Macree nad Wharac (3)

Horrim came back to the real question. “So then, what was chasing these dolphins? If they needed top speed, why weren’t they jumping? It simply doesn’t make any sense. Mac, did you pick up what was behind them?”

“No sir,” I answered quickly, trying hard to sound ‘on point’. "There was a school of tuna in that general direction a little while ago, but they were heading further out, not our way.”

“All very peculiar,” mumbled Horrim. “And I still think White-Sideds are as dumb as sunfish,” he added, apparently responding to Lillic’s comment about clever dolphins. “At least you can teach a Bottlenose a few simple words if you can get her to stop being afraid of you for long enough.” He began a gently paced swim southward in the same direction in which the dolphins had disappeared.

The Family settled into our regular travel rhythm around Horrim and his looming black tower of a dorsal fin. To this day I can emphatically say that Horrim’s was the straightest, tallest, mightiest wave cutter fin I’ve ever seen among all families of the People. I admired and envied him that giant scimitar, as majestic as a great rock island parting the open ocean rollers on the Mother’s surface. Horrim was aware of his dorsal fin’s worth and during the gathering times he was always keen to act as the rallying point, not just for the Family but for the entire clan. You could feel the extra oomph in your jaw when he pinged his way into a gathering of the pods. There’ll never be another Horrim, no matter how hard the brothers and I work to emulate him.

As little Whirl, a year older than me yet strangely small for his age, settled into his rhythm alongside me I gave my cousin a friendly nudge of recognition. He grinned back at me with his unusual protruding lower jaw which made him an especially efficient listener. Exceptional sentry skills from Whirl, he could paint a beautifully detailed picture for you from a single ping shot by a whale on the other side of the pod and even fired in the opposite direction! Whirl didn’t waste energy trying to respond to my childish nudge; he would have just bounced off of my bulk anyway.

As the Eternal Mother’s swells lifted and swept me along like a seahorse in a sargassum patch, I found my thoughts distracted and drawn to Horrim’s attitude toward the lesser dolphins in our part of the Atlantic. The old bull had a special curiosity about the little ones, and he had in fact once adopted a pet Bottlenose dolphin which had brazenly started following the Family, many seasons ago and long before my birth day. Horrim liked to make the mothers laugh by describing how he had argued with the senior bulls of the time who thought the best thing that could be done for the little lost critter was to eat it. He eventually convinced Shoc, Lillic’s mother and the matriarch then, to pardon the Bottlenose by pointing out how much its eyes reminded everyone of Shoc’s recently dead sister. They didn’t really, but Horrim’s power of persuasion could be very impressive if he was sufficiently motivated.

They named the Bottlenose “Tuna” out of a predilection for dark humor and it very quickly learned to respond to its name. Tuna would chatter and whistle back at Horrim and Lillic, who was still so young at the time she retained traces of her orange patches. Horrim almost felt like the beast was trying to talk with him but had to shake his head at the daftness of this notion. Still, he had to wonder if the little gray fish-chaser wasn’t lonely for its own kind. They listened for the distant chatter of Tuna’s kind for a whole season, but only the much more common Atlantic White-Sided dolphins and the tiny pig-porpoises occasionally came within ear range.

Tuna followed along with the Family through that season’s deep ocean journey, content to catch his fish where they hid among floating tree limbs or sargassum weeds and apparently unphased by the Family’s munching away on sea lions, penguins, the occasional Great One and even a foolish, confused little porpoise the pod had stumbled upon and tail-whacked almost instinctively.

Horrim conjured great drama into his description of the evening they were resting on long, easy swells in a light breeze when Tuna, who’d developed a habit of climbing onto Horrim’s or Shoc’s back for a rest, suddenly blurted the word for capelin from his place above Shoc’s nostril! Like all dolphins Tuna would constantly whistle and chirp merrily away, apparently hung up on a bliss trip of some sort, but the actual word for capelin had popped from him as clear as air. The Family all heard it and they immediately gathered round Shoc and Tuna in mild disbelief.

Tuna repeated the sound, this time a little louder. Shoc could only barely blurt out, “What?” to which the dolphin replied with his more usual chittering laughter before rolling off of Shoc and plunging into the indigo depths of the water column.

“What on solid ground just happened there?” barked Erric, a great uncle of mine. Everyone turned to Horrim for an answer.

“I…, I don’t know what happened. I mean, I’ve heard the legends like everyone has, but talking dolphins… really?” Silence and breathing followed, rivulets of the Eternal Mother’s amniotic fluid trickling off flanks and rostrums reassuringly.

Tuna resurfaced with his perennial grin and a juvenile Leatherback turtle he’d found somewhere. He pushed it ahead of himself proudly. To confound the Family further he blurted out, “Capelin,” again and tossed the baby turtle skyward with a flick of his pointy beak.

Horrim whooshed a sigh of relief, “He’s just mimicking us. He’s heard us say the word ‘capelin’…”

“Capelin,” Tuna proudly interrupted.

“He’s heard the word from us often enough and now he’s figured out how to make the sounds himself. The little shit-squirt doesn’t know what it means…, I don’t think.” He paused, “It’s kind of unnerving hearing a lesser-whale speak though, isn’t it?” Horrim recalled feeling more than a little unnerved for some time before he finally became certain that Tuna was just reflecting back the sounds he heard from the Family. Eventually, he learned several other words as well, ‘shit’ and ‘surf’ among them, but he clearly had no idea of their meaning and he certainly couldn’t string two together, sensibly or otherwise.

At the next gathering of the clan Tuna was a sensation with this new trick. Horrim gained much attention with his clever pet, but as he asked around among the other families, he could find no memory or story about any other kind of creature which could mimic the Language. Whether or not that was because none of them had lived among Killers long enough to learn the sounds Horrim never discovered. If it could really be thought of as ‘understanding’ was impossible to say, but Tuna did eventually learn to respond to a few simple commands. Only from the senior bulls Horrim and Erric, however. He would come when told, flop off of a back and also do an amazing back-flip in the air above the Mother’s surface as if he was cartwheeling underwater. I would have loved to see that trick!

That fall the Family crossed paths with one of those giant swarms of Bottlenoses you sometimes hear, and Tuna joined them as they passed in the distance. Horrim never stopped wondering whatever became of his little dolphin buddy. On the rare occasions when he came within range of a male Bottlenose he’d always call, “Come” and “Capelin” but the terrified dolphin invariably tore off in the opposite direction like he was surfing the Mother Wave itself. Horrim never articulated the fact himself, but I think never finding Tuna again saddened him deeply.

This story continues with "Macree and Wharac" (4)

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