Monday, June 1, 2015

You Call Me Iceberg


 
YOU CALL ME ICEBERG

by

Anthonystjoseph

     Hello, my name is Iceberg, and in your world you call me an Orca or a Killer Whale, which in itself is funny because we’re actually dolphins as all of your scientists know.  You named me Iceberg because of the waters where I was born and my family resides.  There are thirteen of us in my immediate family and we always travel together.  There’s my mother Sonuka, my brothers kanji, jingo, and Kingali, and my aunt and uncle, Sonja and Jenko, with their four kids; and then my mom’s two brothers Wilinka and Jonji.  It’s considered a small family where we come from but we are very close and have never been apart.

     My mother Sonuka is actually a leader in our region and is highly respected for some of her contributions to our society.  When I was born it was believed that I wouldn’t live long as others who had come before me with the same condition as me never lived to an adult age.  My mother has always told me that this would not happen to me and that I had a special and chosen purpose.

     I remember the day I was born and came into the world and met all my older brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins just like it was yesterday…  My mother had spoken to me constantly as she was carrying me and taught me our language before she birthed me.  It is necessary to be able to speak and communicate with your family as soon as you’re born in our world because it is a dangerous world full of constant perils and survival is something that starts from day one for us.  Aside from the problems we face in our world, we have to face and deal with the predators that come from yours.

     My brother’s and I are really close as they consider me their baby brother and have always felt very protective of me since I was born.  Kanji, my oldest brother, has always been like a father to me.  Once when I got into a fight as a teenager with one of my cousins, Kanji almost got in serious trouble for harming my cousin and permanently scarring his fin.  My mother forbade Kanji from mating for a whole year as punishment.  My mother is very strict on us as she says we were born to be leaders and that our kind is facing a great enemy that we must learn to defend ourselves against.  Aside from being strict, my mother rarely lets me out of her sight for very long.  From the day she took me to Opalonga and was told my destiny, she has vowed to protect me. 

     Opalonga is the oldest one of our kind and lives in the deepest waters with the largest pod of protectors you can imagine.  When you swim into Opalonga’s waters you are immediately struck by the lack of movement of the water and how it’s almost as calm as a small bay on a day with no wind or tide.  My mother, Sonuka, says the waters don’t move because of all the other whales and dolphins in the surrounding waters just guarding Opalonga from the invaders of our pods, ‘those who left us’.  When I was taken to Opalonga to hear my path at the age of what we call, twelve ‘fully lighted nights’, she put my family on edge with a fantastic tale.

     My mother who is a distant descendant of the Opalonga family line has a portion of the gift that Opalonga has and told Opalonga that she sensed I would survive the curse that has struck the others who were born like me.  I must tell you that unlike all my family, I was born with no color whatsoever, I am completely without any markings or coloring; I am told in your world my kind is called albino, I am all white.  When Opalonga heard that my mother felt I would live, she became very concerned and told us the prophecy.  The prophecy she told us involved the ones who we refer to as ‘those who left us’.  Every one of us knows the old legends involving the ones who were just as we but one day decided to leave our waters and live on the ‘dry’.  Our kind decided to stay in our precious waters and look after all that is here for us to look after…  The only times we see ‘those who left us’ are when they are riding atop our waters on pieces of floating land.

     Those who left us’, or as my brother Kengali likes to call them, ‘the leavers’, have become a major concern to all of us and some say that something has to be done.  The leavers’, for many generations, have been using their floating pieces of land to kill us off.  We are not sure of their reasons for the war on us for we know that we were once brothers and sisters cut from the same cloth.  Some of the old legends actually say that we all lived on land in the beginning and then came to the sea and ‘the leavers’ chose to return to the dry.  Entire families have been wiped out by ‘those who left us’ and their thirst for our kind but we remain adamant in our stance for peace…  Some say it is our gift and lesson to the world.

     My mother never likes to talk about it but she lost her favorite teacher, Grandfather Jonah, to the floating pieces of land the same day her father and mother were taken.  Opalonga’s prophecy about me on my anniversary of twelve lighted nights involved ‘the leavers’ and the genocide that they were performing on our kind.  Opalonga told us that one prophecy has been held in secret and passed down from the very beginning.  The prophecy surrounded one who would be born like me and would shine white in the ocean like the ball in the sky that lights the dark waters at night creating the ‘fully lighted nights’.  She said I was always referred to in the prophecy as ‘Full Moon’. 

     She said that none of our kind, who was born like me, without color, would survive to adulthood and that the one that did would save us from ‘the leavers’.  My mother has been overprotective ever since, while always saying, “I knew you were special”, while my brothers continued to playfully tease me constantly about the legend.  Of course Kengali is the worst always calling me ‘FULL MOON!’ and saying, ‘I light up his life’.  On nights when the big lighted ball is not in the sky and doesn’t brighten the waters for us, Kengali teases me and says, “You ain’t helping now, are you FULL GLOW!”  Kanji and Jingo just egg him on but they all love me since I’m their favorite little brother and somewhat a celebrity in most waters…

     Although Opalonga would not tell us how I was to stop ‘the leavers’ or how it was prophesied that I would stop ‘the leavers’, she did tell us that, “Some paths are better left lived and not thought about”.  My mother Sonuka never seemed the same after those words but she still remained vigilant in her belief that I was special…  Many lighted nights had passed after that, which is how we measure time, and we were approaching a new mating season and swimming to familiar waters.  We had never seen ‘the leavers’ in these waters before and especially with such a big piece of dry floating land…  There seem to be so many of ‘the leavers’ on the floating land that myself and all my brothers are totally captivated.  There are also several smaller pieces of floating land that are similar in shape and moves to our unfriendly cousins, ‘the sharks’. 

     Kengali and I are playing with one of the smaller pieces of floating land as it playfully tries to chase us in fun.  All of a sudden I can’t help it but I scream.  Something has hit me but there is nothing around me.  The water around me is turning the color of my favorite jelly fish.  Whatever hit me has hit me pretty hard because I still feel it inside of my side.  Then I see the thing that hit me is almost as long as I am and it’s going right through my body and the jelly fish color is coming out of where it’s going through me.  I hear another scream and I realize it’s me and now I can’t stop screaming because the pain is becoming real and I feel as though time has slowed down.  Kengali is calling our mother and I can see he is crying as he’s trying to get the rope off the thing that’s going through me.  My new wife swims up beside me and I can see she is crying as well and then I hear all the whales of my pod screaming to the rest of the whales of the ocean that, “Full Moon is being taken by ‘those who left us’!

     My mother arrives and is uncontrollable.  She sees the smaller piece of floating land and takes off in the opposite direction as I watch as she disappears from sight.  I then hear her let off a scream in the distance that doesn’t stop as she gets closer and closer as she returns.  She swims right past me faster than I have ever seen her swim before as she continues to scream.  She aims right for the smaller piece of floating land and then all of a sudden she strikes it.  The piece of floating land moves a little but my mother loses consciousness as blood starts to spurt from her head and she starts to sink, she wakes a little and looks at me through a blood soaked eye and then closes her eye and sinks to the deep of the ocean.  I realize I am being pulled.  I didn’t realize until now that I was being pulled to the larger piece of floating land but now I see that I am at the back and they are starting to lift me up a slide onto the piece of land.  My wife is swimming next to the piece of floating land and screaming for them to let me go. 

     The call to save ‘Full Moon’ has brought several whales from distant waters to see what was happening as everyone had by now heard the tales surrounding ‘Full Moon’ and Opalonga’s prophecy.  As I’m pulled and dragged by the thing going through me onto the floating piece of land, several of ‘the leavers’ come running from its insides.  They are staring at me in silence as I think this is the first time they have seen me as I’m the one ‘with no color’.  They realize that now there floating land is surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of whales from many waters.  I don’t know how they got here this fast but they did. 

     As I laid there bleeding on their floating land with the thing going through me, a ‘leaver’ walks up; it is a female ‘leaver’ as I can tell since she is clearly carrying an unborn ‘leaver’ in her stomach.  She stares at me and then walks closer and puts her hand on my head as she starts to hum to me…  All the other ‘leavers’ get on the floor and start to hum the same words.  Grandfather Jonah was said to know the ‘leavers’ language and Opalonga is said to know some but I know none of their words…

     The woman who’s rubbing my head all of a sudden starts screaming which is hard to hear because now I think there are thousands of whales and dolphins outside their floating land screaming for ‘Full Moon’.  No matter how many there are, I still hear my pregnant wife screaming for her beloved husband who’s first child she’s carrying.  The woman has stopped rubbing my head now and is making some man cut the thing going through me and they slide it out of both sides of my body and now someone else is looking at the holes.  The guy smiles at me and rubs my head as someone else runs up and starts doing things to the holes in my body as the blood stops coming out…  They put something on the holes as they slide me back towards the slide I came up.  The woman who first came up to me and rubbed my head and started everyone humming ran up to me again right as they were lowering me back into the ocean and whispered in my ear and then waved her hand over her face a few times as she cried and walked away.

     My wife and brothers met me at the bottom of the slide off of the floating land and welcomed me back into the sea as they cradled me away from the floating land and all the whales sang in joy as their ‘Full Moon’ was returned to them.  Kengali was crying the hardest and promised he would never tease me again.

     Opalonga, who has never left her waters of protection, swam up to me and said she saw ‘the leaver’ come up to me on the edge of the floating piece of land and whisper in my ear and wanted to know what ‘the leaver’ said.  I told Opalonga that I don’t know ‘the leavers’ words but I will never forget hers…  The leaver woman had whispered in my ears, “My prayers are with you and this killing shall stop.”

     One thing I haven’t told you is my real name in our world.  You have named me Iceberg but my real name is Emmanuelle.  My mother said she heard the name when she was a little girl from one of ‘those who left us’ who had fallen into our waters.  She always thought that it was a special name for someone who was very special… 

By

Anthonystjoseph

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