way, then the other, as they eased the sail higher, bit by bit. When they’d pulled it as far as they could, they stood on either side, planted their heels in the sand, and each grabbed a corner of the sail.

As long as it doesn’t tear, thought Pirra.

“Pull,”
said Hylas.

The close-woven wool went taut—and held. Spirit tried to help by feebly flexing his backbone.

A tiny judder.

“Did you feel that?” gasped Pirra.

Hylas was straining too hard to reply.

Again and again they hauled at the sail. Again and again Spirit flexed his spine.

With each pull, Pirra felt the burden lessen just a little as the dolphin’s back end juddered into the surf and the Sea began to help.

“It’s working,” grunted Hylas.

Suddenly Spirit gave a tremendous thrash, his tail catching Pirra on the flank and sending her flying.

She sat up, clutching her side. Hylas was half pulling, half pushing the struggling dolphin into the shallows. “He’s in!” he shouted. In amazement, she watched Spirit roll off the sailcloth and disappear beneath the waves.

There was an abrupt, unnerving silence, broken only by the suck and sigh of the surf. Foam netted the sand, smoothing away the traces of the desperate struggle that had just taken place.

With his eyes on the Sea, Hylas backed toward Pirra. “You all right?” he said without turning around.

“Mm,” she mumbled. Wincing, she struggled to her feet. “Do you think Spirit’s all right?”

He didn’t reply.

Together they scanned the waves. Sun-dazzle and turquoise water. No dolphin.

What if we were too late? thought Pirra with a clutch of terror. What if he was in the Sun too long, and the next thing we see is a dead dolphin, floating belly up?

Hylas was scowling and shaking his head. Clearly he was thinking the same thing.

He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled.

Nothing happened.

“Spirit!” he cried. Wading thigh-deep, he patted the water with his palm. Again he shouted.

Pirra held her breath.

The breeze swirled sadly around the inlet. A gull flew past, its wingtips skimming the waves.

Suddenly the Sea exploded—and there was Spirit, leaping into the air with an ear-splitting squeal.

Pirra sank to her knees. Hylas didn’t move. He had his back to her, but she saw him put his face in his hands.

Meanwhile, Spirit was swimming up and down at the
mouth of the inlet, rolling onto his side and sticking one flipper in the air, then sliding under again and waggling his tail flukes, reveling at being back where he belonged.

Hylas recovered fast. With a whoop, he dived in and swam underwater, then burst out in a shower of spray. “Come in and cool off!” he shouted to Pirra.

Rubbing her arms, she stared at the Sea—this Sea, which she’d worshipped all her life, but had never been in, apart from that one near-disaster when she’d tried to make friends with Spirit, and ended up swallowing a bellyful of seawater.

“I can’t,” she called back. “I can’t swim.”

“Doesn’t matter! I won’t let you drown.” He broke into a grin. “I need you to help build that raft, remember?”

Still she hesitated, while boy and dolphin stared back at her: two creatures at home where she was not.

“What’s your name, anyway?” shouted Hylas.

“Um—Pirra.”

“Well then, Pirra, come
on
! Come and meet Spirit properly, now that he’s better!”

Pirra hesitated. She took a few steps, and the water licked deliciously around her calves. She wobbled in up to her knees. Then the ground dropped away and with a wonderful shock of cold she was in, and the Sea was lifting her off her feet, washing away the heat and scratches and tiredness; it was combing out her hair with long cool fingers and singing in her ears as she went under.

Hylas grabbed her wrist and pulled her to the surface.
“It’s shallower over here,” he said. “You can stand.”

Panting with elation and spitting out seawater, she stood swaying to the rhythm of the Sea. She felt the slippery caress of seaweed around her ankles. Her gold bracelets shone, washed clean of dust.

Spirit glided past her underwater, his sleek green body rippling with sunlight. She put out her hand, and his flank was as cool and smooth as wet silk. Her heart swelled with pride that she’d helped save his life.