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Chapter or Story
A Pretender Prequel: Alicin Wonderland
Part 17
The Psy Who Came In From The Cold
He opened his eyes again, not to the darkness of watery isolation, but to find himself completely submerged in icy blue water with his feet in loose sand on the bottom of an unbounded ocean. Looking straight overhead, Sydney was able to make out the submerged portions of icebergs, inverted mountain peaks hundreds of feet tall—or was it ‘deep’? All about him, the water was uncommonly clear and bright for its depth, and he could hear the soulful moans of great blue leviathans as they called to one another across the vast distances of the sea floor. The creeping loneliness he felt was sapping his strength.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he sensed movement. He saw a hat. It was a tan panama hat with a purple hat band that matched the shirt he was wearing, and it was floating lazily just off his left shoulder. Instinctively, he reached for it and placed it on his head as though it had always belonged to him which, of course, it had not. Sydney tried to anchor the hat in place with a motion that looked like he was screwing the lid onto a jar of pickles and, as he did, a scrap of fabric floated into his face. It was a necktie. Under other circumstances, he would have secured it to his shirt with a tie pin, but in his present situation he made do by tucking the wide end into his belt. While Sydney was anchoring the tie, the hat floated into view once more and he snatched it before it was out of reach and stuck it under his arm so that he could return to the task of tightening the belt so as to contain the tie. “Why is there a hat?” he wondered. It was then that the good doctor noticed that he was fully clothed in a snappy white linen suit, despite the fact that he was standing—and breathing quite easily—at the bottom of the ocean! A very cold ocean. His determination to regain consciousness was renewed.
He was wondering why he was barefoot when there came a great stirring in the water behind him. Before he could fully turn around for a look, he was engulfed in a mass of wiggling shards of color that swirled around him in a dizzying vortex of shimmering fins and tails. What seemed like hundreds of tiny excited voices were chattering, but Sydney could not understand what they were saying. As quickly as they had arrived, the fish darted away as one body and took up a stance some ten yards in front of him, still swirling in a pillar of color. Intrigued with the display, he focused his attention on the spectacle of living confetti before him.
From the midst of the school came a tiny pink fish, approaching Sydney at as high a speed as the doctor imagined a creature that small could move. It was no larger than a DSA disk and every bit as shiny, only about half an inch thick. Its body and fins were designed for function rather than adornment and it seemed to be smiling at him as it came to a rather abrupt halt and now drifted in front of his face. He smiled back and slowly extended a finger toward the delicate creature that permitted his approach until the gap between them had closed to a few inches, at which point the fish began to drift backwards to maintain the space. Looking beyond his present company, Sydney spied another tiny fish zigzagging toward them with great haste, a burnished orange one. He was sure he could hear it talking as it approached and decided that he would play along with this dream as he had his last one.
“Pinky, what are you doing?” shouted the copper-colored fish, clearly out of breath. “You can’t just swim away from the school like this! It’s dangerous!” It was just after this last statement that Pinky’s friend noticed Sydney and froze in shock, suspended in front of the doctor’s face.
“It doesn’t look dangerous to me, L’Orange!” Pinky piped merrily. “It’s too big and too slow. Just look at its eyes out there on the front of its head, honestly! I could sneak up on it from three sides if I wanted to. Heeeey, how come it’s got no fins, huh? Have you ever seen one like this, L’Orange? L’Orange?” Pinky had been so busy circling the oddity from head to foot that she hadn’t noticed her friend’s condition. She glided gracefully to the mottled orange fish and poked him a few times. When he didn’t respond, she turned her attention back to the oddity.
Sydney was grinning. “I’m not a fish, little friend. I’m a human being, a doctor.”
“Uh-huh,” said Pinky, neither surprised nor impressed that the oddity was addressing her and not the least bit curious about what either a human being or a doctor might be. She left her friend’s side and began to swim figure eights around Sydney’s feet. “What are these things?” she shouted up to him.
“They’re called feet. It’s how I move around.”
“Oh,” she replied, already examining the five digits on the front end of one foot. “And whadda ya call these?”
“Toes,” and he wiggled them.
Pinky let out a little scream and retreated to her place beside L’Orange, who was beginning to thaw slightly, in the emotional sense of the word. But before long, she was right back at the doctor’s feet, giggling wildly and swimming away each time he wiggled his toes again. Sydney, too, was finding the game to be quite enjoyable.
L’Orange eventually regained his senses and threw Sydney the bravest glare he could summon. Puffing himself up to full capacity, he asked “Are you gonna eat me? Or her?” His voice was low, as if he didn’t want Pinky to hear. “Because if you hurt one shiny scale on her body,” he threatened, “I’ll--”
“I can assure you I have no desire do you or your friend any sort of harm,” Sydney answered quietly.
“Lucky for you,” growled L’Orange. “One at a time we may be small, but in a group we’re pret-ty big and single minded, and we can take care of ourselves.”
Just then Sydney’s empty stomach rumbled.
“SWI-I-I-IM!” Pinky screamed in wide-eyed terror as she turned tail and streaked toward the school shrieking, “IT’S GONNA EAT US!”
Meanwhile, a sheepish Sydney shrugged and cast an apologetic look at L’Orange, who just rolled his eyes and hurried back to the school in hopes of preventing an inter-species incident. The little orange fish caught up with Pinky in time to hear her say, “…and its dorsal fin kept falling off, so it grabbed it and stuffed it under its other tentacle!” He sighed heavily.
Sydney recognized trouble when he saw it and he knew he was looking at it now. The swirling mass had suddenly solidified into a silent wall of eyes, all of them trained on him. And although their ventral fins were lowered and locked in a ‘don’t mess with us’ pose, he feared no physical harm from them and suppressed a laugh at the thought of being pestered to death by a swarm of shiny little fish. Nonetheless, the little creatures were in distress because of him and he felt professionally obliged to ease their pain. “I at least owe them that, don’t I?” he reasoned. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he took a deep breath and shouted, “I PROMISE YOU, I HAVE NO INTENTION OF EATING ANYONE!” But what came out of his mouth sounded more like a walrus choking on a mouthful of mussels, and the wall detonated like a burst of fireworks and drifted to the sea floor in a heap of laughter. Pinky was embarrassed, however, and refused to admit the humor in the show, turning her back on the whole lot of them. L’Orange made a gallant effort not to laugh, for his friend’s sake, but finally exploded with hilarity, finding the whole affair to be riotously funny. From thirty feet away, Sydney was nearly paralyzed with laughter himself, partaking of the oldest and best medicine of all.
The merriment eventually subsided, leaving its victims breathless and weak from the exertion. The occasional ripple of mirth swept across the school as it began to regroup. L’Orange had Pinky off to one side, trying to soothe her bruised ego and convince her that she could return to the school without losing face.
“It could’ve happened to any of us,” he began; constantly darting about to stay in front of his friend’s face. “Nobody knew what it was. It could’ve been dangerous.”
“But it wasn’t,” Pinky lamented. “And now they’re laughing at me.”
“But you’re the one who proved that it wasn’t dangerous. It could’ve eaten you, did you think about that? No. You swam right up to it and showed everybody that it was just a funny old fish. You were very brave.”
“I guess I was,” she said without conviction.
“Well you sure did better that I did,” L’Orange muttered in a conspiratorial voice and then struck the google-eyed pose he had been stuck in right after he had seen Sydney.
Pinky smiled. “Maybe,” she conceded. L’Orange continued to drift silently, listing at about ten degrees. Pinky poked him in the side. “Come on, L’Orange. You’ve made your point.” Her friend made no response so she poked him again, sending him into a gentle tailspin. The sight made her giggle. “L’Ora-ange!” she whined. “Stop that right now!”
“Okay!” he said at last, righting himself.
“Race you back!” Pinky challenged and was away before her friend could turn himself around.
L’Orange made a good show of trying to keep up, all the while satisfied that his friend was going to be all right.
The school had pulled itself together and once more fixed its attention on the odd fish with the comical voice. It moved cautiously toward the stranger and spoke as one.
“What are you and what are you doing in our ocean?” they asked.
“My name is Sydney. I’m a human being,” he began. “We tend to be land dwellers, so I really cannot explain why I’m here under the water with you.”
“Land?” they asked and then began to speculate among themselves.
“Yes! Up there.” He directed their attention to the water’s surface several hundred feet above. “Out of the water. Out in the sunshine.
The school gasped, “Out of the water! That’s horrible! How do you hide from the sun so it doesn’t dry you out?”
“Humans are designed to live up there, as I said. We’re mammals. We were meant to breathe the fresh air and bask in the sun-“
“Like the walruses and sea lions!” half of the school interrupted.
Then the other half added, “And the other predators. What do you eat, Sydney?”
Sydney knew he would have to weigh his words carefully before answering. “I’m primarily a vegetarian.” he explained.
“A plant eater,” they pondered. “That’s good, but you said ‘primarily’. Does that mean you would make an exception and eat us?”
Sydney smiled reassuringly. “Never! But to get the nutrients I need, sometimes I eat cheese or eggs. Those come from other animals.”
There was another collective gasp at the word ‘eggs’ and the females pushed to the head of the class, as it were. “Whose eggs?” they demanded.
Sydney sighed. The mothers of past, present and future generations of DSA disk fish were waiting for an answer. “Chicken eggs. It’s a bird that lives on land and eats grain.” The ladies couldn’t quite understand what either chicken was, but were pleased to learn that it wasn’t a fish and seemed to be satisfied with Sydney’s answer.
“What I need now is to find somewhere warm to rest.” Sydney said with a shiver in his voice. “Can you direct me to such a place?”
“Direct you!” the school exclaimed. “We can take you there. It’s where we were going when we ran into you!” There was some individual tittering over the part about running into Sydney, who acknowledged their pun with a smile. “It’s nicely warm over there,” the school informed him, parting to afford Sydney a view of a place in the distance where a broad sunbeam had penetrated to the ocean floor, lighting a magnificently hued coral reef. “Just follow us.”
Sydney watched as the school shaped itself into a curtain of color that billowed through the water as it moved toward the reef. He struggled to swim after it but was frustrated by the drag caused by his clothing. He was shedding his coat and shirt when he saw a tiny pink dot approaching from the direction of the school. Pinky was yelling with great passion about something, but Sydney could not make out a word until she was practically right in front of his face.
“I came back to keep you company ‘cause it looks like you don’t move so good in the water and it’s gonna take you a lot longer to get there than the rest of us. Besides, we can talk and I can make sure you don’t step on the sharp stuff. And I’ll show you where to find the good grazing,” she announced.
“That’s ver-ry kind of you, Miss Pinky,” he replied with a slight bow. “I shall enjoy the pleasure of your company.”
If a fish could blush, then Pinky was that fish. “Me, too!” she demurred, taking up a position beside Sydney where she could easily talk with him. “We can leave just as soon as you finish molting,” she told him as she watched his suit, tie and hat adrift in the current. “Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.”
“I shall do my best to keep pace. Lead on, young lady,” he answered as he pushed off from the sandy floor beneath his feet and began to crawl through the water, ignoring his traveling companion’s snickering.
=====
The two companions swam easily, steadily approaching the more temperate waters of the reef, as they compared life on land to that in the ocean with Pinky educating Sydney on the finer points of deep sea dining and the fine line between plants and animals when the visual clues were less than definitive. The conversation was lively with both participants alternately in awe or disbelief about what they were hearing. Eventually they had exhausted their supply of topics and fell into an amicable silence in which they enjoyed each other’s company and the increasingly beautiful scenery as they drew closer to their destination.
After a long silence, Pinky blurted out, “He’s still a genius, you know.”
“Who’s still a genius?” Sydney asked, clearly baffled by her statement.
“L’Ora-ange!” she replied, as if the answer were obvious.
“I’ve only just met him but he seems like a very nice, uhm, fish. And he seems quite fond of you, Pinky.”
“He does? I mean, he said that?” Her interest was piqued. Then she remembered her friend’s initial encounter with the human called Sydney and she asked suspiciously, “When did he say it?”
“Right after he regained consciousness. He expressed great concern for your safety and well-being. I seem to remember that he mentioned your ‘shiny scales.’”
“He said that? Shiny? About me? ” She was clearly flattered and pleased.
Sydney nodded. He suspected that the fondness was mutual and wanted to know more.
Pinky was only happy to oblige. “He was always the smartest fish in the school. When he was on predator watch on the periphery, we never lost anybody! He has this special sense that can take us around danger.” She swam in a wide arc to the right to demonstrate and continued to talk as she returned to Sydney’s side. “He figured out what order we should visit the feeding grounds to avoid fights with the other schools. He was looking for a more secure breeding ground when the eels showed up and took over.” She suddenly became serious and quite sad. “That’s when he got hurt.” She sounded as if she could cry.
“Did the eels hurt L’Orange, Pinky?” Sydney asked softly and with great sympathy.
“Uh-huh,” she replied and fell silent for a long time as Sydney waited for her to compose herself and continue. “He warned the school in time for nearly everyone to escape, but the eels caught him and…and…and-” She couldn’t go on.
“It’s alright, Pinky,” Sydney said in a whisper. “You’re safe now. The school is safe. And perhaps most importantly, L’Orange is safe. All of that is in the past. It can’t hurt you anymore.” His words were comforting and gave her the strength to finish the tale.
“The lightening eels came. They swam into the school and shocked as many of us as they could. Then, while the rest of the school escaped, the eels took their time eating the ones they’d caught.”
“And did they shock L’Orange?”
“Yes,” Pinky answered in a hoarse whisper. “He was warning the others to swim off when one of the eels wrapped around him and…well, the burns were deep enough that his skin turned dark, like the hermit crabs on the reef. Then he fell into a bed of anemones and was so well hidden that the eels overlooked him. When he revived, he found the school, but he wasn’t the same. Something changed. He changed. And the school started treating him differently.”
“How was it different?”
“At first it was little things, like not giving him predator watch. They said he needed time to rest and heal. But not much later, he wasn’t given anything important to do. Not like before. No one listened to his thoughts on the concerns of the school. They treated him like he wasn’t quite a fish anymore. They still do and I know better. He’s not like they say, like they think. He’s still a genius. He’s still the smartest fish in the school! Why can’t they see that? ”
Sydney took his time and formed his thoughts carefully before replying. “Some people—and some fish, I suspect—look no further than the outward appearance when they measure someone else’s abilities or gifts. In the case of your friend, I’m afraid that may be what has happened. L’Orange doesn’t look exactly like his former self; perhaps the school behaves toward him as they do because he doesn’t exactly act like his former self either. They may see him as ‘different’ before they see him as a fish. Some people—and fish—view ‘different’ as somehow being ‘less than.’ And that is unfortunate for everyone involved. So, if L’Orange is still the smartest fish in the school—‘”
“He is!” asserted Pinky.
“Then the school is poorer for not recognizing his unique abilities and embracing him as a full and vital member of the community.”
“That’s right!” agreed Pinky. “I mean, just because a fish doesn’t always swim in a straight line,” she exclaimed and then added quietly, “—or right side up—is no reason to declare him ‘not fish’. Deep inside, he’s still L’Orange…the way he used to be. The eels didn’t change that. They didn’t! L’Orange is still as smart as he always was. If the school would only take time to learn that, they’d know they’ve been mistaken about him all this time.” She punctuated the sentence with a heavy sigh.
“Perhaps you could tell them,” Sydney suggested.
“Me!” Pinky was astonished at the notion. “Why would they listen to me?”
“Because you are one of them! One fish, one vote, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m too young for them to pay any attention to yet.”
Sydney smiled sympathetically. “A very long time ago, near another ocean, a young human named Timothy said the same thing to his friend Paul. Do you know what Paul told his young friend?”
The little pink fish wagged, “No.”
“He said ‘Do not be afraid to speak out just because you have no standing yet in the community because of your youth. The power of the truth you speak will cause people to listen and believe what you say.’ Do you understand what he was saying?”
“If what I say is true—that is what will make the others believe.”
“Yes!” Sydney grinned enthusiastically. “Your age does not matter here. The truth of your message will cause them to believe your words. You know L’Orange better than any of them, do you not?”
Pinky nodded herself, “Yes.”
“Then let them see him the way you see him--“
“Smart and wise and valuable…no…essential to the future of the school!” she interrupted.
“That’s it! Now you’re on the right track!” Sydney cheered.
“Track?” Pinky questioned.
“A land expression,” Sydney explained, realizing that it had no meaning for L’Orange’s friend. “I mean to say that your thoughts are starting to…swim…in the right direction.”
“Oh!” Pinky brightened. “Okay, I can do that. Talk to them about L’Orange, I mean!” she chirped with the excitement of sudden understanding and swam in a little circle. “Yes, I can do that,” she sighed and then, seeming to take a deep breath, she held very still and whispered, “Sydney, can you feel it?”
“Feel what, Pinky?” he said, stilling himself.
“The current. It’s getting warmer. L’Orange says that it has its own song and the song gets sweeter the closer you get. Can you hear it, Sydney? Can you hear it yet?”
He could not and his face spoke the fact, to his diminutive companion’s sadness. Pinky felt truly sorry for him, for his inability to hear the beauty of her world. The world she loved and shared with L’Orange.
“Listen, Sydney,” she pleaded. “Reach out with your feelings. Listen with your heart.”
He did. For a very long time he listened. And then…
“It’s so incredibly beautiful!” he exclaimed in hushed tones as he looked at the little fish in wonder. “You are absolutely right, Pinky, I didn’t hear it until I listened—really listened—with my heart and…” His voice drifted off as the sweetness of the song drew him deeper into the warmth of the current, closer to the reef. Pinky was smiling at him now. Sydney was hearing and seeing her world clearly for the first time since his arrival. She knew he was leaving now and hoped that he would carry the truths of their time together until the day when he needed to remember them. And Sydney would, indeed, one day need to remember the truth about L’Orange.
=====
Evening and Morning
The air in room was noticeably warmer than it had been when Miss Parker had first visited Sydney upon her arrival at the Center and she noticed that he was no longer resting on the refrigerated mat, rightly assuming that it had helped bring his temperature down to normal. He seemed to be resting peacefully, his chest rising and falling with the smooth breathing of deep sleep. While keeping vigil in a chair beside him, where she could hold his hand and occasionally stroke his hair, she was sure he was smiling just a little.
=====
TBC
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Part 17
The Psy Who Came In From The Cold
He opened his eyes again, not to the darkness of watery isolation, but to find himself completely submerged in icy blue water with his feet in loose sand on the bottom of an unbounded ocean. Looking straight overhead, Sydney was able to make out the submerged portions of icebergs, inverted mountain peaks hundreds of feet tall—or was it ‘deep’? All about him, the water was uncommonly clear and bright for its depth, and he could hear the soulful moans of great blue leviathans as they called to one another across the vast distances of the sea floor. The creeping loneliness he felt was sapping his strength.
Suddenly, from the corner of his eye, he sensed movement. He saw a hat. It was a tan panama hat with a purple hat band that matched the shirt he was wearing, and it was floating lazily just off his left shoulder. Instinctively, he reached for it and placed it on his head as though it had always belonged to him which, of course, it had not. Sydney tried to anchor the hat in place with a motion that looked like he was screwing the lid onto a jar of pickles and, as he did, a scrap of fabric floated into his face. It was a necktie. Under other circumstances, he would have secured it to his shirt with a tie pin, but in his present situation he made do by tucking the wide end into his belt. While Sydney was anchoring the tie, the hat floated into view once more and he snatched it before it was out of reach and stuck it under his arm so that he could return to the task of tightening the belt so as to contain the tie. “Why is there a hat?” he wondered. It was then that the good doctor noticed that he was fully clothed in a snappy white linen suit, despite the fact that he was standing—and breathing quite easily—at the bottom of the ocean! A very cold ocean. His determination to regain consciousness was renewed.
He was wondering why he was barefoot when there came a great stirring in the water behind him. Before he could fully turn around for a look, he was engulfed in a mass of wiggling shards of color that swirled around him in a dizzying vortex of shimmering fins and tails. What seemed like hundreds of tiny excited voices were chattering, but Sydney could not understand what they were saying. As quickly as they had arrived, the fish darted away as one body and took up a stance some ten yards in front of him, still swirling in a pillar of color. Intrigued with the display, he focused his attention on the spectacle of living confetti before him.
From the midst of the school came a tiny pink fish, approaching Sydney at as high a speed as the doctor imagined a creature that small could move. It was no larger than a DSA disk and every bit as shiny, only about half an inch thick. Its body and fins were designed for function rather than adornment and it seemed to be smiling at him as it came to a rather abrupt halt and now drifted in front of his face. He smiled back and slowly extended a finger toward the delicate creature that permitted his approach until the gap between them had closed to a few inches, at which point the fish began to drift backwards to maintain the space. Looking beyond his present company, Sydney spied another tiny fish zigzagging toward them with great haste, a burnished orange one. He was sure he could hear it talking as it approached and decided that he would play along with this dream as he had his last one.
“Pinky, what are you doing?” shouted the copper-colored fish, clearly out of breath. “You can’t just swim away from the school like this! It’s dangerous!” It was just after this last statement that Pinky’s friend noticed Sydney and froze in shock, suspended in front of the doctor’s face.
“It doesn’t look dangerous to me, L’Orange!” Pinky piped merrily. “It’s too big and too slow. Just look at its eyes out there on the front of its head, honestly! I could sneak up on it from three sides if I wanted to. Heeeey, how come it’s got no fins, huh? Have you ever seen one like this, L’Orange? L’Orange?” Pinky had been so busy circling the oddity from head to foot that she hadn’t noticed her friend’s condition. She glided gracefully to the mottled orange fish and poked him a few times. When he didn’t respond, she turned her attention back to the oddity.
Sydney was grinning. “I’m not a fish, little friend. I’m a human being, a doctor.”
“Uh-huh,” said Pinky, neither surprised nor impressed that the oddity was addressing her and not the least bit curious about what either a human being or a doctor might be. She left her friend’s side and began to swim figure eights around Sydney’s feet. “What are these things?” she shouted up to him.
“They’re called feet. It’s how I move around.”
“Oh,” she replied, already examining the five digits on the front end of one foot. “And whadda ya call these?”
“Toes,” and he wiggled them.
Pinky let out a little scream and retreated to her place beside L’Orange, who was beginning to thaw slightly, in the emotional sense of the word. But before long, she was right back at the doctor’s feet, giggling wildly and swimming away each time he wiggled his toes again. Sydney, too, was finding the game to be quite enjoyable.
L’Orange eventually regained his senses and threw Sydney the bravest glare he could summon. Puffing himself up to full capacity, he asked “Are you gonna eat me? Or her?” His voice was low, as if he didn’t want Pinky to hear. “Because if you hurt one shiny scale on her body,” he threatened, “I’ll--”
“I can assure you I have no desire do you or your friend any sort of harm,” Sydney answered quietly.
“Lucky for you,” growled L’Orange. “One at a time we may be small, but in a group we’re pret-ty big and single minded, and we can take care of ourselves.”
Just then Sydney’s empty stomach rumbled.
“SWI-I-I-IM!” Pinky screamed in wide-eyed terror as she turned tail and streaked toward the school shrieking, “IT’S GONNA EAT US!”
Meanwhile, a sheepish Sydney shrugged and cast an apologetic look at L’Orange, who just rolled his eyes and hurried back to the school in hopes of preventing an inter-species incident. The little orange fish caught up with Pinky in time to hear her say, “…and its dorsal fin kept falling off, so it grabbed it and stuffed it under its other tentacle!” He sighed heavily.
Sydney recognized trouble when he saw it and he knew he was looking at it now. The swirling mass had suddenly solidified into a silent wall of eyes, all of them trained on him. And although their ventral fins were lowered and locked in a ‘don’t mess with us’ pose, he feared no physical harm from them and suppressed a laugh at the thought of being pestered to death by a swarm of shiny little fish. Nonetheless, the little creatures were in distress because of him and he felt professionally obliged to ease their pain. “I at least owe them that, don’t I?” he reasoned. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he took a deep breath and shouted, “I PROMISE YOU, I HAVE NO INTENTION OF EATING ANYONE!” But what came out of his mouth sounded more like a walrus choking on a mouthful of mussels, and the wall detonated like a burst of fireworks and drifted to the sea floor in a heap of laughter. Pinky was embarrassed, however, and refused to admit the humor in the show, turning her back on the whole lot of them. L’Orange made a gallant effort not to laugh, for his friend’s sake, but finally exploded with hilarity, finding the whole affair to be riotously funny. From thirty feet away, Sydney was nearly paralyzed with laughter himself, partaking of the oldest and best medicine of all.
The merriment eventually subsided, leaving its victims breathless and weak from the exertion. The occasional ripple of mirth swept across the school as it began to regroup. L’Orange had Pinky off to one side, trying to soothe her bruised ego and convince her that she could return to the school without losing face.
“It could’ve happened to any of us,” he began; constantly darting about to stay in front of his friend’s face. “Nobody knew what it was. It could’ve been dangerous.”
“But it wasn’t,” Pinky lamented. “And now they’re laughing at me.”
“But you’re the one who proved that it wasn’t dangerous. It could’ve eaten you, did you think about that? No. You swam right up to it and showed everybody that it was just a funny old fish. You were very brave.”
“I guess I was,” she said without conviction.
“Well you sure did better that I did,” L’Orange muttered in a conspiratorial voice and then struck the google-eyed pose he had been stuck in right after he had seen Sydney.
Pinky smiled. “Maybe,” she conceded. L’Orange continued to drift silently, listing at about ten degrees. Pinky poked him in the side. “Come on, L’Orange. You’ve made your point.” Her friend made no response so she poked him again, sending him into a gentle tailspin. The sight made her giggle. “L’Ora-ange!” she whined. “Stop that right now!”
“Okay!” he said at last, righting himself.
“Race you back!” Pinky challenged and was away before her friend could turn himself around.
L’Orange made a good show of trying to keep up, all the while satisfied that his friend was going to be all right.
The school had pulled itself together and once more fixed its attention on the odd fish with the comical voice. It moved cautiously toward the stranger and spoke as one.
“What are you and what are you doing in our ocean?” they asked.
“My name is Sydney. I’m a human being,” he began. “We tend to be land dwellers, so I really cannot explain why I’m here under the water with you.”
“Land?” they asked and then began to speculate among themselves.
“Yes! Up there.” He directed their attention to the water’s surface several hundred feet above. “Out of the water. Out in the sunshine.
The school gasped, “Out of the water! That’s horrible! How do you hide from the sun so it doesn’t dry you out?”
“Humans are designed to live up there, as I said. We’re mammals. We were meant to breathe the fresh air and bask in the sun-“
“Like the walruses and sea lions!” half of the school interrupted.
Then the other half added, “And the other predators. What do you eat, Sydney?”
Sydney knew he would have to weigh his words carefully before answering. “I’m primarily a vegetarian.” he explained.
“A plant eater,” they pondered. “That’s good, but you said ‘primarily’. Does that mean you would make an exception and eat us?”
Sydney smiled reassuringly. “Never! But to get the nutrients I need, sometimes I eat cheese or eggs. Those come from other animals.”
There was another collective gasp at the word ‘eggs’ and the females pushed to the head of the class, as it were. “Whose eggs?” they demanded.
Sydney sighed. The mothers of past, present and future generations of DSA disk fish were waiting for an answer. “Chicken eggs. It’s a bird that lives on land and eats grain.” The ladies couldn’t quite understand what either chicken was, but were pleased to learn that it wasn’t a fish and seemed to be satisfied with Sydney’s answer.
“What I need now is to find somewhere warm to rest.” Sydney said with a shiver in his voice. “Can you direct me to such a place?”
“Direct you!” the school exclaimed. “We can take you there. It’s where we were going when we ran into you!” There was some individual tittering over the part about running into Sydney, who acknowledged their pun with a smile. “It’s nicely warm over there,” the school informed him, parting to afford Sydney a view of a place in the distance where a broad sunbeam had penetrated to the ocean floor, lighting a magnificently hued coral reef. “Just follow us.”
Sydney watched as the school shaped itself into a curtain of color that billowed through the water as it moved toward the reef. He struggled to swim after it but was frustrated by the drag caused by his clothing. He was shedding his coat and shirt when he saw a tiny pink dot approaching from the direction of the school. Pinky was yelling with great passion about something, but Sydney could not make out a word until she was practically right in front of his face.
“I came back to keep you company ‘cause it looks like you don’t move so good in the water and it’s gonna take you a lot longer to get there than the rest of us. Besides, we can talk and I can make sure you don’t step on the sharp stuff. And I’ll show you where to find the good grazing,” she announced.
“That’s ver-ry kind of you, Miss Pinky,” he replied with a slight bow. “I shall enjoy the pleasure of your company.”
If a fish could blush, then Pinky was that fish. “Me, too!” she demurred, taking up a position beside Sydney where she could easily talk with him. “We can leave just as soon as you finish molting,” she told him as she watched his suit, tie and hat adrift in the current. “Let me know if I’m going too fast for you.”
“I shall do my best to keep pace. Lead on, young lady,” he answered as he pushed off from the sandy floor beneath his feet and began to crawl through the water, ignoring his traveling companion’s snickering.
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The two companions swam easily, steadily approaching the more temperate waters of the reef, as they compared life on land to that in the ocean with Pinky educating Sydney on the finer points of deep sea dining and the fine line between plants and animals when the visual clues were less than definitive. The conversation was lively with both participants alternately in awe or disbelief about what they were hearing. Eventually they had exhausted their supply of topics and fell into an amicable silence in which they enjoyed each other’s company and the increasingly beautiful scenery as they drew closer to their destination.
After a long silence, Pinky blurted out, “He’s still a genius, you know.”
“Who’s still a genius?” Sydney asked, clearly baffled by her statement.
“L’Ora-ange!” she replied, as if the answer were obvious.
“I’ve only just met him but he seems like a very nice, uhm, fish. And he seems quite fond of you, Pinky.”
“He does? I mean, he said that?” Her interest was piqued. Then she remembered her friend’s initial encounter with the human called Sydney and she asked suspiciously, “When did he say it?”
“Right after he regained consciousness. He expressed great concern for your safety and well-being. I seem to remember that he mentioned your ‘shiny scales.’”
“He said that? Shiny? About me? ” She was clearly flattered and pleased.
Sydney nodded. He suspected that the fondness was mutual and wanted to know more.
Pinky was only happy to oblige. “He was always the smartest fish in the school. When he was on predator watch on the periphery, we never lost anybody! He has this special sense that can take us around danger.” She swam in a wide arc to the right to demonstrate and continued to talk as she returned to Sydney’s side. “He figured out what order we should visit the feeding grounds to avoid fights with the other schools. He was looking for a more secure breeding ground when the eels showed up and took over.” She suddenly became serious and quite sad. “That’s when he got hurt.” She sounded as if she could cry.
“Did the eels hurt L’Orange, Pinky?” Sydney asked softly and with great sympathy.
“Uh-huh,” she replied and fell silent for a long time as Sydney waited for her to compose herself and continue. “He warned the school in time for nearly everyone to escape, but the eels caught him and…and…and-” She couldn’t go on.
“It’s alright, Pinky,” Sydney said in a whisper. “You’re safe now. The school is safe. And perhaps most importantly, L’Orange is safe. All of that is in the past. It can’t hurt you anymore.” His words were comforting and gave her the strength to finish the tale.
“The lightening eels came. They swam into the school and shocked as many of us as they could. Then, while the rest of the school escaped, the eels took their time eating the ones they’d caught.”
“And did they shock L’Orange?”
“Yes,” Pinky answered in a hoarse whisper. “He was warning the others to swim off when one of the eels wrapped around him and…well, the burns were deep enough that his skin turned dark, like the hermit crabs on the reef. Then he fell into a bed of anemones and was so well hidden that the eels overlooked him. When he revived, he found the school, but he wasn’t the same. Something changed. He changed. And the school started treating him differently.”
“How was it different?”
“At first it was little things, like not giving him predator watch. They said he needed time to rest and heal. But not much later, he wasn’t given anything important to do. Not like before. No one listened to his thoughts on the concerns of the school. They treated him like he wasn’t quite a fish anymore. They still do and I know better. He’s not like they say, like they think. He’s still a genius. He’s still the smartest fish in the school! Why can’t they see that? ”
Sydney took his time and formed his thoughts carefully before replying. “Some people—and some fish, I suspect—look no further than the outward appearance when they measure someone else’s abilities or gifts. In the case of your friend, I’m afraid that may be what has happened. L’Orange doesn’t look exactly like his former self; perhaps the school behaves toward him as they do because he doesn’t exactly act like his former self either. They may see him as ‘different’ before they see him as a fish. Some people—and fish—view ‘different’ as somehow being ‘less than.’ And that is unfortunate for everyone involved. So, if L’Orange is still the smartest fish in the school—‘”
“He is!” asserted Pinky.
“Then the school is poorer for not recognizing his unique abilities and embracing him as a full and vital member of the community.”
“That’s right!” agreed Pinky. “I mean, just because a fish doesn’t always swim in a straight line,” she exclaimed and then added quietly, “—or right side up—is no reason to declare him ‘not fish’. Deep inside, he’s still L’Orange…the way he used to be. The eels didn’t change that. They didn’t! L’Orange is still as smart as he always was. If the school would only take time to learn that, they’d know they’ve been mistaken about him all this time.” She punctuated the sentence with a heavy sigh.
“Perhaps you could tell them,” Sydney suggested.
“Me!” Pinky was astonished at the notion. “Why would they listen to me?”
“Because you are one of them! One fish, one vote, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m too young for them to pay any attention to yet.”
Sydney smiled sympathetically. “A very long time ago, near another ocean, a young human named Timothy said the same thing to his friend Paul. Do you know what Paul told his young friend?”
The little pink fish wagged, “No.”
“He said ‘Do not be afraid to speak out just because you have no standing yet in the community because of your youth. The power of the truth you speak will cause people to listen and believe what you say.’ Do you understand what he was saying?”
“If what I say is true—that is what will make the others believe.”
“Yes!” Sydney grinned enthusiastically. “Your age does not matter here. The truth of your message will cause them to believe your words. You know L’Orange better than any of them, do you not?”
Pinky nodded herself, “Yes.”
“Then let them see him the way you see him--“
“Smart and wise and valuable…no…essential to the future of the school!” she interrupted.
“That’s it! Now you’re on the right track!” Sydney cheered.
“Track?” Pinky questioned.
“A land expression,” Sydney explained, realizing that it had no meaning for L’Orange’s friend. “I mean to say that your thoughts are starting to…swim…in the right direction.”
“Oh!” Pinky brightened. “Okay, I can do that. Talk to them about L’Orange, I mean!” she chirped with the excitement of sudden understanding and swam in a little circle. “Yes, I can do that,” she sighed and then, seeming to take a deep breath, she held very still and whispered, “Sydney, can you feel it?”
“Feel what, Pinky?” he said, stilling himself.
“The current. It’s getting warmer. L’Orange says that it has its own song and the song gets sweeter the closer you get. Can you hear it, Sydney? Can you hear it yet?”
He could not and his face spoke the fact, to his diminutive companion’s sadness. Pinky felt truly sorry for him, for his inability to hear the beauty of her world. The world she loved and shared with L’Orange.
“Listen, Sydney,” she pleaded. “Reach out with your feelings. Listen with your heart.”
He did. For a very long time he listened. And then…
“It’s so incredibly beautiful!” he exclaimed in hushed tones as he looked at the little fish in wonder. “You are absolutely right, Pinky, I didn’t hear it until I listened—really listened—with my heart and…” His voice drifted off as the sweetness of the song drew him deeper into the warmth of the current, closer to the reef. Pinky was smiling at him now. Sydney was hearing and seeing her world clearly for the first time since his arrival. She knew he was leaving now and hoped that he would carry the truths of their time together until the day when he needed to remember them. And Sydney would, indeed, one day need to remember the truth about L’Orange.
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Evening and Morning
The air in room was noticeably warmer than it had been when Miss Parker had first visited Sydney upon her arrival at the Center and she noticed that he was no longer resting on the refrigerated mat, rightly assuming that it had helped bring his temperature down to normal. He seemed to be resting peacefully, his chest rising and falling with the smooth breathing of deep sleep. While keeping vigil in a chair beside him, where she could hold his hand and occasionally stroke his hair, she was sure he was smiling just a little.
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TBC
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