Scorched Treachery (Imdalind, #3)(100)
We held our collective breath as Stoney blocked our view of the truth. He finally stepped away and smiled at our circle. Then he released his hand gently, and the pin stayed upright.
A celebratory cheer went up all around us, and the music started again. A combination of beats, claps, clicks, and hums that I’d heard since in the cradle but never in a ceremony like this. Rhythm and music were a big part of Pinhold life. Visitors joined our weekly drum circles on the beach, and stayed to listen to the wave organ built into the cliffs that played a series of gong sounds at every high tide. The patterns we played now I knew in my bones, but they’d never come together this way. Tonight they stirred that feeling of connection and continuity that had always eluded me before.
To the untrained ear, the clicks and whistles probably sounded like nothing more than rhythmic nonsense played along with the beat. But really, they were imitations of the sounds made by the dolphins that lived in our bay—we were inviting the dolphins to join us and witness our commitment to protect their home.
“We call you to pledge yourself as the guardians of the sea. Witnessed by the sacred swirl, do you pledge to protect the ocean from land and the animals from man?” Stoney asked. His voice pulsed in time with the pounding drumbeats.
“Yes,” said six voices in unison, including mine.
“Now it is time to answer in the language of the ancients.” Stony instructed, keeping his voice low. “When I touch you, repeat after me.”
Stony started with Mica. The strange sounds seemed to roll from his tongue with ease. Almost instantly, I could hear the dolphins chattering in the distance. My heart jumped, because the legends said we needed them to witness our pledge, but they didn’t always come around for every ritual anymore.
As each of my friends took the vow, the dolphins’ chatter seemed to fade away sounded softer, as if they headed in the wrong direction. The tension in the crowd was palpable. When Blake spoke, the chatter got louder again, but not closer. And then my turn came.
I inhaled deeply and it felt like I could almost see the location of the dolphins out at sea. They could hear us, but they hadn’t come to watch. For maximum success, we wanted them to come and join our swim back to the Island.
They moved lazily in the water, playing amongst themselves. I wondered how on earth I’d reach them with my voice which was always low and scratchy. Speaking loudly never worked well for me. Then I heard their noises change as they went under the surface to play and swim, even further away from us.
You can do this, clicked Mica, straight into my brain. Slow and low. He said the syllables silently, emphasizing all the proper points for inflection. With this info from Mica, I realized that Stony hadn’t repeated it perfectly. Somehow Mica had known which ones to listen to.
I repeated it silently; spoke it as loudly as possible. While my voice lacked volume, I filled it with as much energy as I could to capture the attention of the dolphins. Vibrations swirled through my bones, down into the rocks, entering the water to reach the dolphins below the surface.
The reaction was instantaneous. The dolphins repeated me sound for sound and were quickly on the move.
“Again!” Stoney said, emphatically.
So I did. I repeated myself five more times until the dolphins came right by us in the bay. The mood shifted with the dolphins’ arrival. When I opened my eyes and saw them in front of me I allowed myself a wide grin. There, right in front of us, was a huge pod playing in the waves. They flipped, jumped and twisted in the air—showing off with glee.
“Well done,” Stony said, looking proud of is all. “Now, join our brothers and sisters in the sea, as is tradition, for a swim.”
I took only a second to watch their silvery grey bodies moving through the water before I dove off the rocks, getting in first. While everyone in The Guard would swim, only those of us pledging for the first time had anything to prove. Mica counted the dolphins silently, stopping when he reached fifty. This pod is larger than we’ve seen in years! he clicked to me, sounding louder than usual in liquid.
The inky-black water surrounded me and I could barely see the many silvery bodies darting around. They brushed against me, skin like neoprene, swimming in front, behind, and all around, churning the water so that they actually moved me along. I stayed underwater as long as I could, so as not to give up my spot in the middle of the large group. When I finally surfaced, a dolphin with skin brighter than the others stopped in the water, raised her head and stared. It felt like she recognized me.
She dove back under the water, and though I didn’t get quite enough air, I followed. Underwater she nudged me forward, and as I picked up speed she came alongside me. Her smooth movement created a slipstream, a pocket in the liquid that let me stay alongside her. I focused on staying with her as we moved front of the crowd and lost track all the other dolphins and the people too.
Underwater, time passed differently. I didn’t realize that I had forgotten to breathe ‘til I landed next to the dolphin on some jagged rocks, gasping for air. And I couldn’t move my body, no matter what I tried.
A sharp fragment of rock dug into that soft indented space behind my ear. Blood—the dolphin's and mine—mixed in the water between us, and she looked so pale I got worried. She flopped her tail a few times, unable to get off of the rock. When I moaned in pain, she stopped doing that and looked right at me with one eye. In order to do that, she had to turn her head to the side. I blinked for a second, breaking the stare when I felt her pulse. I knew it was there. It came through my skin and into my bones, right to the spot that hurt the worst. At once, the blood clotted and the pain stopped. But I was still stranded too far away for anyone near the beach bonfire to see.