Dolphin Song Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Author’s Note

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL , England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa • Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is published in partnership with Walden Media, LLC. Walden Media and the

  Walden Media skipping stone logo are trademarks and registered trademarks of Walden

  Media, LLC, 294 Washington Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02108.

  First published in the United States 2008 by Dial Books for Young Readers

  Published in Great Britain 2007 by Orion Children’s Books

  Copyright © 2007 by Lauren St. John

  All rights reserved

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility

  for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Designed by Nancy R. Leo-Kelly • Text set in Miller Text

  .S.A. on recycled paper

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  St. John, Lauren, date.

  Dolphin song / Lauren St. John.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The white giraffe.

  Summary: A second prophesy, this time involving dolphins, comes true for eleven-year-old

  Martine, an orphaned South African girl who has mystical powers over animals,

  when she embarks on a school trip to study marine life off the coast of Mozambique.

  eISBN : 978-0-803-73214-8

  [1. Dolphins—Fiction. 2. Wildlife conservation—Fiction.

  3. Human-animal relationships—Fiction. 4. Animals—Africa, Southern—Fiction.

  5. School field trips—Fiction. 6. Prophecies—Fiction. 7. Orphans—Fiction.

  8. Africa, Southern—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S77435Do 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2007029248

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my godson, Francis, who is not quite old enough to read this book but who loves dolphins, and sharks with “big teef”

  1

  When her teacher first told the class that they were going on an ocean voyage to see the “Sardine Run,” Martine Allen had a funny vision of the silver, tomato sauce-covered sardines that come in cans, only whole and wearing matching sneakers in which they’d sprint along the South African coast.

  But that wasn’t it at all. The Sardine Run was, Miss Volkner told them, one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on earth. It was a migration by sea. Every June and July, millions of sardines left their home off the Aghulas banks on the west coast of South Africa in pursuit of their main food, the nutrient-rich plankton flowing eastward on the cold current. The sardines swam after the plankton with their mouths open, gobbling it up as they went. They in turn were pursued by tens of thousands of predators, including dusky, ragged-tooth, and bronze whaler sharks, dolphins, and great flocks of Cape gannets with fledgling chicks.

  Joining this caravan would be Martine and her classmates. Miss Volkner explained that they would follow the Sardine Run up the KwaZulu-Natal coast, before continuingnorth to Mozambique, where they would help count the population of dugongs.

  “What are dugongs?” Martine whispered to Sherilyn Meyer, and was told that they were those “cute, lumpy, gray things . . . You know, sort of like a cross between a hippo and a seal. The old sailors used to think they were mermaids.”

  The whole class was in a fever of excitement at the thought of ten whole days off school in midterm, and on a cruise ship no less. So was Martine, until her teacher handed around some notes on the trip. Top of the list of what to pack was:

  1. Bathing suit

  Martine put up her hand. “Excuse me, Miss Volkner, but why do we need a bathing suit?”

  There was a lot of giggling, and Miss Volkner couldn’t resist a smile. “It’s called a sea voyage because we’re going to sea, Martine,” she said. “There’ll be endless opportunities to snorkel, dive, and splash around in the waves, and I don’t think we want you swimming without a suit!”

  More laughter.

  “But what if . . .”—Martine tried to get the wording right—“. . . what if some of us prefer not to swim?”

  “Why ever would you not want to get into the water?” asked a surprised Miss Volkner. “The reefs are glorious. Trust me, Martine, once you’ve swum in the open ocean, where the sea floor might be as much as half a mile beneath you, we won’t be able to keep you out of the water.”

  Somebody else asked a question then, so nobody noticed that the color had drained from Martine’s face and that, beneath her desk, her knees had started to tremble.

  That night, the sharks came for Martine for the first time. They circled her in Technicolor nightmares, their deep-set dead eyes on her flapping white limbs as she struck out across tempestuous seas. Over the weeks, the dreams increased in frequency and intensity to such an extent that Martine became afraid to go to sleep. Two nights before she was due to leave on the school trip, she took the extreme measure of sitting up in bed with a stack of books on her head so that they’d crash to the floor and wake her if she nodded off. Unfortunately, by then she was so exhausted that the third time they toppled she barely heard them. She simply scooted down in the sheets and gave herself up to the sharks.

  She was battling to stay afloat and uneaten in an ocean so icy that her limbs felt paralyzed, when a disembodied voice cut into her dream. “Wakey wakey, Martine! We’ll need to go soon if we want to get to the beach while it’s still early.”

  Martine forced herself into consciousness. It was morning and a blurry figure was sitting on the edge of her bed. She blinked and it swam into focus. Her grandmother, dressed, as usual, in denim jeans but wearing a pale blue shirt instead of her khaki work one with the lion on the pocket, was watching her with sharp indigo eyes.

  “How many times have I told you not to sleep with the window open?” Gwyn Thomas reproached her gently. “No wonder you have nightmares. You’re freezing. June is winter in Africa, Martine
. Try to remember that.”

  Martine struggled to free herself from the cold tentacles of her dream. “I was drowning,” she said blearily. “There were sharks and I couldn’t breathe.”

  “Of course you were drowning,” said Gwyn Thomas, leaning forward and briskly shutting out the biting air. “You were all caught up in the blankets. And what are these books doing on the floor?”

  Martine disentangled herself and sat up. She didn’t want to worry her grandmother by telling her how bad the nightmares had become. “I was trying to find something good to read.”

  “And you thought you’d start with The Enthusiast’s Guide to Model Railways and the Jeep Engine Repair Handbook?”

  Martine didn’t answer. As usual, she was absorbed by the view from her bedroom window. Beneath the thatched eaves, a herd of elephants straggled around the distant water hole, gray ghosts in the wintry dawn mist. She’d been at Sawubona for six months now, and she still couldn’t believe she lived on a game reserve in South Africa; still got a thrill every single morning when she opened her eyes, propped herself up on one elbow, and looked out over the savannah wilderness she now called home. Those things didn’t take away the knot of sadness that had dwelled inside her ever since her mum and dad had died in a New Year’s Eve blaze in their Hampshire home in England, but they definitely helped.

  It helped too that she had a new family. It wasn’t a replacement family, because no one could ever replace the parents she’d worshipped. But at least she didn’t feel so isolated anymore. Along with her grandmother, there was Tendai, the big Zulu who had recently been promoted from tracker to game warden. Tendai taught her bushcraft skills to help her survive the beautiful but deadly African landscape, and took her for campfire breakfasts up on the game reserve escarpment. Martine adored Tendai, but she had a very special relationship with his aunt, Grace, an African medicine woman and traditional healer—a sangoma—who also happened to be the best cook in the world. Grace alone knew the secret of Martine’s gift with animals, and many other secrets besides.

  Last, and to Martine’s mind, most important, was her white giraffe, Jeremiah (Jemmy for short). Martine thought of Jemmy, whom she’d tamed and could ride, and Ben, the boy who’d helped her rescue the white giraffe when he was stolen, as her best friends, although since Jemmy couldn’t talk and Ben was mostly silent, they hadn’t actually confirmed that.

  “Sometime today would be nice,” said Gwyn Thomas pointedly, and Martine remembered that she was supposed to be getting up. She glanced at the bedside clock and stifled a groan. Six a.m.! Sometimes she wished her grandmother was more of a fan of sleeping in on Sunday mornings.

  Gwyn Thomas saw Martine’s expression and her eyes sparkled with amusement. Once, those eyes had only ever studied Martine with coolness or hostility, but these days her tanned face was more usually creased in a smile.

  “You must be so excited about leaving on the school trip tomorrow,” she said. “Ten whole days at sea. Ten whole days of history and nature and, I suppose, a little adventure. I envy you, I really do. I almost wish I was going with you.”

  “Want to swap places?”

  Gwyn Thomas laughed. “For a minute there, you sounded almost serious, Martine. You are looking forward to it, aren’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” said Martine with as much conviction as she could muster. She swallowed a yawn. “Can’t wait.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, because you’ve been looking quite pale recently. You could do with some sea air. Well, I’ll see you downstairs in a few minutes. I’m just packing a picnic for our beach walk.”

  “See you downstairs,” Martine said brightly, but as soon as the door swung shut behind her grandmother, she put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. She knew very well why she was having the shark dreams, and it had nothing to do with sleeping with her window open in winter, getting tangled up in blankets, eating cheese late at night, or any of the other things people said caused nightmares. She was getting them because of something that had happened almost exactly a year ago.

  She and her parents had been on vacation in Cornwall, England. On their last afternoon there Martine’s dad, a doctor, had received an emergency call to help some boys who’d fallen down a cliff. Martine’s mum, Veronica, was recovering from the flu and was having an afternoon nap, and her dad had asked Martine if she would mind reading or drawing for a while because he wanted her mum to get plenty of rest.

  But it was a roasting hot day and after a while Martine was bored and decided that if she nipped down to the beach and put her toes in the sea, she could be back before her mum woke up. When she got down there, though, the water was so inviting that soon she was up to her knees and then her waist. Then, out of nowhere, a wave had knocked her flat. It had dragged her along the sea floor and she’d tumbled over and over as if she were in the spin cycle of a washing machine. When she felt certain she would drown, the wave had spat her out, and she’d managed to half swim, half crawl back to the beach.

  At more or less the same time, a fisherman had pulled in a basking shark. Martine had seen its sinister shape on the sand as she staggered up the beach, and somehow the two things had become combined in her mind—the shark and the washing-machine wave. Moments later she was in her mum’s arms. Veronica, who’d been searching high and low for her, was so overjoyed to see her safe that she forgot to scold her. Not wanting to distress her mum further, Martine had thought it best not to mention the wave and how she’d nearly drowned, although she did vow to herself that she would never again swim in the sea if she could help it.

  None of that had mattered until now because they’d left Cornwall the next day, and her parents had died before they could have another seaside vacation. As a result, nobody had found out about the one thing Martine had never confessed to another living soul because she didn’t even want to admit it to herself. She was petrified that something or someone would force her into the sea, and that she would drown or be eaten by sharks.

  2

  In the six months she’d lived in South Africa, Martine had not once been to the beach. Her grandmother rarely left the Storm Crossing area and wasn’t the sort of person who would ever be caught covered in sunblock, relaxing on a striped deckchair. For obvious reasons, Martine was quite content with this arrangement, so she’d been surprised the previous evening when Gwyn Thomas had suggested that they get up at dawn and go for a walk along the Cape coast. Luckily it was far too cold to swim, which meant that Martine was much more enthusiastic about the idea than she would have been during the summer.

  She was even more pleased when they reached Uiserfontein shortly before eight that Sunday morning and she saw the ocean spilling out before her. The sun was a band of glittering gold splayed across a heaving wilderness of metallic blue. Purple heather grew right up to the shore. As she climbed out of the car, the sea breeze snatched at her scarf and the smell of the waves filled her nostrils.

  It was definitely not warm, and Martine was glad her grandmother had insisted she bundle up with a woolen hat, Windbreaker, and gloves. Seagulls aside, there was no one around but a kite surfer out in the bay. Martine stood riveted on the dunes as he rode the waves like a charioteer. At intervals he’d disappear behind a swell and all that would be visible was his kite, a billowing parachute in candy-colored stripes. He’d be gone for so long that she’d begin to think he’d fallen victim to the undertow, but then he’d come speeding out on the face of a breaker.

  The wind whipped the waves into powdery plumes of spray, like the manes of white horses. They’d toss the man and his board into the air, and the kite would catch him and lift him even higher, allowing him to somersault and twist in effortless defiance of gravity. Then he’d float back down and slip behind another swell.

  Out on the beach, the whistling wind made conversation difficult, and Martine couldn’t help thinking about the school trip again. Her swimming fears aside, it did sound fantastic. Miss Volkner had told the class that the Sardine Run was one of th
e great wonders of the natural world, as marvelous a migration as that of the wildebeest in East Africa. Every year over a million of the curly-horned beasts moved in an epic black sweep across the yellow plains of the Serengeti, evading lions, hyenas, the spotted gold streaks of the hunting cheetahs, and slow-blinking crocodiles in torrential rivers. On the Sardine Run, she said, it was not uncommon for shoals of sardines to be as much as nine miles long and two miles wide, and for the pods of dolphins that pursued them to be a thousand strong.

  Martine was looking forward to the dolphins most of all. She had only ever seen one dolphin in real life, and that was at a grim aquarium she’d visited with her equally grim former school, Bodley Brook. In a peeling swimming pool, a trainer had coaxed the dolphin into performing dozens of tricks with beach balls and rubber rings. Some of the children had been invited to reward it with fish from a bucket—probably sardines— but Martine had kept her distance. When the dolphin approached the poolside she’d noticed its mouth was curled at the corners in a permanent smile. Throughout the show, she’d had the feeling that the dolphin was smiling only because it couldn’t help it—like a clown smiling through tears.

  The dolphin memory reminded her of another animal she felt was being taken advantage of: her own white giraffe. The best thing about Jemmy becoming famous after the rescue was that he’d lost his value to hunters. As the only white giraffe on earth, he was still very valuable, but not nearly as much as he had been when he was a mythical beast of legend. And he was not exactly a size that would make it easy for a poacher to catch him and dye him a different color for reasons of disguise.

  The worst thing about Jemmy becoming famous was that everyone wanted to see him. Previously, he’d slept in his secret sanctuary during the day and only come out at night. Now he went there at night and roamed the game reserve during the day, and Gwyn Thomas led White Giraffe tours around Sawubona in search of him. She had even ordered White Giraffe mugs and White Giraffe T-shirts.