A bubbling enthusiasm burst from the water. It spoke of foam and sea and deep, cool places. It was not like the horses with their dull, plodding minds that thought of food and rest more than anything else. This was a laughing creature with an infectious delight in itself. Nor was it like the human minds, they were such complex things whose thoughts were never clear until they spoke. Here was pure, simple joy.
Azkun laughed with it, absorbing its joy as his own.
The dolphin was suddenly aware of him and the joy changed to curiosity. A question without words was passed to Azkun, what manner of creature was he? He did not know how to reply. The dolphin’s mind was different from his own. It was a sea creature, it thought of currents where he thought of wind, and the currents were far more important to it. It knew only light and dark where he saw sunrise and sunset. He was reminded of Keashil, how she held a different view of the same world, how touch and sound ruled her perception rather than sight.
Nevertheless he tried. He formed an image of himself, a human figure, and sent it to the place where their minds touched. A kind of speech became possible in this way and Azkun found that he could converse with the dolphin to some extent. Often the creature would bombard him with chatter that he could make no sense of, but he could understand much of the rest.
At first his picture of a man confused the dolphin. It laughed at him, called him a shark or some other large, jawed fish, and dived deep. A moment later Azkun saw it leap from the water some distance from the boat. It did this several times, each time leaping completely clear of the waves. It dived deep again and Azkun thought it was gone.
But it reappeared at the bows. He felt its mind touch his again.
“Truth,” it said in its bubbling mind pictures. “Sun on back, back of whale-log stands a man. Not blister? Not dive for cool deep?”
“We live on land, not water. The sun does not hurt us,” insisted Azkun. The dolphin was slow to understand. The idea of wanting to stay out of the water was too foreign to it. He tried to project the idea of sinking below the waves and drowning. Some of the pirates had drowned and he had felt their darkness.
“Deep, deep, cool, deep,” replied the dolphin. “But surface for air, blow spout, dive again.”
It took some time to convince the dolphin that he could not swim and had no intention of trying now. The darkness of drowning pirates was too close to him. The dolphin did not understand this. Life was a game, it laughed, and new games were good. Should he not try everything new?
Its laughter continued. It was a happy creature, delighting in riding the bow wave of the ship and it was happy to converse with Azkun. He learned much. It measured time in heartbeats not days, for it did not sleep at night. Distance was also measured in heartbeats, as was depth. When Azkun asked about its fellows the dolphin referred to a tribe or extended family it roamed the oceans with. Its life was taken up with games, fishing and mating. Azkun was disappointed to hear that it relished fresh fish, but that was the way of things until it could be changed.
With its tribe the dolphin had travelled far. It had been to the warm southern waters where fish were bright colours and strange shapes and the sun shone through the water.
It had been to the north as well and even knew the mouth of the Chasm. There was a strong current of cold water flowing out of it but many fish in the warmer waters on either side. The dolphin told Azkun of the very far north, where huge rocks coloured blue and green floated on the water, where enormous fish swam and sang deep-throated songs that echoed for miles across the ocean.
Azkun was interested in these tales, or what he could make of the tumbling impressions he received from the dolphin. But he sometimes wondered if the creature was not imagining some of it. Its glee was contagious, though. His spirits were lifted by its bubbling laughter, even when it told of hunting fish or, in turn, being hunted by the dreadful orca. It spoke of the orcas as ‘brother killers’, as if it shared a strange bond with them.
Azkun was also interested in its accounts of mating. He had not recognised his human companions’ desire to hunt and kill until he had seen it. Now he began to recognise the ideas the dolphin told of in some of the misunderstood thoughts he had seen in his friends’ minds. Drinagish was Menish’s nephew, he had heard them say that, he had known the words, but he had not appreciated the concepts behind such family relationships before. It was somehow predatory, this creation of life. Inherent in it was the destruction of life as well, for birth makes death necessary, feeding the darkness.
It was well into the morning when the dolphin mentioned in passing a place of dragons. It wove a brief picture of a rocky island far away and laughed onto other subjects.
Azkun stopped it.
“What is this place of many dragons?”
“Dragons, dragons everywhere. Flying, diving, fire, hot water, burning,” it laughed back. “Tall rocks, black, black, sharp. Scratch skin.”
“An island?”
“Far, far away. Many heartbeats, many seaweed shifts back and forth.”
“Where?”
“Across wide, warm current, drifts, drifts, then forward.”
This told Azkun little. He did not know the sea currents well enough even to guess which direction the island lay. But the dolphin was certain of it. It laughed its bubbling laughter as Azkun’s mind raced.
Dragons! He looked at Tenari. They had not come when he was besieged by spectres. It was Tenari who had rescued him twice now, three times if he had not dreamed the episode of the dead man’s finger. She was solid, like a block of granite, bright as fire when the darkness was filled with spectres. And she was as blank as a stone.
Yet before him, in his mind’s eye, he could still see the glorious creature shining in the sunlight. He could still feel the tingle as he had been enveloped in the flame, as words had leapt into his mind and he had known speech for the first time.
At this the dolphin gave an anxious thought and severed the connection between their minds. Azkun had to reach gently out to it and coax it back to him.
“Dragon, flame, hot water, scald, death.”
“No, it breathed gentle fire. It gave me life.” He tried to picture his existence in the Chasm, but it was difficult to gather enough impressions together to pass anything coherent to the dolphin. All he could do was repeat his reassurance that the dragons were benevolent and kind, not the monsters the dolphin thought. And one other thought he sent.
“Could you guide me to the island?”
“Dragons, hot water, scald and burn.” The dolphin seemed to be muttering to itself. “Dolphin-not-dolphin, log-not-log, sun on back does no harm, not blister, not burn. Dragon, hot water, no harm to dolphin-not-dolphin.” It chortled to itself, pleased that it had solved the puzzle. “Far, far away. Dolphin take dolphin-not-dolphin, follow?”
Azkun laughed with it.
“No! I cannot go yet. It is not time.” He could guess Menish’s reaction to a request to turn the ship and follow the dolphin to the isle of dragons.
“Time, heartbeats, waves back and forth, light, dark, when?”
“I do not know. Perhaps I must wait for the dragons’ call,” he replied. “I wonder if that will ever be.”
“Light, dark, seaweed swaying, echoes from afar. What fish will you eat, games will you play, mates will you take?”
“I travel to a place called Atonir. I think it is a city, a tribe-in-one-place, of my kind.”
“Tribe-in-one-place? Many not-dolphins not swimming, not going to dragon island, not playing?” It chortled. “Call dolphin when the seaweed swaying, heartbeats are enough. Call dolphin when dragons call not-dolphin. Call, call, echo through the sea when the seaweed swaying makes it time. Not-dolphin follow dolphin.” Joy bubbled from it as it thought of the game, for it was only a game. It did not understand compulsions of any kind, except to procure joy.