The Dolphin

I see the Maggie by itself nearby, and I come to the top of the water to speak to it.

These humans are more strange than I know before. Now that I learn how they make their noises together I come to know some of their talk. I ask it where do they take Kitik.

This is what I think is so strange about the humans. I think the Maggie tries for long to teach us the speech of humans. But when I use that speech the Maggie acts that it is greatly surprised. Does it believe we are stupid? The human speech is very clumsy, as I think before, and it is very ugly, but I think I say right in their way.

Yes, I say right, for in time the Maggie begins to speak back to me. It says that Kitik is taken to a place where other humans will care for him. I do not understand why there must be a different place for this, but the humans are not the same as we and I understand that this is their way.

But I think again of Kitik’s fear as he is taken away. The Maggie tells me the Jason is with him, and I know that is so, but it is not enough. The Jason says “Tow-bee” when it speaks to Kitik, and that will not help Kitik, it will make him more fearful. I tell the Maggie that the Jason must say his name. It makes me repeat the name, and it still does not say right, but finally it is close enough that I think Kitik will understand. I say good.

The Maggie uses a stick-out part to hold something to its mouth, where it makes its sounds. It seems to talk to the Jason, though I do not know how this can be. But it speaks “Kitik” in the way that it can. Then it asks my name and again I must speak slowly several times before it says close enough that Kitik may understand, and it says my name into the thing that it holds.

After it has put the thing away I ask the Maggie why it calls us by these strange sounds, “Em-ill-lee” and “Tow-bee.” It says that it does not know our names before. That is not sensible, we are not Lone One who chooses not to have his name. Lone One has reasons for his choice, but a name is important; it is the one that we are. I tell the Maggie that it knows our names now, and it should not call us other. I go below to think on Kitik and to rest.

I think, too, of how Kitik is hurt. None are near him when he takes hurt. How is it possible that he is hurt when he is alone?

A memory comes to me. Once when I am small and still with Mother we come upon a strange creature. It is like octopus but very different, all the stick-out parts go one way. We swim close and it sends out a liquid toward us. The liquid is dark and nasty, and some of it strikes me with force. Mother laughs at me as I swim away fast. She says the creature sends out the liquid to protect itself.

Can it be that humans may send out hard things in the same way, with force? Is that how Kitik is hurt?

---

“Exactly what the hell did you have me say to him?” Jason burst out. He’d just returned from the Flagler facility and had almost run onto the apron looking for Maggie.

“Well, did it work?”

“Did it work?“ he expostulated. “Christ, Maggie. I went in and said what you told me like a good little boy, and dammit, Toby went apeshit. They’d just got him out of the cradle in that friggin’ truck with their own sling, and moved him into whatever the hell it is that passes for a sickbed in that place, and he was being nice and quiet and easy, and then I said what you told me and it was like an explosion! Shit, he started squirming and tossing like there was no tomorrow.”

“But what happened?” she asked.

“Well, the first thing that happened was they threw my ass out of there. I mean, hustled me right out the door. Couldn’t get rid of me fast enough. Told me they needed to keep Toby down, slow, couldn’t have him upset like that.”

“And?”

His ire fell away, and in its place was something like a grin. “Well, like I said, bumping me was the first thing. But the second one was, well, about five minutes later they came out and told me his vital signs were back up. They’d been real nice to me all the way there, but I kept getting the feeling they were just trying to set me up for the big downer. They were talking all this medical shit I guess they figured I wouldn’t understand, but if you listen it’s not that hard to follow and it sounded like they thought he was going downhill pretty fast.”

She was smiling so broadly that it threatened to consume her face.

“Anyhow, that’s what had been happening. And I was getting more and more scared, and— well, then you called, and I said what you told me. Kitik and Minacou, right?” She nodded, the smile still suffusing her face. “And he went wonky, and they bounced me, and then lo and fucking behold he’s by God coming back!”

“Yes!” she exclaimed, pumping her fist in the air.

“Which brings us,” he went on, “back to what I asked to start—which is, what in the name of God was it you told me to say?”

“His name, babe,” she said, her smile still wide. “Just his name. Kitik. And hers, his mate, Minacou. Just names. But they matter, really matter.”