CHAPTER SIXTEEN
My death was short-lived and somewhat premature. The
tough kelp that held me beneath the surface was stripped away, and
puny little fins pulled me to the surface. When I was yanked from
the water, my lungs gave an involuntary gasp, and filled with wel-
come air. All my senses returned in a flash of black to red to white
to light. I was quite surrounded — captured, if you would — by slick-
skinned sandwalkers who swam in the water with me.
A skin of some sort had been wrapped around me, and I was
quite unceremoniously lifted above the sea and dropped into the
shell-shark. I had seen the inside of one of these strange creatures
before when Little Brother and I had breached above its sides, but
nothing prepared me for the actual experience of riding on its back.
I stayed perfectly still — more from fear than from curiosity
about my surroundings. The back of this shell swarmed with pu-
ny-finned sandwalkers who rushed about doing odd things to odd
things. Some would bend down beside me and look me in the eye
and offer a strange whistle punctuated with guttural burping (and
Little Brother thought my singing out of tune).
From deep within this hard-shell’s creature’s bowels, I could
hear it buzzing and groaning. Soon it began to pitch and yaw in the
open sea, and I could tell that it was attempting to swim.
The sandwalkers now regularly leaned down to touch me as
was their desire and strange satisfaction. Still others splashed me
with water. Then they did the oddest thing: they smeared my body
from nose to tail with sickeningly sweet, melted jellyfish.
Then for no apparent reason, they placed a very cold and
long-dead fish in my mouth. Did they really wish that I would eat
such filth? I spat the dead thing out. They pushed it back in. I spat.
They pushed.
Food fight!
I looked up and could see an odd spirit burning in the eyes
of my captors. This fish dance must be some ceremony of great re-
ligious significance. I finally relented and swallowed the fish whole.
In this manner I was fed three dead fish, and somehow this
satisfied these odd sandwalkers. They asked me to eat no more.
I didn’t see much as the shell-shark swam, and the sounds
and smells of the dryside assailed my senses. The beast settled
into a steady stroke as the smells grew stronger and the sweet scent
of the sea was replaced by other unidentified scents.
Suddenly the shell-shark went silent, and floated still in
the water.
But all that had happened was soon forgotten as the air was
filled with a heavy slapping sound. The wind stirred about me; the
strange wispy seaweed on the sandwalkers’ heads blew this way and
that. I could see nothing forward other than puny fins and the yel-
lowed skin of the shell-shark. I looked up and to my horror; there
above was the largest feathered-fury I have ever seen — if indeed it
was a feathered-fury at all. It looked something like a shell-shark
but with a great fin that spun crazily about.
It hovered above me for a time, a whomping sound pulsing
the air. Finally it dropped a large coil of kelp to the back of the
shell-shark. The skin on which I rested was twisted in the kelp, and
with a slap on my back, I was lifted into the air with a lurch, a cap-
tive of this flying beast.
Finally, I knew what was to happen. I was to be fed to this
great unfeathered fury. I waited for that moment I would enter its
belly and truly and finally be joined with the end . . . the beginning.
Surprisingly I was not eaten, but, instead, I was carried to great
heights, lifted clear up into the clouds.
Higher and higher I was raised, but I refused to look up
anymore and cast my eyes down to the sea. Lo, what a world! The
dryside seemed filled with straight-lined mountained corals that
reached for the sky but with no water to surround them. I yearned to
see more of these strange miracles, but we left the coral mountains
and moved ahead with the sea on one side of the shell-shark and
the dryside on the other.
As the huge fury moved slowly, I could see odd islands of wa-
ter trapped in coral pools surrounded by the dryside — the opposite
of all I had known. It was to these dryside water islands the great
bird dropped, and I was sure that here was where it nested and kept
its young.
Ah, ha! That was it! I was to be fed to the young of this
flying monstrosity. As if in answer, the beast dropped lower and
lower, until I was nearly touching the dryside. But instead of finding
myself pounced upon by hungry, hopping, children, I was instantly
surrounded by sandwalkers who gently guided me to a soft landing
on a raised slab of cool stone.
With their fins all around, they pushed me, and I glided past
the smooth coral and rock into the dryside itself. Here in the land of
the sandwalker, the golden light was trapped in smooth water orbs
that glowed like the light of day. On and on I was whisked through
the walls of stone that opened with crashes and clanks. At last, I
was stopped in a great room filled with acid smells and odd plants
that grew in odd directions.
I began to panic and flipped my body mightily against the
restraints. A sharp stinging pain distracted me on my right side, and
suddenly I could not move at all, save for my eyes. But I could feel,
though numbly, the length of my body. Every bit of my surface skin
was poked and prodded: my eyes, my vent, my tongue and teeth.
Nothing was left unexamined.
And then these creatures, long cast from the sea, became
quite excited. They began to whistle and burp faster and faster.
They all rushed from my sight, yet I was still able to hear them. In
a way that only a mother could understand, I knew they had found
my baby, the child growing in my womb, and for the first time I truly
feared for my child. There was nothing I could do, no protection
could I offer.
Reverently now, a sandwalker with gentle eyes and long sea-
weed draped from its head came to gaze. We stared at one another
for the longest of times, and I reached out with my heart, beseech-
ing it to set me free. But sandwalkers cannot sing, and those who
cannot sing cannot hear the song as it is sung.
There was more poking and prodding, then some new sharp
stings. My skin began to tingle as life was given back to me.
After a time, once again I was carried on the slab of stone
through the strange narrow canyons and, once again, into the
non-captive light, that golden light of the true day.
I was lifted again and felt the comfort of those waters of life
wash me as I was put back in the water. I breathed deep and thought
I could almost smell the sweetness of the open sea. But this water,
oddly enough, seemed too clean. Was I actually free? I cast a
sounding cry, but the echo returned coldly from all around. I real-
ized I was trapped in a captive water island completely surrounded
by stone and coral.
I swam about this pool of sterile water faster and faster,
seeking escape, but none was found. I breached and leaped from
the water over and over again to further view my alien surround-
ings. All I could see were other pools and sandwalkers standing
around, gaping.
For how long I spun in that pool I know not. The skies
turned first to pink, then purple, then black. The blinking lights
of night winked at me just as they had done in other places, other
times. Suddenly, in a flash of blinding light, I was back in the bright
light of day. But no, it was not the sun, but rather, strange crystal
orbs that had captured bits of light and now brightly flooded the
pool in which I swam.
I moved to the center of this dryside pool, floating there still
for the longest of time, and the sandwalkers moved away one by one
on their puny fins. Then, as quickly as the light of day had come, it
disappeared, and I was plunged into the cool, soothing darkness of
the silverside night.
I called out, hoping against hope that a pod close to shore
might hear, but I was rewarded only by the echoing of the water on
the smooth rock shores. There was no one to hear me in my plight.
There would be no dramatic rescue. I was trapped, captured in
some nightmare dream, ripped from my home, my life, the sea.
I shouted out in my fear and anger, but there was no Little
Brother to soothe me. I laughed, and then I cried.
I slept fitfully through the night, and as the early golden
light crept across the stone ponds, I was awake and searching for
some opening that might afford my escape. Search though I might,
I found nothing other than the bubbly source of the sterile water. I
leaned into the stream of bubbles, but I could smell no trace of the
open sea, only unnatural scents. Oddly, the water burnt my eyes.
It was with my head in the bubbles that I thought I heard
voices of others. It was faint, a whispering, barely echoing through
the dryside from the other ponds, but definitely voices. There were
four or five individual dolphin and the singing of one whale. They
were excited but their song lacked the deep feeling, the emotion,
and the passion of the others that I had known in the open seas.
After a while, things settled down, and I could not hear the whisper-
ings anymore.
In a frustration born of boredom, I swam in the widest circles
possible, more than anything because I felt the need for exercise
and the chance to relieve the pains of the cramps the baby was
causing. I had not swum for long when there came an odd clicking
sound, followed by the splash of something thrown in the water. I
sourced the object, and by its size, I knew it must be a fish. I surged
down to it and was shocked to find another of those long-dead fish
so favored by the sandwalker.
“Why do they do that?” I wondered. “Is it some sort of game
for the sandwalker to throw dead fish at dolphin?”
I nosed the fish around the pond, trying to revive it, when the
odd clicking began again. There was a splash, and another dead
fish joined the collection.
“This is getting ridiculous,” I spoke out loud. “What am I to
do with these?”
But I knew they were to be eaten. For the sake of the child,
for the sake of myself, who was very hungry, I ate the very dead
fish. In truth, it wasn’t that bad; it was worse. When the second
was eaten, the odd clicking came again, and another fish, and an-
other were thrown into the water.
It was obvious where the fish came from; what was not ob-
vious was the meaning of it all. Why were they attempting to feed
me? Why did they trap me in the first place? What did they want?
What was the game?
After I had eaten my fill and the last two fish were left to rest
and sing their silent song on the bottom of the pond, the strange
clicking stopped. I was alone with the solitary sound of slapping
water on smooth rock shores. The walls of the pond reared half my
length up from the lapping water, which made it nearly impossible to
see anything on the dryside, and there was much dryside to see.
There was nothing to do, save swim in circles, which I had
already done so much, that I was dizzy. Bored, I kicked with tail
and lifted out of the water to better view the stone pond. What a
surprise! A group of sandwalkers swarmed together just on the other
side of the wall, watching me. I don’t know who was more shocked
— the sandwalkers or me. I quickly back-flipped into the water.
But why were they staring at me?
Before I could ponder much, the sandwalkers made their way
to the edge of the pool, gawking with their odd, dry-blinking eyes.
Seeing them stand there watching, I was overwhelmed with anger.
They had taken me from the sea. They had taken me from Little
Brother. They had taken me from all that I loved.
I leaped in the center of the pool and circled underwa-
ter, pausing for a moment below the spot where the sandwalkers
watched. I swam around again and again gaining speed, then
breached as high as my plump body would allow. My plan was to
slam one of them full face with my tail, but the best I accomplished
was to wash them clean.
I back-swam with my head out of the water, angrily berating
them for what they had done. “You slime-gutted jellyfish. You eggs
that were never hatched,” I ranted and railed. From the dryside
came the burbles and burps of excited sandwalkers. Maybe they
liked the water. Using my front fins, I tossed more and more water
at them, hoping to wash just one of them into the tank to possibly
have a little chat, but all that happened was that the sandwalkers
were forced back from the slick-stone shore.
Every time they returned to the edge, I rewarded them with
vertical rain, but soon even I tired of this game and retired to the
center of the pool. As the day went on, they, too, tired of just
watching. A few of the sandwalkers drifted away, and others dragged
things to the edge of the pool. Then the clicking began again.
What did it mean? I listened to the tonal echoing in the
water. There was a faint, very faint, resemblance to the crudest of
speech, but it sounded like no singing creature I had ever heard
before. If those repeated clickings were some odd kind of speech
or song, they obviously meant very little. Freely translated, they
meant, squid squiggle. But was this some kind of code? Were the
sandwalkers trying to communicate with me? Did they think I was a
squiggle-fin?
This unusual communication only took place in the golden
light. During the silverside nothing happened at all. The return
of the sandwalkers to the stone pond was always preceded by the
clicking words, squid squiggle. During the long nights when I was
unable to sleep, I would think about the noises and actually reached
the point where I could imitate the sounds. If there was a secret
code in what they were saying, my understanding was awfully slow
in coming.
The sandwalker at least kept my captivity interesting with
bits of junk that they threw in the water. I examined it all carefully,
searching for the answer to what the sandwalker wanted of me.
But what odd junk!
There was a red-skinned orb as round and as smooth as a
water-washed stone, and also a flat circle with a hole in the middle
that seemed made of a strange floating skin. There was also a larg-
er circle that they suspended over the pool, vertical to the water and
the sky.
I threw whatever the sandwalkers tossed to me back at them.
My hope was that I might hit one of them full in the face, but if this
creature had a special ability, it was adeptness in the way it could
use its puny fins, and it managed to catch all of my ill-timed missiles.
Oh, how I wished for just one of the floating poisoned jellied
fish. That would indeed give them something to catch.
The circle that they suspended above the pool will always be
a mystery to me. The best I can figure is that it held some religious
significance. Once I even jumped through it, but the sandwalkers
became so agitated, I avoided that practice in the future.
My other problem was that I was becoming more and more
pregnant every tide, and escape, though seemingly impossible, was
always foremost in my thoughts. I continued to eat the dead fish
that were thrown into the water, for there was nothing else to eat,
the smooth stone pool was devoid of all life.