Dolphin Way: Rise of the Guardians (13 page)

‘
At this stage I don’t want you to concern yourself with trying to read the waters, nor even trying to identify the exact definition of a particular Shade. It will be enough for now if you can learn to be receptive to the Shades, and can be aware of the change from one Shade to the next.’

Sky brought them to the surface to breathe. ‘Now, we’ll make a deep dive and then slowly ascend. Let’s dive in silence. In these surface conditions we should see shafts of light that will reveal several of the subtler Shades. As we descend, I want each of you to close down the peripheries of your minds and bodies as you’ve been taught. We’re aiming for the fourth level of consciousness now, but you must still be receptive to what your eyes tell your mind. Now prepare yourselves for a long dive.’

The students stilled themselves at the surface, breathing deeply, calming their bodies’ need for oxygen. Sky watched them for a while but then found himself looking down; down into the depths.

There would be no bottom. At least none any living zeta could reach. How long would you prepare yourself for? How many breaths to take? How long would you want it to last?

Then he realised they were watching him expectantly. He cursed himself. They would have passed the peak of preparedness to dive — lost their concentration. He led the students in a hurried dive — messy — wasteful. The wound in his belly gave him a jolt of pain. He descended with his students just behind him.

You would start like any other dive. A dive to hunt, a dive to chase a lover in play.

As they fell, Sky softly intoned the names of the Shades as he recognised them, and listed the traditional meaning associated with each. The students swam silently alongside him. From the corner of his eye he noticed Lost In Moonlight looking especially concentrated. He began: ‘This is
Ndria-axi
, meaning Joining, Reunion or Reconciliation. Now, see this change, this means Towards The Familiar or Regressing. Look, another change here,’ Sky murmured, indicating the shafts of light that now wavered around them, ‘this would suggest Something of High Import or Great in Scope.’

A good Shade for a Darkening Dive.

At a little over fifty metres depth he levelled out. There was no sign of the seabed, which was still far below them. He looked at each of the class in turn, trying to assess their mental state. They looked good: calm, slightly withdrawn, yet with their eyes still alert. He signalled for them to stop swimming. He wanted them to pay attention now; this was a depth these young ones rarely visited, for many of them it might be their first time. The water was a deep indigo around them, falling away to blackness below.

It’s not frightening down there seen from here. Inviting, really. Like the welcome cool of the air on your back, when you lay at the surface on a summer night after a long day.

Far above them a cloud covered the sun, diffusing the light.

‘
The south facing light shafts prevail now, meaning Unexpected or Feared, and look what happens as that cloud begins to cover Senx: this would be read as being Towards The Unknown or Extending
.
Lastly, see this subtle change in the depths here: it would usually be read as Separation or Dispute.’

Separation. That would be an appropriate Shade. But wouldn’t you hope for the Joining Shade now? How much further would you be able to go? Maybe there are more Shades to see down there, that the living have no names for.

No. There is only one kind of light down there: the colour of the Void. Utter blackness. The colour of nothingness. The colour Born sees now. The colour Wakes sees.

‘
Jeii! Jeii!’

He snapped back into the moment. Lost In Moonlight was calling him. He suddenly realised that since he had told them to stop swimming they had been sinking. He did not know how deep they were now, only that it was deep — too deep! He looked in the direction she was gesturing and saw that Bellatrix was losing consciousness, her young body tilting sideways, her eyes glazing.

‘
Alright, everyone! We’re going up! Take your time, stay calm, follow your training.’

He put his head under Bellatrix and lifted her, bringing the class up as fast as he dared. If he made them swim too fast they would burn up their remaining oxygen and pass out. Too slow and it would run out anyway.

‘
Jeii, is Bellatrix going to die?’

Is Bellatrix going to die?’

‘
Hush now. Stay relaxed. Just swim.’

It seemed an age to the surface. And Sky tortured himself with guilt the whole way. These young ones were in his care. Their parents had trusted in him.
They
had trusted in him. He had been obsessed with thoughts of death and now here death was, swimming amongst them!

Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.
Please don’t die.

The water grew lighter, the surface nearer, nearer, then the light cracked open and they were there in the full sunlight.

He shouted at her and prodded her harshly. ‘Bellatrix, wake up! Breathe, Bellatrix! Breathe, now! Bellatrix, breathe!’

For an eternity there was nothing. Then she shuddered violently and took a gasping breath. Slowly, she came back to consciousness. She looked at her classmates then at Sky. ‘I’m sorry, Jeii, I missed some of what you said at the bottom of the dive.’

He almost laughed in relief. ‘Don’t worry. I’m just glad you’re alright. We’re going back to the shallows now.’

Soon the students were chattering away happily. None of them seemed to realise how close catastrophe had been, including Bellatrix herself. They all acted as though this was normal. Sky was still in shock. On the swim back Lost In Moonlight spoke to him earnestly. ‘Touches The Sky-Jeii, you said at the beginning of the dive that because of the clear blue water here this Kruma means Risk or Decay, doesn’t it?’

‘
Well, those are two possible meanings of this Kruma, yes.’

‘
So, today the Shades foretold a situation of decay, then some kind of reunion, a meeting with familiar things, probably a lot of them. It must mean the coming Gathering! And then something unknown but somehow frightening happens and there’s some sort of conflict and separation!

‘
Moonlight, that is just one interpretation; an experienced reader of the Shades might come up with something quite different from what we saw.’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, that must be what it meant, it was so clear. Something bad is happening to us. My mother said as much, after those two zetii died so strangely…’

Sky interrupted her. ‘I think that’s enough about that. Talk to Silent Waters about what the Shades meant when she has a moment,’ he said eventually, ‘she is able to interpret them far better than me. And don’t look so sad, it’s just the colours of the water in the end. Now, lessons are over for today.’

They made their farewells and departed. Sky was left confused. Should he have emphasised a logical approach and argued against Moonlight’s interpretation of the Shades? What if the Shades really did foretell the future?

He looked down. The clear blue water fell far into the darkening depths, overlain with wavering shafts of light. A Separation or Dispute. Of Great Import.

Chapter 15

“
The heavens hold all knowledge”

- Traditional

Sky found the other three Novices waiting for Green Wave Falling around midday. Sky stayed nearby, half listening, still going over his own near disastrous lesson in his mind. At first they spoke of Wakes Softly, tried again to guess what had happened. At last Deneb said, ‘Well one thing is certain. I’m going to tell my mother what Wakes told Sky and me.’ He went on to tell Dusk and Muddy of Wakes’ story, how she had seen an older dolphin listening to the Starwriters and then meet another dolphin secretly. Eventually, they lapsed into an awkward silence, which Muddy eventually tried to lighten by relating his experiences that morning with the second echelon class. Sky lost track of the account for a while, busy with his own concerns, then focussed again as Muddy became more agitated.

‘
Then Pebbles kept asking me “But how
exactly
do Starwriters remember all that stuff, Jeii?” and of course I had to bluff it and say things like, “well that is too advanced for our current lesson”, but I really have no idea! It was awful!’

‘
Well we don’t remember it exactly,’ Dusk said. ‘It would be impossible to order it all in your mind properly. It is often fairly meaningless stuff you know; just data.’

‘
And that is why you somehow tie the data to astronomical events, right?’ Muddy asked.

‘
We use astronomical events because they are so reliable and precise. Some Dreamweavers have experimented with other repeatable events like tidal movements, coral spawning and even volcanic eruptions to entrain information, but they are only suitable for imprecise, more generic data…’

‘
Hold on,’ an exasperated Muddy interrupted, ‘never mind all the exceptions to the rule, how do the basics work? How can I explain this to a class?’

Dusk closed her eyes and thought for a moment. ‘Well, try putting it like this. We have all this information to record somehow, ranging from the findings of the greatest Seekers in history to dull data about prey stocks, Council resolutions and so on. It would be impossible to remember so much information reliably, especially when some of it may not be accessed for perhaps centuries at a time. So, the Dreamweavers entrain the data with cosmic episodes.’

‘
Oh, they “entrain the data with cosmic episodes”, do they?’ repeated Muddy stonily. ‘That is
not
an explanation!’

‘
Alright, alright; let me think for a moment.’ Dusk shot to the surface and leapt high, falling back through the mirror of the surface with barely a splash. Sky watched her leap and noticed again how beautifully sleek and muscular her body was as she effortlessly swam back down to them.

‘
We wait for a specific event in the night sky, such as the passage of a planet over the constellation of the Cleaner, for example. The Starwriters who will be recording have to be in the seventh level of consciousness in preparation for the event, so everything must be timed perfectly. The Dreamweaver who is in charge of the recording then starts the song she has composed for that session’.

‘
Does the Dreamweaver sing alone?’ Muddy asked.

‘
Not always; for more complex, multiple layers of data, other Starwriters may help her with the harmonies that entrain additional information. They won’t be in the Seventh Level of course, so they’re not actually recording.’

‘
But why a planet? Why the Cleaner’s constellation?’ pleaded Muddy.

‘
Those are just examples, fish-brain!’ said Dusk. ‘Any event will do as long as one part of the universe is moving in a unique way in relation to another. That is why events like the lunar eclipses are so useful to us. We even have some songs that have been passed on from generation to generation of Starwriters that mean nothing until a particular comet comes by every hundred years or so and allows us to get the data out again.’

Deneb stirred at last, as Muddy had obviously hoped he would. ‘That bit is extraordinary. I watched part of a Starwriter song once. They were reading from the sky at a time near the equinox when the moon was passing some star I think. A Dreamweaver chanted this strange song without words and the Starwriters stared at the moon through the whole thing for an age. When they came back to near consciousness they just poured out information — ancient stuff, from the First Millennium I think it was.’

‘
Exactly,’ Dusk said. ‘Once the information is woven into a song we sort of absorb it into our subconscious. We say that we
dream
it in
. I can’t consciously access the information I’ve taken in as a Starwriter. The only way to get it out is to see exactly the right alignment of stars or whatever at the same time as you hear the unlocking song. For more complex information the Starwriters sometimes enter into a form of shared consciousness so no single one of them may have understandable data – but I can’t do that yet.’

‘
Isn’t that what the Calculators do too?’ Deneb asked. ‘Somehow they are able to link their thinking together so that they can handle more complex computations. I suppose they speak to each other somehow, but if you watch them it seems they are just chanting together in a trance.’

‘
Something like that, I really don’t understand how they do it. And it’s no good asking them, they’re mostly very strange to talk to. Anyway, enough about all that, it’s too much like being back at the Academy. Sky, what have you done to yourself?’ She stared at the fresh wound on Sky’s underside.

‘
Oh, it’s nothing really. I was stupid; I made a jump near the shore and landed on some rock.’

‘
Really? You are not usually that clumsy. So, how did your lesson go today?

Sky related his dive and Bellatrix’s narrow escape. The others listened in silence.

“
That’s really not good,’ Deneb said. ‘Bellatrix is Last To Speak’s daughter. I hope he doesn’t get to hear about this.’