Section Two

as sung by Laughter Ring

 

CHAPTER TEN

The others may sing, and we may listen, but best of all and

always, we laugh.

It is we.

The two of us, for always — forever and a day.

We are dolphin. He is Little Brother and I am Laughter Ring.

But I am before the story, and the Song of the Sea must be

sung clearly to all those who will listen and understand.

This song cannot be sung as some of the other songs have

been sung. Those other songs are long in melody and rich in

voice. I can barely carry a tune — my voice squeaks and twitters.

The other was whale and he is great in philosophy and purpose. I

am dolphin, and we have little philosophy. Our purpose as dolphin

was and is to laugh, to giggle — to bring mirth and merriment to the

cloudiest of days.

This then is my singing of the Song of the Sea.

 

I was born long, long ago in a happy time, a time of joy in

the waters of life. I grew, like all birthed creatures, for some con-

scious time in the darkness of my mother’s womb, listening to her

silly stories about the mysteries of life. “You will be different,” she

whispered, “You will be special. Your laughter will ring the world

over and cause rainbows to kiss the waters that flow.”

“Who, me?”

Then, in a blink of an octopus eye and the pop of a sea foam

bubble, I was suddenly one with the world. Oh, and how the sights

and the sounds assailed my senses, but I wasn’t shocked or fright-

ened. Like all dolphin, I was amused. The world made me laugh,

and laugh I did. I laughed and laughed, rolled and giggled in delight

at all I saw and felt. My mother, as tradition dictated named me what

first came to her mind –Laughter Ring.

The mother and daughter intimacy was lost in the riot of

colors that danced upon the waters of life. In the silliness of all that

is, I immediately joined with others my own age. How the seas

rolled with our laughter as we danced on the waves and leaped over

the wind. We chased our tails which made us laugh all the merrier,

for there were many of the young in those days, and even the older

dolphin loved the sound of our laughter.

Time, like the tides, rolled on. We traveled all about the

great circle of our sea, from crystal ice to balmy blue. From our sea

we watched the golden light as it rose in the dawn over the Dryside

of Burning Rain. We followed the golden light across our sea to

the dryside where it finally set smoldering into the steamy fields of

dryside kelp that waved so oddly there.

Fate always calls to those who listen, and fate sang to me

in rapture. Hundreds of tides after my birthing, my joining with

the laughter of life, I met my life’s mate. I was sneaking up on the

tuna-tails and tickling their bellies from beneath, causing them to

scatter in fear, when I found myself the victim of another’s teasing.

Somewhere, somehow, someone had slipped beneath me and tick-

led me in the most ticklish of spots between fluke and fin. I giggled

and rolled trying to escape as laughter in bubbles fair burst in rain-

bows in the surface air. Try though I might, I could not escape this

demon of the untimely tickle.

“Stop!” I cried as my tears squeezed into the already salty

water. “I can laugh no more, or surely I will die.”

His voice called to me with a final tickle on my tail. “Be not

I the one to cause your death, Laughter Ring who sings so sweet.”

And there he was — sleek and silver with streaks of black racing

back from head to tail.

“Who are you?” I cried, stifling the laughter that yearned to

giggle more, “who tickles those who were made for tickling?”

“Just me,” he sang in his sing-song fashion.

“And just who under the seas is ‘just me’?” I asked in

mock disdain.

“My name is Little Brother,” he exclaimed in all seriousness.

Whether by reason of his serious tone or perhaps the silli-

ness of his name (I know not which), I again began to laugh. “Why

are you called Little Brother?”

He became more somber still and said, “I must warn you that

I am very good at riddles. Why would I not be called Little Brother?

Can the answer be a question: Did not my mother and father already

birth an older child?”

“And I suppose,” I laughed, that his name is Older Brother.

Tides forbid that your parents should birth another son for he should

be called Littlest Brother. Then there would be room for no other

brothers and your mother would have had to begin on the daughters.”

I think at this point the joke had turned a bit sour and my

companion of tickle had become indignant at the laughter pointed

at his name. “For your information,” he retorted tartly, “my other

brother is not called Older Brother, but rather something else.”

“Like what?” I asked. “Olderest Brother?”

I truly expected Little Brother to answer that his brother was

named a regal name like Prince of the Sea or Radiant Splendor,

but he retorted in a very somber tone, “My older brother is named

Bubble Butt.”

Like the pest I was then, I persisted and swam after the bait,

“Bubble Butt? Your older brother is called Bubble Butt?”

Indignantly, he turned tail to me and I surely felt I had hurt

him to the quick. “I am sorry,” I sang. “I meant no harm.” I followed

but stayed behind in consolation.

“Yes,” he sighed, “you meant no harm but great harm you

did cause.”

I was hooked, saddened by the laughter turned sour, by the

hurt to another. “I truly meant no harm. It was just that the name

Bubble Butt seems a bit odd.”

He still had his back to me and, I felt deep remorse from my

dark humor. Never is a dolphin’s laughter to cause pain. “His name

really is Bubble Butt. He got his name because he was born butt

first in a bubble and his butt is monstrous round and smooth and

does look like a bubble.”

It was then that Little Brother turned toward me, and I could

see the mischief in his eyes. He was not hurt at all; he was teasing.

He was the master jabber of jabs in the ribs of some unsuspecting

squiggly-finned creature.

I was shocked and surprised, and a bit dizzy as one who has

been turned round and round. “Why, you . . . .”

“Besides,” he laughed, “I really don’t have a brother, but I do

have a sister called Older Sister. I was to be Little Sister, but nature

always causes the rain to fall on those who seek fair weather.”

With a flip of his tail under my chin, Little Brother was gone

in a flash, and feeling angry at being duped I quickly chased after

him. He breached from the waters as he raced along slicing smooth-

ly into the dryside, gaining speed and distance. I followed, and our

spray traced lazy patterns back to the sea.

We chased and chased until my anger turned again to ex-

hausted blowing of misted laughter from the tonal vent on my

head. We finally stopped in a cove of coral, living rock and there

we looked long into one another’s eyes. It was a deep soulful look

that merged and melted all our reserves and, like others before, we

became one — in our own way we were mated for life — bonded by

that which must be. Shyly we turned away and joined the others, but

we were one, soul mates — forever and a day.

In the sea, the tides change, and with changing comes the

growth to adulthood. It was strange as I grew how I never felt the

change, but rather observed.

Little Brother and I bonded closer and closer in friend-

ship until we nearly thought alike. In many ways that was a scary

thought indeed, Little Brother being silly as he was.

Together we played, laughed, and teased the world unmer-

cifully. The feathered-furies were a delightful prey and the subject

of a great many jokes and games. At times, we would slip slowly

beneath them as they floated in the waters of life. Then gently, like

a rising tide, Little Brother would slowly rise until one of them would

be standing, quite confused, on his back. Not very intelligent were

they. They would stand there, these dryside, feathered tunas, while I

would rise under another one until the two were standing eye to eye.

With wide eyes, they would screech warnings to each other and

then lumber up into the wind-swept sky. My friend and I would roll

in the seas, bathed in our own laughter.

One of our favorite ploys was to slip into a great gathering

of these feathered-furies and skim the surface with our fins jutting

from the water like some great sharp-fin, which are known to have

devoured a dryside meal or two. This cruel joke was played many,

many times, but like all jokes, it finally ran its course and became

less amusing when the pretend became reality.

One day as we were playing our little child’s game, knifing

through the waters pretending to be other than we were, scaring

the very feathers off them, I noticed Little Brother, who was silkily

slicing through the water on my strong-fin side. “How smooth he

glides,” I thought. “Almost like a real sharp-fin.”

I swam for a time in this manner with Little Brother at my

side, when I dove to change sides and make a new run at the feath-

ered furies. To my amazement, Little Brother had shifted sides, too,

and we were still swimming side by side. I blinked and realized that

there was no way possible that he could have gotten from one side

to the other.

“Oh sweet coral crap!” shouted Little Brother, “A sharp-fin is

swimming at your side! It would not please me to watch you be-

come a meaty meal.”

I breached and as quickly dove, glancing behind to see if

I had eluded that which I had moments before striven so hard to

imitate. To my great discomfort, I discovered the sharp-fin had tired

of snacks of feathered-fury and decided to follow me. Not only to

follow but also to intercept and perhaps devour a small meal — a

meal that was composed of a plump young female dolphin who was

far too young for such a fate!

I twisted and swam deeper, and yet it followed on behind in

that icy way that sharp-fins do. He slid by, as if I weren’t there at

all, and then turned to face me, jaws open wide, glistening teeth in a

sickening smile. His eyes rolled and the lids locked in the evil eye of

death. This was it! I was soon to be a lump in his stomach. I twist-

ed and lurched to one side as he attacked, knowing too well that my

defenses were hardly any defense at all.

My prayers of finality, the beginning of the end, were rudely

broken as my eye caught a flash of diffused light on yet another

sharp-fin. But this was not simply another mortal fin; this was none

other than Little Brother, and he was throwing himself at my attack-

er. His body rammed the sharp-fin full in the side, and there was a

burst of bubbles as the creature lost a rib or two from the collision.

Quickly, Little Brother raced off and attacked, again and again. The

sharp-fin soon lost all desire to taste my sweet meat, and beat a

hasty retreat into the deep.

I surfaced, my tail quivering in the aftershock of fear that

touches all of us at the closeness of a meeting with the beginning

of the end. Little Brother soon leaped above and then fell back into

the water. His showing off, which normally irritated me, this time did

nothing more than ingratiate, as I watched my hero bound about in

the waters of life.

Finally he tired of his game and swam to my side and gently

asked, “Are you okay, Laughter Ring?”

Surprised by his gentleness, I responded in kind, “I am all

right. Thank you. For what you did was very brave and very sweet.”

“Not so brave nor for the reason as you would think,” he

laughed with his eyes twinkling merrily. “For if the sharp-fin had

tasted you, he would have spat you out such a bitter taste are thee.

And then he would have come looking for me. It is the talk of the

sea that I am the sweetest dolphin around.” With that, he splashed

me full in the face, and the chase was on.

CHAPTER NINE

I remembered nothing for a tide or tides, I know not which. I

stirred as one waking from a frightful sleep. I stretched and my body

ached. I looked around and found that I was close to the breakers

but a short way from the shore. I listened, but there was no song.

I knew that what I had hoped I had dreamed, was real. I was alone

with the memory of the Song of the Sea.

The memory.

Of all that is holy, the memory!

The pod was dead!

My mind was flooded with memory. The delights, the laugh-

ter, the fears. To remember was to ache with such gut-wrenching

pain that to think was effort, not worth the price. I twisted in my

own sea of guilt as I wondered the impact of my singing of the

Narwhal song. I agonized my journey and the singing of that song.

How much of all of this was my own responsibility? How much guilt

was mine truly earned? How deep was my conceit at the wonder

of the song. How hollow is a song when there is no one to sing it

to? Now, being Scribe was not an honor. Now, being Scribe was

charged with the horrible prospect of passing this hideous ritual on

to another pod, as it had been passed on to us. Others–and still

others–would die, and like those interwoven nets of kelp, it would

keep building until all the seas would be silent forever.

“No!” I screamed, “This will end with me. This will end for-

ever here. I will join the others in their futility, rather than take the

chance that this song might be sung again.”

Slowly, I turned my back to the sea and rushed to the dry-

side. I began to sing of recrimination. I was the one who returned

from the journey and passed on the hatred of the sandwalker. I was

the one who had listened to the dreams of the Narwhal and passed

on their vengeance to the pod.

“The pod. The pod.” I cried again and again. Then, with the

speaking of the word, came fresh memory anew, and like a sharp-fin,

it ripped at my heart and devoured my soul.

“Melody and Progeny, my own sweet mother, Rhapsody, all

are dead,” I wailed, and the tears blurred my vision of purpose so

that I could not see. A wave lifted me higher and threw me closer to

the shore and to the end I so desperately sought. The coral sand

began to scrape along my belly; still I fought higher and higher, up

the land shelf into the dryside. Finally, I could swim no more and

was beached like a monstrous log in the land of the sandwalkers.

With a calmness that belied my spirit, I sang of other days.

I sang loudly so the Song of the Sea would be carried on the winds

of the dryside, and all the sandwalkers could hear what I had done,

what they had done, what we all had done to the world. I sang of

destruction. I sang of the lives lost and the friends departed. I

waited for the end . . . the beginning.

As I lay there, prepared for death and embroiled in my own

self-pity, I felt a biting, a pulling at my tail. “Odd,” thought I, “al-

ready the feathered-furies are pulling at my flesh.” But what mon-

strous feathered-furies! These strange furies not only pulled at me,

they yanked. I felt myself being scraped backward. The oddity of

this event momentarily snapped me from my private wake, for no

feathered fury could pull a whale back to the sea. What was hap-

pening? “Ah, no matter,” I mused out loud. “It matters not at all

whether it is a feathered fury, or a great sharp-fin pulling me into the

sea as a meal. It matters not, for the song is dead.”

Suddenly, my self-pitying reverie was broken by excited

chitterings and a voice that sang from out of the past, “You blub-

ber-brain. Help us for pity’s sake!”

“Help us? Help who?” I asked deliriously.

I heard my own words being mimicked like an echo gone bad,

“Help us? Help who? Help me? Help you? Come on, flounder

butt, help yourself.” My brain was fogged with grief, but still and all,

echoes don’t add to words spoken. Echoes don’t speak in squeaky

voices. Then the voices were remembered — Little Brother and

Laughter Ring.

“Let me die!” I cried. “The song is silent, and the pod is

dead!” I pulled from their grasp and once again began inching my

way back up the shore, but once again I was held short of my goal.

“By all things that are holy, let me die! For all is lost!”

“Not quite all,” shouted Little Brother, yanking me rudely again

toward the sea. “For out there wait the children that you saved. Did

you save them only to let them die of neglect and confusion?”

I paused in my struggle, and far out to sea I could hear the

gentle, tiny squeaks of the babies. All in the pod were not dead.

I remembered in a rush that in my madness to break the spell of

death I had pushed several young calves back to the deep. Now,

with no one to guide them, they floated and called to the parents

that could not hear.

But obstinacy is born of pride, and I shook their simple

songs from my ears and would not listen. “No!” I bellowed. “I am

whale, and my destiny is to die as the others before.”

Suddenly, my friends from long ago let go. “Fine,” taunted

Laughter Ring, “and the Narwhal are right as they sing. But what

happens when there are no more whales? What happens when all

the whales have cast themselves upon the shore? Do you think the

sandwalker will feel your protest after you are gone? No! They will

push your fat, rotting carcass back to the sea or better still, leave it

where it lies. Then they will quickly forget and continue their ruin-

ation of the world.”

“But,” I protested weakly, “I have carried out my responsibili-

ty. I have sung the song.”

“That’s a floating pool of carp crap, and you know it,”

snapped Little Brother. “Who do you sing to as you die? Do you

sing to the children, so they can continue this madness? Or do you

sing to the sandwalker? There is good reason why the sandwalk-

er does not sing the Song of the Sea. For how can you sing that

which you cannot hear?”

I froze in my undulations to reach the dryside. I paused.

Perhaps they were right. The sandwalker does not sing our song,

and we, the whale, can’t sing his. With a sigh breathed deep, I ex-

haled all that was wrong with my soul and began slowly to turn back

to the sea.

I flipped and flopped, helping my friends to extricate me from

the shore, and slowly inched my painful way from the sands of the

dryside. The salty waters of life burned my wounds but, all in all,

soothed my dry skin. As my wounds tingled with the sharp bite

of healing, I dropped into the deep to soothe that tortured melody

echoing in my mind. My little friends let me be while I mused my

situation. The children must learn the Song of the Sea, and from

its singing change would come. All must learn the song, not only

whale but flipper-fin and dolphin. All of the waters of life must sing

the same, not bits of melody here and there.

While there, on the bottom of the world as I knew it, I found

answers that had never been questioned. For there was a way to

protest the sandwalker. There was a way to remove the sandwalker

for all time from the sea. Exalted with rebirth and buoyant with the

spirit that has made the whale strong for all of time, I breached. For

the first time, for the last time, I breached for the life of all living

creatures in the sea.

Sustained by the new life within me and aided by my dear

friends, we searched for the children of tomorrow. We found them

not far from shore, confused and so alone. There were seven in

all. They sang to us for guidance. They asked for the song, and

they asked for food. Fortunately, all but one of them had tried the

first taste of fish and needed not their mothers’ milk. Little Brother,

Laughter Ring, and I swam ourselves ragged, hunting fish and re-

turning to feed the hungry mouths that waited, still in shock from all

they had seen but settled by normalcy of eating.

Though we tried to feed the littlest one, she was so dis-

traught she would not eat the fish we offered and cried fitfully for the

warmth of her mother’s milk. “What are we to do?” I asked of the

others, “I can soothe the young ones with the song and feed them

with the fish, but this little one I can do nothing for.”

“It has been done before,” Laughter Ring said quietly. “We

are both of the family of the sea. I will nurse the young one until

she can be taught to eat the fish. It may not be much, but it will

have to do.”

“That’s ridiculous,” snorted Little Brother. “You can’t nurse

another unless you are with child.” He paused and looked foolishly

at his mate. “Are you? Are we with child?”

Laughter Ring laughed true to her name, “I don’t know about

you, but I am. If you haven’t noticed these last many tides, I have

been growing large with child.”

Sure enough, I now noticed that Laughter Ring was filled with

child, and it was easy to see that she would have little trouble nurs-

ing a young one, even a whale.

“But, but,” stuttered Little Brother, “I thought you were just

getting a little fat. I mean, I thought you were eating a bit more

than I …”

“Hmm,” muttered laughter Ring, as she sought out the child.

“You and I shall talk of this another time. Fatter indeed.”

Later, when the silverside replaced the golden light with its

silvered reflections, we fed ourselves. Sated, we dozed, rocking

on the now gentle seas. I would sleep for a time, and then wake

abruptly, thinking I had heard Melody’s song calling to me from the

dryside. After listening for a time and hearing only the gentle rush

of the waves falling on the sea, I would fall back into my fitful sleep.

For many tides we moved the small pod around in no partic-

ular direction, as all seemed to wait for some decision from me as

to a call to action. What they didn’t know then and know now, is

that I didn’t know what to do. The dream of the Narwhal had filled

my mind with such narcissism as to my importance, that I couldn’t

make a decision, thinking somehow that the fate of the Song of the

Sea rested solely in my wake. I had begun spending more and more

time alone, forcing the two dolphins to care for the calves alone, no

mean task, indeed. It was on one of these reflective sojourns that I

had yet another mysterious chat with the mystical ghosts of the sea,

the Narwhal.

I had been in a deep dive and was actually due to breach, to

fill my straining lungs with air when I heard Godwin’s voice. “Why

do you wait, white whale? Why do you wait?”

I spun around in the water, looking for the source of the sing-

er. In the distance I thought I saw the faded image of Godwin the

Avenger, tail down in the water. I tried to focus on the visage but the

more I concentrated the more faint the image became. Sure that I

was still hallucinating, I called out “You! Why do you haunt me so?”

“You are the salvation. We cannot wait, Godwin called out.

The sandwalker has taken all from you. It has taken your moth-

er, your lover, your life. The prophesy has been fulfilled. You are

alone. There is no one for you to sing to. Call for the gathering.

Call for the Conclave. Let all the brethren sit in judgment of the

sandwalker. It is you and you alone who can bring us together.”

And then, as suddenly as he appeared, Godwin disappeared.

Lungs straining, I breached. I floated there, rocking softly on the

gentle waves that moved tirelessly to the dryside, to the sandwalker.

I was decided.

I rushed back to Laughter Ring and Little Brother and as the

young calves slept I sang, “The Narwhal are right in the sharing of

their wisdom, but they are so wrong in how they teach it. They hide

within their frozen crystal walls and give gifts of hate to any whale

that happens by, and, one by one, the whale is disappearing. The

Narwhal could do no better if they all gave their twisted horns to the

sandwalker, so that they could kill even more of us in the seas. A

new song must be sung. Not a song sung by just a single pod of

whale, here or there, but all in one massive chorus. I call for a Con-

clave, the greatest meeting of all the brethren of the sea.”

There followed a faint echo from afar, “And that is good!”

At first I thought it was again my imagination, the on-going

hallucination, but I was wrong. The two dolphins turned to the

sound also, and although it was faint, they, too, heard it. The Nar-

whal or at least one was somewhere in the nearby seas. “So, the

ghosts do move beyond their enchanted chambers,” I muttered.

“What did you sing?” asked Little Brother.

“Nothing,” I murmured. “Nothing. Draw yourself near. It is

time that I pass to you the entire Song of the Sea.”

“No!” said Laughter Ring, as she backed away, her eyes

opened in horror. “I will not listen. There is no way that I will let

you sing the song and die!”

“There is no fear of my throwing my life to the dryside and

the sandwalker. No, I propose to share the song as it was meant to

be shared. No one, whale or brethren, should hold the song alone.

The song is to be shared and with that I began to sing: This, then,

is my singing of the Song of the Sea.. I was born some seventy-five

hundred tides ago, in a time when the waters and life were mirror

smooth. Before my birth, in…”

I sang it all, leaving out nothing. When I was done, the dol-

phins’ eyes were wide with wonder. “By all that is holy,” whispered

Little Brother, as he twisted and turned, “I never would have thought

any song could be so long.”

“Or beautiful,” sighed Laughter Ring.

“It is the history of the world that you now share.” I sang,

“Go, go my friends. Call your pod of dolphins together, and tell

them of the Conclave. Send them out to the waters of the world and

each one of that group shall go to another and yet another group,

tell them all of the Conclave. Call to the flipper-fin and the great-

backed whale. Call to the blue and the bowhead. We shall all meet

in five-hundred tides near the crystal walls of the Narwhal of the

Horn.”

And with that, I gathered the young calves around and began

moving up the world to meet my destiny, the Conclave.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Life continued in sweet monotony. We journeyed with the

tides and moved about the world. The bright light and night of

the silverside moved in an unrelenting blur of activity, all of which

I turned to song. It was on the tenth journey back from the cold

summer feedings that I heard the classical tones of Philosophy

once again evoking a philosophical change in the song. The pod

stopped silent in the seas.

Philosophy, who seemed as old as the song itself, had lagged

far behind. Objectively, I drew away from the main pod to seek out

this old whale and see what new theme he was creating. What I

found was sad indeed–a whale that had grown so old and feeble he

was barely able to move. His mind had gentled, and he sang now in

monotone. I followed and listened as he moved with deliberation of

purpose toward the pod.

He had fallen so far behind that it took the good part of the

golden tide for him to join the main body of the pod. There at the

edge he stopped, floating deathly still in the water. When asked if

all was right, he sang in a reedy voice that he had been slowed by

a deep trance and that from these dreams was a new theme for the

song itself. He needed a tide or two to finish his vision. The pod

was patient and took this time to feed heavily on all those sweet

things that can be found to eat in the warmer waters.

Early the next day, when the bright lights of golden tide had

overshadowed the night of the silverside, Philosophy began to sing.

At first it was only a gentle harmonic rippling the water, but slowly it

crescendoed into a demand that the pod gather about him. From all

points and depths of the sea, they came. We moved and surround-

ed this aging whale of wisdom and dreams.

“I am old,” he said. “I am about to slip from the waves that

rock the sea and fall like a rock to the deep! As is my wont, I wish

to reunite myself voluntarily with the waters of life and give up that

which was given to me.”

The pod buzzed in excitement but quieted again as the old

whale continued, “I have over the past several tides been visited in

dreams by the Narwhal of the Horn. They have presented me with

new thoughts and perspective of life. I have been much moved by

their arguments in my dreams. It is with the counsel of those pro-

phetic dreams that call for my right as dictated within the Holy Song

of Truth as sung by the Narwhal of the Horn . . . for the THOU-

SAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER.” Then in dramatic

punctuation, he floated there, quiet still rocking side-to-side with the

waves, singing nothing. But from the pod there was a silent expec-

tation of more and a searching for understanding of his request.

My charge was to record all, as part and parcel of the song.

While Philosophy sang, I remembered the ghostly pair I had met so

long ago who had first sung of the “death.” I silently recalled my

dreamlike meeting with the Narwhal and their call for the ultimate

revenge, wherein a pod would drive themselves upon the shore in

obscure protest. I tore deep into the heart and soul of the very

song itself searching for a melody or a verse that would guide me to

accept or refute Philosophy’s demand that the pod should commit

such a massive suicide and if that request should be honored. The

pod turned to me and waited in nervous anticipation.

How long they waited or how long I searched I do not know,

but suddenly from the very beginnings of the song I found that pas-

sage, that same passage that was later sung to me by the Narwhal

in my youthful dream in the ice flow.

At first as a gentle humming and then to full voice, I sang,

“There will come a time when the song as sung need not be sung

any more. There will come a time when one amidst the pod will call

for the THOUSAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER, to force the

pod to the dryside in silent protest of all the wrongs the sandwalkers

have committed in the sea. The pod must agree in majority and be

willingly to give up that which was given to them, life itself. The

requesting whale, so honored, will be allowed to lead the pod to the

dryside, there to leave the waters of life forever and die, never to

return to the sea.

But the decision is great for the pod. For, with the honor of

the THOUSAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER, the pod song

is ended. All must go. All must sing the final song with the one

so honored. All must gloriously rush to the shores of the dryside

and sing the final stanza in protest to those that wish us gone from

the sea. This is not an ignominious death, but rather a rapturous

crescendo honoring all of those who have swum and still swim the

waters of life. So it is sung in the Song of the Sea.

As I finished, the seas went flat, not even a breeze ruffled the

waters. The pod floated as if suspended in time and place reflecting

on what I had sung. All, every member of the pod from Progeny

to Philosophy would die if the request was granted, this honored

death. Right or wrong, I knew not which, but a feeling of waste

pervaded my very soul. Surely the pod would see the futility in this

gesture of ending the song. I was but the Scribe. I was the singer

of the song and could not, would not enter the debate as to the val-

ue of this decision. I was charged with listening, detached, a part,

yet not a part. I waited as all those others waited for a new song

to be sung to end the anticipation of this frightful request. Surely

Philosophy had grown mad with the aging. Surely the pod would

not agree.

Dark had come with the rising of the silverside and the melt-

ing of the bright golden light. Nothing moved but the waters them-

selves. The tiny bright flashes of the far above watched and cooled

the seas, but still no one moved. Everyone, young and old alike,

silently sang the song that had been sung.

Much later as the tide changed and the bright light skipped

across the rolling waves like some great silvered fish, without cue

the pod began to sing as one. ‘We greet the golden tide. We greet

the sea. We honor those that have gone before. We honor those

still living. We now honor Philosophy with the beginning, the end.

We gladly go as one to sing this the final passage to the Song of

the Sea. We will freely die to protest the sandwalker and the evil

that he brings to the sea.”

As long as I live, as long as I swim the seas seeking some

form of destiny, I will hear those hollow lyrics that were added to the

song. My mind reeled as I recorded all, as was my charge. For the

moment, I was caught in the very same excitement, the fever of this

momentous decision and I too began to sing the acquiescence. I

hummed, and my blood boiled with the power that comes in being

one with the pod. It was done. The pod had decided and the insidi-

ous wave had begun its ominous roll to the shore.

I, too began to sing the acceptance, pledging my body to

the THOUSAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER, but the old,

cracked voice of Philosophy cried out bringing me to my senses,

“No, Harmony! The entire pod must go as one save for one . . .

the Scribe, the sentinel, the singer of the song. You must stand

away and record the final notes. You are charged, as you have been

charged before, with watching and recording. There is no other way.

When all is done you must sing the song in all its finality to another

pod so that the traditions will be passed on. As you sing the final

notes of the song, then and only then will you enjoy the rapture of

all that we have enjoyed. Then shall you have your end, your be-

ginning. This is the way it has been. This is the way it shall be.”

Silence once again knifed through the pod but in the air was

the blood call of the decision. So numbed was I, that I simply re-

corded and thought not at all of what would come later.

As the pod sang their song of expectation, I heard, in the

distance, the angry bellowing of Cacophony as he breached from

the deep. “It was mine. The song was mine. Mine to sing. Mine to

listen. I agree with the pod, but I do not want to die!” Only I heard

this passionate outburst, like many small verses. It was followed

by silence, as Cacophony sounded deep and disappeared from the

song for a time.

The pod did not move; the pod did not sing. It lulled in the

waters off the shore and waited for the darkness of the silverside.

For this was the time of great madness, as the silverside pulled not

only at the tides but twisted our sanity and reason. With the si-

lence and the quiet of the pod, I dropped from the world to reflect on

the fullness of the song. The music of all the histories reeled in my

mind and I sought some form of escape from the decision of Phi-

losophy. The music whispered like a quick wind that blows, but no

remedy came.

I found in the song in tides long past other Scribes who had

traveled long distances until they found our pod. They had come

shrouded in the anguish of their aloneness and to sing their song

one final time. Always when finished, as they sang the final chord,

the crescendo, of their now-extinct pod’s song, they died becom-

ing one with the sea, their song echoing forever in the verses of

our pod. For being a Scribe without an active song to sing has to

be loneliness so painful and deep that the only cure is the end,

the beginning.

But also in the song was one Scribe who came not alone.

He came with a mate. I was there, a young whale, and as this

Scribe from some unknown, long-departed pod sang, his mate

joined him with a gentle harmony. At the final crescendo, they end-

ed their lives together.

I could take a mate!

It was always known to me that should I wish, I could take

a wife, and it was always assumed that in some tide, Melody and

I would be one. Now was my final chance to join, to have a com-

panion to ease the lonely tides as I searched for a pod to pass the

song to. A mate. An interlude in my personal song in which I could

reflect and join and become one for a time. No time for calving, no

time for child, but still something to grasp on my journey to the end.

Without thinking, I breached and called loudly for Melody. Her

name echoed about the pod as they floated idly in deep contempla-

tion of all that was, and was to be.

The waters seemed to sweeten as I felt her come near, her

song questioning my need. The wind whipped at the waves and

froth, in the form of tiny bubbles lifted in the air reflecting the laven-

ders and blues of the twinkling lights overhead. She sang a gentle

blush and brushed against me as the swell of the waters lifted us

both in unison. We became one for a moment, there in the bril-

liance of the reflected silver light, and for that moment, forgotten

was the world.

The forgetting seemed forever. There was not yesterday, only

the sweet promise of now, but like the tides that roll in and out,

tomorrow crept upon us. What had been only two in the world be-

came all things of the sea, and a pod that demanded to sing a fatal

song. I regained my senses.

“Stay with me Melody,” I rushed. “As is my right as Scribe for

a pod that seeks to end its song, I may choose a mate. Stay with

me and listen to this strange glory. Our tides will not be long, but

we can see what we can as we seek another pod to sing our final

song.”

She sang nothing for a time as we rode the crest of the silver-

side tide, then slowly she pulled away. “I, too, had a vision from the

Narwhal. In my dream I was told that I must succumb to the will of

the song. The Narwhal said that I would be tempted to stray, but

that I must be true of course and sing with those I have sung with

always. Philosophy has called for the finale to our song and of that

honor I should sing. But, I also long for your song. I wish to sing

both songs but I cannot.”

“But,” I protested, “it seems so futile, such a waste of life and

the song. We have lived, frolicked, and swum the seas. We have

run from dangers. Have we survived only to drown in the dryside?

What makes Philosophy right? What makes the death of all for the

death of one so glorious? Who has a right to ask us to give up our

world for the sake of an old whale’s pride? Don’t sing with them,

sing with me! It will give us tides together before we, too, sing the

finale of the Song of the Sea.”

In answer, Melody slowly drifted from my side by the tide of

the night of silverside. “Let me think,” she cried as she turned.

“Let me think of that which I should do.”

I found myself alone, wrapped in my own self-pitying song.

Pity always wraps those who sing of it in a numbing blanket of false

warmth and security. I heard not the rush and swell of the seas, nor

the simple tunes sung by the others that swam nearby in the waters

of life. I could only hear my own song as I lamented a love lost.

So dulled was I by my saddened introspection, it was some

time before I realized that something was very wrong indeed. I felt

the waters begin to churn as I was tossed this way and that. Blink-

ing my eyes in confusion, shaking off the lethargy that had envel-

oped me, I was tossed again violently as a giant fluke smashed me

full in the face.

I turned and looked but could see nothing. Then, from the

murkiness of the depths was a shape and form I knew only too

well–Cacophony! His eyes were glazed and shot with the raging hot

blood that coursed in his veins. Full into my side, he hammered,

and I felt the bone and cartilage splinter and crush. I twisted in

slow agony trying to hold to conscious thought, but the darkness of

the silverside was getting darker, and I could not react as he struck,

again and again.

I floated, unable to defend myself, all the sweet dryside airs

driven from my body. I could only listen as Cacophony railed, “Die,

white whale, die. Die not the honorable THOUSAND DEATHS OF

THE SANDWALKER, but die just the same. You have taken the

song that should have been mine. You have changed my life. You

have made all the wrongs seem right. You might have had the hon-

or to stand aside and listen as we all sang the final song, but I take

that honor. I take back that which you have taken from me!”

He receded into the gloom, and I could barely discern his

form as he prepared to deal the final blow. As he charged, I steeled

myself for the end, the beginning. Just as he was about upon me,

a tiny form leaped through the waters and deflected his blow. Like

a dolphin, darting here and there, was Progeny. Progeny, my tiny

friend, was no match for this monster of the deep but a match he

made.

“You must leave him be!” Progeny sang in his child-whale

voice. “You must be gone from the crystal seas.” He rammed the

much larger whale square in the eye, and Cacophony was blinded

on one side. Progeny darted this way and that, and before Cacoph-

ony could react, this silvery missile smacked into his other side,

rendering the mad bull totally blind.

“My son,” croaked Cacophony in shock and disbelief, “you

would side with him who has taken the song from your father?”

“Yes,” cried Progeny, “I learned from Harmony to give all for

the song.”

“And, I suppose,” continued the blinded whale in gentler

tones now, “that dear, sweet Harmony has sung all sorts of ditties

about your father. I suppose he has sung in a loud voice all the

wrong that he felt I had done.”

“No, father. Harmony has not sung of you at all. He has

avoided all melodies with mention of you for fear of turning me

against you. No, father, the song I sing is one of observation. I

have watched. I have listened. You are an evil in the waters of life!”

Cacophony paused in silence as he thought on all that had

been spoken. Then, he softly spoke, “May chance you are right,

my son. May chance I have squandered the wealth that the waters

of life gave me. I am so sorry. I have not been a father to you at all.

I have ignored you and I know not your song. Come closer so that

I may see you, for you have blinded my eyes and I can barely see.”

As Cacophony spoke, the child’s angry resolve softened

and then turned quickly to pity and shame. “Father,” cried the tiny

whale as he cautiously slipped to Cacophony’s side, “I have hurt

you so, but I only did so to save another.”

Progeny moved near to his father and began to sing a song

of gentle healing, as he brushed against the eyes that could not

see. Round and round, round and round, he swam about the injured

whale, as he tried to heal the injuries that he had caused.

Suddenly, the older whale twisted his massive body and

with one mighty blow, smashed his tail with all of his weight into

the tiny whale.

With a burst of bubbles, Progeny softly sang, “Father, why?”

“Why? Why?” his father laughed, “You are my son, and

you have to ask why? Anyone who dares to strike at the mighty

Cacophony shall not live long in the sea. Adagio, the fat whale;

Tympani, my learned father; Harmony, the great white; even you, my

son, none shall live that fail to understand–I am he that controls the

sea.” And with a crash of body on body and a cackle of laughter,

Cacophony ended the just-begun life of his son, Progeny.

I lay there still in the water. “Oh, my dear sweet child, Prog-

eny. Yours was a special gift of laughter and mischief. Yours was

always to give to me, and now you are gone, involved in that which

you did not belong!”

My lament was broken again by the discordant voice of Ca-

cophony, “Now, white whale, as my vision clears, we shall finish

that which is ours to finish.” He began moving towards me and I

once again steeled myself for the end. Droning a senseless tune,

he moved in the ever-tightening circle of the death spin. I had just

begun to sing my final song, to quietly ease what pain was coming,

when Cacophony stopped.

The waters surrounding us were filled with such frothing that

as single-minded as was his intent, even Cacophony stopped. But

the water wasn’t truly frothing. The waters were dancing with the

unified voices of the entire pod, singing the first chorus to the Song

of the Sea, the prelude to the death of Philosophy. The notes of

the song were accented by each of the pod, from the smallest to the

largest, and it caught them all in a fever of finale. Whale by whale,

they breached between Cacophony and me, and whale by whale,

they separated us. Cacophony bellowed in rage as he was carried

along, but no one in the pod reacted, for the ritual had begun.

“Stop!” he cried, “I am Cacophony. I will not lower myself to the

clamshell level of you . . . you followers! I am the leader.”

But the pod ignored his protestations pushing him toward the

shore behind the slowly swimming, age-mad Philosophy.

Cacophony began to panic as he realized he was trapped at

the head of the procession. “You kelp heads, you crusty-coated

feathered furies, let me be! I should have been the Scribe. The

song should have been mine to sing.”

But the pod continued to sing as one. The mad bull tried

vainly to swim through the pod and back out to sea, but the crush

of whales was so massive that in their fervor, they could not let

him go. He battered and slammed at the moving wall of flesh but

they were resolute in their determination. All the while, Philosophy

moved through the break line of the crashing waves, closer and

closer to shore as he hummed a sweet gentle tune in counterpoint.

As the pod passed me by, so did Melody, and the waters

seemed saltier still as rainbow-hued tears welled in her eyes. “I

love you, Harmony. I want that noted and reflected in this, the final

crescendo of the song. I wish I could stay. I wish I could live a

moment more with you by my side, but I cannot. I will be with you

forever in song.”

I was mortally injured and could do nothing but listen. I float-

ed in the sea, charged with the responsibility of those things that

had been sung before. I could not interfere. I could not be involved.

I was the Scribe . . . the singer of the song. I was to listen and to

remember, not necessarily of choice but rather by chance alone.

The pod moved by and I was left alone in a sea awash with

the music of the honor and vengeance of the THOUSAND DEATHS

OF THE SANDWALKER. I heard and remembered tens and hun-

dreds of simple verses as the pod moved where the waves broke

upon the sands. I heard short tunes of love lasting forever, and

mothers cheering their children, and the children nervously respond-

ing, not truly understanding all this stuff of traditions. I listened as

Cacophony bellowed, at first in rage and then in total fear, for his

end was very near. Though he thrashed and tried to force himself

back to sea, the press of flesh was too much, and he was rolled in

the waves that crashed up on the shore.

The entire pod was embroiled in personal verses, all of which

became part and parcel to the final singing of the song. At the head

of this senseless procession was Philosophy, and slowly I began to

isolate his ending song. I expected something deep and meaning-

ful but instead I heard a silly lullaby, a song a mother would sing to

a child. His sing-song voice rocked with the waves as his ancient

form began to grate on the sand. This was not the tune of some

great member of the pod. This was the song of a whale gone mad.

This tradition, this death of the sandwalkers, was the whim and

wish of senility. It was off tune.

The sea now rang with other noises, the rattle and the grated

clackings of the sandwalkers as the shore filled with their scores.

Why were they here? Why would they mingle with us? Why would

they interfere with the song as it was sung in all its glory in protest

of their lives?

Finally, I began to realize that in a way maybe Cacophony was

right, and all of this was senseless waste and carp bile. I started to

move my aching limbs and began to shake myself from the lethargy

of tradition. This was wrong! This hideous act must be stopped!

Waste, what a waste, all the pod, all the lives thrown to the shore

to end all, to honor some whale who now sang of chasing tuna-tails

and butterflies. I pushed my way through the mass of slick flesh

that blindly moved to a sandy death.

“Stop,” I cried, “Go back. What you do is wrong! Stop the

singing! Stop the song! The final test is the sanity, the rightness,

of him who calls for the death. Philosophy is not right with the

world. He has failed the test. This death should not be!” But my

pleas fell on ears deafened by that which has happened before — tra-

dition. As I tried to turn the tide and force them back to sea, some

were already singing their final melody. I pushed and shoved, bit

and battered at them, but they would not be dissuaded. Back and

forth, my belly dragging upon the sand as my great fin stood from

the water like some sagging white sail, I swam, trying to stop all

from this stupidity. The waters frothed about me as I sought Melo-

dy. Surely she would listen to the logic of all this insanity.

v oices began to drop out from the song as they passed over,

gone forever. I lashed at some, battered at others–anything to get

their attention. Some of the babies, the smaller whales, frightened

by my machinations, moved miraculously back from the shore, but

it was all I could do to keep them away from the death, for they did

not understand, wanting only to be near their mothers and fathers.

Mixed in with the rocking bodies of the pod were the hideous, frail

sandwalkers who strangely moved in the waters with us.

Before me, closer to the shore, I could hear the beautiful bell-

like sounds of my beloved Melody, as she reached the goal. “No!” I

bellowed. “Do not die, my sweet. You can live. This final song is

a lie. It should not be sung.” I flipped and pulled at these waterless

sands forcing myself higher and higher into the dryside and closer to

my Melody. I must save her. I must force her back into the waters of

life, back to sensibility.

As I pushed forward, I felt myself being pushed back. Not

by the sea, which was rushing to the shore, but by the dry-skinned

fins of the sandwalkers. “Let me be!” I sang, but as I noted be-

fore, these strange creatures know not how to sing, and worse

still, would not listen to my song. I fought against them. I pushed

and twisted and hammered myself closer to my love, my life itself.

They pulled; I pushed.

Then to my horror, I heard the final, gloriously dreadful sound

of Melody singing her last. She sang the song of love, the song of

my life as she saw it. She sang a song of calves not born and the

golden light we would never see again. “I loved you, Harmony,” she

sang in a whisper like the wind. “I loved you then; I love you now,

and I dedicate my end, my beginning to you!” And with that, the

waves seemed to stop and the seas went flat. The song ended. The

song was no more to be. For the first time in my life, I heard a silent

world, a world without a song.

I paused in my grief and stared with great unblinking eyes at

the shore that was now strewn with the bodies, the hulks of all who

I had loved and come to know. How long I floated there, I do not

know. I felt myself at some other time being pressed back to the sea

by the strange sandwalkers. But I cared not, idly floating and allow-

ing the waves to move me to the shore. Now I too had reason to

die, for I had no reason to cling to a hollow life, empty of song. The

song that I had been charged with singing was a flat buzzing sound

of memory only. It was then that all around me faded to black and

cooler grays.

CHAPTER SEVEN

I wasted no time on the journey home to the pod. I stopped

rarely to eat and never to sleep. Many times I had to force myself to

snag a fish just to maintain my strength. What I had experienced

reeled through my mind like a song sung off-key.

There was much to think about. Some of the sandwalkers

were evil. Many of the sandwalkers were good. All of them tried to

sing, albeit though a tiny snatch of song. The sandwalker was truly

paradox, for there were many good, but there seemed to be many

more evil.

The protest as proclaimed and advocated by the Narwhal

was true in its intent, but was more death the answer? Should we

answer the death of our brothers and cousins with violence? Was

there no better way? Was there not a solution to this invasion of

the seas besides the Conclave? Surely ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN

THE WORLD must have some reason for allowing all this to con-

tinue. These thoughts and others like them raced through my mind

like a sharp-fin in feeding frenzy.

As I swam, I listened for traces of the pod’s song, and

though I heard other bits of melody, the tunes did not ring true of

my pod. Finally, some fifteen hundred tides after I had left as a ca-

pricious youth, I returned an older, wiser, and much subdued whale.

It was odd fate, as I neared the coast of the dryside, that the first I

heard of the song was Cacophony telling all that he would feed first,

and whatever was left as scraps, they could feed upon.

I sang briefly announcing my return, and, of course, the first

to meet me was the mad bull himself. As I approached, Cacophony

stopped still in the water, his massive body having grown even larg-

er and more grotesque during my absence.

His voice had not improved with age. “Well, well, if it isn’t the

wayfaring stranger himself. Thought you might have confused your-

self with the salmon and run yourself up a clear water stream and

spawned. Still and all, you had best understand, bubble-breath,” he

continued, “that I now control this pod. Soon, when my father has

the sense to flip over dead, I will be the Scribe. Then I will sing the

song, and you will have to listen.”

I was tired, hungry, and in no spirit to listen to his prattling.

“Squiggle-fin!” I rumbled. “On a good day you couldn’t catch a jelly

fish by yourself. Go beach yourself.” With that, I quickly brushed

by him. Cacophony probably would have thrashed me then and

there, so weak was I, but my tone was assured; and being the bully

he was, he only attacked when he was sure he would win.

I moved through the body of the pod and swam directly to

Tympani, who was singing an intricate verse of the song to old

Philosophy. As I approached Tympani stopped singing and a hush

fell over the pod. Philosophy, having not seen me swim through

the pod, looked at the Scribe perplexed as to why he had stopped.

Then he saw me. It took a moment for him to recognize me, yet

alone realize that I had been gone for so many tides. Grumpily he

moved to the side and I faced the recorder of the Song of the Sea.

All was silent and still. In a strong but tired voice, I sang my song,

adding new verses to our song, new understandings, profound ques-

tions that would be answered over generations of tides. The pod

was silent as I finished. No one moved, and the wind slacked and

then died out all together.

Philosophy was the first to break the silence as he idly float-

ed away musing, “Much food for thought. Much thought is needed.”

Tympani sang soothingly, “You have done well by the

song, my young friend, but now you must rest and build your

strength. When you are fulfilled, come to me and we will sing

more of your adventures.”

And rest I did. I thought of nothing but myself for at least

twelve tides filling my body with the sweet meats that ran free in the

sea, but never again did I touch the meat of the flipper-fin. I placed

myself in self-imposed isolation, wrestling with all that I had seen.

There were questions, many, many questions and the answers that

I sought were buried somewhere deep in the Song of the Sea. I

vowed to learn all I could from Tympani before his death and the

passing of that song to his son, Cacophony. I knew full well that

with the death of Tympani would also come a death of the song as

it should be sung. This was a fact and there was little I could do

about it, save to press the Scribe for as many verses as he could

afford to sing to one single whale.

From that twelve day tide forward I dedicated all my time to

the absorption of the Song of the Sea. Always near Tympani, as

many tides passed, I listened to the song unfold verse by cryptic

verse. No matter who the Scribe was singing to, I was there listen-

ing, learning – seeking the answers to obscure questions created by

the adventures of my journey.

Early one silver tide, Tympani stopped in mid-tune as if

listening to some unsung melody. “It is time,” he sang to the pod.

“It is my time. I have lived a long, wonderful life. But now I am old

and it is time for the waters of life to wash over me no more. I am to

again be undistinguishable from the sea, I am to become one with

ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD.

I listened in silent shock as this great, quiet whale and

mentor portended his own death, the coda of his song. My silence

did not go unnoticed, for Tympani sang a gentle tune to me, “Birth

and death are nearly the same: the end and the beginning. My time

is marked upon the sea and I have nothing to fear in giving myself

back to the waters of life. You and the others will feel the loss, but

that is the melody of the song for as long as it is sung. I will be

remembered in the song, and in the music of that memory, there is

no end. There is no death.”

By this time, the rest of the pod had gathered around the

aging Scribe of the Song of the Sea. He sang loudly so all could

hear and none would forget, “Tradition calls for me in dying to pass

the song on to my son, Cacophony who as tradition and the song

dictate will become the new Scribe, the new recorder of the song.

But traditions are created by those they serve, so I will change that

which has been for all of the tides in the sea. Rather than passing

the song on to my son, Cacophony, I pass the song to Harmony,

the great white, so that the song will be sung for all eternity.”

There was an interminable silence from the pod for this had

never been done. Then, as one they chanted, “So be it blessed

now by ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD. It is done. It is to

be sung as verse and lyric of the song.”

The seas moved in silence and no one of the pod moved

with the echoes of the music that was sung. Finally, the back of the

pod, a great thrashing and wailing began as the news rested with

Cacophony. “It was mine. The song was mine to sing as Scribe.

May you all be carved bloody deep by the sandwalkers. This is

bilge and flotsam!” With that he noisily crashed deep into the water,

his vile curses soiling the sea.

I was honored but saddened more by the imminent loss of my

dear old friend.

Tympani solemnly continued, “As is the tradition, come dive

with me, my Harmony. There in the deepest of deep, the clearest of

waters, I will sing the entire Song of the Sea for you to remember for

your lifetime.”

With that, the aging whale breached, diving deep into the

sea. I looked at my mother and my friends knowing that when I

returned all would be changed forever. I could never integrate in the

action of the pod ever again. I would be he who stands to the side

remembering all for all. The song called to me and I wanted to hear.

I dropped down into the world. Deeper than deep I fell in spi-

ral, following the haunting melody of the past and the future to be.

Down and down, round and round into the coldest, clearest water.

There in the emerald dark of the sea, I found the shadowed form of

my dear, dying fiend Tympani, the Scribe.

As the pressure settled about me like a well-worn mantle,

Tympani began to sing this ancient song that had been passed on

for so many generations: “The pod was born in a flash of light that

was the beginning and the end of all things. We were there at the

edge of creation and will be there when creation crumbles.” His

voice, like the tides rushing through crystal coral, rang true and I

listened and remembered all. He sang songs of the sandwalkers and

their crude entrance to the dryside, of their foaming desire to rid the

seas of all that sing. He sang of the destruction and of the death,

the crying and dying as songs were stopped before they were sung.

He sang of births and beginnings and of the glorious passing

of the song from one Scribe to another, over millions and millions

of tides. He sang of the structure of the pod, the Conductors who

lead and must be followed if there is to be a melody. He sang of the

Composers, the creators who force new melodies upon the pod. He

sang of rhythm and rhyme.

He sang loudly the praises of Philosophy, our dreamer, and

now the oldest living member of the pod . . . Philosophy, who dared

to dream of things undreamed, and who shared with the entire pod

his thoughts of the deep and its relationship with the dryside and

those creatures beyond.

Tympani sang as I had never heard him sing of all things

before — even the birth of me, the great white, Harmony, destined to

grandeur by the fluke of being born white. When he sang of Adagio

I remembered the innocence of youth of things lost and found.

Finally he sang to me the responsibility of the Scribe and all

that he must do, the sacrifices that must be made in order to save

the song at all cost. “A Scribe must never be directly involved in

any action, but rather, must stand aside and record the events as

they happen. The Scribe must listen to the glorious melodies of

birth and death. He must listen to the laughter without laughing,

the sadness without shedding a tear. For no matter the pattern or

melody, the Scribe must stand to the side and record and remem-

ber the Song of the Sea. If the pod should cease to be, the Scribe

must pass this song to another pod and thus ensure the continu-

ance of eternity.”

In the distance, faint as faint could be, I thought I heard

queerly accented voices sing out, “And so the prophesy has been

filled. And it is good!”

I turned to the voices, but the water was dark and I could see

nothing. Surely this was nothing more that imagination still stimu-

lated by the insane visions of my dream of the Narwhal of the Horn.

I looked back at Tympani, and, although, he stared at me oddly, he

made no comment. Obviously he had not heard the ramblings of

my mind.

The old whale smiled and then slowly sang only for me,

“You are so young, my dear great white Harmony,” he sang, “but the

whole of the melody is now part and parcel with your spirit. You are

now the Scribe and I, at last, am free. Come with me and listen, as

I sing my final song and suffer, yet exalt, in the glory of the end, the

beginning, the incorporation with the waters of life.” With that, he

sank deeper still into the heavier waters and began to hum a haunt-

ing melody, a song of death and dying.

The song had taught me that the passing was a time of

celebration of oneness with all that is, but I could not help but be

gripped in melancholy. As I watched the beginning of Tympani’s

quiet passing, I felt a loss I had not felt before, a regret at not know-

ing him better, regret at not seeing all that he saw when he saw it.

Tympani’s hums were quiet and gentle filled with solitary re-

flection. His reverie, however, was shockingly interrupted by a flash

of slick-black flesh as Tympani was rolled to the side as he was

rammed hard by another whale . . . Cacophony!

His gentle hums became strained and discordant as Cacoph-

ony rammed him over and over screaming, “Want to die the quiet

death, old man? Want to end your tides in dignity? Then give me

the Song of the Sea.” As if in answer, Tympani stopped all singing

and accepted the brutal abuse in silence, which only enraged and

angered the bull to attack again and again.

With mighty flips of my flukes, I surged to rescue my old

friend. I was nearly in the middle of the melee when Tympani with

his last bit of strength sang out, “No! Harmony, stand off! You are

the Scribe, never to be involved, never to interfere. You, as the

singer of the song, must watch and wait. Do nothing. It is my wish

and the command of the song that you only record this. Do not

involve yourself. This is your ultimate test.”

“Yes, singer, listen,” roared Cacophony, “listen well. I will

give you a song to sing.” With that he smashed his massive head

again into the side of his father. But Tympani did not cry out, and

the water again slowly filled with gentle harmonic humming as a

smile crossed the old whale’s face like the shadow of sun and cloud

on the sea. And with that, Tympani passed into the end . . .

the beginning.

Cacophony continued to ram repeatedly the now-vacant flesh

but finally realized that his torment was in vain. He stood back

confused. Then, in a flash of tail and fluke, he was gone. I floated

nearby remembering all there was to remember of the song. For the

song was now everything and all. In respect to the memory of his

father, I didn’t chase after Cacophony and smash him into the deep.

Instead, I surfaced and, with all the strength in me, sang the new

verse of the Song of the Sea to all who would listen of the ignomini-

ous death of the greatest Scribe of all, Tympani.

Anger was the wound, and time was the healer. But as the

now singer of the song, the Scribe, I was damned to remember–for-

ever. There would be no healing for me. Again echoing in my mind

I could hear, “And this is good!”

As dark turned to light, turned to dark, like the flickering

of one’s eye, I found myself distancing from the pod as I learned

to listen. Circling, always circling, listening for all the new gentle

melodies. With the listening came learning, and knowledge filled

the empty voids of loneliness. As time and tides passed, innocence

washed from me, and my senses became dulled. My sensitivity

became objectivity as I concentrated on the song–only the song.

It coursed through my veins, chilling my blood until no day passed

when I didn’t feel a bit colder and very numb.

As we swam from cold to warm to cold to warm and then to

stormy seas and back again, my peers, the others of my age and

birthing all seemed younger and different, yet paradoxically the

same. I could sing of them and all their adventures but I never

joined with them again.

I watched and recorded the joys that occurred and also the

anguish and heartache. A worse fate was that I was forced to watch,

remember, and sing of Cacophony’s railings and of his discordant

belches of life. To me, his very presence soiled the waters, made

them unlivable. Listening to him sing was like listening to a rock

sing to the sand, but as was my mission, I did as I was charged to

do and recorded, making all a part of the song.

Cacophony did not swim alone. Slowly, as the tides

changed, some of the younger whales began to follow his strength

despite whether right or wrong. One of these was a whale called

Metronome, who never could decide whether he was whale or jel-

lyfish. To him life was a game of make-believe. What he never

pretended, though, was deep and undying love for Cacophony’s

strength. He drank of it, and slowly he lost his own personality,

becoming a shadow to the hulk of the disgruntled whale.

Cacophony used Metronome as a game piece, an object of

interference when needed. When Cacophony was caught in his net

of lies and cowardice, he would simply say, “Metronome did it!” and

this simple fish brain accepted these accusations from this blocker of

light, as a compliment and acceptance. His moony eyes would widen

in pride whenever Cacophony called his name–for whatever reason.

It was at this time that all the younger whales passed from

the warm waters of youth to the colder chill of adulthood becoming

fully vested members of the pod. They were now thought of as adult.

This fact was strange to watch and record as a part of the song

because I knew them so well. Like the blinded, lustful salmon that

rushed from the sea to the clear-waters for procreation, the young of

the pod, those born with me and some much later, blindly ignored

the beauty of the light that danced on the waters. They missed

much because of their eagerness to dive to the deep where they

would be called adult, take a mate, bear young, grow old and die.

They taught themselves to squint in the sun and limit their

vision, and in this act somehow came the wonderfulness of adult-

hood, but much was missed. As they rushed with the current of

time, their dreams began to die and with that death so went the

laughter of innocence. With the death of the dreams came the

inability to hear clearly the Song of the Sea and the great variety of

melodies that lay within.

Even I was attracted to the deep and I teased myself with its

feeling of strength and pressure. Though I often thought of taking

a mate and could feel my blood warm to life’s current, the responsi-

bilities of my life as the Scribe brought me back to my senses. To

watch objectively from a distance was almost to freeze time in place,

though I never forgot how to dream. But all the perfection of my

dreams were nearly shattered one day as I recorded a bit of song

that was sung very off-key.

Cacophony had already taken a mate, a silly cow by the

name of Percussion. Her name was appropriate, for her singing was

as the beating of a weed on a water-soaked log. She was in the

constant want of Cacophony, a fact he both relished and ignored.

As Percussion now ploughed through the waters, great with

the calf that grew inside, Cacophony’s eye wandered to other mate-

less whales. One of these was my friend, Melody, who always sang

to me dear gentle tunes of laughter breaking like frothing waves on

the sea. She often sang of the moonlight dancing on the waters

and, of her, I would drink deep and remember forever. Cacophony

wanted her as much for her song, as for the fact that she sang to me.

Then, one bright silverside night, Cacophony and his shad-

owy, off-beat friend, Metronome, cornered Melody in a smooth-wa-

tered cove close to shore. “Well, well, well,” crowed Cacophony in

his discordant rumbling tone, “look what we have here a delectable

bit of fish, sweet and tightly meated. Melody, let’s you and I join

together as one to taste those saltless waters!”

Unfortunately, Melody swam away from the open waters,

deeper into the cove. As she sought escape from eminent disaster,

she taunted him to gain time, “Oh, but Cacophony you have sung

the song that only can be sung to one, to Percussion who bears

your young. Are you to violate all the laws and mate with two or

three? For, if this is true, then why not mate with your shadow,

Metronome? Though he be male, it is sung that he can sing a two-

part harmony.” With that, she quickly dove deep, attempting to dive

beneath Cacophony and escape the trap of the cove. But the bull

was fast, and with mighty kicks of his flukes, he dove and blocked

her escape.

Cacophony’s eyes flashed wild, sparked with anger like

clashing rocks on a wind-torn shore. “Don’t fool with me, Melo-

dy. The pod knows that you yearn to mate with Harmony, the great

white, but we all know that he is made impotent by the song that he

must carry. Come to me and let’s give the pale-one something to

sing about.”

Melody turned to retreat back into the cove, but her way was

now blocked by the bull-cow, Metronome, who had quietly slipped

in behind her. “Are you going somewhere, my gentle squid?” he

called. “My master wishes you to stay. Maybe I, too, will be allowed

to share in the sweetness of you when Cacophony has had his fill.”

Panicked, she began to swim in ever-tighter circles as the

two drew their hunt net tighter and tighter closed. The great bull,

Cacophony, bellowed a rambling challenge into the sea. “Harmony,

great white, where are you? Where is the Scribe when you need

him to record an important passage in the song? Harmony, come

record this song as I mate with this sweet-meated tuna. For I am

Cacophony! I am destined by the blood that boils in my loins to

father my own pod.”

As was my responsibility, I floated nearby shaking near the

breakers of this coral cove and listened to the song as it was poorly

sung. The song pounded at my heart, and none too soon I could

listen no more. Filled with the haunting melodies of Adagio and

Tympani as they had died from the result of this putrid bit of life, I

charged. Borne by the strength of a wave at my back, I smashed

into Cacophony’s side. Bubbles blew, and the sweet air that main-

tains life was forced from the massive bull. He breached, gasped,

and then dove back to the fight in the blinding anger that was his

special kind.

“Ahh, the Scribe has feelings yet,” he rumbled gleefully.

“How dare you to attack the greatest whale ever! Come fight me,

Scribe. With your imminent death I am yet to have the Song of the

Sea by default alone.”

Anger replaced all reason and rule. I was no longer the

Scribe. As he dove, I twisted on my spine and, with all the strength

I could muster, smashed my head into his side as he overshot his

mark. Stunned, he floated between sunlight and the waters deep. I

attacked again and again, smashing into his side with all the pas-

sion that boiled in my soul, remembering all those that had been

injured by this cowardly bully. How many times I do not remember.

I could hear and see nothing but the death of this whale. I ham-

mered and slashed, and for the first time in my life, I wouldn’t sing

the song.

I backed Cacophony to the shore and prepared to end

his life, once and for all. But a whale blocked my way. At first, I

thought it was Metronome and I was well-prepared to kill him also,

to rid the water of all disease. Before I could do any harm logic

overcame passion and in the far distance I could hear Metronome

keening a song of fear and loathing far out to sea. I stopped my

charge and looked. The whale before me was older than old. His

skin was dulled by many tides and hung slack like waters with-

out waves. His soft voice was querulous, yet rang with authority.

“Scribe, stop that which you do! Death as you wish it for Cacoph-

ony, though he be deserving, must not happen at your whim! You

must leave him be! You are now the wrongness in the sea. You

have violated one of the oldest verses of the song. Listen and lis-

ten well, you are Scribe, and Scribe is commanded by all that is holy

never to interfere. Scribe is charged with standing away and record-

ing all that is sung of the song. You are wrong in being involved!”

“Who are you?” I challenged, “that charges me with wrong-

ness. Cacophony has soiled the seas in all the verses since the day

he was calved. He has been the disharmony in all the melodies. He

must die, and he must die now! Who are you, old whale, who stops

that which must be?”

A silence pervaded the sea as the old whale lifted with a

wave that attempted to wash all things to the shore. “Know you

me not, Scribe? Has your anger wiped your memory clean? I am

Philosophy, the elder of the pod, the dreamer of dreams since the

very beginning of the song. Listen to that which you have been

charged with . . . remembering. Remember me in song. Remember

that which you have pledged to do. Then do what must be done.”

The Song of the Sea began to reel in my mind and heart as I

listened to the old whale. Cacophony floated nearby, awaiting life or

death but seemingly not caring which. I wished nothing more than

to crush the life from him, but the song sang to me and, as before,

I listened. The responsibility for which I was charged took prece-

dence over all. Tides before, near the very deep, I had drunk the

melody that Tympani had sung. In honor of the memory of the mel-

ody that I carried in my very soul, I broke off the attack. Sullenly, I

swam to the deep and reflected on my wrongness. I was to observe

and not be involved; that was the song, and that was the only way it

could be sung.

I cleansed myself in those darkened waters. When I

breached, Cacophony was gone, and the seas were quiet still. In

the distance I could hear the pod moving stoically onward in the

seas, the event forgotten, to be remembered only by the Scribe who

was charged with all remembering — the Song.

I sang the event of the fight over to myself again and again

until the angry tune had become part and parcel of the song. Then,

and only then, did I move to rejoin the pod.

Times and tides passed. The song took on a gentle melody,

as all events became non-events and monotone. I allowed the memo-

ries of my journeys to fade like morning’s mist. There were births and

deaths and tiny things that became simple notes in a complex song.

Percussion, the ill-fated mate of Cacophony, calved at a

time of storm, and the winds whipped the sea into a mighty froth.

She breached and dove, breached and dove, through the changing

of the tide, groaning and complaining of the child birthing within

her. Then, she began the spin of life. Round and round she spun

in tighter and tighter circles, until the momentum itself sent a slick

bundle of life spinning too, into the sea.

As long as I live and as long as I sing, I shall always pause

at the crescendo of birth. It is magic and power of the most perfect

kind. It is violent and possesses a demonic strength like a mighty

storm of clashing light. Following the storm always comes the calm,

which only heightens the amazement of the event that has just

past. Always, there is anguish as the child wishes for a separate

soul, as if the mother wished to hold on to that bond. The battle for

life is a battle of lives and from this singularity there comes two: the

child fresh and new and the mother forever changed by the event itself.

Percussion named her calf Progeny, but he was as unlike his

father as Cacophony was unlike his own father, Tympani. In time,

Progeny became my shadow, a shimmering dart that flowed in the

waters where I swam. As I recorded all that happened, he watched

and looked on in innocence and constantly asked, “Why?” “Why”

was his byword and the beginning to all that he spoke to me, “Why

do we sing?” “Why do we swim?” “Why do sandwalkers walk on

the sand?” “Why do they want us dead?” “Why can’t they sing?”

“Why has my father forsaken me?”

To most of these questions I could answer with simple song,

but to the final question I had no answer. I suppose I could have

sung some of the off-colored songs that Cacophony composed. I

suppose I could have sung of the death and destruction that he

caused, but I didn’t, for to sing that verse would have been to alter

the song, and Philosophy had brought that message home hard.

There comes a tremendous responsibility with a shadow like

Progeny. Many, many times he wrapped himself in the coral kelp

that grew in great profusion on most of our journeys. He would

wait patiently for me to unwind him, then, once again, he would slip

into my wake and tag along. It was wrong to interfere even in these

small matters, but it was a small wrong. I dutifully recorded my sim-

ple rescues and continued on my way.

Because of the little calf, I did although violate the precept

of my vow one final time. One break of tide, as I moved away far

from the main pod to rest my ears from the onslaught of the song,

I breached as was my wont and Progeny followed, imitating in his

small way my bigger moves. To do a final cleansing of my soul, I

dove deep, and Progeny stayed above in the bright silvered light

warming himself against the now colder waters.

I swam deeper than I had in many hundreds of tides, and I

did not surface for a goodly time. In the deep, I reflected on the

song and allowed the harmonics to wash over me. The pressure,

though strong about me, left my spirit clean, and I felt again rejuve-

nated. So deep was my musing and delight in finding release from

the mundane that, as I slowly lifted from the bottom of the crystal

cold dark, I didn’t recognize the simple prelude to fear and danger.

I was snapped from my fog of self-complacency as there

came from the surface a screaming . . . a tiny song of terror. With a

mighty thrust of my flukes, I climbed into the warmer waters of the

bright side. Above me, sitting still in the rocking waters, were shell-

sharks, and within the shells, as always, the sandwalkers.

The remembering happened of other times and other plac-

es, of dolphins caught in nets of kelp and their brutal beatings.

My blood ran through my veins and blocked all sense of logic, of

responsibility to the sacredness of the Scribe. I calmed myself,

humming bits of the song that would help me in this situation.

Silently, I eased to the waters’ surface, and once again there

came the non-musical screams of fright, and this time I recognized

the singer of that song–Progeny. Twisting this way and that, I sud-

denly saw clearly what had transpired. For there, right before me,

was my little friend, trapped, rolled, and caught in a weaving of kelp-

like vine. With age comes a certain maturity, a detached ability to

slow before reacting. Carefully I dropped below the surface. I moved

closer to the shell-sharks and their passengers, the sandwalkers.

In other verses stored in the song were memories of the

sandwalkers, not simply killing whales, but literally stealing them

from the waters of life. Obviously, this was what was happening

here. The sandwalkers were rolling poor, dear Progeny in their

stronger-than-kelp and trying to lift him from the waters. My respon-

sibility was to stand off and record objectively all that happened to

the song, but this bit of verse was one I could not leave alone.

I breathed in those sweet, energy-instilling airs of above and

dove deep. Then with bends and kicks of my body and with all

muscles in play, I surged up through the sea. With all the power

in my body and soul, I rammed into the rocking shell-shark. I was

surprised that it lifted as easily as it did but not as surprised as

the sandwalkers who spilled into my domain. I charged again and

again, ramming all of the shell-sharks until they looked down with

large blank stares. With my teeth, I ripped and tore at the stronger-

than-kelp and finally, like a slippery eel, Progeny flashed by me in

fear and slid to the deep.

v engeance warmed my blood to boiling as I hummed the

roaring song of Adagio and remembered other scars of the sympho-

ny called the Song of the Sea. I breached high from the water and

came crashing down on the shell-sharks. Delightfully, I could feel

them splinter and break beneath me. Over and over, I breached and

broke until there was nothing left to break. Nothing save the sand-

walkers themselves. How insignificant they looked from beneath.

Pale flipping fins that thrashed and fought at the waters, instead of

working with them. I surfaced in their midst, prepared to wreck per-

sonal havoc and to take one or two with me to the deep for a long

discussion of the wrongs they had committed to those of my kind.

But as I prepared to sing of blood, I remembered the shell-

shark with the clouds of kelp and also the little yellow shell that

had saved me so long ago. I stopped and stared and looked into

the eyes and very soul of a sandwalker. In that momentary gaze,

I found bits and pieces of a song. Not our song, but a song just

the same. My study was broken by the distant drone of other shell-

sharks racing from somewhere in the distance. Knowing that Prog-

eny was safe and fearing for my own safety, I slipped back to the

waters to find my adopted little brother. As I swam away, I waved

one fin, a sign of disdain.

CHAPTER Six

We swam, my new little friends and I, on and on. Our

direction was away from the warm waters of the meridian and

always moving up to the bitter cold waters of summers past. As

we traveled, I listened intently for other whale songs, but there

were none. I listened also for the shell-sharks but our trip was with-

out event and without contact with the spindly-fin sandwalkers.

The dolphins kept up a running commentary on all they

saw–saw now, saw before, and possibly might see in the future.

Everything was an adventure that ended inexplicably in laughter.

Everything was a source of mirth and merriment. They laughed

at me. They laughed at life as it swam by. They even laughed at

themselves.

Laughter Ring was the quieter of the two, but, like her name,

her laughter would ring about the sea as Little Brother came floating

by with a crown of seaweed on his head or mush-fish in his mouth.

I have never laughed so much in all my life. You would think, as

did I, that after a time the humor would grow old, but they were as

adept at laughter as the whale was of song, and I never grew tired of

laughing with them.

At first I continued to count the tides, tracking my time away

from the pod, but as I reached one hundred I stopped counting, time

was not an issue. Tide after tide, we swam, until one and all were

exhausted of our journey but not of our company. Later, when we

had traveled beyond the summer feeding grounds and the sea was

very cold, the skies filled with snow, I asked Little Brother when I

would see that which I should see. For the first time ever, he be-

came somber and resolute.

“There is a taste in the water,” said he, shuddering in revul-

sion. “A bitter taste of blood mixed with the essence of the sand-

walker. There is evil in the sea. Come next tide, two at the most,

you will see that which you won’t want to see and that which you

will never forget.”

With a sense of foreboding we swam slower now slowed also

by the water, which was filled with massive chunks of ice. Early the

following tide, as the dryside burned with the new golden light,

we came upon a great group of flipper-fins. I was delighted at this

change of menu, and dove quickly in chase of a large tasty meal.

He was a wild one, that flipper-fin, but I had become an experienced

hunter. Soon, filled with the savory meat, I surfaced near my friends

who looked at me in total shock.

“What is the matter?” I sang, “Is there some evil in the water,

some sandwalker drawing near?”

Laughter Ring wouldn’t talk, so disgusted was she, but Little

Brother spoke angrily, “You speak of seeking the sandwalkers and

wish to see their evil ways. Yet, you prey on and eat the flesh of our

near-to-cousins, the flipper-fins.”

I was startled. Many times the pod had feasted on flipper-fins

and I was taught in their ways. “That’s impossible; I’ve never heard

them sing.”

“You and your bloody songs,” Laughter Ring snapped. “Not

all are related by a musical song alone. Listen as they speak in

the water. Listen to their words so true as they dash in fear of the

brutal you!”

Her anger lashed me, much worse than any beating at the

fins of Cacophony. I listened, as she had asked, but heard nothing

but the fearful barkings of flipper-fin. “I hear not but the bark,” I

said frustrated.

“That,” said Little Brother, “is the song of the flipper-fin.

Whether you know it or not, they are of our family and yours.”

The meal once so warm and secure in my belly began to roll

queasily. I listened again and I could hear the crude beginnings of

song in the now-speech of the flipper-fin. They sang of fear. They

sang of the great white hunter who killed their leader. They sang,

warning all in the sea to leap to the islands of ice to escape the fiend.

It took me a bit of time to realize that I was the great white

hunter . . . I was the fiend. Sickened now, I moved away and be-

came very ill for a time. Later, I know not how long, I moved silently

back to my friends shamefacedly. They spoke not a word as we quiet-

ly moved through the icy waters, but I knew what they were thinking.

After a time, Laughter Ring whispered quietly, “Keep low in

the water and watch the shore of the dryside. There you will see

part of that which you seek.”

I looked to the shore and watched the flipper-fins that cavort-

ed there, safe from the menace in the sea. In time, there came a

movement, and I saw sandwalkers moving swiftly along on spindly

fins near the water’s edge, as if to force the flipper-fins farther from

the sea. They moved with deliberation and purpose like we did

when we hunted a large school of fish. The large male flipper-fins

were left to their own devices and allowed to escape back to the

sea, but the females and the babies were being herded back to a

shear wall of snow and ice. The sandwalkers were intent that they

shouldn’t escape.

As my eyes stared in blinkless disbelief, these evil creatures,

these sandwalkers, swung dryside sticks and beat the babies to

death. The cries of the young dying mixed with the painful agony

as mothers watched their children die.

I turned shaken and spoke to my guides, “The sandwalker

gathers meat, as does the pod. They are no better or worse than

the whale.”

“Look again, dear friend,” cried Little Brother as tears

traced down his silver skin. “They are much worse than you, who

seek a meal.”

I gazed again at the shore and was shocked to see the sand-

walkers ripping the furry skin off the dead children and tossing the

bodies away. Over and over, this was repeated until hundreds of ba-

bies were dead and discarded. Then, as quickly as they had come,

the sandwalkers left the blood-red beach to the crying mothers and

the very few young ones who had survived.

Unable to help and unable to watch or listen anymore, we

moved out to sea to cleanse the filth from our eyes and ears; a

horror that could never be washed from our souls. “I should have

snapped the arm from the sandwalker on the shell that touched me

before it could do this harm,” I rumbled angrily, not even able to

sing in song.

“It wasn’t them,” said Laughter Ring very subdued. “For

there are many, many sandwalkers. Some are good. Some are bad.”

I turned away from the dryside diving slightly below the

surface unable to accept the reality that floated on the islands of

ice behind me, the dolphins followed. In the distance, focus-fogged

by water and ice, I saw the shape of a whale lying motionless in the

water. I looked and then looked again while faintly I heard the soft

keening of laughter. I shook my head and looked again, but the

apparition was gone! “Did you see that,” I asked, “the whale in

the distance?”

“I saw nothing.” Said Little Brother.

“Nor I,” sighed Laughter Ring. “Perhaps you saw a reflec-

tion of ice.”

“Maybe,” I sighed, too emotionally exhausted to investigate.

“Maybe so.”

We floated to the surface and lolled in the shallow troughs,

soothed by the silence. At last, I roused myself from my introspec-

tion and said, “I must bid you farewell, my friends. It is time to

return to the pod. I have seen the good and I have seen the evil of

the sandwalker. Now, there are many new verses that must be sung

into the song. Somehow I must make sense of all of this.”

I assumed the dolphins would be delighted to be rid of their

cannibalistic guest, but that was not to be. Laughter Ring spoke

softly, “Not yet, great white. There is more to see.”

“More,” I moaned. “More of the sandwalkers killing the

flipper-fin young and then defying the basest law of the sea by not

consuming their kill?”

“No,” answered Little Brother, “it is worse than that. Much,

much worse.”

My heart hammered in my throat as I followed my two now-si-

lent guides. I knew not if they were silent and remorseful because

of my actions earlier or if it was the death of the flipper-fins. No

matter, I didn’t feel like laughter, and the silence was a golden balm

to soothe the pain of watching that which we had watched. We ate

sparingly of the bottom fish, bug-eye, and flat-tail and sped quickly

down from the cold, following the powerful currents that moved us

swiftly on our journey.

Little Brother and Laughter Ring settled into the trip and

again frolicked; only occasionally forcing a wry smile to my face.

For the most part, we swam hard, and there wasn’t time for talk,

let alone laughter. The water changed as the air warmed and there

seemed to be a new smell or a taste, I knew not which, which had

wrongness about it. Often, we would have to swim around or dive

deep under a floating island of rot and filth. Objects, the likes

of which I had never seen, floated crazily on the water, but they

smelled of sandwalker and the evil of the dryside and close inspec-

tion was not advised.

The water was so fouled that my skin began to turn an oily

black. Laughter Ring said that I had begun to take on the color of a

real whale, but I was not amused by the transformation.

We swam parallel to the dryside and there was a sense of

death all around. Fishes seemed to have been changed; malformed

by some devious magic of the sandwalkers. We pushed on and

early one golden light, in the distance, we heard the plaintive cries

of dolphins seeking help from anyone that could hear. Tired though

we were, we swam faster and closed in on their cries for help.

What we found was hideous beyond belief. Dolphins

wrapped in woven webs of kelp-like streamers that held them fast.

Some were dead; others were dying. The sea was filled with the

screams of agony as the dolphins desperately tried to rip free from

this trap. Without fear of consequence, I rushed at the webs tearing

at the strands with my teeth, but for all my efforts only one dolphin

was freed. I tried and tried again, unable to bear the screams of

pain and anguish but my actions were futile and I stood the real

chance of entangling myself in these webs of death.

Little Brother and Laughter Ring finally pulled me away.

“Your efforts are to no avail, our friend,” they cried, “for these dol-

phins have been trapped too long. If they lived, they would suffer

still, for they have been long without the sweet air to fill their lungs.

No matter what we do now, they will die.”

I backed away, watching in horror as hundreds, of trapped

dolphins died in that cove. On the surface, we could see sandwalk-

ers moving about their shells. Soon these spindly-finned bottom

feeders began to pull their woven webs to the surface, and the

dolphins that were trapped there, still clinging to life, were beaten to

death until the water ran red, a degrading useless death.

When all was done and silence returned to this sea mourn-

ing, I asked, “Why? The fishes are food for all to share as was

instructed by ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD. Why do they

need to take so much? Why do they kill the dolphin?”

“We don’t know,” answered the two dolphins sadly.

Little Brother continued, “We think that there are more

sandwalkers that live deep in the dryside. We think that sandwalk-

ers believe all the fishes to be theirs. We think that they don’t wish

to share, and kill anything that gets in the way. But we really don’t

know why. We love all things created, even the sandwalker, but

sometimes we are rewarded with death.”

“I have seen all that I need to see!” I anguished. “Now sure-

ly you will let me return to my pod to add all these horrors to the

song. To tell of the right and to tell of the wrong.”

“No!” shouted Laughter Ring. “There is one more event that

you should see. You must know all if you seek the truth.”

Knowing my pain at seeing all this for the first time, Little

Brother tried to console me, “It isn’t far, and it truly is on your way

back to your pod.”

I was so numbed by all I had seen that I meekly followed as

they led me back to the sea and the sweetness of the open water.

We swam slowly, in silence, I, for one, had nothing to say and much

to think upon–and much more that I wish to forget.

But the worst was yet to come. As we swam true to the

rising golden light, the water seemed to reverberate with keening, a

soft, high-pitched sound. We swam hard, and the noise increased

until we were bathed in its unearthly song.

Suddenly, Little Brother and Laughter Ring stopped. “Go no

closer, my friend, but see what you can see from where we are.”

I looked and saw on the horizon many shell-sharks so large

that each must have been filled with hundreds of sandwalkers. “I

must go closer. I can barely see, “ I protested.

“You don’t understand,” choked Laughter Ring. “You are in

mortal danger here. For the sandwalkers kill not flipper-fin or dol-

phins. Here, they kill the song itself.”

I shook my head still not completely understanding.

Little Brother came close to my side and whispered, “They

murder the song, they murder the whale. All that swim with this pod

will die.”

Against their warning, I blindly surged forward. It wasn’t

long before the water turned brown with the blood-sludge of death.

I looked about and watched as small, screaming shell-sharks, not

unlike the ones that had mortally wounded Adagio, chased whale af-

ter whale and stabbed them deep with an object, which I presumed,

was a Narwhal horn. Hideous, ear piercing noise filled the water,

but it was not the screaming shells. It was a wordless melody sung

horribly off-tune, the death knell of the whales.

Amidst all this carnage, a small yellow shell-shark raced

madly about with a single sandwalker standing inside. I watched,

thinking of ways to attack the little one and wreck some small form

of vengeance. But then I noticed something odd; this little yellow

shell was turning the bigger shells aside. With each one turned

aside, a whale was saved and was able to dive to the deep.

I watched as the small yellow shell screamed across the

water towards me and I coiled to counter attack, but the shell raced

on by. As I turned, I was shocked to see the tiny shell blocking yet

another shell-shark that was slipping up behind me, Narwhal horn

at the ready. When the bigger shell-shark backed away, the smaller

shell raced by me again on the way to help yet another whale in dis-

tress. As it raced by, the sandwalker raised his puny fin and waved,

like the one long ago, as if to say good-bye.

Quickly Laughter Ring and Little Brother guided me away.

Once at a safe distance I dove deep and allowed the mighty pres-

sure of ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD to cleanse my soul

of all that I had seen. While in the deep I sang about the song that

had died. I sang for the souls of the whales that had gone to the

end . . . the beginning.

I had stayed at that great depth for a long time and my sight

blurred as the last of the good air was used to maintain the func-

tions of my body. It was at this time I saw again the fuzzy-edged

visage of a whale in the distance. Not just any whale, but a Nar-

whal, Godwin the Avenger. His icy voice whispered across the way,

“Now you have reason to call the Conclave, white whale. Now call

for the death of all the sandwalkers.” Again as before the visage

disappeared. Truly this was only hallucination brought on by my

time in the depths.

My lungs screaming in protest, I surfaced where Laughter

Ring and Little Brother waited patiently for me. “Are you alright?”

they chorused.

“Yes,” I said as I looked about. The seas were clear and

there was nothing on the horizon. Thankfully the war had moved

beyond my sight and ability to hear. “I don’t know whether to love

you for showing me all this,” I sang, “or hate you forever. My song

is filled with enigma, wrapped in confusion.”

“It is time,” they sang in gentle voices. “Go now to your

pod,” “Though you be confused, remember that there is good and

bad in all things. You must learn to value each for its balance.

Someday we will meet again and share a memory and we will learn

to laugh again.” And with that they disappeared.

Filled with emptiness bigger than the waters in which I swam,

I began the slow journey back to the safety of my pod, yearning

for the comfort of my own kind. I had journeyed a long, long time;

there was much to sing into the song.