* * *

Swimming always made her think about time, that fluid that her senses and her brain could not comprehend. She’d recently read a book by a physicist who called time an illusion, who stated that the past still existed, as solid as a ball that had floated out of reach. She knew this to be true, the different eras in her life, the people she’d loved, the times she’d been most alive, all of it drifting away. Her inability to perceive the past was a failure of her senses, a deafness to time, an inability to swim through the current.

She watched a nurse shark on the seafloor, finning lazily forward.

* * *

Her letters did not stop. She might not have fame, but Blum increasingly did.

His articles and books and speeches gradually changed. He talked more and more about the intelligence of dolphins and whales, their right to exist, the cruelty of human’s experiments and hunting. In 1975, he released an album with music interlaced with the songs of dolphins and whales. He asked people to listen with their souls, to hear what was being said. The record was discussed on talk shows. Each year he grew a little skinnier and more birdlike. Turning the channel, she’d occasionally stumble upon him talking with a host, Blum slouching on a couch wearing sunglasses and a necklace. He gave talks around the world, in nation after nation. Bit by bit, he convinced people to stop hunting cetaceans. With all his weaknesses, he did this one great thing, working at it over decades.

The international moratorium on whale and dolphin hunting was passed in 1986. The killing of cetaceans worldwide cut dramatically. She read every article she could find.

She wrote one last letter, thanking him.

* * *

She was watching a cuttlefish pulse leisurely around the coral. Its big eyes spotted her, and it shot away, a fleshy bullet with legs.

Under the water she remembered the solidity of time, the way it was something she could move through if she could concentrate enough. She felt the past there, just out of reach. She could get there if she could only swim fast enough in the right direction.

As the cuttlefish disappeared into a crevice, she realized she’d stayed underwater too long, forgetting to breathe. She looked around, dreamlike and lost. Her lungs straining. She kicked toward the surface.

* * *

With her kids grown up and her letters to Blum finished, she had more time, and so, at forty-three, she went to college, taking her classes by correspondence. She studied marine mammals, of course. It was a surprise to receive good grades.

Junior year, she heard about a scientist who chose not to study captive dolphins, but to instead observe them in the wild. Since no human could follow the dolphins, keeping up with them in the water, the scientist waited for them to come to her. She anchored her boat in the same shallow waters off Bermuda, day after day, every summer, waiting for the dolphins to visit. As soon as any were visible, she would slip into the water. She would not approach them or chase them, but instead would play with a toy in hopes of attracting them. It was their choice to spend time with her. She found that the most attractive toy was a simple scarf. Dragged through the water, it moved and rippled, could be played with in so many ways. The dolphins would approach and watch her playing. Once they trusted her, they would move close. Accepting her, they would go about their lives near her, letting her observe sometimes for hours.