The Worst Mama in the World - The Code - Part #4

One of the boys swung the blade down. Mama Turtle flinched. For a second, she felt nothing and thought the blade had missed her entirely and gone through the sand instead. Then her back leg recoiled. It was a searing pain.

They had hacked off her back flipper. Mama Turtle grunted. She felt nauseated.

She shut her eyes tight and gritted through a wave of pain and dizziness.

They would hack her legs, then her head. Then cut her open.

Her death was minutes away.

The blade swung a second time.

It slashed through her front flipper and ripped it off her body.

She was done, Mama Turtle thought, through a fog of maddening, numbing pain. Her flippers, her beautiful big flippers were gone! Mama Turtle began to cry. She would never swim again. Never know the joy of gliding through deep cool blue waters, swimming up the coast... through currents warm and cool... past jellyfish... beautiful corals... yellow sandy sea floors...

The two boys raised their blades again.

Mercy, she sobbed, as her mind split in half - one part of her acknowledging her last few seconds on Earth and the other part of her seeing a vision that flashed into her mind, as though her brain was trying to tell her something, about an encounter with a funny pink creature with gills and a smiley face during her travels across the oceans. Her memory was reminding her what that creature had told her... that a mysterious signal in a human language called 'English' was a code... that would bring help to any animal in need.

Kochi was the creature's name, the one that had told her about the Code.

M-E-R-C-Y, she whispered, as she nearly passed out in agony. She tried to remember what Kochi had said, although the idea had been so ridiculous she had dismissed it back then. She remembered the pink face, the smile, the gills... but the words? She could not remember the foreign words. Mama Turtle trembled and waited for the final blow to fall, but...

For some reason, the boys had gone still.

She wondered, distracted, why they were looking over their shoulders...

When in a flash, all of a sudden, just as she was least expecting it, her brain gave her the answer!

The boys approached her again. On instinct now, without thinking, she used her good flipper to throw up a swathe of sand up at the boys. She wouldn't live, for she could not swim, but nevertheless, she used her working flipper to cut into the sand - the way she had done hours before to dig a hole to lay her eggs - and threw a second and third load of sand into the boys' eyes and shouted 'Z11!' It was a strange word and she hissed the 'zee' and made an O-shaped mouth to create the 'one-one'.

Mama Turtle kept digging and throwing up sand, over and over, creating a blinding wall, and saying zee-one-one... zee-one-one... zee-one-one... and just as she thought she could not do it anymore, without warning, two things happened. A giant wave came crashing down on top of the boys. She couldn't see it, but she heard it, and the surprised, scared, panicked shout of the boys.

Simultaneously beneath her, the sandy floor opened up like a trapdoor, and she fell... into a deep, dark hole.

Terrified first, she scrambled for control and then gave up, realizing she had none. She slid down, unable to direct her descent and continued to roll and tumble and slide and fall, hitting sand and rock, edges and corners, screaming as her injured side rammed in and against the solid walls. She shut her eyes as she went along in dizzying speed. She didn't know where she was headed or what was going on or what was happening, but she knew the Code had worked. Someone, somewhere had heard, listened, and felt for her. If this wasn't merely an accident, but help, if she survived with two flippers instead of four, if she ever met Kochi again...

Then everything went black and airless and she dropped straight down, no longer sliding, but falling, and with a whoosh, landed on something soft and small and feathery that was neither grass nor sand but...

And she heard a familiar voice shout from underneath her -

"OH, FOR GOD'S SAKE! NOT AGAIN! SQUISHED for a SECOND time today! What am I? A cushion? GET OFF ME! GET OFF!"

"Kochi?" Mama Turtle whispered. "Is that you?"

TO BE CONTINUED.