CHAPTER TWELVE
We swam slower now as the sea filled with massive chunks
of ice. And it was early the next tide that we came upon a group of
our distant cousins, the flipper-fins. We happily called to them and
were delighted to notice that Harmony, too, seemed to recognize the
flipper-fin as an extension of the intelligence in the sea. He became
excited and before we could tell him the tales of our cousins, he
swam quickly away from us to meet with them.
It was with horror that we watched Harmony surge into this
herd of simple-minded relatives–not to play, but to feast. The herd
scattered, dashing up onto the shore, as this great white whale
chased a fat cousin into the deep and quickly devoured him in two
or three bites at best. We waited–no laughter, no smile–until he
swam back to rejoin us.
“What is the matter?” Harmony sang innocently enough, “Is
there some evil in the water, some sandwalker drawing near?”
I couldn’t even talk so revolted was I, but Little Brother
spoke angrily, “You speak of seeking the sandwalker and wish to
see their evil ways. Yet you prey on and eat the flesh of our near-to-
cousins, the flipper-fins.”
Harmony looked at us, his eyes going blank. “That’s impos-
sible,” he said. “I’ve never heard them sing.”
“You and your songs,” I 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 and tell of the brutal you!”
The whale paused and listened carefully to the fearful cries
of the flipper-fin as they made their escape to the dryside. “I hear
not but their bark,” he retorted.
“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 flipper-fin kept singing their song of fear. They sang
of that great white hunter who had killed their leader. They sang a
warning in the sea for all to leap to the frozen islands in order to
escape the monstrous fiend. It took Harmony a bit of time to realize
that he was the great white hunter . . . he was the fiend. This dis-
tant cousin of ours, though over-sized and munch-mouthed, stared
at us in total shock-horror as the truth seeped into his dryside brain.
His eyes widened and his skin seemed to pale. He backed away and
disappeared for a time into the gloom of the deep.
“He makes me a bit nervous,” said I. “He talks of lofty ideals
and sweet sung songs and then turns and eats his relatives. I don’t
know whether I trust him or not. I mean, first a flipper-fin and then
one of us?”
“I don’t know about you,” said Little Brother chuckling, “but
if I hear his stomach grumbling one more time in hunger, you’ll find
yourself swimming alone.”
Later the great white hunter returned looking shamefaced,
but still I could not trust him. We moved closer to the dryside shore
and after a time, I quietly whispered to him, “Keep low in the water
and watch the shore of the dryside. There you will see part of that
which you seek.”
We watched the flipper-fin that cavorted on the dryside, safe
from the “menace in the sea.” Soon, as we had watched so many
times before, sandwalkers wobbled swiftly along on spindly fins
trapping the baby flipper-fins they called seals against an ice wall,
cutting off any escape to the sea. Then with clubs they summarily
beat the babies to death.
Harmony, after a long time of watching this horror turned
and solemnly said, “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
their way down his silver skin. “The sandwalkers are much worse
than you who only seek a meal.”
We gazed again at the shore and watched as the sandwalkers
ripped the furry skins off the dead children and tossed their car-
casses away. Then, as quickly as they had arrived, the sandwalkers
retreated from the bloodied beach.
Our minds filled with this horrible carnage and waste, we
pulled the whale away from the shore to the deeper waters. “I
should have,” Harmony rumbled angrily, “snapped the arm from the
sandwalker on the creaker that touched me before it could do this
harm,” not even able to sing his message in song.
“It wasn’t them,” said I very subdued. “For there are many
sandwalkers, some are good but most are bad.”
We rolled in the silence of the sea, soothed by its very si-
lence. Little Brother and I watched the great whale as he wrestled
with all that he had seen. Finally, he roused himself from his intro-
spection and said, “Now it is time for me to return to the pod. For
I have seen the good and the evil of the sandwalker and there are
many lessons that must be sung into the Song.”
As much as we would have been glad to be rid of this float-
ing appetite and as much as we wanted to continue our search for
delight in the world, I spoke again, “Not yet, my great whale. There
is more that you should see.”
“More!” he cried in disbelief. “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.”
We silently swam down the seas and left the cold, stained
waters of the flipper-fin. We didn’t talk, let alone sing for a time, out
of fear that we might become the next meal for our glutton friend.
We ate sparingly of the bottom fish, bug-eye, and flat-tail, and sped
quickly down from the cold following the swift currents.
Within a tide or two as the dark turned to light, turned to
dark and back to light, Little Brother and I both tried to bring laugh-
ter back to the sea. We frolicked and played, breaching over this
behemoth, but little could we do to make him laugh. It may have
been his introspection of all he had seen, or it may have been that
the water changed as the air warmed.
Whenever Little Brother and I swam in this part of the sea,
we felt and tasted the wrongness, the bitterness that seemed to
seep from the dryside. Often we would have to swim around, or
under, a floating island of rot and filth. Objects, the likes of which
Harmony had never seen, floated crazily on the water, and because
they smelled strongly of evil; a closer inspection was not advised.
Little Brother explained that all these objects and all this filth
had come from the sandwalkers that lived on the dryside nearby. The
water had become so fouled that Harmony’s bright-white skin began
to turn an oily black. I jokingly said that Harmony had begun to
look like a real whale, but I don’t think he was much amused by the
transformation. Time and tide again, he would dive to the deep in an
effort to rid himself of his stains, only to breach in yet another slick
of the brackish, putrid water, and he would be blackened once again.
Soon after, in the distance, we finally could hear the plaintive
cries of other dolphin. Tired though we were, we swam faster and
soon closed in on their pleas for help.
What we found, though so hideous as to be beyond the pos-
sibility of belief, were dolphin that were wrapped in kelp-like stream-
ers holding them fast. The sea was filled with their screams of
torture as the dolphin tried desperately to rip free from their death-
bound prison.
Harmony, without thinking of the possible consequences to
himself, tore at these webs with his teeth. He thrashed about, his
great bulk wracking great havoc with the sandwalkers’ woven kelp
but, even with all of this tremendous effort, only one was freed.
Harmony never stopped trying, reason deafened by the screams of
dolphin pain and anguish.
He was finally pushed firmly away by Little Brother and
myself. “Try not, our friend,” we cried, “for these dolphin have been
trapped too long. If they lived, they would be stranger still, for they
have been long without the air to fill their lungs.”
We backed away, watching in horror as hundreds, of dolphin
died in that cove. Above, we could see the sandwalkers still milling
about inside their shells. Soon they began to pull the kelp-like ma-
terial to the surface, and the dolphin found still clinging to life were
beaten until the waters ran red with their deaths — a horrible death.
When all was done and silence returned to the sea, a som-
ber Harmony asked, “Why? The fishes are food for all to share as
was commanded by ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD but the
dolphin have song. Why does the sandwalker murder them?”
“We don’t know,” Little Brother said, answering in kind and
then continued, “We think the sandwalkers believe all the fishes to
be theirs. We think they don’t wish to share, and kill anything that
gets in the way. But we really don’t know why. We, the dolphin,
love all things created, even the sandwalkers, only to be rewarded at
times like this with death.”
“I have seen enough!” the great white said in anguish. “Now
surely 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!” I cried. “There is one more truth that you should see.
You must know everything.”
Knowing the depth of Harmony’s pain at seeing all this for
the first time, Little Brother consoled, “It isn’t far and it truly is on
the way back to your pod.” Harmony, so numbed, meekly followed
as we led him back to sea and the sweetness of open water. We
swam slowly, in silence. The great whale sank many times to the
deep in attempts to cleanse himself of the filth that had tainted his
body. But his memory would never be the same, and 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 volume of the noise increased until we were
bathed in its unearthly sound.
Little Brother and I knew that sound. We understood from
all that we had seen before that the carnage to be seen would be
beyond that which we could bear. We gently warned our friend, “Go
no closer. You must see what you can see from where we are now.”
On the horizon, many giant shell-sharks were filled with
hundreds of sandwalkers. Harmony leaned high into the dryside,
gazing at the horizon, trying to discern what could be causing such
a commotion. “I must go closer. I can barely see,” he protested.
“You don’t understand,” I said, as I leaned into his bulk to
restrain him from going closer. “You are in mortal danger here. For
these sandwalkers kill not flipper-fin or dolphin. Here they kill the
whale, the very Song itself.”
Harmony shook his great head, still without complete un-
derstanding. Little Brother came close to his side and whispered,
“Here they kill your song. Here they murder whales. All within this
pod will die.”
Against our warning, Harmony blindly surged forward, brush-
ing us both out of the way like we were a bit of storm foam. We fol-
lowed to help if we were needed, and it wasn’t long before the water
turned brown with the blood-sludge of the dead. Around us, strange
screaming shell-sharks chased whale after whale and stabbed them
deep with pointed sticks.
In less than a tide the white whale, numbed by all that he
had seen, had to be forcibly guided into the cleaner seas. His eyes
were glazed with the pain and misery. Harmony quietly sank from
our sight, and we politely held our distance, knowing that he need-
ed to be alone to cleanse himself. From the deep, we could feel
the vibration of his song, and it welled all about us, filling us with
its sadness. We did not talk, we did not laugh, and it was only by
conscious effort that we even remembered to breathe, so beautifully
plaintive was the song as sung by Harmony.
Finally, the seas were silent again. Soon after, the great white
breached from the sea with a roar. There he floated for a bit and,
when the silence echoed on the trailing waves, he sang. “I don’t
know whether to love you for showing me all of this or to hate you
forever. My song is filled with confusion.”
“Go now to your pod,” we said in gentle voice. “Though you
be confused, remember that there is good and bad in all things in the
sea. 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.”
Filled with sorrow because we understood his great pain, we
slowly swam farther down the world to a gentler place. Here we,
too, would be able to cleanse ourselves of all the great wrongs we
had seen these past many tides.
Although the great white needed to learn these lessons that
we taught, it is hard for a dolphin to be without its natural purpose
— laughter in the sea. We hadn’t laughed freely in gleeful abandon-
ment for such a long time and had need for the clear blue waters of
the downside — the corals of Winsome Bright.