Chapter Eight

Outcast

Buffer didn’t like any of it. The whole trial had left him feeling disgruntled and hollow. Piper hadn’t really done any serious harm to the Pod. He couldn’t see why she had to be cast to the mercy of the sea’s darkest terrors. He shuddered at the thought of her trying to cope with hungry Snag-Tooth and HunterKin—and the other dangers of the Deep. Surely a good scuffing with a hard beak was all she had earned. His anger at her had faded the more he thought back on that “battle” with the Basker. So she had ruined his chance at impressing the Commodore. Buffer never could stay angry with Piper for very long, even when she spurned him. And impressing the Commodore now seemed very unimportant.

What truly baffled the brash young Fury Fighter was that the big beast had never even fought back. What sort of victory was that? He had expected much more of a fight, considering all the time they’d spent training for it. Was this the powerful enemy they had dreaded for so long? By the way everyone had been gloating, it was as if they’d routed a hundred Furied Snag-Tooth—not one timid giant that seemingly couldn’t even flick its tail in anger. Something was very wrong with all this talk of heroics and pride in fulfilling Commodore RamStrong’s “great cause.”

****

Piper was startled when she received a visit from Buffer. Shortly after the verdict, she had been escorted by two of RamStrong’s Elite Fury Guard to the OutZone, where she would await Thane SilverFlukes’ formal command of Exile. So she was baffled by the familiar swagger of fins and flukes as the burly young battler paddled out to her. Piper had been puzzled by Buffer’s behavior, particularly his seeming melancholy during the Hearing. She had not understood it at all, but she was glad to see him now.

“Well, you little scamp, you’ve got yourself into a nice tidy fix here, haven’t you,” he quipped with a soft cetacean laugh.

Piper had never known Buffer to joke.

“You…don’t hate me, Buffer?” she asked.

“Hardly,” he answered. “It was about time you showed you were willing to fight. At least I won’t have to worry about you out there, I can see.”

Underneath his light tone, Piper could see he was dreadfully worried. It moved her.

“The Waifs have all gone, you know,” Buffer said suddenly, first making sure the two guards were spread far enough away to allow them privacy.

“How do you know that?” she asked in surprise. They surfaced for a breath under the watchful eye of the nearby sentries.

“Because I went looking for them,” said Buffer with a toss of his beak. “Your tale made me curious.” He blew out a stream of vapor, pleased with himself, satisfied that his recklessness may have impressed Piper.

“Buffer—that’s dangerous,” she uttered quietly, not wanting their voices to carry. “You could have been caught!”

“I suppose so,” he said matter-of-factly. “Oh, but certainly not as dangerous as whacking away at ferocious Snag-Tooth giants, eh?” he snickered.

Piper was stunned. Of all the Whistlers in the Pod, Buffer was among the last she had expected to start thinking for himself. Now she realized there was so much more to him.

They stayed above the waves for a few more moments, feeling the afternoon sun’s bright warmth. The morning fog had broken, and the sky had become a cloudless blue. The sea was shiny and calm.

“I think it best that I return now,” said Buffer, “before my visit here causes problems. Do be careful out there,” he said, sounding almost tender. “And if you come back with anymore farfetched notions, you’ll feel the side of my beak,” he cooed softly, waving a flipper. Piper didn’t want him to go.

“Perhaps then we can be friends, Buffer,” said Piper.

“Perhaps,” he answered. Then he was gone.

Her encounter with her brother did not go as well.

“What matters, Piper, is that the Clan be protected at all costs,” QuickFin had pressed. “We all have to make sacrifices, sometimes even the things we believe in most.”

Piper had been through this so many times with her brother. He was so much like the rest of the Pod. All of QuickFin’s beliefs were colored by whatever he’d been told by the Elders, and especially by Commodore RamStrong. She knew it was pointless to argue with him.

“Brother, I love you dearly, and I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me, but I can’t do as you ask,” said Piper.

“But it might save you from being banished!” he cried, wagging his long handsome face. He looked so much as Thane SilverFlukes must have in younger seasons, she thought. She wondered if this was what the Thane was like in those times: sincere, gallant… gullible.

“Even if it did, QuickFin, it would make everything I’ve said sound foolish,” she said gently, trying to make him understand why she could not recant her actions and beg forgiveness.

“But that’s why you have to!” chimed QuickFin, beating his strong flippers against the smooth current. “Then the others will all be sure you were wrong…and you’ll at least be here, safe.”

“I wasn’t wrong!” she snapped, annoyed with his rationale.

“Of course you were. Why else would they have banished you? Commodore RamStrong knows a lot more about the Snag-Tooth than you do. And if he says you were making it dangerous for the rest of us, you can be sure it’s true.”

They streaked to the surface for a quick gulp of air. On the way up, Piper tried once more to make her brother understand, in spite of the rigid dogma that had long dominated her Clan’s thinking.

“QuickFin, haven’t you always been one to point out that here at Kwi Coast we have the right to see our own way about things; that we may speak what we feel at Clan meetings? Even if it’s different from what others think? And haven’t we been told that if the Snag-Tooth ruled, this would no longer be so?”

QuickFin looked puzzled as they popped above the surface and rolled through the gentle swells. He hated these little exchanges with his sister. She always brought up strange ideas that confused him. He didn’t have answers for all these clever questions she probably spent all sorts of time thinking up. It frustrated him. Piper shouldn’t have to think so much when the answer to everything was right here at Kwi Coast. The High Clan was the place for thinking. They were the ones who had to make the laws.

“Piper,” he began in a tone she sourly recognized, “there is a point where you must be careful in what you say and do, because it might influence others.”

“What a dreadful thought, dear brother,” said Piper in mock distress. “It might even change Kwi Coast for the better.”

QuickFin paled, not believing what his sister had just said. It troubled him to hear her talk so.

“Don’t you realize, sister, that because of what we did to that monster yesterday, Whistlers like you are free and able to go around saying things like that!” he scolded as they dove under.

More slogans, she thought.

“The Commodore is very strong within you, brother,” she answered softly.

QuickFin was not sure whether he had been complimented or chided.

When they returned, the sounds of a small procession of Whistlers informed them that the Thane was on his way for the formal decree of Exile. QuickFin did not want to be present for that; he could not bear it. He knew his sister was not going to renounce her actions. Their argument above the waves was forgotten in an instant. And if a dolphin could shed actual tears…that is what QuickFin did. His love for Piper was unyielding and his respect for her courage, immense—even if he did disagree with her. He never had understood Piper’s ways.

“Do remember the little hints I gave you on using your speed in a scrap,” he said in a voice that shook like weeds in a storm. “Use your speed and use your wits…and never let an enemy know you’re afraid. Sometimes a good bluff will give you all the edge you’ll need,” he said. “Goodbye, my sister.”

They touched beaks. Piper told him again that she loved him. No matter how they argued, QuickFin would always cherish her, and she would always feel that way about him. Her brother might even have tried going with her, but a harsh Clan law said that such a willing traitor would be cast out forever. Otherwise, desertion might have posed yet another threat to the Clan.

Piper wondered if the same conflict she had seen in Buffer would ever go on inside her brother too.

****

Over fifteen of RamStrong’s finest Fury Fighters had come along as the Thane’s formal escort. SilverFlukes, as always, was a magnificent sight to behold against the backdrop of the dark kelp jungle and towering gray crags. His smooth skin glowed in the pale light of the afternoon, and his turquoise eyes sparkled like a pair of oyster pearls. Strangely, RamStrong and his procession were commanded to remain behind, while SilverFlukes surprised everyone by swimming into the OutZone alone.

Piper was baffled by the Thane’s actions. The ritual called for a brief decree of sentence before the Commodore and an Elite Guard…and nothing more. A personal escort into the Deep by the Thane himself was completely unexpected.

Away from the others the two swam—almost into the Open Sea where, until the attack on the Basker, Piper had never been in her life. Then SilverFlukes stopped and regarded the younger Whistler thoughtfully. For one of the very few times in her life, Piper was speechless. She waited, puzzled by the strange behavior of the Clan’s leader, with whom she had never been alone. Finally he spoke.

“I was taught the ways of the Clan, like every other Whistler, by Commodore RamStrong,” he began. Several air bubbles rose over the melon of his forehead. He paused, as though not sure how to express his next thoughts. “I was but an eager youngster then, thrilled to be a part of the Fury Squad, boldly batting away any prowling Snag-Tooth and crying out the words that made the Commodore and my father both proud. I never once said anything or did anything that might displease either of them.”

Piper waited, unsure what SliverFlukes was leading up to. Why didn’t he just banish her and be done with it?

The Thane continued. “In all my seasons at Kwi Coast, I have never known of a single Whistler who dared oppose the Code so boldly.” Then he added quickly, “But the Clan cannot permit such recklessness…It threatens our survival.” His tone had changed abruptly to one of formality, as though remembering his role as Thane. But then his eyes softened in spite of his words. “Still, I cannot help admiring your choosing to do so—knowing full well what your punishment would be.”

Piper nearly choked as she heard Thane SilverFlukes speak in such a way—while nearly all the rest of the Clan now scorned her.

“I do not think you mad, nor do I believe you to be a traitor,” he declared, utterly surprising her. “But what you have done has violated every principle of our Code. And for that, I must banish you.”

Piper and SilverFlukes regarded each other a long moment.

“I understand,” she finally said meekly. What the Thane had said to her here meant more than any of the slurs she had endured from so many of her fellow clanists…more than the dread of the unknown fate awaiting her. And before realizing what she was doing, she paddled over and gently touched his beak with her own.

“I shall think on all you have told us, Piper,” he said quietly, his pearly eyes glimmering in the sea’s azure light. “With all my heart I hope we will see you again, Goodbye, my brave Whistler.”

And with that, the great silver-and-white form of the Kwi Coast Clan’s Thane turned and swam back to his Pod.

‘Thank you, dear friend,’ Piper beamed quietly to herself. Then she cast a final glance at the only world she had ever known and, after a long, sorrowful moment, turned away and thrashed her small white flukes in a grateful plunge into the great unknown.