The Dolphin

It is when the light is gone that Acou comes to us.

I can smell that he is full of fear. At first I do not even recognize his scent, so strong is his fear.

Nevertheless he comes. He is near the rock-weed when he calls to me. I go to this side of the rock-weed and I can see him.

“You are gone to this place for very long,” he says. “Do you find your Kitik?”

I call to Kitik and he comes to meet my father. They greet each other. This time Acou says his true name. I am pleased; he no longer calls himself Lone One, and this is as it should be.

“Is it that the humans capture you?” Acou asks me.

I wonder what are humans. Is that a name for the land creatures? And how does Acou know this? I do not ask these things now. I tell him that I come to this place of myself, because of Kitik.

“Will you come out now, then?” he says. “You and Kitik?”

I tell him how I come here, and that Kitik cannot leap so high. I say I do not know if I can leap that high to go out, because the water is not so deep here, and I say that I will not go without Kitik.

His fear is very strong now. “How can you live in this way?” he asks. “Always to do what humans force you to do. I would rather go to the land than to live like that.”

Kitik tells Acou he does not understand his speech. “I think you mean the land creatures, and they do not force. They ask as friends, and we do as friends. One is a very good friend, that one cares for me as mother when first I come here.”

“There is another who is also good,” I add. “These two give us food and stroke us sometimes, and the others do not trouble us. Why do you say these things?”

Acou does not speak for a time. I can smell that his fear is less now, though it is still in him. Then he begins to talk again.

“I must tell you some things of my shadow,” he says. “I never speak before of these things, and it is pain in me to speak of them now, but I must say to my daughter.”

When he is very young, Acou tells us, he is taken like Kitik. The humans carry him to a different place, it is to that place that he is leading me when I find Kitik. At that place they do not care for him as Jason does for Kitik.

“And there are others there, others of us, and they do not care for me either,” he says. “They do only as the humans make them do. They have no wills of their own any longer, they are beaten.”

Acou tells that he does not wish to do as the humans want. When he does not they do not give him food, and it is as it is here, there is no food for him to hunt. And the humans make hurt in him when he does not do what they want.

“I decide that I will not live in this way,” Acou says. “In the sea I watch you make joy, Minacou. In that time I can leap as you do. And so I wait until the water is soft, and I make a leap to leave that place.”

But his leap is not enough, he says. He comes down upon the land and makes great hurt to himself. But he tells us he can sense the water near. “I roll and I turn this way and that as much as I can, and I do not remember everything but after a long time I reach the water and I can swim. I have great hurt but I swim long and long to go away from that dreadful place.”

This is how he learns of the names of humans and boats and other things. “The humans make noises, they are always making noises. They would often make many noises together, and they would use the noises to tell me to do this thing or that thing. I would not do those things, but the noises are still in my mind. I hear them sometimes now when I rest or am still. I think I will never go out of that shadow.”

It is a terrible tale that Acou tells, and I am sad for him. I understand better how his shadow pain can make him strike at others, as he once tries with me and as when Altauk and the others drive him away.

But I tell him it is not so for Kitik and me in this place. I say that the humans are good, they always give us food whether we do as they ask or do not, and none ever make hurt to us. I tell him we will stay.

“Go well then, Minacou and Kitik,” he says. “I will go. Perhaps I will come to you again. I do not know.”

As he swims away I see that he is again thin and gaunt. I do not think the hunts go well for him. I think he may go to the land soon if he does not eat better, and that makes sadness in me.

Then I think of a thing that he says. He speaks of the humans making many noises together. I hear this too, often; when they speak to us they usually use just one noise, but mostly they do not make just one noise by itself when they speak to each other. Can it be that they make their speech in little parts, and that the sense is in how the parts come together? It seems a poor way of speaking, but I think perhaps it is so.

If I listen how they put the noises together perhaps I may understand better. I think I will try.