They must be working to fix me, he thought. I must have been hurt. Though I don't feel any pain, I feel a vacancy. Something has been taken from me. A ball? A tool? A skill? Anyway, the people are probably trying to put it back.
I trust people, he thought happily. And the apex of his mouth curled into a slight smile.
* !!!! *
The apex of his mouth did what?
Oh. Yes. Smiling. That new thing.
New thing? I've done it all my life!
Why?
It's expressive! It adds subtlety to my features! It…
It is redundant.
Creideiki let out a weak, warbling cry of confusion.
* In the brightness
Of the sunshine -
* There are answers
In schools, like fishes *
He remembered a little, now. He had been dreaming. Something terrible had happened, and he had been plunged into a nightmare of bewilderment. Shapes had darted toward and away from him, and he had felt ancient songs take new, eerie forms.
He realized he must still be dreaming, with both hemispheres at the same time. That explained why he couldn't move. He tried to coax himself awake with a song.
* Levels there are -
Known only to sperm whales
* Physeter, who hunts
In chasms of dreaming
* To battle the squid
Whose beaks are sea-mounts
* And whose great arms
Encompass oceans…
It was not a calming rhyme. It had overtones of darkness that made him want to fly away in horror. Creideiki tried to halt it, fearing what the chant might call up. But he could not stop crafting the sound-glyphs.
* Go down to levels -
In the darkness
* Where your 'cycloid'
Never reaches
* Where all music
Finally settles
* And it gathers
Stacked in layers
* Howling songs of
Ancient storms,
* And hurricanes
That never died…
A presence grew alongside Creideiki. A great, broad figure could be felt nearby, forming out of the fabric of his song. Creideiki sensed its slow sonar pulses, filling the small chamber he lay within… a small chamber that couldn't possibly hold the behemoth taking shape beside him.
Nukapai?
* Sounds of earthquakes -
Stored for epochs
* Sounds of molten
Primeval rocks…
The sound creature solidified with each passing verse. There was a muscular power in the presence forming beside him. The thing's slow, huge fluke strokes threatened to send him tumbling head over tail. When it blew, Its spume sounded like a storm breaking on a rocky shore.
Fear at last gave him the will to open his eyes. Moist mucus ran over his eyeballs as he labored to separate the lids. They were recessed to their deepest, and it took moments to make them switch to air-focus.
At first all he saw was a hospital suspension tank, small and confined. He was alone.
But sound told him he was in the open sea, and a leviathan rode next to him! He could feel its great power!
He blinked, and suddenly his vision shifted. Sight adopted the frame of reference of sound. The room vanished, and he saw It!
!!!!!!!
The thing beside him could never have lived in any of the oceans he had known. Creideiki almost choked in dread.
It moved with the power of tsunamis, the irresistibility of the tides.
It was a thing of darkness and depths.
It was a god.
* K-K-Kph-kree !!
It was a name Creideiki hadn't been aware he had known. It welled up from somewhere, like the dragons of a nightmare.
One dark eye regarded Creideiki with a look that seared him. He wanted to turn away — to hide or die.
Then it spoke to him.
It spurned Trinary, as he knew it would. It cast aside Primal, disdaining it a tongue for clever animals. It sang a song that brushed against him with physical force, enveloped him and filled him with a terrible understanding.
:You Swam Away From Us Creideiki : You Were Starting To Learn : Then Your Mind Swam Away: But We Have Not Finished : Yet :
:We Have Waited Long For One Such As You : Now You Need Us As Much As We Need You : There Is No Going Back :
:As You Are : You Would Be A Hulk : Dead Meat : Emptiness Without A Song : Never Again A Dreamer or A Fire User :
:Useless Creideiki : Neither Captain : Nor Cetacean : Useless Meat :
:There Is One Path For You : Through The Belly Of The Whale Dream : There You May Find A Way : A Hard Way : But A Way To Do Your Duty : There You May Find A Way To Save Your Life… :
Creideiki moaned. He thrashed feebly and called out for Nukapai. But then he remembered. She was one of them. She waited, down below, with his other tormentors, some of them old gods he had heard of in the sagas, and some he had never heard mentioned even by the humpback whales…
K-K-Kph-kree had come to bring him back.
Though Anglic was lost to him, he conveyed a plea in a language he had not known he knew.
:I am damaged! : I am a hulk! I should be dead meat! : I have lost speech! I have lost words! : Let me die!
It answered with a sonorous rumble that seemed born beneath the earth. Beneath the ooze.
:Through The Whale Dream You Go : Where Your Cousins Have Never Been : Even When They Played Like Animals And Barely Knew Men : Deeper Than The
