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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