Dolphin Way: Rise of the Guardians (3 page)

Just then, Dusk called back to the others. ‘What’s that up ahead? Something big in the water — not moving.’

Sky moved closer to her. Nothing could be seen yet, but then she had detected it by sound. He sent out a short burst of clicks in the direction she was looking. Yes, he could “see” it too. The reflected sound that came back from his sonar signal showed it to be a large, firm bodied animal; not a squid, probably as big as a dolphin…and then he could actually see it. ‘It’s a Cleaner’, he said, ‘and it seems to be dead.’

They cautiously circled the shark. It was not long dead; its sleek, blue-grey body had not stiffened yet. Its perfect, hydrodynamic shape now pointed skyward as it hung suspended from the long, vicious hook that was embedded in its open mouth. The line from the hook led almost to the surface where it was attached to another, horizontal line that extended out of sight in either direction.

‘
What happened to it?’ Wakes Softly asked.

‘
Walkers,’ replied Deneb grimly. ‘Let’s follow this and see where it goes.’

‘
What a horrible way to die,’ she murmured, unconsciously moving slightly behind Deneb as though to protect herself from shark and hook.

They followed the horizontal line which was suspended just below the sea surface. Soon they came to another line and hook; this one empty but for some shreds of the now missing bait. But the next had another victim: a young Blue Shark. It was still very much alive and it thrashed against the pull on its jaws. This just drove the hook further into its flesh. It stopped for a moment, exhausted, staring at them with wide eyes, its dark pupils dilated.

They followed the line further. There were five sharks in all on separate hooks; two dead, one nearly so, the remaining two very much alive.

Muddy turned to the others, his expression troubled. ‘Do they just leave them here to die?’

Deneb shook his head. ‘No, they’ll come for them eventually. They return to these things. But I wonder how many they take like this; they seem to be killing more and more fish every year.’

‘
They say that’s why the hunting’s getting so hard’, Sky agreed.

Dusk rolled her eyes and snorted bubbles. ‘Don’t be so naïve, Sky! That’s such a convenient explanation for everybody. The real truth is that it’s not the Walkers, it’s other zetii taking more than their share from the quotas!’

‘
No, I don’t believe that we would…’

‘
Not
we
— not the Ka-Tse. I mean the deep water zetii; the Xenthos or Xa-Hana. They’re not like us; they move around in those huge clans and eat everything they come across. Don’t tell me they’re following the quotas!’

Sky knew he should stay calm and back off, but this had become a familiar argument from her recently, and it frustrated him that Dusk believed this stuff. ‘Come on, Dusk,’ he said, gently, ‘there’s no proof — this is the kind of nonsense those so-called Guardians come out with.’

‘
Well it sounds like they actually realise there’s a problem then!’

‘
Stop it,’ Deneb interrupted. Talk about the issues if you want, but stop talking about the Guardians. There are good reasons why they’re banished from the rest of us.’

Dusk was about to reply but stopped, her head tilted, listening. The water slowly filled with the distant, rhythmic thrashing of a propeller cleaving the water. The sound grew steadily louder, then slowed. Above them, they saw the shape of the boat silhouetted against the glare of the surface, its wake strung behind it. They could even make out the shapes of the men that reached down to haul in the longline.

One by one, the sharks were winched aboard the boat. Three, passively; two still fighting for life. But even as the last one was dragged out of the water, the sharks began returning to the sea, spiralling down from the surface towards the dolphins. But something was wrong. The sharks’ bodies, already exquisitely streamlined by millions of years of evolution, were now even more so. Obscenely so.

Sky stared at the first descending form in confusion. It was hard to see against the light, and a darkening cloud spread behind the shark as it fell towards him. Behind it, the surface was broken again as the next shark entered the water, followed by its own expanding cloud.

The first shark fell between Sky and Dusk. Its body trembled and twisted weakly as it desperately tried to halt its fall into the depths. Its eyes looked uncomprehendingly into Sky’s as it passed him. The next four sharks followed one by one, each like the first, with fins and tail hacked off. The dolphins watched in shocked silence as the bodies passed them, but as the last neared them, Sky spoke at last.

‘
This one is still alive too. Let’s move it over to the wall at least.’

They gently pushed the shark over to the steeply sloping wall and found a sand covered ledge big enough to accommodate its body. It squirmed helplessly on the sand, blood still flowing freely from its wounds.

Wakes closed her eyes, then opened them slowly and looked at her friends, her expression pained.

‘
Why?’

‘
Who knows?’ replied Deneb. ‘Of course, the Walkers are wasteful, but this seems incredible. Why take just their fins? And why be so cruel?’

The shark was shaking slightly, its mouth opening and closing rapidly as it fought to breathe. Dusk turned to the others and spoke quietly, as if she was afraid it would understand her.

‘
We should kill it — end its suffering.’

‘
No Dusk!’ Sky said. ‘You know we can’t. We mustn’t kill except to eat.’

She turned to face him, her voice quietly angry. ‘Don’t quote the Way at me! Just look at it — we can’t leave it like this!’

‘
And we can’t just ignore the Way whenever it suits us! It’s what makes us civilized — otherwise we’d be no different from those Walkers!’

‘
I’m not saying we ignore it all — we just need to realise that it doesn’t answer all the questions any more — Ocean’s changing, and if we don’t change too we’ll all end up like this Cleaner!’

Deneb moved between them.

‘
Both of you calm down. I think the argument’s irrelevant. Look, he’s almost gone now. I say we let Ocean take him back.’

The shark had stopped trying to swim and was still. There was a small flicker of life in its eyes, but it was a small, distant, failing thing. Like a stone dropped into the void and gently fading from sight. They lifted what was left of its body and carried it away from the wall, out over the darkening blue of the open sea. Without a word they let the shark fall. As they did so the flicker of light vanished and its eyes were left with only the peaceful, indifferent gaze of the dead.

They watched it tumble gently into the abyss.

Chapter 3

“
Trust the words of a fool. Only the wise lie well.”

- Traditional.

‘
There’s just sand. Endless sand. And sand doesn’t talk.’

‘
Keep swimming.’ Sky pressed ahead faster, forcing Muddy River Mouth to keep the pace, hoping that the greater effort might discourage his complaining. But he knew that Muddy would never allow himself to make any unusual effort without at least a token show of resistance and reluctance. That was just Muddy and it did not mean a thing.

‘
Why are we doing this, Sky? Alright, so Born was stranded on the beach near here, but that was days ago now. You think that someone is going to be still hanging around here? There’s nothing here!’

Sky said nothing. It was true that the area was barren. Just a flat, shelving seabed, a continuation of the white sands of the shore stretching far out under the sea, the small ripples in the sand the only blemishes on an otherwise bland space. That was why so few dolphins from the clan came this way; there was just no reason to. But Sky had dragged the reluctant Muddy along to try to find something, anything, to explain what had happened to Born; what had driven her onto that beach and why.

‘
Sky, we need to stop and find some food. I am so hungry, I could eat…’

‘
Quiet!’ Sky stopped swimming so suddenly Muddy almost careered into him. ‘Listen!’ he hissed at Muddy.

Faintly, the sound of two female dolphins’ voices could be heard ahead. They were young, not yet adults, and bottlenose dolphins like Sky and Muddy. Sky flicked his head to Muddy in a signal commonly used in a hunt —
close in silence
. They approached the voices cautiously then Sky stopped them as a huge shape loomed into view at the edge of visibility. The wreck of a large metal ship lay partially on its side in the sand; decaying rusty plates, cables and containers beside it. Corals and sponges were growing on various parts of the hulk, gradually absorbing the intruder into the world in which it had fallen. The voices were coming from the other side of the wreck. Sky and Muddy surfaced to take a breath, then Sky led the way to the near side of the ship where they stayed motionless, listening. Sky could hear the young dolphins clearly at last. He glanced at Muddy, who tipped his head in silent acknowledgement. Sky knew these voices: one was Bellatrix Unseen, one of the younger students he and Muddy helped to teach at the Academy. The other was the same age and new to the clan, she was called Shining, but he could not remember her full name: something Shining, anyway.

Bellatrix was speaking now, quickly and full of enthusiasm as always, but in the loud conspiratorial whisper of a child trying to keep an exciting secret. ‘He’s late again! I hope he is going to turn up this time! Are you sure he meant today, Shining?’

‘
Yes, that’s definitely what
we
said. But you never know with him. I don’t think he hears half of what we say.’

‘
Let’s go up and see.’ Bellatrix led her friend to the surface where they both finned hard with their tails, lifting their heads high above the water to look out into the clear air. Sky took advantage of their temporary inability to hear to speak to Muddy. ‘They shouldn’t be here on their own! Who are they meeting so secretly?’ Before Muddy could answer the two young dolphins dived down again to the other side of the wreck, chattering excitedly. Sky and Muddy hung back in the shadow of the ship’s keel. They could clearly make out Bellatrix’s voice. ‘So he did remember! He’s just late as usual. I wonder if he’s going to try to scare us again today!’

Sky swam cautiously upwards until he could just see through the thin branches of a red gorgonia, which swayed gently back and forth on the upper rail of the ship in the lazy swell. The two young dolphins were looking expectantly out into the blue away from him. Sky heard the sound of the approaching dolphin’s ranging sonar, then saw him appear and approach the two females. He was not much older than them, and Sky was sure he had never seen him before. His head was slightly misshapen, flattened on the top and one side, as though it had been squashed somehow as a baby, and the eye on that side was partly closed. He spoke slowly, his voice flat and dull. He seemed to need to concentrate hard to get the words out. ‘You still here. I said you must go.’

Shining shook her head vigorously. ‘We told you, we can’t just go! The Council decide where the clan goes, and they are not going to move it now with the Gathering coming up.’

The strange youth dipped his odd head for emphasis as he spoke again in the same stilted way. ‘Is Gathering that troubles start. You go before Gathering. Go now.’

Bellatrix interrupted. ‘But you still haven’t told us why! We can’t tell our mothers we just want to go without a reason!’

The youth spoke more forcefully still. ‘Don’t tell then! Just go before bad things happen. Go before Gathering’. Then, pleading, ‘Promise you go.’

Sky sank slowly back to Muddy’s side and indicated for him to take station behind the gorgonia, then swam quietly around the bottom of the wreck till he was on the opposite side of it, behind the three young dolphins who hung above the wreck, absorbed in their conversation. When he was directly behind the strange young male, Sky rose up into view, saying as gently as he could, ‘It is I, Touches The Sky. And I think you had better tell
me
about these bad things.’

The three young dolphins spun to look at him in shock, the male looked terrified and turned to bolt, but as he did, Muddy’s bulky body loomed up above the edge of the ship in front of him. He turned back to look again at Sky for a moment, then to Sky’s horror he shot into an opening in the wreck, disappearing into the darkness of the ship’s inside. Sky darted to the opening but did not dare to go in.

‘
That young idiot! If he gets lost or trapped in there he’ll drown! Muddy, see if there’s another way out.’ His friend swam swiftly along the wreck, using sharp bursts of sonar to scan the surface as he went. Sky turned back to the two females. ‘You two are both from the Dune Coast Clan. You know you are not meant to be here! Who is he?’

They looked at each other, frightened and guilty. Bellatrix answered at last. We are really sorry, Jeii. We didn’t think it was so wrong. His name is Sand In Rain.’

‘
So his clan call him Rain?’

Bellatrix looked embarrassed. ‘He says they call him “Sand In Brain”. It’s why we come here — we’re his only friends. We call him Sand though.’

Sky looked at them hard for a moment before going closer to the darkness of the opening into the wreck. He called into the darkness: ‘Sand! Come out Sand! We’re not going to hurt you.’