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 waters
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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.

Linda noticed that the Oysters ridged shell

was cutting into Sammys tusks! She jumped up
and tried to pry the Oyster off. She grabbed the
flat rock and jammed it between Sammys tusks
and the Oyster shell. Linda tried to pry the Great
Oyster off and noticed that the Oyster was slowly
slipping off of Sammys 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 Oysters
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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, its 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 Lindas
tusks! The force of the Oyster was just too much for
Lindas 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.
Im sorry, Im sorry, he moaned in a low, eerie
voice. I didnt see you; my vision isnt 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 colonys
lore speaks of a weird giant clam, he began in a
strange, ominous tone. They say that its huge
and has no shell, but thats 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
other normal clams and sucks em up shell and all!
Id 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

24

of

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 him
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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

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but stopped short

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

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that they were

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