Minna gazed astern. Never had she seen those bright hills so close. Little wonder that the petals flew and the scent of flowers rode over the sea! The coast was so close that it almost seemed she might swim to it. As she gazed, she saw a gray dolphin frolicking in the wake.
“Oh, Dolphin!” Minna whispered, that her father might not hear. “Have you seen the shores of flowers?”
The dolphin nodded and dived and shot underwater to the stern of the boat. As he surfaced, he stood on his tail in the water and winked at her with his round bright eye. “Chipwheetwirl!” he called out, and Minna knew that it was his name.
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“How far is it?” whispered Minna. “Can you carry me there, Chipwheetwirl?”
The dolphin nodded again and pointed his head toward the shifting shores. Minna understood. She threw off her heavy blue jacket, coarse trousers, and boots, and flung herself cleanly into the water. Its chill was a shock. She gasped as she came to the surface and stroked out after the dolphin.
The gray swell lifted heavily and slid her down into the trough. She swam steadily, but the cold sea pulled the strength from her limbs. A glance over her shoulder showed the boat small in the distance, but the blossoming hills seemed no closer. How much longer could she swim? She began to be frightened, and her stroke faltered.
“Chipwheetwirl!” she called. In moments he was beside her, rubbing her side and whistling encouragement.
“Can you help me?” she asked. She stretched out her arm and grasped at the dolphin’s back. With a gurgle, he dived and came up on her other side, again playfully rubbing her.
“I can’t play! I’m getting too tired to swim! Won’t you help me?” she pleaded. The fear of the endless deep sank into her.
Chipwheetwirl gurgled again, and slipped beneath her so she could ride astride his back. As he carried her, he whistled and clicked at length. The meaning came to her in his tone: he had forgotten how weak her kind were, and apologized for not understanding sooner
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that she needed to be carried. He would take her to the shore as quickly as he could.
They were coming closer, and the petal-filled breeze came again, warm and full of spices. Suddenly they were past the first headland, and now the water too was warm, running silver and sweet over her legs. Vigor flowed into her veins. She had left the ocean her father fished and entered immortal waters. The bay was full of swimming folk and leaping dolphins. With a cry of delight, she slipped from Chipwheetwirl’s back, and the scars and salt-burns washed away from her hands. The wavelet that lapped her cheek was silken. She laughed and frolicked with the pearl-shining dolphin, and swam on to the strand.
Youths and maidens swam beside her, splendid in their ivory-pale bodies, and they came to the shore together. “Welcome! Welcome to Minna the dreamer!” they called, and their speech was song. On the shell-white shore, they welcomed her with kisses and caresses. They clothed her like themselves in robes of cloth-of-blossom and brought her to trees of ambrosial fruit and chalice-flowers flowing with nectar. When she had eaten and drunk, Minna joined them in the long dance that is danced through the sunset bloom upon the shifting ridges.
In the narrow harbor of Noyo, the fisher folk went into their white wooden church to inform their god that he had had the right to take
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Minna from them. And they tolled the bell in token that this was true.
But the sound of the bell did not reach Minna where she dwelt in joy on the ever-changing shores of the Vespern Empery.
Karen Anderson
SHANIDAR IV
The discovery of pollen clusters of different flowers in the grave of one of the Neanderthals, No. IV, at Shanidar cave, Iraq, furthers our acceptance of the Neanderthals in our line of evolution. It suggests that, although the body was archaic, the spirit was modern.
Ralph Solecki, “Shanidar IV, A Neanderthal
Flower Burial in Northern Iraq,” Science,