The Dolphin

I tell Lone One to stop. But I do not wait for him, I turn and go toward the land.

It is Kitik! There is only a small scent, but it comes to me as I swim and I am sure. Kitik is near!

Lone One comes up to me. “Why do you stop, Minacou?” he asks. “This is not yet the place where I will take you.”

I tell him that Kitik is not in that place, he is here. I say I must go closer to the land, it is from there that the scent of Kitik comes.

The water becomes very shallow, and I must swim beside the land to follow the small bits of scent that come to me. But then the water is deeper again, and that is where Kitik’s scent is strongest. I swim closer toward the land in this deeper water.

Lone One halts. It is hard for me, because I smell Kitik more now, but I turn back to tell him we must go nearer to the land.

“I will not go there, Minacou,” he says. “My shadow is strong in me, and I will not go further. If you go there you must go alone.”

For a brief time even Kitik’s scent does not draw me. I know that I must part from Lone One if I am to follow my search, but it is a sad parting, even more than when I leave the pod. He and I are not together for long, but it is good for me, and I think it is good for him too, and I do not wish to part. But my search has found its end.

“I must do this,” I tell him.

“I know that, Minacou,” he says. “It is time. I do not think this would happen, I do not think you would find your Kitik even in the place where I take you, but if you find him here you must go. He is your male now, I am but shadow.”

I will not talk in his way at this time. I dare to call him again by his name. “You are not shadow to me, Acou, and I am sad that you will not be with me now,” I say. “But you are right that I must go to Kitik. If you are here when he and I return, I will swim with you again. We will swim with you.”

“Perhaps I will be here,” he says. “For a time I will stay nearby. If you come back I may be near and find you.”

“‘If I come back?’” I repeat his speech. “Do you think I may not come back?”

“I do not know,” he says. “You go now to the home of the boats. I think that the water is deep here because the humans, those of the boats, make it deep. Not all come back from such a place. You should know this before you go there.”

Even so, I tell him, I must go, as he knows.

“Then go well, Minacou,” he says as he begins to swim back to the big water. I hear him again as he goes away from me, but this time he speaks different. “Go well, daughter.”

I turn again toward the land. Kitik’s scent is strong now, I know he is very near. I follow his scent, but soon I sense something before me, some barrier that will not let me go further. It is like a big weed and yet it is also like rock, very hard; it has small holes that let the water flow through, but much too small for me or for Kitik. I come to this barrier and I stop; Kitik’s scent is very strong now, but he is on the other side of this strange rock-weed.

I call out to him. Very quickly he answers! Yes! It is really Kitik, and he is there; I sense him and I can even see him with my eyes. I tell him to come out to me. But he says he cannot, the rock-weed is in the way and in other places there is land.

I swim back and forth so far as the water will allow me, and he is right. I sense that the rock-weed is very high, so high that I may not go over it. And I sense that it is sharp on top, so that if I try to go over it I may be speared by the edges and catch terrible hurt that will take me to the land. And on the sides of the rock-weed is the land, and it is also high.

But there is one place in the land. It is beside the rock-weed and I sense that it goes back more than the rock-weed, but it is not so high as the rock-weed and there is no sharpness at the top. And the water by it is deep so that I may dive well.

In the pod when we make joy my leaps are always greatest. I can go more high from the water than any. Sometimes when one of the others makes great joy and goes high above the ­water, the others would tease that one. “You do Minacou,” they would say. But when I would make joy there are none to match me.

I do not know if I can go over this low part of land to the water that is beyond. Perhaps I cannot go so high and so far, and then I will truly go to the land.

But I must try. Kitik swims beyond, and now that my search finds him I will not let this land and this rock-weed separate us longer. If it is time for me to go to the land then that is where I will go, but in the now I must try.

I will wait a time. Then the light above will be gone, and the water is softer when the light is gone and it will rise higher. But when the light is gone and the water is as soft and as high as it will be, I will dive deep and I will go as much as I can.

To Kitik.