Harriet took in a lot of air. “Even though Carl can transport us there instantly, we still need to get ready. The queen is expecting us.”
She held out her hand, and I took it, and I led m’lady down the grassy hill, toward our simple stone cottage in paradise.
I knew I was dreaming, but I prayed I never woke up.
The End
Also available:
Dolfin Tayle
by J.R. Rain
and Piers Anthony
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
The killer is all around us, and I am afraid.
Around me, the sea is foaming and churning, and the dead are everywhere. Among the dead is my mother. I am confused and lost and hurt.
Earlier, something swept through the waters, something unseen, but felt by all. This unseen force gathered many of us up, along with other creatures of the deep. This thing, this sweeping thing, prevented us from surfacing, to breathe air.
I also got swept up into the force, got tangled into the invisible web. My mother was there, too, by my side. She fought frantically for me, tearing at the unseen material that kept us from surfacing. She used her great beak and teeth, and finally tore through what she called the netting.
But she could only tear a small opening, for this netting is nearly indestructible, and she was losing her strength. She needed to surface. All of us needed to surface. We needed to breathe. We were dying.
But there was only room for the smallest of us to escape.
My mother urged me through, and I listened to her, because I always listened to her, for my mother was known as the Seeker of Truth, and in her words was the truth, and I always listened to the Mother Seeker. Always, even when I did not want to. Always, even if I was tired or wanted to play with my friends.
Now my mother, the Seeker, urged me through the opening, holding this netting open with her strong jaws, speaking to me rapidly through clicks and chirps, our language of the deep. I did as I was told, and squeezed through the opening. She helped me through by nudging me with her bony beak. Our beaks aren’t like bird beaks. No, they are long, bony protrusions that jut from our faces and allow us to snap at rapidly fleeing bass and mackerel, our favorite food.
Finally on the other side of this net, terrified, I listened as others began singing their death songs, and the ocean was filled with dying words and memories and voices and cries. I cried, too, and watched as others of our pod began floating silently up toward the surface, although they did not get very far. The netting held them in place, suspended in the water. Those whom I had once called uncle and aunt, those whom I had called friend and teacher, those who were kind and patient with me, those who were so wise to the ways of the deep, had finally quit fighting the net. And now they were floating.
The water, once alive with their fighting, filled with their haunting singing, slowly quieted and stilled.
“Hurry, ma,” I said, zigzagging back and forth on the other side of the net. Above me, a human boat—a massive human boat, trawled slowly over the ocean, bouncing slightly on mild currents, its sleek and narrow shape a dark shadow above.
I saw that my mother was badly tangled. Her flukes and fens were bleeding as she struggled. She needed air. I needed air, too.
“I am stuck,” she said. And as she spoke, I saw that she was fighting less and less. Blood wafted up from her many wounds as the net cut deep into her smooth hide. The more she fought, the more the net seemed to be holding her tighter and tighter, like a living thing. A great, evil thing. My mother, amazingly, smiled at me, although her face was growing a frightening shade of purple. She needed to breathe. She was dying. I needed to breathe, too. I would die unless I surfaced immediately.
“Please come with me, ma. Please.”
“Live bravely, Azael,” she said, calling me by my nickname.
“But I cannot live without you.”
“You can do more than you ever dreamed. Go breathe. Go live.”
“But—” But my breath was faltering. Darkness encroaches from the corners of my vision.
My mother spasmed violently; her blowhole quivered as it failed.
“I will not be far, my daughter. None of us will be. The sea is alive in you. Go now, girl. Now!”
And I did, turning up, thrusting with my tail and flukes, for I needed to breathe so very bad. From below my mother’s death song reached me, and it was the most beautiful and horrible thing I had ever heard. I looked down once just as my mother’s blowhole exploded open and she sucked in a great quantity of water. She shuddered convulsively...and then began floating.
I screamed and kicked hard and burst from the ocean like a flying beast. I released my air in a spray of water and inhaled deeply and landed with a massive splash.
But before I landed I saw clearly the markings on the ship. It was a white vessel with a large blue circle on its side, its hull, as my mother had taught me. The circle had the picture of a fish in it. Artwork, my mother had taught me. Humans were adept at art.
They were also adept at killing.
I would never forget that ship or the blue circle with the fish inside.
Chapter Two
I watched in horror as the net was brought up to the surface, and with it the tangled bodies of those in my pod. I watched as my mother’s lifeless form was pulled haltingly to the surface, for she was still very much entangled in the wicked webbing.
I followed her up, touching her, nuzzling her, drifting through the blood that surrounded her badly wounded body.
At the surface, as the sun shone high in the sky and seagulls circled, her body floated serenely in the wake of the ship, bouncing and bobbing. I floated with her, always careful of being ensnared in the webbing again. Others of our pod were there at the surface. All were dead. All floated lifeless, and the scene was too much for me to bear. I cried out and sang a song of deep sorrow. And as I sang, those humans on the ship turned and looked at me. Many watched me, holding their hands to shield their eyes. I saw one or two shake their heads, and then they went back to work, moving quickly, calling loudly to each other, doing whatever it is that they do on these ships.
Actually, I knew quite well what they did on this ship. They killed. And their netting was the instrument of death. Those creatures who did not need to breathe air were still alive, flopping wildly within the net, desperate and helpless, and even though only moments earlier my pod had been hunting them, I felt sorry for them, trapped as they were.
I continued to sing. I continued to nuzzle against my dead mother. The mackerel fought the netting furiously, twisting and angling their muscular bodies, damaging themselves. Great swaths of blood now drifted away from the netting, and I knew the sharks would be here soon, attracted by the blood. No doubt they were already on their way.
My mother was a beautiful creature. Long and elegant and sleek. Her eyes stared at me now, unseeing and lifeless, and I sang harder, my voice traveling far and wide.
Above, the humans worked quickly, hauling the net out of the water. I drifted on the currents, lifting and bobbing, staying close to my mother, but far enough away from the hateful netting.
And now my mother was moving, but not with life. No, she was being dragged over the surface of the ocean as the humans on board the ship gathered up the black net. As they took it in, I saw, they hauled great amounts of flopping mackerel from the ocean. They also hauled the bodies of my uncles and friends and those I had loved with all my heart.
My mother shifted on the currents, and then she was moving steadily toward the ship. She moved sideways. So unnatural. So painful to see. I did not want her to go up on that ship. I did not want her to leave the ocean. But I did not want to watch the sharks from the deep consume her, either.
I was torn and lost and full of pain. Still, I turned and dove under her lifeless body. I tore at the netting that held her in place, that cut into her body. But I could not tear it. How my mother had managed to do so, I did not know.
Still
, she moved steadily toward the ship. And still I fought the netting, helpless.
“Leave her be, little one,” said a voice from below. “You do not want to risk being caught yourself, correct?”
I did not know who spoke, but indeed the voice was right. Once or twice, as the net shifted and moved toward the floating ship, I had nearly become entangled myself. Through my tears and confusion, I looked down below and saw a very old seal.
“I do not want her to leave me,” I said.
“Of course not, little one. But she would not want you to perish foolishly, either. Is your mother not the Seeker?”
I nodded.
“Then she has taught you that she will live on, yes? In spirit?”
I nodded again, and as I did so, I saw that I had drifted very close to the great ship. Men reached over the railing, hauling the netting up, using also what appeared to be a metal machine to aid them. My mother shifted. She was, I saw, slowly rising up out of the water.
“No!”
I was about to dash for her. I was about to plunge through the netting and tear her free. I was about to sink that whole blasted ship when the old seal reached out a fluke and wrapped it around me gently. “No, little one.”
“But what will they do with her?”
He did not answer immediately, and together we watched as my mother, along with others from my pod, rose slowly out of the water, and flopped over the wall of the great ship...and disappeared from view.
“I do not know,” said the old seal, and now he patted my back gently. “Come,” he said. “The sharks will be here soon.”
Chapter Three
My pod was gone, and I was alone.
Well, not really alone. I was with the old seal, whose name was Kasmar. The ship had hauled its great net, bringing with it everyone and everything I had known and loved. Kasmar said it was better that we did not stay around, and I believed him, although I wanted to follow the ship. I wanted to follow it until they gave me back my mother.
“No, child,” said Kasmar, as he gently nudged me away from the ship again, out toward the setting sun. “It is best we leave it be.”
But we didn’t leave, not yet. I had drifted up to the surface and lifted my head above the rolling waves, the wake left behind by the ship. As water gently splashed over me, as the sun shone down behind me, I watched the ship slip away over the ocean, hauling with it my pod.
My dead pod.
In a blink, in a span of moments, in a span shorter than it would take for me to consume milk from my mother, I was left alone in the ocean.
I sensed them coming from below. Actually, I heard them whispering, their low, guttural voices. Voices carry exceptionally well through water. I did not need to be close to them to hear them. The voices whispered of blood and hunger. The voices whispered of killing and destroying.
“Come,” said Kasmar, he nudged me again, but this time harder. “We need to go.”
I looked down, and far below I saw the white, torpedo shapes rising. Sharks, and not just any sharks. White sharks. Their whisperings grew louder.
A natural fear gripped me, and this time I heeded Kasmar’s advice. He had already kicked off, and was looking back. I thrust my tail hard, and together Kasmar and I shot just beneath the ocean surface. I had been taught, long ago by my mother, to avoid splashing on the surface when the sharks were near, to keep from surfacing for air as long as possible, and so the two of us glided rapidly away from the scene of death, in the opposite direction. Far, far away from where they were taking my mother.
And when I couldn’t last another moment without air, Kasmar and I surfaced together. He lifted his mouth and sucked in air, but I burst high above the waves, far higher than I had ever risen before, and as I twisted briefly in the air, the sunlight straight in my eyes, I let out a great, tormented cry.
I landed hard and not very smooth. Air burst from my blowhole, and together the old seal and I sped away. I knew one or two of the sharks had briefly given chase, but they let us go. After all, there was blood in the water to investigate.
Once or twice I waited for Kasmar to catch up to me, as the older seal could not swim quite as fast. But he was an excellent swimmer for his kind, and I was still young, and thus not as fast or swift as the older dolphins.
When we were many miles from the death scene and from the sharks, Kasmar and I finally slowed; it was then that I broke down and wept, my cries filling the ocean.
The old seal swam over to me and lay a flipper on my side, and we floated on the surface like that for a long, long time.
Chapter Four
At last growing hunger distracted me from my grief. I had to eat, or I would die, and that would waste the effort my mother had made to save me. She was gone, but I remained, and I had to do what I knew she wanted, and survive.
Kasmar understood, maybe before I did. “Let’s go find some mackerel,” he said.
We sniffed the water, orienting on that type of fish, and picked up the faint scent. I was glad for the seal’s continued company; he was now my only link to my former life. Why he was helping me I was not sure, but I was not ready to question it.
Soon we located a small school of mackerel and dived in, as it were, catching the fish in our mouths, chewing them into bits, and swallowing the delicious fragments. Then, sated, we returned to the surface.
“What will you do now?” Kasmar inquired.
The question stumped me; I had no idea. My grief for my lost pod surged back overwhelmingly.
“Come visit with us,” the seal suggested.
That surprised me, because seals and dolphins were only nodding acquaintances, foraging in similar places. But the notion appealed; I did not want to be alone. Now I had to ask: “Why are you helping me?”
“That’s a bit complicated,” he said. “Mainly it’s because you’re a child alone and you need some help, at least until you learn to manage on your own. But it is also that we seals have our own issues with the killer humans.”
“Tell me,” I said as we swam where he led. Maybe it would distract me from my misery.
“We seals, unlike dolphins, do some things on land. We have favored beaches for birthing and nurturing our babies, for one thing. We have cousins who make their families in very limited regions. And the humans come with clubs and bash the skulls of their babies, brutally killing them for their delicate fur. The carnage is awful, and the mothers mourn for weeks. We hate that, but can’t stop the slaughter. I thought of that when I saw your pod about to get caught with the mackerel in the deadly net. I would have tried to warn you, but I could not catch up to you, and it was too late by the time I got close enough. All I could do was watch, and try to help if I could. You were the only survivor, so I came to you.”
That made sense. “You seals suffer as we do,” I said.
“We do.”
Then I experienced a new emotion: the desire for vengeance. “I wish I could fling a big net over their cursed boat and haul it down into the sea until they all drowned, too.”
Kasmar sighed. “I know I ought to tell you to avoid thoughts of revenge, to focus on positive things like lovely corals, the majesty of the mighty ocean, and personal survival. But I can’t, because I feel as you do. I’d like to abolish the killer humans. The urge is pointless, because they have machines and weapons we can’t touch, and just approaching them is dangerous. But still I wish for some retribution.”
His confession was immensely reassuring. I was not alone in my feeling. And it gave me a mission: “I will find a way.”
“Don’t be foolish, little one. All you are likely to do is get yourself killed. You must learn to accept what you can’t change, as I do. You don’t have to like it; I don’t. But you have to be realistic, or you won’t survive.”
“I’m too young to be realistic,” I said rebelliously. “At least I must search for a way. That may give my life meaning.”
“Maybe that will do,” the seal agreed. “Just make sure that you don’t convince y
ourself that you have the answer when you don’t. Be realistic at least in your quest, so that if you ever do discover the way, you will know it is real and not foolish fancy.”
That struck me as excellent advice, the kind my mother would have given me. “I will,” I agreed. And the pain of my grief lessened somewhat, becoming slightly more manageable.
Kasmar took me to the seals, and they welcomed me. They were not my kind, but it was a comfort to be with them. Whether it was because I was so young, or that they shared Kasmar’s outrage at what the humans did to their cousins, or some other reason I did not know. Maybe it was that Kasmar, as an elder seal, had influence to sway the others. But for now it sufficed.
Chapter Five
I played and hunted with the seal colony, enjoying the companionship of the young cubs and the protection of the mature members. I explored the ailing coral reef with them; there was still some good hunting there, though much of the coral was whitening and dying and the fish were leaving. We swam in the shallow waters of the great land that bordered the sea, digging out edible tidbits. I discovered that there were many tasty fish, not just mackerel, each type with its own habitat and ways. I learned the little tricks of hunting and foraging, and did not go hungry as might have been the case had I done it alone. Life with the seals was good enough.
I grew and filled out as time passed, becoming less a child than a young female. But several things prevented me from accepting, or being accepted, completely. I was not a seal, but a dolphin, a different species. I saw the males and females beginning to appreciate each other in new ways, but I could not relate in that manner. The seals could not swim at my pace, and I could not join them to bask on the beach. And though they feared and hated the human killers in their dreaded boats, they generally accepted that they could not do anything except avoid those boats. I, in contrast, was attracted to the boats, not from any pleasure; I wanted to discover how to sink them and wipe out their killer men. I was serious about my mission, and that determination grew as I matured, rather than fading.