Since finally reaching the Dolphin Hall three days ago, Dioron felt he had not slept a wink, but he didn't mind, because every minute of the day was filled with something new and exciting. Still, he felt he could not have survived his first days without Andy.
On the first day they had come off the ship, the apprentices had stood around awkwardly, no one bold enough to break the silence. Except Andy. She had been standing as quiet as anyone else, but suddenly, she came up to Dioron, stuck out her had, and said, "Hi. My name's Andy." Dioron had taken her hand and shaken it, saying, "I'm Dioron. It's nice to meet you." Everyone began following their example, and soon, all the introductions were complete.
"Everybody ready?" asked Readis, coming off the ship.
Andy voiced everyone's thought. "Ready for what, sir?" she asked.
He grinned. "To carry your baggage up to the Hall!" Everyone groaned, and Readis laughed. "It isn't far," he promised.
It wasn't very far, but it felt it as the tired apprentices forced themselves to drag their bags up the path from the docks to their new home. When they reached the top of the hill, they found themselves facing a tall stone cabin.
"Do we go in here?" asked Andy doubtfully.
"I suppose!" said Dioron much more cheerfully than he felt. He walked up to the door and knocked. Hearing no answer, he opened the door and walked in, where he stopped, shocked.
"You have got to come see this!" he said softly. The others joined him, and they too gasped at the sight before them. The cabin had two floors, and the bottom floor was open, with nothing in it except for a long table lined with chairs. The upper floor was more a balcony that ran all the way around but didn't meet in the middle, so from where he was standing, Dioron could see the skylight in the roof. There were numerous doors around the walls, and a piece of paper was stuck to each door.
"Shall we go up and see what the papers say?" Andy asked, breaking the silence. The others nodded silently and headed for the stairs at the back of the first floor. Within moments each apprentice was reading the various papers.
"Hey, this one has my name on it!" cried one boy from the third door.
"And this one has mine!" called a girl from the other side.
"They are your room assignments," called Readis from downstairs. Startled, the apprentices leaned over the chest-high railings to stare down at him. "Find your rooms, drop your bags, and presently a bell will ring to tell you dinner is ready."
As Dioron dropped his last bag in the room assigned to him, he heard the clang of a bell from downstairs. "Andy!" he called, poking his head out of the door. "Are you coming down for dinner?"
On the other side of the balcony, Andy popped her head out of her room and called back, "Be right there!" In a few moments they met up at the head of the stairs and raced down them for dinner.
They stopped, amazed, as their eyes met the feast laid out on the long table they had noticed on the way in. "Dig in!" said Readis, beaming. The hungry children needed no further invitation, and Dioron and the others were soon eating as fast as they could. After two sevendays living on salted fish and ship's biscuit, everyone was eager to sink their teeth into proper food again.
"After you have eaten," Readis said with a smile for their enthusiasm, "I will go over a few of the rules of the Dolphin Hall for new apprentices, and will tell you a bit about what you'll be doing here. Then you will all go to bed, as you have a long day ahead of you tomorrow."
He was right. Dioron and the others were roused at dawn to feed dolphins and write down the fish and weather reports the dolphins told the journeymen, who then dictated them to the apprentices. Then they had to write out messages containing the information and take them to one of the three journeymen with fire lizards, who sent them to the major Holds both North and South.
They had breakfast, and spent the morning doing chores around the Hall. The afternoon was devoted to lessons where they were taught underwater hand signals and bell sequences. But it was that evening that the moment Dioron had been waiting for for seven Turns finally arrived; the moment they made contact with the dolphins themselves.
The dolphins came in with the evening reports, and Master Merinka, the Hall's Healer, who had a thorough knowledge of both human and animal medicine, showed the apprentices the nasty bloodfish that attached themselves to the dolphins, and how to remove them with a belt knife.
After removing bloodfish from three of the pod, Master Merinka handed the apprentices over to Master Readis, who separated the apprentices into those who could swim and those who needed to learn. He sent those who couldn't swim away with another Master to another bay for lessons, then had the remaining eight draw numbers to swim with a dolphin. Dioron and Andy watched enviously as the lucky two slipped out of their clothes to reveal their bathing costumes underneath and were instructed on how to enter the water properly. Andy and Dioron had drawn seven and eight, and so it wouldn't be their turn for another three days.
On the morning of the fourth day, Dioron woke up and was seized by excitement. I'm going to swim with a dolphin today! he thought to himself, trembling with excitement. He raced through his chores and lessons, and was scolded by Master Telos, their classroom teacher, for not paying attention when he was lecturing them on some of the many hand signals used for underwater communication.
"I'm sorry, sir! I'm just so excited about swimming with a dolphin tonight that I can't concentrate!" Dioron apologised, still nearly bouncing off his seat with excitement. Telos smiled, remembering his own first swim.
"Then I'll expect you to concentrate twice as hard during tomorrow's class," he said with a faint smile.
That evening, Dioron and Andy skipped dinner and went straight down to the bay to wait for Readis and the others. They spent the time practising signals with each other, and drawing pictures in the sand. Andy was just starting to build a sandcastle when Readis arrived with the other swimming apprentices.
"Now, I can see you two are eager to begin, so please enter the water as has been demonstrated," he said with a smile, slipping into the water himself. In the water, his slight limp was invisible. He waded over to the bell hanging from the end of the pier and called back to the apprentices, "What's the sequence for 'report'?"
"Two long bells, a short bell, and another long bell," chorused the children. Readis rang the sequence, and soon, over the noise of the waves, came the sound of the dolphins.
"Report! Report!" they clicked and squeaked as they came racing in. "Readis! And more calves to play with!" exclaimed some of the younger ones as they saw who was waiting.
"My name Booj," said a dolphin to Dioron, turning to the side to get a better look at him.
"My name is Dioron," Dioron replied, grinning at some of the leaps others were doing.
"Diron!" Booj squealed. "Diron! Play with me, Diron!"
"Let's play!" Dioron shouted gleefully, and taking a deep breath, dived under the water, Booj at his side. Andy and her new friend Dit were close behind them, and the four of them dived and swam and played for three hours until Readis called them back in.
"Goodbye, Booj! Goodbye, Dit!" the children called as they left the water, dripping but happy.
"Bye Diron! Bye Addy!" they called back, leaping away with the rest of the pod.
"It's good to see you two have made dolphin friends already," said Readis, eyeing them. "A lot of the apprentices we get are too nervous the first time they get in the water to do anything at all with a dolphin, let alone as much as you two did."
"Thank you, sir," said Andy. "I can't wait to get back into the water with Dit!"
Readis smiled. "You'll have another opportunity soon, but you'll have to wait until the rest of your classmates can swim confidently before we take you out of the bay."
Thanks for reading!