Joseph A. Suarez

A Walrus Tale

Joseph A. Suarez

Illustrations by Simon Goodway

© 2009, 2011 Joseph A. Suarez. All rights reserved.

A special thanks goes to Jonathan Peck at Dovetail Publishing, Grass Valley, CA

First Printing: July 2012

ISBN: 978-0-9835517-0-6

Printed in Canada

A long time ago, as hard as it is to believe,

there were no seals. There were also no birds, no insects,

and no plants. The only living creatures in the whole

world were a colony of walruses, the clams in the seabed,

and the oysters. The walruses fed off of the clams but

admired the pearls in the large oysters in deeper waters.

The walruses knew that it was dangerous to go pearl

diving, but their desire for pearls was so great that they

disregarded logic and went pearl diving anyway.

There was once a walrus named Sam, but

everyone called him Sammy. He and his female

friend Linda loved pearls more than any of the

other walruses in the colony. One day, they heard

a rumor that in another part of the ocean, much

deeper than where walruses usually went pearl

diving, lived a Great Oyster. The Oyster gave birth

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to huge pearls. Sammy and Linda decided to try to

find the Oyster and extract its pearl, even though it

would be very dangerous.

They went about gathering the equipment they

would need for their expedition. In total, they packed a

large ration of dried clams, a hard, flat rock with which to

pry open the Great Oyster, and a large, light oyster shell

with which to carry back the pearl. They said goodbye

to the other walruses and they were off!

They traveled for hours into the deeper waters

until they finally came to a very large rock protruding

from the water. They decided to stop on the rock to

have lunch and rest, but Sammy accidentally dropped

one of the clams into the water. Linda told him to

dive in after it, as their

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clam rations were not innumerable. Sammy dove

into the water but could not find the clam. When he

turned around in the water, he saw a great cavern

eroded from the rock and a point of light shining in the

dimmest recess of the cavern. Sammy went over to

investigate.

At the same time, Linda was exploring the

surface of the rock, and she found a small hole. She

peered in and saw Sammy in the cavern, and she called

out to him as he surfaced there. Sammy called Linda

over and told her that he had found the Great Oyster!

Linda darted into the cavern after Sammy and

found the Great Oyster right beneath the hole through

which she had spotted Sammy. It rested on a mound of

sand some ten feet below the water’s

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surface. They took the flat rock that they had

brought with them and jammed it into the mouth of

the oyster. Suddenly, and completely unexpectedly,

the Great Oyster spoke. “OUCH,” he complained.

Sammy stared at Linda in amazement only to see

her just as shocked as he was. “OUCH, take that

rock out of my mouth immediately,” boomed the

Great Oyster. Sammy lurched back,

but it was too late. The Oyster bounced up and

clamped onto his tusks, spitting out the rock as he

went. Sammy tried to object but was muffled by

the Oyster.

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Linda noticed that the Oyster’s ridged shell

was cutting into Sammy’s tusks! She jumped up

and tried to pry the Oyster off. She grabbed the

flat rock and jammed it between Sammy’s tusks

and the Oyster shell. Linda tried to pry the Great

Oyster off and noticed that the Oyster was slowly

slipping off of Sammy’s tusks. She gave an

enormous heave and triumphantly forced the

Oyster off. She watched as the Oyster toppled off

the mound of sand and fell down into the abyss.

Linda smiled, but then she heard Sammy moaning;

she looked over at him and gasped. His tusks were

broken and lying on the mound of sand below him!

She led Sammy back up to the rock and

comforted him. No matter how hard he tried, he could

not fit his tusks back on. He got up angrily and vowed

to rip the pearl out of the Great Oyster’s

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mouth mercilessly! Linda sighed, but agreed to

go back that night to punish the Oyster for its

misdeeds.

That night, they swam down into the cavern,

taking with them a fluorescent rock that they had

found that day. They peered down onto the

previous resting place of the Great Oyster and saw

the huge pearl that they had come for! Linda dove

down to retrieve it before Sammy could say

anything. As Sammy waited for Linda to return, he

thought that it all seemed too easy… Then, he

realized the inevitable: “WAIT, Linda, it’s a trap!”

It was too late. Sammy watched in horror, still

holding the fluorescent rock, as the Great Oyster

soared up from the abyss and slammed into Linda’s

tusks! The force of the Oyster was just too much for

Linda’s poor tusks, which shattered into a million

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pieces. Sammy let out a howl and, in his fury,

hurled the fluorescent rock as hard as he could at

the Great Oyster, even as it dove back down into the

abyss. Before long, both rock and Oyster had all but

disappeared into the depths. Sammy was about to

grab the pearl and help Linda back up to the rock,

when he saw a dazzling light coming from the

luminous rock they had found. Awestruck, he

watched as the rock engulfed the Great Oyster in

the light. Then, though no one knows how it

happened, the rock burst into flames. The Giant

Oyster was shot up and up and up. Higher and

higher it flew, right up to the surface of the water.

There, its shell exploded outwards and turned to

dust. All that was left of the once Great Oyster was

a small, badly burned, pink body. It screamed in

pain as it sank back down into the abyss, unable to

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move, but alive. It is still there today, and always

will be, suffering eternal torment.

Sammy and Linda slowly took the pearl that

had cost them so much and headed home. When they

reached the colony of walruses, they were greeted merrily.

All eyes were on the massive pearl. Every single walrus

continued to stare at the pearl for another hour, until one

by one they looked up to see that Sammy and Linda

had no tusks. They sat there, shocked. Then, one walrus

started laughing. Every single walrus joined in the

chorus, raining down insults upon poor Sammy and

Linda. Sammy and Linda looked down sadly and then

swam away, never to be seen by the colony again.

They swam far, far away until they came to a

hospitable looking cave. It was half in and half out

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of the water. They took a look inside and found

that it had a high platform of land in the middle,

surrounded on all sides by water. They lived alone

there together for many years. They had two children.

On the day that the two children were born,

Sammy was very concerned about making sure that Linda

would bear the children without permanent injury. At

noon, as the sun was at its highest point in the sky, the

children were born. As soon as Sammy and Linda saw

the children, they gasped. There was a male and a

female, but that was not what shocked their parents.

What shocked them was that they, like their parents, had

no tusks and that their skin was covered with gray fur.

They were the first seals.

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Once upon a time, there were only two true seals,

Sirotan and Crystal, and they were proud of their

uniqueness. They were brother and sister. Siroten was a

very strong, yet mischievous seal; Crystal was relaxed and

intelligent. They lived happily with their parents, Sammy

and Linda. Sammy and Linda were walruses, but that is

another story.

One day, Sirotan and Crystal were out

gathering clams. They came upon a great number

of them and busily began collecting them. As

Sirotan was bending over to grab a particularly

juicy one, he was barreled over by an old, blind

walrus. Crystal rushed over and helped Sirotan up.

They turned towards the apologetic, old walrus.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he moaned in a low, eerie

voice. “I didn’t see you; my vision isn’t what it

used to be.”

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The walrus turned towards the bunch of clams

and started feeling around, looking for clams to feed

on. When he came upon a particularly juicy one, he

jumped. Sirotan and Crystal looked at each other

perplexed and asked him what was the matter. He

stuttered, then breathed a sigh of

relief, and managed to tell his tale. “My colony’s

lore speaks of a weird giant clam,” he began in a

strange, ominous tone. “They say that it’s huge

and has no shell, but that’s not the worst of it.

Somehow, it has grown weird tentacle-arms, five

them, to be exact. It has grown a tough skin, almost

as tough as that of a walrus. It feeds on

of

other normal clams and sucks ‘em up shell and all!

I’d watch my back if I were you,” he said hastily, his

voice straining. “Where is this weird clam?” asked

Sirotan. The old walrus began to sing in a

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cracked voice, “over the ridge, past the clam holes,

and around the hill.” He then dropped asleep.

Sirotan and Crystal looked at each other

awkwardly and swam home without a word.

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Sirotan decided to go find this weird clam to see

it for himself. One night, he swam out of his home,

leaving a note behind explaining where he had gone. He

traveled for the rest of the night. At early dawn, a ridge,

just barely poking above water, came into sight. He

decided to stop there to sleep and rest. While he was

sleeping, some of the sand on the seabed was caught by a

swirl of water and thrust over him. When Crystal came

looking for him later that day, she failed to spot him

under the sand and continued looking for him elsewhere.

By the time Sirotan woke up, she was long gone.

He looked ahead to the ridge, took a breath,

and swam full speed, angling up towards the surface

of the water. He broke through, soaring above the

ridge, and landed safely on the other side. Sirotan

smiled and continued on.

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He came upon the clam beds and noted all the

clams sitting in their holes but did not stop until he was

around them, making sure to give them a wide berth.

Sirotan did not want the clams clamping down on his fur.

There were thousands of them, way too many to travel

safely through, so he had to sacrifice an hour of his trip

to make his way around them.

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Sirotan came upon a small island and decided

to stop there to rest for a while. As he was resting,

he realized his mistake. He was not sitting on an

island; this must be the hill that he was supposed

to go around. Sirotan dove back into the water and

went around the hill.

What he saw next made him gasp: Crystal

wandering around, still looking for him. This

was not what made him gasp, though. What

made him29

gasp were the five tentacles slowly crawling towards

her, only a few feet away. The ground hurtled past

Sirotan as he swam with the speed of lightning

towards his sister. He was about to reach her, but

suddenly the creature lunged. It enveloped her,

sucking at her nose and ear holes. Sirotan darted

at the creature that dared attack his sister and

succeeded in freeing her, but he could not get away

from the weird thing for a while. While he struggled,

the thing sucked incessantly at him. Finally, when

he thought he could no longer bear the dark cloud of

pain that surrounded him like a cloak, he broke free.

He whipped around and lunged at it, biting, ripping,

and tearing until it was no more.

He swam to Crystal, who was still dazed. Back

on the rock, as they shook themselves off, they looked

at each other and gasped. Their ears, their

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ears, their ears that defined them as seals were

hopelessly mutilated! They had been completely

inverted! Their once inward ears were now flaps of skin

hanging hopelessly from where their holed ears had once

been. They looked to each other, tears in their eyes,

and quietly swam home.

When they reached their home, their parents

rushed forward to embrace them but stopped short

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and stared at the ears of their children. Then

Sammy and Linda looked knowingly into each others’

wise eyes and embraced their children. Nothing more

was said about their ears; no aggravating comments,

no gasps of horror, just a loving understanding.

When Sirotan and Crystal were older, they

were married. It did not matter that they were

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brother and sister for they were the only seals in

the world. There was no one else in the world for them

to love but each other. When they were older still, they

had two children. As Crystal was giving birth, Sirotan

was running around insanely trying to find any

underwater plants that would help the pain. As a result,

he did not see the children until Crystal had recovered

enough to look into his eyes.

They both then simultaneously looked at the

two children. They gasped. They had not brought

more seals into the world, as they had expected.

These new “seals” had brown fur. Their bodies

were built differently, and one of them had a large

ruffle of fur around his neck. But this alone was

not what had shocked Sirotan and Crystal. What

had shocked them was that they had ears like their

parents. They were the first sea lions.

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From the Author

I wrote this book when I was

twelve years old and have left it

mostly unedited since then. I had the

good fortune of traveling to the Arctic

and Antarctica when I was

younger, and this inspired me to write these two short

stories for a creative writing assignment at school. A

couple of years later, when I applied to a prestigious,

private high school, I was asked in their application to

predict the title of my first published book and share its

synopsis as it would hypothetically appear on the back

cover. This question inspired me to turn the two short

stories into an illustrated book for children and make it

available for free on the Internet. I answered that the

synopsis for A Walrus Tale would read: “A cute, informal,

yet well-written tale of walruses. Follow Linda and

Sammy on their quest for the Great Pearl, unaware of

dangers that await them.” My application was accepted.

It is my sincere hope that Linda, Sammy, and their progeny

will be accepted by a wide readership the world over.

— Joseph A. Suarez

Illustrations by Simon Goodway