The Message (Animorphs 04) by K. A. Applegate

Author:K. A. Applegate
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Children's Fiction
ISBN: 9780590629805
Publisher: Scholastic
Published: 2009-11-17T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Tobias said later it was only ten minutes. But during that ten minutes, I was lost to the world. I was being shown a small part of the whale's thoughts.

He had lived eighty migrations. He had many mates, many mothers, who had died in their turn. His children traveled the oceans of the world.

He had survived many battles, traveled to the far southern ice and the far northern ice. He re membered the days when men hunted his kind from ships that belched smoke. He remembered the songs of the many fathers who had gone before. As others would remember his song.

But in all he had seen and all he had known, he had never seen one of the little ones become a human.

Marco, I realized. He means Marco. And little ones? Is that what the whales call dolphins?

We are not truly. . . little ones.

No. You are something new in the sea. But not the only new thing. I wasn't sure what he was telling me. He spoke only in feelings, in a sort of poetry of emotion, without words. Part of it was in song. Part of it I could only sense the same way I could sense echolocation.

Something new?

He showed me a picture, a memory. It was a broad, grassy plain, with trees and a small stream. All of it underwater. And across the grass ran an animal that was part deer, part scorpion, part almost human.

Where is it? I asked him in a language of squeaks and clicks and mind-to-mind feeling. And he told me.

Suddenly I woke up. That's how it felt, any way. The whale released me. It was like coming out of a dream.

<Are you okay?> Jake asked. <You were starting to worry us, but we had this feeling maybe the whale didn't want us to interferes

< I'm fine,> I said. < I'm beyond fine.>

<Marco's ready to try remorphing,> Jake reported.

<Uh-huh,> I said, still lost in images from a mind larger and older and so utterly strange.

<Guys? You have about twenty-five minutes,> Tobias reported. <And it's a long way back to shore.>

41

I heard Marco say something, but he was speaking normally now, not in thought-speak, so it was hard to make it out with my ears under the water.

I stuck my head up and saw him begin to re sume his dolphin shape. Halfway through, he slipped off the side of the whale and back into the water. His fins formed. His beak.

And his tail. Perfect and healthy and undamaged.

We headed for shore, tired but alive.

I felt strange, leaving the whale. But when we were a mile away, I heard his song - slow, mournful, haunting notes.

<Why didn't he sing more when we were with him?> Jake wondered. I smiled inwardly. And of course, since I was a dolphin at the moment, I smiled outwardly, too.

<He doesn't sing for the little ones,> I explained. <He sings for the mothers.>

<What?> Marco asked.

<He sings for a mate.>

<Ahh. Cruising for chicks. Got it. I wonder if the big old guy even realizes that he helped save my life.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.