Dolphin Song Read online

  Martine was panic-stricken. She yelled for help, but it was a feeble yell because she was beyond the arc of the searchlights and she knew with nauseating certainty that they wouldn’t be able hear her on deck; that if she couldn’t reach the boat before the waves obscured her, she’d be left alone in the raging ocean in the middle of the night, waiting to drown or be eaten by sharks.

  Fear lent her energy. She started to swim again. To distract herself, she did her best to imagine she was competing in the school games, but that only reminded her of how she always came last. So she put her head down and concentrated instead on doing one stroke at a time. When she judged she must be nearing the lifeboat, she stopped and trod water. Her chest constricted with shock. The ship was a fast-shrinking square of light on the horizon! Martine wiped the salt water from her eyes and, when a swell lifted her up again, squinted into the darkness. But there was no mistake. The current and the huge waves had swept her away. At least a mile lay between her and any hope of rescue. She was on her own.

  Battling to stay afloat, Martine started to cry. Breaking down went against everything she knew about survival, the most crucial part of which was staying calm and not giving up, but she couldn’t help it. It would take a miracle to save her now. Already, she was completely exhausted. She’d swallowed gallons of seawater and she was so cold, she didn’t know which was going to get her first, hypothermia or the sharks that lurked in the depths below. She could imagine them circling in preparation for charging at her the way the great white had hurtled at Norm in Shark Alley, their deep-set dead eyes on her flapping white limbs. She tried to paddle more slowly and to tuck her legs up, to minimize the area of flesh they had to attack, but all that happened was that she sank.

  Terrified, she clawed her way to the surface. She was almost there when there was an explosion of bubbles and a shining streak passed her—a sort of oceanic shooting star. Then it swooped the other way. Martine tried to focus, to see it through the darkness and rain, but the whale-tail strength of the waves shoved her back and forth and she caught only glimpses of a long, swiftly moving shape, glowing with some unearthly light.

  Instinct told Martine that if she could only reach the shining thing it would mean survival. But she kept sinking. No matter how hard she struggled, it stayed tantalizingly out of reach. And with every passing second the chill was numbing her limbs, making the sea seem heavy, as if she were swimming through snow. She was so tired that she knew she wouldn’t be able to fight for much longer. Soon she’d have to stop paddling and then . . .

  The edges of Martine’s vision wavered and darkness closed in.

  It was Cornwall she remembered first. A spring day on Porthmeor Beach in St. Ives, before the summer madness when the tourists came. Martine had been standing on the apricot sand, reaching for a honeycomb ice-cream Mum had bought her, when a fat seagull had swooped down and snatched it. But her dismay had quickly turned to laughter. While the seagull was gloating over its spoils on a nearby rooftop—sending ear-piercing screeches in their direction—another seagull had reached over and swallowed the cone in a single gulp! By then Martine and her dad had decided that it was too chilly for ice cream anyway, so the three of them had spent the rest of the afternoon eating warm scones heaped with strawberry jam and whipped cream in a cozy harbor café, watching the tide spill in around the rainbow-painted fishing boats.

  Martine remembered it as a day of perfect happiness.

  Other memories followed, flickering through her head like a well-loved home movie. There was the magical night on the game reserve when she’d woken from a dead faint to find the white giraffe towering over her, his coat shimmering like sun on snow, his silver patches tinged with cinnamon; the exhilaration she’d felt the first time she rode him—the way they’d swept across the moonlit savannah, Jemmy galloping with a rocking-horse stride.

  Next, and as vividly as if it was happening then, Martine felt electricity crackle through her just as it had when Grace placed a hand on her forehead on the day she arrived in Africa. “The gift can be a blessing or a curse,” the sangoma had warned her. “Make your decisions wisely.”

  The scene changed and Martine relived the horror of the fire and the last time she saw her parents, when her father had hugged her good night and told her he loved her. She’d been about to go into her bedroom when he’d said, “You have to trust, Martine. Everything happens for a reason.” And afterward she’d thought how odd it was that he should say it then, at that precise moment.

  Last—and as if she were watching from above—she saw herself as a baby. She was in her mother’s arms in the living room at Sawubona. Mum was holding her up to the window so she could glimpse the animals—lions beside zebras, leopards beside springbok, baboons beside warthogs—lined up along the game fence, their eyes trained on the house. “See that, beautiful girl,” Veronica murmured. “That’s your destiny.”

  Then, almost imperceptibly, she had added, “But not if I can stop it.”

  Gradually Martine became aware that she was being raised to the surface of the sea by something immensely strong and yet infinitely gentle, like angels’ wings. A blast of stormy air hit her face and shocked her back to life, and then she was coughing up seawater and sucking oxygen into her burning lungs. She was draped across something solid and slippery. For a minute she lay there, grateful for the opportunity to rest and breathe and be partially out of the freezing water. Then the solid thing moved. Martine, who’d been idly speculating that she had happened upon a piece of floating wreckage or, miracle of miracles, the lifeboat, nearly passed out with fright. She struggled upright. The clouds cleared from her vision and she realized that she was holding on to a large dorsal fin.

  A shark! She was sitting on a shark!

  Then a nose poked above the water and emitted a few clicks and squeaks, and Martine was filled with an intense relief. In spite of her predicament, she laughed out loud. She’d been rescued by a dolphin. All of a sudden it didn’t seem so bad that she was in the middle of the ocean in the middle of the night, with the ship long gone. She wasn’t sure what was going to become of her now, but whatever it was, it had to be better than being snacked on by sharks.

  Even as she was congratulating herself on this piece of good fortune, a movement in the blue-black water caught Martine’s eye. A dorsal fin cruised slowly by. She tried to see it clearly. Surely it was another dolphin? Surely it was a friend, come to join her savior? But the dorsal fin began to circle and soon it was joined by a second fin and a third, four, fifth, and sixth. In a matter of minutes, she and the dolphin were ring-fenced in a deadly shark corral. Martine was already shaking with cold and exertion, but now she began to shiver so violently at the thought that she might, after all, be torn apart in a feeding frenzy of great whites—Greg’s talk about their many good qualities had failed to reassure her—that she was worried she might slip off the dolphin. And anyway, what was to prevent her new-found friend from darting away to save itself, abandoning her to her fate? But the dolphin stayed with her, although it made squeaks of alarm at the encroaching sharks.

  Suddenly the sharks melted away. Nothing happened for a moment and then, over the sighing of the sea, Martine heard a tremendous splashing. What she saw next took her breath away. Through the wild waves came what must have been one hundred dolphins, their silhouettes outlined in silver. They were leaping, dancing, and cavorting, and their silvery arcs, freeze-framed against the midnight ocean and the scudding storm clouds, were beyond beautiful. Martine sat perfectly still, awed by the spectacle. As they drew nearer, she could hear them communicating with one another, and it sounded to her like music; like singing. And whether or not it was her imagination, she fancied they were singing in the Xhosa language, because their clicks were not dissimilar to the lovely clicks made by African singers she’d heard. And that, strangely, calmed her and made her feel that somehow, some way, she’d be all right.

  The dolphins surrounded Martine in their dozens and opened their smiling mouths an
d squeaked and whistled, almost as if they were greeting her. That was amazing enough, especially because they allowed her to reach down and stroke their satin skins, but then Martine noticed that several of the dolphins were transporting passengers. The other kids! Most seemed barely conscious. A couple cast desperate glances in her direction, blinked in acknowledgment, and resumed their frozen postures on the dolphins’ backs, sobbing quietly.

  Martine counted five figures, but as far as she could tell, Ben wasn’t among them. What if he hadn’t been saved? What if he was lost at sea? What if he was gone forever? She tried to imagine life without the boy who, in the shortest possible time, had come to mean so much to her, and was taken aback by the pain that suddenly speared her heart. After all, it’s not as if she really knew him. Ben wasn’t someone it was easy to get to know. She always had the impression that he was watching the world from some peaceful place inside himself.

  Martine was so busy agonizing over Ben and whether or not she could have interpreted Grace’s clue sooner and prevented the whole disaster that she didn’t notice a new dolphin entering the ranks of those around her until it actually nudged her foot. Ben was slumped on its back. By the look of him, he was drowned, or very close to it.

  “Ben!” cried Martine hysterically. “Ben, wake up! Oh, please be alive. Please be alive.”

  When he didn’t respond, she shook him hard. She was so afraid that this was to be her fate—to lose everyone she ever cared about—that she forgot everything she knew about first aid. Ben sat up, startled, his eyes glazed. She could see him trying to make sense of the scene around him. Perhaps he, like her, had dreamed he was somewhere else. Slowly his expression began to register the same incredulity Martine had experienced as he took in the fact that not only was he surrounded by dolphins, he was on the back of one. Then he saw Martine herself. Wordlessly he reached for her hand. He made no effort to disguise how frightened he was, nor how happy he was to see her, and that made Martine cry again, and for a while they just rode along like that, holding hands.

  After a while Martine felt shy, which she knew was ridiculous under the circumstances, but she let go of his fingers and said, “What time do you think it is?”

  Ben managed a weary smile. “Why, have you got an appointment?” But he went on quickly: “We can probably work it out. It was about nine thirty when the siren went off. Judging by the position of the moon, I’d say it’s between midnight and one in the morning.”

  Martine fell silent again and the two of them concentrated on staying awake so they could watch over the others. After a while the numbing cold and the easy rhythm of the dolphins and the endless, rolling ocean, almost flat now that the storm had passed over, made them start hallucinating. They began to murmur to themselves about mirages they glimpsed of palm-fringed islands, or steaming bubble baths, or rescue parties bearing mugs of hot chocolate and thick, soft blankets, so that when a lighthouse did actually loom into view—atop a hulking dark outline of land, ragged with palms—they thought it was just another mirage.

  The dolphins slowed and stopped. When their passengers didn’t respond, they deposited them unceremoniously in the shallows. And even when the seven frozen figures felt solid sand beneath them, even then they couldn’t believe it was real, because the rocking motion of the sea had infused their bodies, and they still felt as though they were floating. It was all any of them could do to crawl beyond the fringe of surf, which they did without speaking, the stronger ones helping the others. Then they collapsed on the darkened beach.

  Martine’s muscles were so sore and wobbly that those final few steps were the most arduous of the night. The air was fragrant and balmy, but the chill had penetrated to the very marrow of her bones and her teeth chattered uncontrollably. When she could go no farther, she toppled onto the pillowy sand. Ben dragged her a bit farther, beyond the tide’s reach, and then he flopped down a few feet away. As weak as he was, there was something about his presence that made Martine feel protected. Moments before she lost consciousness, she whispered to him, “Ben, weren’t you afraid of dying?”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I was afraid of not living.”

  Martine fell into a sleep that was closer to a coma, with the palm fronds rattling like wind chimes in the breeze and her head full of the dolphins’ song.

  12

  Martine woke to the soothing swish of sea and the sun on her skin. It flowed into her grateful bones like hot honey. She tried opening her eyes, but her lashes were crusty with dried salt and at first all she saw was a beach strewn with untidy heaps of clothes and a few life jackets. Then one of the heaps started snoring. Claudius! Martine couldn’t believe it. As if she hadn’t been through enough. What had she done in her life to deserve being stuck on a desert island with Claudius?

  Farther down the beach, Sherilyn was lying on her back, wearing pink pajamas. Her mouth was open. Her fluffy, polka-dotted dressing gown was gone. On her left was Jake, his lanky athletic limbs curled into a fetal ball, and on the other side was Lucy, her pale blond hair splayed over the sand. A large orange crab was making a home amid her tangled tresses. Martine debated whether to remove the crustacean but couldn’t summon up the energy. Farther along the beach lay the sprawled figure of an African boy. Martine’s eyes wouldn’t cooperate enough for her to be sure, but it looked like Nathan Nyathi. He too appeared to be asleep. Her gaze shifted to the last item of clothing and she saw that that was all it was, an item of clothing.

  Ben! Where was Ben?

  Some of the terror of the previous night returned to rob Martine of what little reserves she had. She scrambled to her feet and stood rocking, her head swimming. The beach felt as unsteady as the deck of a yacht. Gradually the dizziness passed and she took a few steps, wincing at the stiffness in her muscles. Her lips too were cracked and swollen. She had a raging thirst. Her jeans and top were still damp on the side where she’d slept on them, and her hair was matted with gritty sand. Her stomach growled loudly. She longed for a shower, a coffee, and two or three of Alberto’s bacon and fried banana rolls, but those were clearly out of the question. Ben, she had to find Ben.

  She began walking along the beach, and it was only then that her mind unfogged sufficiently for her to take in her surroundings. The sand stretching out before her was of the purest white, though the early-morning sunlight gave it a rose glow. It was so clean that it squeaked underfoot as if mice or a litter of puppies were nestling beneath it. Palm trees followed the long, lazy curve of the bay. The turquoise sea was as translucent as bathwater. Martine could see a big blue starfish drifting along the bottom of it. In the distance, she could hear the dull crashing of waves, but the water in the bay lapped quietly, suggesting it was ringed by a coral reef.

  But it was the island itself that really got Martine’s attention. It didn’t look like the sort of island one saw in photographs of Mauritius or the Caribbean. It was a mix of mountainous sand dunes, regular African bush, and lush, low-lying greenery, as though the deserts of Arabia had been joined up with Sawubona. A lighthouse was perched on the highest point. There were no obvious signs of human habitation, but the lighthouse was very encouraging. Martine had a dim recollection of coming around briefly at some point during the night and seeing a yellow beam flashing from its tower. If there was a lighthouse with a working light, surely that meant there was a lighthouse keeper?

  Martine reached the end of the beach without seeing any sign of Ben. She was staring up at the Everest of rippled chestnut sand, trying to pluck up the courage to return to her fellow castaways and appeal to them to form a search party, when he came tripping over the top of the dune. His black hair was wet and shiny and he was wearing frayed denim shorts, which he’d manufactured somewhat haphazardly from his jeans. Shirtless, he looked smaller than ever, but his arms were strong and his chest and stomach were ridged with muscle. With his burnt caramel skin, he looked as if he belonged to the island, as if it was his natural home.

  “Breakfast,” he called to Martine wh
en he saw her, dipping his chin at the stack of green coconuts he was holding in his arms. He slid the rest of the way down the dune and dropped them at her feet. “Only one small problem—I haven’t been able to find a way to remove their outer husks. They’re very tough and fibrous, and bashing them against rocks barely makes an impression.”

  Martine was so taken aback by the sight of him— particularly since he looked and spoke like a boy on his summer vacation and not like the survivor of a harrowing ordeal—that she was silenced. A concerned frown came over Ben’s face and he had to ask her twice if she was okay before she managed to get out, “I have a knife . . . maybe we can use the knife to cut off the husks?”

  Then it was Ben’s turn to look astonished as he realized that, not only was she still wearing her pouch, it was a survival kit. He watched wide-eyed as she turned out the contents for him to see, showing him the matches, Swiss Army knife, fishing line, compass, and Grace’s potions. Everything had stayed clean and dry in the waterproof pouch, but the leaves were badly wilted. Their days were numbered.

  Ben couldn’t believe she had carried them all the way from Cape Town. “Are they important? We might be able to save them.”

  “What are we going to save them with? Coconut milk?”