The Dolphin

At last I know something of why money is so important to these humans. Hiram explains that humans must have many things in their lives, he calls them tools of living, and that it takes time and knowing to build these tools. Money makes it easier for them to trade the tools and other things among themselves.

But it is as with all about the humans. They make a shadow for a purpose that at the beginning is sensible, but then they allow the shadow of their own making to overtake the now in them. The shadow becomes all and the purpose and the sense are lost, or much of it. Hiram says that for many it is money that is important, more than what they can receive for it. So far have these humans strayed into the depth of shadow from their now.

I think of these things when I sense that Acou has returned once again. I go quickly to the fence where I may speak with him, and Kitik is with me. But when I see him I know it is bad with him, I see the same that I see in Hiram.

He knows what I see and he speaks it. “Yes, daughter,” he says, “it is my time to go to the land. I cannot go alone any more, and I will not be as others to take food from the boats and make foolish of myself.”

“How if we come and be with you, Acou?” Kitik asks him. “We may make our own pod and live together and hunt together.”

What Kitik says is caring, and I move to rub against him to show my feeling. Yes, he would be good leader, this is as Altauk shows caring for me after Kitik is taken.

But Acou says no. “Kitik, I cannot live with others,” he says. “In one time I hope that I may leave this shadow of mine and come full into the now. But for me it is too late. My body pains me more where I am hurt when I leap from where the humans keep me, and from other things too, and even when shadow is light in me the pain reminds me and keeps me in the shadow. If I live with others the shadow will overcome me and I cannot stay. You are good to make offer, but I am weary now, it is my time.”

I know he is right, but I must say a thing more. “We can live with you, father,” I tell him. “Your shadow will not drive us away.”

“It drives me,” he says. “And even if it does not I do not think you could come to swim with me, I do not think the humans will allow you to leave where you are.”

I am silent as I think on what he says.

“This is the reason I come in this time,” he continues. “It is to tell you that you must find some way to leave from where you are, if you can do so. You cannot go as you come, Minacou, and even if you could do that Kitik could not go with you. You must find some other way.”

Kitik speaks again, this time to me. “Acou is right, Minacou,” he says. “The humans keep us here, they do not allow that we leave. This fence is theirs, to keep us. I know that you find good in your talk with Maggie and with others, but their way is shadow, it is not our way.”

“Do you wish to leave?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says. “I think that I must leave soon, that we must leave soon, or it will be too late. We take our food only from the humans, we do not hunt, we do not make joy because we feel joy but only to make show for the humans. We do not have our lives. I feel the strength going out from me. If we were in the sea I would soon be strong again from the hurt that is done to me, but here I can only be weak and take food as from mother and be as a calf. In time I think that I will go to the land from this. Perhaps you may find your strength in talking the human talk, but it is shadow talk and it is shadow strength and at the last I think you, too, must go to the land from it.”

It is the longest Kitik ever speaks to me, and his speech makes hurt in me because he is right. I come to this place for him, and he is still my life, but for a time I lose myself in the wonder and the strangeness that is the humans’ way. But this is not right for Kitik, and I think he speaks true that in the end it is not right for me either. It is in the now that we must live; if we do not do that we must go first to shadow and finally to the land.

Acou is speaking. “This is why I come,” he says. “I cannot be near to help my daughter as young. But I will help my daughter now if I may in the last thing it is that I do. Is there some way that you can leave this place where you are?”

“I do not know,” I tell him. “But there is a thing I may do.”

“Will you do this thing?” asks Kitik.

“Yes, Kitik,” I say. “I think you are right that we must leave here. I will do what it is that I can do.”