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.