CHAPTER THIRTEEN
As Little Brother and I left our friend, the great white whale,
we felt fouled from all the cruelty and horror that we had seen. Try
though we might, it did not seem possible to quickly cleanse our-
selves of our terrible adventure. The seas were soiled, perhaps
forever, and all our senses were clouded and gray.
We swam hard and fast down from the up of the earth to-
wards the warmer waters of Winsome Bright. With every wave, we
seemed to swim faster and faster, as if speed alone could eradicate
the memories etched so deeply.
With muscles working in concert, I darted from side to side
and quick-breached to gain even more speed. The grip and ripple of
the water as it smoothly crossed over my body made me feel eel-
slick and sinewy.
My heart boldly pounded, reminding me of my mortality, and I
pushed even harder, twisting my body in torturous, powerful undula-
tions. I felt fast and the faster I felt, the faster I swam.
I had always been quicker than Little Brother and loved to
challenge him to race after race, knowing the sure outcome of every
challenge. He gamely tried to beat me, but rarely did. Even now,
as we raced away from both good memory and bad, he was hard
pressed to keep up as I slip-breached through the waters, chasing
tuna-tails and bits of froth.
I was tired from all the adventures with our new friend, Har-
mony, yet I was still excited about our travels throughout the seas.
We had not been back to the corals of Winsome Bright since birth.
The memory of the beginning of that particular delight burned hotly
in both our souls and urged us on faster and faster.
But there was change coming — great change. Little Brother
and I could feel it but really didn’t know what it was. The sun still
set in purples turned to black, and morning still peeked from wave
to wave in a silver wash of golden hush. The fish were sweet to eat,
Little Brother was still a delightful fool, but yet there was something
different — odd, not about the water but rather about us.
It was a time as if I could feel my body grow. I felt longer and
sleeker. I felt both vain and embarrassed by my vanity. For the first
time, I felt that I was different from Little Brother and he was different
from me. It was frightening. It made me mad at him and him at me.
Now this feeling made me swim faster still, and in time I had
distanced myself from my mate.
My mate? To say, even think that word both angered and
confused me. Was he my mate? Always, we had been the best of
friends and, as such, we had called each other “mate,” but what
did it really mean? Were we mates as friends, or friends as mates?
Why was I faster than he? Yet why did I feel as though I should be
slower and allow him to protect me? Was I destined to be dominat-
ed? Was this what was meant by being female: one who subordi-
nates her own feelings to the feelings of her mate, her best friend.
My mind spun round like a waterspout.
Little Brother finally caught up with me after I arrived at a
small atoll where the waters were warm and blue. His breath came
in ragged gasps of vented air mixed with laughter. “Why,” he ques-
tioned, “are you swimming so fast? Do you fear Harmony’s Nar-
whal, or do you race your tail, a race that can never be won?”
I turned and nipped in anger. “If you can’t keep up,” said I,
“then follow my wake and catch up at a leisure pace like the turtles
that wallow in the sea.”
He backed away, his eyes turning icy.
I continued angrily but not really knowing why, “If you
weren’t such a coddish clown, and had learned to swim as a child,
you wouldn’t have so much trouble keeping up!” I railed.
We swam on in icy silence, only stopping at times to slap
verbal insults at one another, then we would swim on again, sulk-
ing all the while, only to stop and rest — and spit more indignities.
Finally, with eyes squeezed tight, we swam on in total silence, no
longer speaking.
Yes, something was different, and though we never spoke
of it, both Little Brother and I felt it. Was all this in response to a
chance meeting with a whale and all that we had seen? Is every-
thing changed because of that or is this what it means to get old-
er? Is up really up or down really down? Or is this simply another
mystery, to be solved with the old parental dictum, “When you are
older, you’ll know.”
No answers, but many questions clouded my horizon. I
soon found myself loathing the friend whom I had known and
shared all with since birth, since tides too numerous to count.
Finally, at the end of our stormy trip, we arrived under bright,
blue skies at our destination — the corals of Winsome Bright. Our
anger — no, truly it was my anger alone that brought on his anger —
seemed diffused and softened in this place of magical delight.
We began to zip about in the waters, racing only a breath
away from the sharp coral walls as we chased bright butterfly fishes
that dashed away in explosions of light. This exuberance at reach-
ing our destination put distance on the memories of the horrors and
difficulties of the journey, but I still felt charged like the clouds of a
loud-noised storm.
I filled myself with the joy of the lagoons and bays, pretend-
ing Little Brother was but a pest best forgotten. I swam about this
coral sea, amazed as always how fishes changed with the waters,
from the deep silvers, blues and purples of colder fish, to pinks,
blues, and yellows of the apparently slower, but happier, fishes that
swam in these waters.
There was a constant celebration of all of life here, a feeling
of a festive tide-to-tide party that had continued since the very be-
ginning of time. This was the feeling; the emotion sensed by those
who entered these magical, coral pools of Winsome Bright.
Oh, and how the memories of a youth long past flooded
one’s senses with bubbles of joy and ecstasy, as I swam in the
warm waters of this enchanted place.
Ridges of coral were rounded about the atolls and tiny is-
lands of the bright side, the dryside. Fishes darted about, playing
the silly games that ring true with the survival of all in no matter the
water, but here it was funny, here it was wonderful.
I swam with the fishes, and chased them in sport and chased
them for food. I feasted, and then washed myself clean of my an-
ger-filled journey to this idyllic place and Little Brother did the same.
But still and all, he and I maintained our distance because we
were different, we were changed, and it seemed that these changes
were to be forever. When I felt the need to be in his company and
went to him, once there I felt nothing but agitation towards him and
soon after would swim away. Once away, I wished only to seek him
out again.
What was going on?
There were other times that I would rush to his side and
breach over him as I had done in the earlier tides of our childhood.
He would begin to play, and I would begin to play, and then for some
insignificant reason I would turn and order him to go away. I was
very confused about my feelings and could only imagine what Little
Brother must be feeling — although how he felt was certainly no con-
cern of mine. My own feelings were turned first on, then off, like a
waterspout.
Finally he could take no more of my cruelty and angrily
rebuffed me with, “Leave me be, little girl. Swim alone in these
waters, and if you should find me by accident in some sheltered
bay, warn me that you are coming and I will swim away!” With that
he surged into the surf and with a flip of his tail disappeared in the
foam of an arcing wave.
“Ah, good riddance,” said I as he left me alone. “What I need
is some peace and quiet.”
I swam without aim, idling my time by eating constantly of
the sweet little fishes when I wasn’t even hungry — the ultimate sin
of the sea. In this black mood of desperate straits, I came suddenly
upon the oddest whale I had ever seen. She was white to the point
of almost being pink and plump as could be. Her eyes twinkled
as she watched me streak through the waters of Winsome Bright.
Delighted at last to have someone to talk with besides that dull but
clownish Little Brother, I swam near. “My name is Laughter Ring,
and I have come here to Winsome Bright after a long journey in
order to rinse myself clean of all that I have seen,” I gushed.
She laughed in a low rolling song and then began, “Ah,
my little one, I know. I have listened to you and your mate playing
throughout the waters of Winsome Bright.”
“He is not my mate!” I snapped. “We have unfortunately
known each other since birth, and as such have called each other
mate, but it is only by a twist of fate that we have been together on
this journey at all.” I paused, embarrassed at my outburst.
The tension broken, I laughed, “Who and what are you?”
She laughed again, and her sides rolled with the merriment
she carried within. “I am a Beluga and the others that have come
here before you called me Momma Love.”
“Well,” I continued, “Momma Love, it is wonderful to have a
creature of intellect to talk with. I have found you just in the nick of
time, for Little Brother has been swimming me crazy. He is such a
baby. All he wants to do is play and make childish jokes. It is good
that I am away from him. Even now I can hear him as he swims
away from me.”
“And does that make you happy?” asked Momma Love.
“Certainly,” I said resolutely, “It makes me very happy that
the tuna-brain has gone away. It makes me very content indeed
that that bubble-butted, jelly-fished, flat-eyed, kelp-finned, wannabe
swimming sandwalker has gone from my life forever. Now I will have
a chance for some peace.”
Momma Love looked at me with her great soft eyes, and gen-
tly asked, “But then, why do you cry?”
It was only then I realized I was uncontrollably sobbing
adding to the salt in the sea. “I don’t know,” I blubbered. “Every-
thing seems to be changing so fast, and I don’t understand what
is happening.”
Then, like a crested wave washing to the dryside, I told Mom-
ma Love all that had happened. I rambled and railed about how I
felt about this and that blaming all on Little Brother.
“He’s a pain,” I cried. “I hate him!”
“Hardly that,” she said, as her eyes twinkled. “You are in love.”
“With him?” I asked incredulously. “How could anyone be
in love with a silly dolphin who wears kelp-weed on his head like a
crown? Me? In love with a shell-brained fool like Little Brother?” I
backed quickly away from this Beluga in revulsion.
“Oh, it is true, little one,” she blithely continued. “You are
in love and you should not fear that which will come. Listen, child,
once I felt just as you do. Sometimes, I fought that change from
childhood to adulthood, and then at other times I tried to urge it to
come faster. But all things in time, and in time all things. It is well to
wait for complete commitment, for true love, but don’t be so blind
that you cannot see that which should be.”
With that, Momma Love laughed and swam away, leaving
me swirling in the wake of all that she had said. “In love with Little
Brother? Me? Just wait until I tell him. If ever there has been a
joke to be told in the sea, it is this.” I quickly, even eagerly, sought
out my old friend, Little Brother, in the corals of Winsome Bright.
I found him in a shallow, warm-water pool nose-to-nose
with a clacker claw. It was only with a bit of gentle teasing that I
convinced him that I had more to say than his hard-shelled friend.
Eventually, I coaxed him into the deeper waters that surrounded this
atoll. I laughingly told him all that had happened. He joined in my
laughter as I told him of Momma Love and her hilarious observation
that he and I were in love.
It felt so good to laugh again with my friend — my lover.
My lover?
How did that word slip into my thoughts? What was this
feeling that had come over me? Had Momma Love cast a spell over
me to allow such language to seep into my vocabulary?
I watched Little Brother frolic in the foam of the oncoming
waves and I had to admit there was a sleekness about him, a mus-
cular grace that belied his silly nature. I shook my head and spit
the thought from my mind. That’s it! I was losing my sanity. Little
Brother? Muscular grace?
Coral crap!
I found my mind switching from thoughts of loathing to lov-
ing like the swishing of a sharp-fin’s tail.
As the golden light dropped into the sea mixing all in purpled
splendor, Little Brother inadvertently smoothed against my side. A
charge, like the touch of a twisty fire eel, burst from my dorsal to the
tip of my tail, and I was changed forever. The waters turned a ghost-
ly blue and light flashed on the waves. It wasn’t just me, for in Little
Brother’s eyes I saw a change, a gentling. A fever set over us and
cast our blood afire.
The winds of the dryside, filled with the essence of whisper-
ing, golden sands — heady perfume. We paused gazing into one
another’s eyes and for the first time, but forever and a day, we saw
and touched each other’s souls. Then, for no apparent reason we
raced off leaping from crest to crest, seeming not to touch the water.
We swam as one; we were one, our bodies coiled and spinning.
There was only the beating of one heart, the passion of one mind.
We were wed on that night of the silverside moon. With the commit-
ment of our souls, we dedicated ourselves to each other and to the
will of ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN THE WORLD.
Far out to sea, I sensed the gentle rolling laughter of
Momma Love.
We rested enraptured there in those still waters for hundreds
of tides, I truly know not how long. Life took on new meaning. We
became bonded and, like the others that had come before, noth-
ing would part us save death. We pledged to live and die together.
Nothing would separate us.
Under the watchful eye of delightful Momma Love, we learned
of the joys and responsibilities of adulthood. We were filled with
a longing to know more of one another — to join both in spirit and
life’s direction. What Little Brother would do for the rest of his life,
so would I. Where I would go, he would follow. These were more
than simple pledges cast upon an empty shore. These vows would
bind us for all of eternity.