White Dolphin (11 page)

Even though the boulder is snagged with weed, it’s too smooth and white to be a rock here. It’s not a rock at all.

It’s a dolphin.

It’s the white dolphin lying beached upon the shore. Small waves run in and furl around her. But the sand is wet and hard. The tide mark of scum and seaweed curls around her tail flukes. The tide has turned and is ebbing out to sea.

The other dolphin in the water rushes at the shore again. I was stupid to think it was me she was waiting for. She’s not waiting for me at all. She’s trying to reach her calf beside me on the sand.

I’ve never seen a dolphin so close up before. I’ve seen them in the distance and in books, but I’ve never been right next to one. I guess the white dolphin must be young but I can tell she’s not newborn. She’s maybe one of last year’s calves. I follow the curve of her back and dorsal fin to her tail flukes. She’s not really white at all. Her body is pale pink and her fins and tail are tinged with blue. Deep scratches, dark with blood, line her back. Her blowhole is clear of the water, but I cannot hear or see her breathe.

I take a step towards her. Her eye is partly open. The lids are dry and crusted with salt. The eye beneath looks dull and lifeless, like frosted glass. She doesn’t blink or move.

I crouch down beside her in the sand. Strands of thick seaweed are wrapped around her lower jaw. Only as I look closer, it’s not weed at all. It’s fine mesh fishing net. Fine mesh nylon wrapped so tightly, it has cut deep into the skin behind her dolphin smile. Her tongue is blue-black and swollen. Shreds of nylon twist around her peg-like teeth. Flies buzz up from the wound and I see peck marks from the ravens around her jaw.

I sink down onto my knees and feel bile rising up inside me. I can see how she came to be like this. I can see her drowning, tangled in dark waters, thrashing in a fishing net trying to escape.

I close my eyes and try to push those thoughts away.

But the image of the dolphin drowning haunts me.

I splash water on my face and open my eyes.

The sun is bright white in the sky. A line of sweat trickles down my back beneath my shirt.

I don’t want to be here any more.

I stand up to leave. But I want to touch the dolphin once before I go.

I wet my fingers and reach out to trace them in an arc across her face.

‘
P
FWHOOOSH!!’

I fall back into the water.

A blast of wet breath fills the air.

It stinks of fish.

The dolphin draws in a breath, a whistling sucking through her blowhole, then the blowhole snaps shut again.

The dolphin’s eye is wide open now. She is watching me.

I slap the water with my hand. ‘You’re alive,’ I shout. ‘You’re alive.’

The dolphin’s tail flukes flap the shallow water.

I get up and kneel down beside her, so my face is close to hers. I look into her small pale pink eye. She blinks and she looks back as if she’s working out just who I am, and what I’m going to do.

But my mind is blank. All these years I’ve secretly dreamed of rescuing a dolphin and now I don’t know what to do. I put my hands on her side and try to roll her back to sea, but she might as well be one of the boulders on the shore. She’s much too heavy on land. She breathes again, a sudden burst of air, and I wonder if I’ve hurt her doing this.

I reach out to touch the white dolphin’s face again. Her skin is dry and hard, like sun-baked rubber. I remember I have to keep her wet and shaded from the sun. All the things Mum taught me start flooding back to me now. I know she could dehydrate out here. I jump up and run across the beach from boulder to boulder, pulling armfuls of wet seaweed from the rocks. I lay these across her body, careful to keep her blowhole open and uncovered.

I dig hollows in the sand beneath her fins to take the pressure off the bones inside. Tiny sand hoppers flip around the scooped-out sand. I brush my hair back from my eyes and see the white dolphin is still watching me.

I force myself to look at the wound in her mouth. The fishing net has cut deep into the skin. I try to gently pull the green mesh, unwinding it from around the teeth. Strands of fresh blood thread into the wet sand. The dolphin flinches as I pull and slaps her tail. Her tongue is a swollen mess. Her mouth is bruised, a bloody mass of skin and muscle. I can even see the white of jawbone shining through. She can’t catch fish like this. Even if I wait with her until the tide turns and comes back in, I don’t see how she can survive.

I scoop water with my hand and let it trail across her wounds. I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do.

The mother has slipped back with the tide and is too far out to hear her call. The white dolphin’s eyes close. I wait to hear her breathe. I count the seconds in my head, but the breath doesn’t come. I don’t know how long she can last like this.

‘Wake up,’ I shout. I tap my fingers on her side. She blasts air out through her blowhole. She opens her eye again and looks at me. She mustn’t sleep. Dolphins don’t sleep. I know that if she falls asleep she’ll die. I remember Mum telling me that every dolphin breath is a conscious thought. People don’t have to think to breathe, but dolphins must remember to take each one. Dolphins suffering in captivity can choose not to breathe. They can choose to die.

And I don’t want her to die.

I soak my coat in seawater and squeeze it out across her back. I keep talking to her all the time. I tell her that she will swim with her mother across the sea again.

She watches me closely as I clean sand from around her eyes and mouth. I look into her small pale eye and have the strangest feeling I am looking at myself. I wonder if she sees her own reflection in my world too.

I feel I’m keeping her alive, somehow.

I know I must get help, but I can’t leave her here all alone.

The ravens croak above me on the clifftop.

I press my head against hers and close my eyes.

I don’t know what to do.

I just don’t know what to do.

‘KARA!’

I look up and fall backwards in the wet sand.

Someone is stumbling up through the shallow waves towards me in a wetsuit and fluorescent life jacket.

I can’t believe it.

He’s silhouetted against the sun, but I know just who it is.

‘How did
you
get here?’ I say.

F
elix stops in the shallow water and stares up at the sheer cliffs behind me. ‘I could ask you the same thing,’ he says. ‘I told Dad it was you here on the beach.’

Beyond Felix, I see his dad swimming in from a small sailing dinghy anchored in the cove.

Felix sinks onto his knees beside the dolphin. ‘What happened here?’

I kneel down beside him. ‘She’s been caught in fishing net.’

‘Is she alive?’

I nod. ‘Only just.’

I hear Felix’s dad’s feet slap on the sand behind us. He crouches down beside the white dolphin. ‘There’s another dolphin in the water going crazy,’ he says. ‘It almost caught my leg with its tail. I guess this must be its calf.’

‘We must get help,’ I say. ‘The Marine Life Rescue will help with this.’

Felix’s dad pulls his mobile from a waterproof pouch around his waist. He taps the keys and frowns. ‘No network. It must be these cliffs.’

‘Can’t we push her to the water?’ asks Felix.

I shake my head. ‘She needs a vet, anyway.’

Felix’s dad stands up and looks out towards the sailing dinghy. ‘Listen, I’ll sail back and get some help. You two stay here with the dolphin.’

‘Go to the chandlery and ask for Carl,’ I say. ‘I think he works part time there.’

I watch Felix’s dad climb in the dinghy and guide it out of the narrow cove. It’s not like the sailing dinghies at the sailing club. Felix’s dad sits deep inside the centre of the boat like a racing driver in a car, instead of sitting at the stern next to the tiller.

I scoop some water from the trench around the dolphin’s body and pour it through the layers of seaweed protecting her from the sun. ‘I thought you were going back to London.’

Felix frowns. ‘What made you think that?’

‘You weren’t at school today and your dad didn’t want to buy
Moana
. He said he was going to listen to what you wanted instead.’

Felix helps scoop more water and runs his wet hand along the dolphin’s skin. ‘Dad
did
listen to me,’ he says. ‘That sailing yesterday was the coolest thing I’ve ever done, but I can’t sail a boat like
Moana
by myself. I like to be the one in control, remember?’

‘So?’ I say.

Felix sits back in the sand and grins. ‘So Dad borrowed a sailing dinghy from someone he knows through the cerebral palsy charity. I couldn’t believe it when they brought it over today. That’s why I didn’t come into school. Dad and I decided to try it out in the bay. It’s designed for the Paralympics. The seat is low down in the cockpit and I can control the sails and tiller with a central joystick with just one arm.’

‘So you’re really going to learn to sail?’ I say.

Felix grins. ‘Not just that. I’m going to win the regatta race around Gull Rock in five weeks’ time.’

I flick water at him. ‘You’ll be in second place.
Moana
’s going to win it this year. She always does.’

Felix flicks water back at me and laughs. ‘I wouldn’t bet on that, if I were you.’

We hear the rescue boat before we see it. The orange rib inflatable slews in a narrow arc into the cove with the dolphin mother arching through its bow waves. Dad and Mr Andersen are sitting in the boat with two Marine Life Rescue volunteers. One I recognize as Carl, one of Mum’s marine biology students from last year, and the other, Greg, one of the local crab potters and scallop divers.

Carl switches off the engine, drops a shallow anchor in the water and jumps out of the boat. He runs up the sun-bright sand towards us. I haven’t seen him since the night we floated candles out to sea for Mum. He used to make amazing sand sculptures of mermaids and sea monsters just for me.

I pull him down beside me. ‘You have to save her, Carl,’ I say.

Carl kneels down and pulls some weed away from the dolphin’s head and whistles softly. ‘She’s albino. I’ve never seen an albino dolphin before.’

‘She’s badly injured,’ I say. ‘She needs a vet.’

‘We’ve called the vet, but she’s out on another emergency right now,’ he says. He shines a small pocket torch inside her mouth. ‘You’re right. These wounds are nasty.’

‘But how long will the vet be?’ I don’t think the dolphin will last much longer here.

‘She said she’d radio us when she’s on her way,’ he says.

Dad crouches down beside me. ‘Mr Andersen told me you were here. You know you’re not meant to come here on your own.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ I say. ‘But if I hadn’t come . . .’

Dad sighs and shakes his head. ‘You can’t just go running off. I have to know where you are.’

‘I will, Dad, next time . . .’

‘Hold this,’ says Carl. He passes me the end of a tape measure. ‘You stand at the head end, Kara. You don’t want to be in the way of her tail.’

We measure the dolphin from beak to tail flukes. Carl reaches into the black bag for a clipboard and a pen. ‘A hundred and sixty centimetres,’ he says. ‘She can’t be much more than a year old. She may even still be feeding from her mother.’

Felix points towards the water. ‘Her mother’s out there, waiting for her.’

Carl nods and writes notes on his clipboard. ‘We saw her as we came in.’

Greg crouches down to examine the white dolphin too. He presses his hand against her flanks. When he takes it away, it leaves a dented handprint in her skin. He shakes his head. ‘Not a good sign. She’s very dehydrated.’

Carl looks at his watch. ‘Her breathing rate is up too. Ten breaths a minute. It should be about four or five.’ He sits back on his heels and rubs his chin.

I wet my fingers and trace water across the white dolphin’s face. She blinks and watches me. ‘What are we going to do, Carl?’

Carl runs his hands through his hair. ‘Let’s give her some fluids by stomach tube while we wait for the vet to get here.’