The Dolphin
Copyright© 2017 by Colin Barrett
Chapter 2
I am here once more, this time alone.
I do not understand why I still come. There is no smell of Kitik any longer, it is gone very soon, there is only the empty water where he is before. Yet still I come, I must come again and again, it is only in this place that I feel right with me.
The hunt is good, all eat well. I finish my hunger, and I am very hungry. And after, all have joy, there is leaping and playing and happiness. I alone have no joy. My hunger is gone now, but there is another hunger in me that cannot be filled by eating.
Altauk will no longer come with me. None of the others will come. They tell me I cannot always live in shadow, no good can come of it. I know they are right.
But they are not there when Mother and I find the tiny calf alone and starving, its own mother caught in a great weed and drowned. I could free her from the weed if I were older, I learn that almost always one may escape the weed if one is calm and does not take fright and entangle oneself. But I am small myself then, and besides we are not there in time for her, only for her calf.
For Kitik.
Those others are not there as Mother takes the calf to herself, and nurses it together with me. They are not there as Kitik and I grow together, and learn together, and have joy together, and do all things together.
They are not there when the evil mouth comes on Mother unawares and cuts her with its sharp teeth. They are not there when Kitik and I beat on the mouth again and again to make it let her go and leave. They are not there when, after we finally drive the mouth away, Mother’s blood leaves her and she goes to the land. They are not there as he and I learn to do for ourselves, so very young, until we can find the pod again.
These things I have only with Kitik. He is all of my life. When the others tell me to leave shadow, they do not know they are asking me to leave my life.
If I leave my life I must go to the land, and I am not ready to go to the land.
But Altauk shows me the way. I do not think he means to do that, I think he merely speaks out of weariness—weariness of me, and of my coming always back to this place.
“Go to that place, go where you will, Minacou,” he says to me. “Go to find Kitik if that is right for you. But Kitik is not there, it is only shadow. You must seek Kitik in the now if that is what you must do.”
I tell him that I do not know how.
“Then learn how,” he says impatiently. “Or leave shadow. You know that the way of shadow leads not to Kitik but to the land.”
Yes, I know that; Altauk is wise, he sees what the path of shadow does to others like Acou. I know he does not wish for me to take that path.
So I must do what else he says. I think I know that for long, but I do not want to tell it to me. But his speech makes an echo in me and I know I must do what he says.
I must go to find Kitik in the now.
We finish the hunt and I eat well. I do not know when I may eat well again. The hunt is hard for one alone, the food moves quickly and it escapes and there are no others to block the escape. It is best that I have no hunger for eating when I go.
I do not know where I may find Kitik, but there are things I do know. I know that the monsters above that take Kitik come from the land, and return there. Then that is where I must go.
I will not go to the land, but I must go near it. That is where I may find Kitik.
Perhaps I will not find him. Perhaps when I go near the land it will overtake me and I will go to it. But all may happen in the brightness ahead if I begin. If I do not begin there is nothing but shadow for me, and that is not the way.
This is the last time I will come to this place. I do not know where I go from here, but there will I go.
“Well, Maggie, have you met our boy yet?” It was Morris Steinberg, finally freed of the checkout chores of the front desk, walking out through the sliding glass doors.
She smiled. “What do you think?” she asked, gesturing down at her still-dripping clothes.
He laughed. “Teach you to stay back. I do. Keep over by the customer seats.” He gestured toward the crude grandstand nearby. “The splash protector helps. Customers get a little wet anyhow, makes them sort of feel part of things, but not like you are.”
“That’s not why I’m here, Morris,” she responded. “I need to get close if I’m going to keep track of his health. And work with him.”
“Health, yeah,” he said. “So how do we do that? I mean, you need him hauled with the winch or what?”
“No, no, Jason already asked me about that. With dolphins you mostly look for symptoms, anything wrong with the skin or the mouth or the eyes or behavior, anything like that. We won’t haul him unless we have to, and we’ll have to sedate him a lot when we do.”
“Okay, so what about symptoms? You gave me all those horror stories about them getting sick suddenly and dropping dead, why I brought you on. So you get enough of a look at him yet? What’s the story?”
“Take it easy, Morris,” she said. “I haven’t really had a chance to examine him very thoroughly, but my first impression is that he’s in pretty good shape. Now we just need to make sure he stays that way.”
He looked at her sharply. “About what I thought,” he said grumpily. “You scare hell out of me because I got a pretty big investment here, buying him off that boat and closing off the lagoon and the advertising and everything, then you get here and just say he’s fine, which is what I thought to start with. You taking advantage of me?”
“For a hundred a week and the odd meal?” she asked. “Some advantage. And I could have told you he’s sick as a dog and needs all kinds of treatment and then gone around pretending to give him snake oil and whatever, and you wouldn’t have known the difference, would you?”
“Okay, okay,” he said, throwing up his hands in appeasement. “Let’s don’t get off wrong foot, your first day and all. What you think about the lagoon? It all right to keep him?”
“It looks pretty good to me so far,” she said. “I told you that when I came out before. Really a lot of room for just one dolphin, a lot more than they mostly get at the seaquariums. Or at Flagler. But tell me how you work it, regulating the water flow and the temperature, keeping it clean and all.”
“Hah,” he laughed. “We got all that covered. We just let God take care of it.
“See, we just call this a lagoon. Sounds all lush and tropical, impresses the tourists. But what it is, or used to be, is a harbor, a marina. That’s what it was when I bought the place; you can still see a few of the old pilings out there, you look hard enough.”
She stared out into the water, and sure enough one or two were visible just beneath the surface.
“How did—?” she started.
“How come, you mean?” he interrupted her. “Well, that’s kind of a story. Come on, let’s get some coffee and I’ll give you the short version.”
“Short version, my ass!” said Jason, passing nearby as he continued his chores around the apron. “He hasn’t got a short version. Talk your ear off if you let him. Won’t you, old man?” he added affectionately.
“Oh, go play with the fishy, kid,” Morris retorted in the same easy tone. “This here’s between me and Maggie, she ought to know how all this”—he gestured broadly around him—”came to be.”
With coffee in hand they settled down at one of the tables set back along the boardwalk area. As Morris arranged himself comfortably in a chair she recognized that she was indeed in for an extended session.
“Back when I bought this place,” he began, “it was kind of a dump. Down on its luck, sort of. The owners didn’t have any money to make improvements, and they were being beat up by the Holiday Inns and the HoJos and all the chains that had opened up, and well, the whole place seemed like it was on its last legs.”
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