The Dolphin
Copyright© 2017 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 11
We do the things that we always do when there are other humans near. We do them to start, at least, but then in the middle I hear a human making loud noises such as I do not hear before. I dive quickly, and I tell Kitik to come with me, but he is slow and then there are big sounds like the ones when Kitik is taken, and he does not come. I go to him.
Kitik is hurt! I do not know how this happens but I see that there is in him a deep hurt, as though an evil mouth has struck him only smaller. His blood flows out through the hole and I begin to despair for him.
The human called Jason comes into the water and it is beside Kitik. It touches Kitik’s hurt with a thing, and for a time Kitik is easier. Kitik tells me this Jason cares for him as mother before, and now the Jason does that again.
But the blood still comes. I go to the hurt in Kitik but I cannot help. I call to Kitik to be strong and to let the human Jason help him. It is all I can do.
I hear the one called Maggie say the Jason’s name and other noises. That one makes another thing come over the water, but the Jason reaches to get it before it comes in the water. It uses that thing to hold Kitik’s hurt, and now it holds more hard. It helps stop the blood.
Much happens on the land, but I have no care. I look only to Kitik. In time the Maggie also comes into the water. I think this is good because the Jason now moves slower and weaker. It takes from the Jason and now it is this one who cares for Kitik. I see it try to swim with Kitik to another part of the water. It moves only slowly, but I understand what it tries and I go to help. Now it goes much faster, but soon the Maggie makes a “stop” movement and I stop.
A thing from above comes into the water, and the Maggie moves Kitik to that thing. Kitik calls to me in fear. It is the same thing that brings him at last to this place, he says. He does not wish for the thing to take him away from me.
I must choose what I will do. Kitik calls to me to help him away from the thing. If he will go to the land, he says, he will go from here.
But I see the humans help him and care for him, better than I can care for him. I think if they wish this thing for him it may be to help more. I tell him so, and I say to be easy. In the now it is right that he must be easy, I say. Then Kitik calls to me again in very great fear, but the thing takes him up out of the water and he is gone, and the Jason goes with him.
I do not know if I choose right. Do they take Kitik to the land? I must know that, and I will not wait.
Wrung out, both physically and emotionally, Maggie sat despondently in the first row of the bleachers, her head in her hands. The guests were gone, Morris was dealing with the police in the lobby, and for the moment she was alone.
What an awful day, she thought. Why would anybody shoot a poor innocent animal? She’d read enough and heard enough about the excesses of fanatics, religious and otherwise, the crazy people who bombed abortion clinics and shot up offices and killed seemingly just for the sake of killing, trying to “make their point” with violence. But she’d never had personal experience with it. And now that she’d seen it she’d never forget.
She was letting the feelings overwhelm her when her thoughts were abruptly scattered.
“Maggie,” came Donald Duck’s voice. “Where take—” the rest was unintelligible, vocalized clicks.
“Not funny, Jason,” she said in weary annoyance; he’d picked up his quack-quack impressions again after she’d asked him to—
Hadn’t Jason gone with the truck?
Even as she was turning the voice came again. “Speak Jason no,” it said. “Speak I—” and again unintelligibility, a murmur and a click followed by a cooing sound.
There was no-one near. The apron was completely empty. Except— she looked at the water where Emily’s familiar snout floated just a few feet away.
“Emily?” she said in disbelief.
“No Emily,” came the immediate response. She could see the blowhole vibrate; it was the animal making those sounds. Making those words! “I”—again the three-syllable garble. “Ask where”—tick-tick—”go. You say Tow-bee. Where take?”
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