The Golden Flight (16 page)

It was Lundy’s lone voice she heard and, by turning her head, she could locate its direction - far out in the sea to the south.

There was an urgency and concern in it that was new to her. Marguerite had only ever known calmness in the dolphin’s voices – except when Malin spoke about pollution. Lundy’s voice was far from calm now.

‘Squirrel-friend, where are you? I am on my way to your island to find you, but I sense that you are not there, but are somewhere nearer.’

Marguerite projected her thoughts seaward. ‘I am here with two friends. We are near a place where the sea is in a circle with land almost all round it. Do you know this place?’

‘That must be the Cove of Lulworth. I’ll come at once. Can you get down to the water’s edge? I need your help – desperately!’

Marguerite roused her companions, who were dozing near her, and in the light of a moon that was now casting a silver sheen over the seascape, she told them what she had just heard.

‘The dolphins need us. Lundy is coming to meet us soon. We must go down to the edge of the water in that round hollow.’

Treading carefully and alert for night-danger they went along a stony Man-track and through a wire fence, then under dark bushes, the foliage of which was permanently bent landwards by winds from the sea. Slippery paths and steps took them down to the shore.

The water in the bay was calm and lapped quietly on the shingle beach. Smells of damp and rotting seaweed filled their noses as they waited, looking towards the gap in the cliffs with the open sea beyond. Soon a black shape, a dorsal fin clearly visible in the moonlight, rose from the water some distance from the shore, and they heard the sound of air being blown through the nostril on top of a dolphin’s head.

‘We are here, Lundy-friend,’ Marguerite called.

‘I am pleased that you were so near. My prayer must have been heard.’

‘The Suns-child brought us,’ Marguerite replied. ‘You prayed for us to come?’

‘It’s Finisterre. He’s tangled in a human’s fish-net on the other side of the Bank of Chesils. He is safe at the moment laying on the pebbles, but there is a storm coming and the net is stopping him from swimming.’

Marguerite looked up at the night sky and remembered the sunset.

A red sky at night

Heralds a delightful day –

Dawn to dusk sunshine.

‘Are you sure about a storm?’ she asked.

‘Yes, the red sky was deceiving. The wind is shifting to the west and then the south-west and a storm is coming. We have learned a lot about the weather in the last
 
 
 years. Believe
me!
’

(
 
 = 60 x 60 x 60 – 216,000 years
)

‘I do,’ said Marguerite. ‘How can we help?’ Wood Anemone and the troubles on Ourland were forgotten.

‘I must find a way to get you to Finisterre before the storm reaches him. Can your teeth cut away the Man-cords of the net?’

‘We will do all we can.’ Marguerite replied. ‘Can you get a boat?’

‘There won’t be time for that – can you hold on to some wood if I carry it in my mouth?’

‘We will do our best. Have you brought some wood?’

‘No, can you find some on the shore? Please hurry.’

Marguerite quickly explained the situation to Sycamore who had only heard one side of the conversation and the three squirrels scurried along the high-tide mark, searching for a suitable piece of driftwood. Lundy, in the water, kept pace with them, her agitation sweeping in waves towards the land.

At first there was a total absence of wood, the glowing embers of a human’s fire explaining this. They briefly watched the tiny flames, some blue from the salt in the wood and others a soft green around a copper nail. Marguerite hustled them on until, further along, Sycamore found the handle of a broken oar, half buried in the slimy ribbons of kelpweed. They struggled to free it, tiny crabs scuttling for cover as they did so, then rolled it down the beach to the water’s edge.

‘What now?’ Marguerite called out to Lundy.

‘Are you
all
coming?’

Marguerite looked at the others.

‘Yes,’ said Chip simply, and once Sycamore had been told he said, ‘Wouldn’t miss this for all the nuts on Ourland.’

The squirrels grasped the wood, Chip and Marguerite at one end, Sycamore at the other.

‘Hold tightly to the wood – I’m coming in.’

There was a rush of water as the dolphin surged forwards the beach and the squirrels felt the oar handle being picked up and held high, as the great black body thrashed in the shallows and turned about. Then, with another heave and a violent beating of her tail, Lundy was in deep water again, holding the oar handle crossways in her mouth. All three squirrels were soaked and, as the dolphin swam rapidly towards the opening from the bay into the open sea, a cold night wind blowing from the south-west quickly chilled them.

Lundy was right about the wind changing, thought Marguerite, digging her claws deeper through the layers of peeling varnish and into the soft wood below.

‘Thank you all. Hold on tightly.’ Lundy let her thoughts envelop the squirrels, then she closed her mind to interrogation and tuned in to the minds of each squirrel in turn.

 ~ The young one is enjoying this. It’s nothing more than a great adventure to him. The other male is here because Marguerite is here, he would follow her anywhere. He loves her – I wonder if she knows?~

 ~ Marguerite, my friend, I seem to know
you
so well. You have never even thought of Chip as a suitor. You really
do
want to help me and you have such complete trust in your Sun that you
now
believe you have been sent to do that. This is a strange friendship – but one I value highly. ~

Lundy reopened her mind as she swam steadily on – Marguerite was asking how far they had to go.

‘I came round the end of the Isle of Portland, through the tearing waters of the Race, but we won’t go back that way. We are swimming the Bay of Weymouth and then we’ll cross the Harbour of Portland to the Lagoon of Fleet, between the Bank of Chesils and the Mainland. Malin and Finisterre are on the seaward side of the pebble bank, with other dolphins helping, but none have teeth to cut like yours can. We should be there soon after dawn – if my strength holds.’

Marguerite sensed that swimming with her head out of water was tiring Lundy. She would normally swim submerged, only coming up to breathe.

Occasionally the dolphin changed course slightly to take advantage of the different currents that she seemed to know intimately. She was holding the oar handle steady and firm, and by the time they passed between the great rocks forming the breakwater that protected the ships in the Harbour of Portland, the squirrels’ fur had dried in the wind.

‘The tide is against us,’ Lundy told Marguerite, and the squirrel sensed the extra energy the dolphin was having to expend to swim against the mass of water rushing out through the narrow gap.

The moon was turning pale and the dawn showed grey behind them. Huge metal cylinders leaned with the flow, the seaweed and barnacles on the undersides and the anchor chains of the giant buoys smelling dank and salty on the morning air. Lundy swam doggedly on against the current.

At the Ferry-bridge they passed under the metal girders, past the round black bridge supports where the whole weight of water trapped in the lagoon was trying to follow the moon’s pull and rush out into the Harbour before the earth rotated enough for it to be drawn back to fill the lagoon once again.

Marguerite knew that Lundy’s strength was failing. ‘You must rest,’ she told her –

‘In times of great stress

Rest is a sound investment –

Restoring one’s strength.’

‘I can’t,’ the dolphin replied. ‘The storm is too close. My son will be battered to death on the beach.’

Unexpectedly Chip who, with Sycamore had been concentrating on holding tight to the oar-handle said –

‘When quite exhausted

Keep on going while you must,

Never, ever quit’.

‘I won’t,’ Lundy responded, and Marguerite asked Chip where he had learned this Kernel. She was sure that she had not heard it before.