Dolphin Way: Rise of the Guardians (11 page)

‘
A Cleaner?’ Muddy ventured.

‘
No. They bite much deeper. They wouldn’t leave her intact.’

Then maybe a pack of krakars?’

‘
No. None have been seen around here for a long time. It’s too warm for them here, and they would do much more damage. Only one kind of creature kills like this.’

It was Dusk who said it out loud. ‘Zeta? You mean another zeta killed her? That’s unthinkable!’

‘
Deneb turned to her. ‘Not necessarily one zeta. Maybe several zetii. They would leave teeth rakes like that, they would kill by ramming another creature. They’d have to be big zetii too, like Ka-Tse.’

‘
But that’s absolutely against the Way. It can’t be true. Maybe she was hit by one of the Walkers’ crafts.’

Then Cloud Passing returned to them. ‘I shall miss Wakes Softly. She was full of life, with great potential. Now she is taken from us too soon, just like poor Born Into Summer was. We must arrange the farewell ceremony for her. Fades Into Dusk, please go back to the clan and return with any who should attend. Who will say the last goodbye above the Abyss?’

Deneb spoke: ‘Her only relative here is her mother. If she will allow it, I’ll carry Wakes Softly with her and say the last goodbyes in her company.’

‘
I think she will appreciate that. And then the only thing we can do is get back to our lives as best we can. We’ll carry on with the Academy tomorrow. We can discuss this more later.’

Sky looked across at Deneb, who was staring at Wakes’ body, his eyes full of pain. Sky felt nauseous. This was the second of his friends he had seen die unnaturally. And, unthinkably, unimaginably, other dolphins looked likely to be the reason. What was going on? Tonight was the new moon. He had an appointment. Maybe he would find out then.

Chapter 12

“
See hunter measure and compare

Shoal waits in fear, each one aware

He focuses: the choice is made

All hearts but one no more afraid

The prey her dance of death begins

While erstwhile friends silently sing”

Third Wave Breaks - (3,001 – 3,043 post Great Alluvium)

Sky swam in gentle circles at the surface, often lifting his head to look across the wave tops for signs of the young dolphin with the distinctive, misshapen head. At first, if he had come from the west, Sky would not have seen him; the glare from the dropping sun reflected harshly from the sea, tossing bright balls of light from the peaks of the wavelets. But soon Senx changed from his fierce white daytime guise into the indolent red giant of day’s end, and lowered himself lazily into the pliant horizon.

Sky hung above the wreck, waiting. Hoping that Sand In Rain would come again, as he had seemed to promise he would. Hoping that if he did, he would reveal something more. About Born. About Wakes. About these dangerous plans of the Guardians.

The sun settled lower, painting the dunes of the shore a deep orange-red. The tropical darkness came hard on the tail of the retreating daylight, but Sky could still make out the wreck clearly against the white sand of the seabed. He dived down to swim alongside it. He wondered why the Walkers made these devices. Why were they charging about the sea in these noisy metal monsters? What was the point of it? Sometimes you could tell; sometimes they hunted; taking from the waters. But often, the biggest of these things just thrummed their way from one horizon to the next with no pause, no apparent purpose. Sometimes, Sky had seen the Walkers moving about on them in their strange, jerky way, but he had no idea what they were doing in their great machines.

The sound of someone’s sonar stopped him. The light was very dim now, the new moon giving no real light. But he saw a dim shape at the edge of visibility — a small dolphin on the landward side of the wreck. It must be Sand In Rain. The newcomer hovered about there above the seabed. Sky made his signature call: ‘It is I, Touches The Sky, of the Dune Coast Clan!’ No reply.

He advanced slowly towards the figure. As he drew nearer it retreated away from him into the shallows slowly, often turning to look back at him. Sky swam forward steadily but carefully, not wanting to scare him again. ‘Sand, it’s me, Sky. Don’t be afraid. I just want to ask you some questions.’

Sky swam a little faster, but the small figure sped up too, so he slowed again. Sky surfaced briefly when the youth went up to breathe and looked above the water. In the twilight, he could see they were entering a narrow bay, so they would have to stop soon. The sand on the beach glowed an almost luminescent white in the last of the light. Then Sky realised that this was
the
beach. The one where Born had died. There was a rocky headland dropping into the sea here, and the slight figure disappeared behind it, just ahead of Sky. It was now so dark that he could see a trail of yellow-green specks of light behind the dolphin where he was disturbing the tiny, bioluminescent creatures in the plankton. Sky rounded the corner and stopped, confused. There was no sign of the smaller dolphin, even though he had not been far ahead. He sent out streams of sound and listened for reflections but there was just the rock of the wall face and the softer sounding shelf of sand. Something made him turn around towards the open sea behind him. He was not aware of hearing anything, but he turned quickly, some inner sense warning of something wrong. Seven or eight streams of yellow-green light were approaching at speed, one much nearer than the others. In a moment he had an impression of them: the up and down strokes of their tails showed them as dolphins, but not like the small creature he had followed into the bay; these were big, powerful dolphins. The nearest one came straight at him — Sky lunged to one side as the other’s rostrum crashed a painful glancing blow against his side — a blow that would have crushed his ribs had he not moved. Sky leapt out of the water, momentarily confusing his pursuers, but as he exploded back into the black water he saw them turning and coming at him again. Sending out blasts of ratcheting sound to locate him. Sky fled in confusion. ‘I am Touches The Sky! Why are you doing this?’

His only answer was a harsh laugh and a call back in a rough voice: ‘And we are going to help you spend some time a little closer to that sky soon!’

His pursuers had spread out now and Sky realised that they were between him and the open sea. They were hemming him into the small bay. He realised with horror that this must have been what happened to Born Into Summer, that she had been driven high up onto this same beach and left to die. Then his fear mixed with anger. He had to escape somehow. To tell others what was happening. To find out who these strangers were and stop this madness. He suddenly veered and swam away from the nearest big dolphins towards the shore. They took a moment to follow him. No doubt they had expected him to try and break out for the open sea between them, not to head for the impassable wall of the shore. This gave him enough of a head start to get out of visual range, so they could not see his trail of light; but they knew there was nowhere for him to go. He heard two or three harsh laughs again as the hunters slowly closed in on him. Again that rough voice came to him through the water,

‘
Come and join us for some fun, little fish! The other meddler was boring too. She preferred lying on the beach to playing our games!’ Several more jeering laughs followed.

Sky sped close inshore to one end of the small bay. Soon he was in barely enough water to swim, up against the rocky headland. It was a high rock wall, totally impassable. He made a small leap, and could just see in the failing light that the other end of the bay was blocked in the same way. He was trapped! He could hear the ranging sounds from his pursuers, it sounded as though most of them were waiting at the narrow opening of the bay while three more were closing in, searching for him, hunting him down like prey. He swam fast along the shore, his belly brushing the sand in the shallow water. The hunters’ sonar was louder. Sky did not think they would have detected his exact location yet, but he knew they would be on him soon! He approached the other end of the bay. There was no way out. Should he die on the beach like Born had? Or fight? Attacking another zeta was wrong, but defending yourself? Sky decided he would rather swim out and have them attack him. Sky looked out for a moment at the pale expanse of sand, still clearly visible in the starlight. It looked perfect, sterile, peaceful. Almost invitingly tranquil. But he’d almost died on a beach before, he could not face that slow, lingering death. Sky could hear all the hunters closing now, moving slowly and purposefully, confident of their success. They knew he had nowhere to go. This was the end. He heard the sonar of two of them move behind him, they were sweeping the along the shoreline now. They would be on him in a moment.

Sky lifted his head above the water for one last look at the sky. The rocky wall of the nearby headland could not be seen, but he could clearly make out its outline by the absence of bright stars where its mass blackened his view of an otherwise perfectly clear night. Then Sky realised that the headland was not quite a straight wall of rock. There was a small kink where the rock met the water, close beside him. It formed a small alcove in the rock wall at sea level and by moving closer to it he realised that there was a shelf of rock above the water there, maybe two or three times his body length above the water. Sky did not really think about what he did then. There was no time to. The sound of the hunters was so close, they would pick him up with their sonar at any moment. He just leapt as best he could from the shallow water. a mad, desperate leap, contrary to every instinct in his body, up through the clear night air, and then falling down onto the unknown, unnatural, cruel harshness of the rock. His body slammed down hard onto the rocky shelf and he had to stop himself screaming out with pain. The shelf was small, barely enough to hold him and he twisted sideways in the strange environment to stop himself falling back into the water, the rocks cutting painfully into his belly.

Sky lay still on the rock shelf, breathing with difficulty. Below him he could see the twin streams of green luminescence of the lead hunters sweep past him and then stop as they reached the wall of the headland, in apparent confusion. He guessed that a command must have been given, as he then saw the multiple trails of the other hunters start to move inwards, and the party started to comb across the small bay, hunting for him. Sky lay as still as he could, in agony. He could feel open wounds on his chest and pectoral fins oozing blood.

He watched the hunters sweep back and forth the small bay, at first methodically, then with increasing speed and agitation. He felt his skin drying out and tightening. The sharp rocks cut into his flesh and he fought the urge to move to try to gain some relief from the pain. Blood trickled from a deeper wound in his belly where a sharp point of rock had sliced into him. He eased himself away from it a little but the wound continued to bleed and dripped into the water below him slowly from a point on the rock shelf.

The trails of light from the hunters converged briefly then fanned out again, each moving to an equidistant point close to the shore. There, each one stopped, waiting. One was directly below Sky. He saw the large shape of the dolphin come to a stop there and then he heard it come to the surface to breathe. He could just make out the wet skin of its back at the surface dully reflecting the starlight. Then, Sky also saw another, closer wetness. The line of his own blood glistened slightly on the rock beside him. It oozed slowly to the edge of the shelf. A new droplet of blood formed there, and swelled, was about to fall…directly above the head of the hunter below. Sky watched it in horror as the heavy drop of blood separated and fell away, seeming to fall so slowly towards the dark figure, but just then the large dolphin settled down to the bottom again, and the fall of the blood droplet was lost in the swirl of his descent and the gentle movement of the swell against the rock.

The hunters stayed motionless for a long time, listening, waiting. Sky lay in agony. His blood continued to slowly ooze across the rock and fall; drip…drip…drip. If the hunter came up now he must hear it. Then there were a few glimmers of green light below him again. The hunter was moving again, slowly rising up to the surface again.

Drip…drip…drip. He would surface directly under that point. Sky’s own blood would betray him. Now Sky could just make out the shape of him slowly approaching the surface, he was almost there, still moving quietly, still listening for the sounds of his prey. Sky watched another drop of his blood fall exactly over the shape of the rising dolphin. Then he twisted himself; leaning all his weight towards the wound, pressing down hard against the sharp blade that was the rock. He felt the sharp stone enter the wound again and he fought against his instincts to press it harder, yet more deeply into himself. He thought for a moment he was going to black out with the pain, but pressed all his weight against the point. He felt the sharp rock enter deeper into the wound, the blood continued to flow past it, then, as the stone spread his flesh wider it slowed, blocked. He heard the hunter below surface. A thick drop of blood slowly swelled at the edge of the shelf, directly above the waiting dolphin. Sky could see the slow line of his blood that fed that dangerous droplet. He pressed against the cruel rock in agony and the line of blood slowed. The droplet hung, quivering slightly in the faint breeze. Suddenly, as one, the hunters turned and sped out of the bay. Sky watched the light trails of their passage as they shot off into the distance. He eased his weight off the rock, wincing in pain as the point of stone pulled from his wound. The blood flowed freely now. Then, with an effort, he jerked his body several times until he tipped sideways, banged painfully against the harsh edge of the shelf, then rolled over the edge and fell gratefully into the water. He was hurting. He was bleeding. But he was alive.