The Girl Who Dreamt of Dolphins Read Online Free Page B

diver’s
outstretched hand gently brushed Spirit’s smooth flank. A tingle
went through Spirit’s body, unlike anything he had ever felt
before. They had made a connection.
    Spirit saw the diver breathing heavily inside his mask.
Dolphins can go for a long time without breathing compared to
humans and the cumbersome divers suit seemed so awkward in
comparison. They regarded each other for a minute or so, but Dancer
was whistling at his back.
    ‘ Come away, come away’ he called. ‘They’re
dangerous!’
    Reluctantly, Spirit turned away from the diver and swum slowly
away. He turned back to look one more time. The diver seemed to be
making a gesture with his hand.
    ‘ I think he’s saying goodbye to me’ Spirit said. The diver went
back inside the rusting hulk on the seabed.
    Spirit sped up to the surface in a rush of excitement and
leaped high out of the sea before slicing back through the water to
where Dancer was.
    ‘ That was amazing!’ he said. ‘You haven’t lived till you’ve
swum with a human!’
    ‘ I don’t know’ said Dancer hesitantly. ‘I just don’t know. What
if it tried to grab you or something?’
    ‘ Don’t be silly’ laughed Spirit in reply. ‘They’re not water
creatures. They don’t know what they’re doing. There’s no way they
could outsmart us.’
    They sped back home to the pod. All the way, Spirit was aware
of this strange sense of elation, of recognition, as though he’d
known humans all his life, but had only just remembered
them.
    In the sea, although they may be a long way from each other,
dolphins are able to call between one another and come together as
a group. Within half an hour or so, they found Summer, Moonlight,
Storm, Chaser and Breeze. The dolphins rolled on the waves and
relaxed, warmed by the sunshine. Dancer soon told them all they had
seen at the wreck.
    Spirit thought that Storm might be angry at him for what he
had done, but the older dolphin’s reaction was not what he
expected.
    ‘ Remember Spirit’ said Storm sternly, ‘humans might seem cute
and friendly and sometimes you can play with them, but they are not
dolphins and they can be unpredictable animals. You may think that
you know a human, you may think they are smiling at you, but they
are just wild animals really. You always need to take
care.’
    Moonlight, though, had no such qualms and gushed excitedly
about the humans she had encountered in her life. She said that
they were always so friendly and that once they had thrown her fish
to eat. She said it was fun to ride at the bow of a ship and, if
you did so, all the humans would come out to look at you. She said
that they were mostly pink in the face, but sometimes brown and
that they had furry stuff on their head, like the tentacles of sea
anemones which would blow in the wind. She said they always seemed
to have a casing of stuff on their bodies when they were on boats,
but that sometimes when they went into the water they were all pink
or brown, except for something dark around their middle. She said
that they screeched and splashed a lot in the water and that they
were so clumsy that they were very funny to look at.
    ‘ What could be more harmless than a human?’ asked Moonlight,
echoing Spirit’s words to Dancer earlier.
    Just then, a plastic bag floated past Spirit on the current.
Spirit was old enough now to know that plastic bags were not good
to eat. When he was younger though, he’d taken a bite and almost
choked on it.
    Storm had been listening to Moonlight’s excited talk of
humans, preferring to say nothing. Now he spoke up.
    ‘ You see that white thing, floating in the water. Humans put
that there.’ Spirit looked at the plastic bag.
    ‘ But those things are dangerous’ said Spirit, remembering his
own close escape two summers before. ‘Why would they do
that?’
    ‘ Humans are careless’ replied Storm. ‘They don’t think. They’re
just like children really. They put lots of other stuff into the
water too,