The tuna panicked and tried to evade the trap. The dolphins snapped them up in their grinning jaws by the dozens, by the hundred, gulping them down one after another. I grabbed one, more than enough for me to handle, bit through its spine to kill it and then let myself float to the surface with the big fish in my hands.
“Only one, friend Orion?” my friend teased. “This is the mighty hunter?”
I laughed as I tore at the clean fresh meat of the tuna. “How many deer can you chase down, legless one? How many rabbits can you outrun?”
I saw the dark fins of sharks circling in the distance, attracted by our slaughter of the tuna, but they kept away from the dolphins. As the sun began to slide toward the sea, we swam back to the beach by the Creators’ city, with me riding my friend’s back again.
Finally I was wading toward the beach. I stopped while still waist-deep in the water and shouted a farewell to the dolphins.
“Thanks for the hunt,” I called.
“The sea is good, friend Orion. Too bad you aren’t a dolphin, or at least a whale. You are a good companion, for a two-leg.”
“And you are good friends, all of you. Thanks for sharing your hunt with me.”
“The sea will always be your friend, Orion. It is good in the water.”
With that, they turned and headed out to the deeper waters, leaving me to stagger back up the beach and throw myself on the warm sand for the lowering sun to dry me.
The sea will always be my friend, they said. Yet there was a place in space-time where I was floating helpless in the sea, wounded and dying.
I returned to that place.
CHAPTER 11
I had hoped that I could somehow return with my body repaired, strong and healed of my wounds. But that, I could not do.
I opened my eyes and saw the starry dark night and felt pain, wave after wave of agony throbbing through every part of my body. Even as I consciously damped down the pain receptors in my brain I could feel it sullenly glowering beneath my deliberate self-control.
I was floating on my back in the deep, dark ocean, just as battered and helpless as I had been before my trip to the Creators’ realm. Had I really been there, cavorting with dolphins? Or was it all an illusion, a self-imposed dream, a feverish attempt at escapism?
My self-questioning quickly ended. I felt something brush against my badly burned leg. Just a touch, enough to make me twitch with alarm and get a mouthful of salt water in return. Then it was gone. But it would be back, I knew.
I remembered those tentacled horrors in the swamp, and wondered what predators this ocean harbored. Alone, half-dead, weaponless, I was going to be easy prey for some hungry hunter.
The sea will always be my friend, the dolphins had told me. I doubted it.
Another touch, making me flinch again. I remembered that sharks will often nudge their prey, bump it, almost play with it like a cat with a mouse before snapping it up in those horrendous tearing teeth.
Should I play dead or try to swim away? Would it make any difference?
It was no shark. This time I felt a tentacle delicately wrapping itself around the burned remains of my ankle. I shook my leg and it let go.
But not for long. The tentacle came back at precisely the same spot. This time it held fast. Quickly another slithered across my chest. I could feel its suckers attaching themselves to my burned flesh, delicately, almost tenderly.
I knew it was hopeless but I gulped down a big swallow of air as the tentacles pulled me below the surface. Bubbles gurgled in my ears. We sank down into the cold inky depths of the ocean.
Do not be afraid, friend Orion, I heard in my mind. We will not hurt you.
Now I’m hallucinating, I told myself. First I dream about dolphins and now I hallucinate that I can hear their voices in my mind. While I’m being pulled down to the bottom of the sea by some tentacled monster. If I don’t drown the pressure will cave in my ribs soon enough.