Page 93 of Echo and the Homicidal Sea Panda

Echo

We don’t know that the cave made me go into heat. Though, I’d love a sample of the blue glowing organisms in the water. If you go back, take a small clean container with a lid and collect some. I can take it to the lab.

Another photo popped up. It was a close up of the two figures that looked like him and Mael.

Tempest

I got the weirdest feeling when I saw this. That looks suspiciously like Mael.

Tempest

Then there’s a little light-haired dolphin? It looked a bit like you.

Echo sensed the question she wasn’t asking. The one he didn’t want to answer. He didn’t respond for a few seconds, frantically thinking of a way to shift the conversation.

Thought bubbles appeared on Tempest’s end but disappeared. His phone rang seconds later. He stared at the screen a few seconds, sure she was going to press. Echo didn’t want to piss Mael’s sister off, but at the same time, it was his business, not hers.

“Hey,”Echo said upon finally answering.

“I know you had the phone in your hand and let it ring. Good thing you picked up before it went to voicemail,” Tempest said.

“I… I had someone nearby. I waited until I had some distance,” he fibbed.

“Then I forgive you. I hate talking on the phone, but this was all too much for texting. Can you talk?”

It would be harder to avoid her question on the phone, but he didn’t know what else to say besides, “Yeah, sure…”

“So, you say you don’t know if it was the cave that sent you into heat, but Mael mentioned it wasn’t your time… and then I saw the pair on the mural. One like Mael, the other…”

Echo tensed, rolling his eyes.

“I’m mahu… but I’m not a dolphin, I don’t have light hair, and I only have one womb, so it isn’t me.”

Echo’s breath caught the second she made her admission.“You’re mahu?”

“I am.” Tempest paused, the muted sound of another’s voice in the background coming through. It sounded as if she got up and moved before murmuring, “Something tells me you are, too.”

Echo’s heart raced. He’d never met anyone else like him. “I am.”

Silence hung between them for a few heartbeats. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he feared stepping across the line.

“And you have two…?”

“Wombs?”Echo sighed. “I do.”

“Do you know what this means? That’s you and Mael on that wall, Echo. Iknewit the second I looked at it.”

“That cave has got to be at least two-hundred-years old. There’s no way that’s Mael and I.”

“The second matriarch of our pod was supposedly a seer. She had visions in her dreams. There are handwritten pages bound in our historical society that recount some of them. She’s the one who brought our pod to Maki Island from the South Pacific. Maybe these murals are images from her visions. Maybe itisyou and Mael.”

Goose bumps skittered over Echo’s arms and legs. He’d heard stories that the second matriarch had dreamed of taking her pod to Maki Island during the height of colonization. She’d invited dolphins to join them for the long journey, one they weren’t built for. The orca had protected the dolphins who crossed the ocean with them. His ancestors—who’d eventually formed a new pod in Dolphin Bay.

“Reallylookat the pictures I sent. They’re telling a story. In the first, it’s dolphins and orcas crossing a wide ocean and building new townships in peace. They’re at war in the next, split apart. There’s only been one war between our kind that I know of. If that cave is over two hundred years old like you suggested, how could they have known about the war to come?”

His chest tightened as he processed what she said.

“Then we get to the one with you and Mael… and there’s peace again. Dolphins and orca living in harmony. You and Mael coming together might be the catalyst for true peace, Echo.”

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