the agonizing death of her mother, who had perished before her time of a mysterious wasting disease. Agena’s first child had died in a collision with one of the humans’ boats while her second had succumbed to a fever. I related similar woes, though I tried to gloss over my relief that my family had prospered in the face of great trials largely due to my grandmother’s guidance. Together we sang songs of mourning and remembrance. Finally just after dawn with the sun red upon a cloud-heavy horizon, I told the Scarlett Word Painters of the white bear and the burning sea, and I explained why I had journeyed so far from home.
‘I have never imagined,’ Mother Agena said, ‘losing my ability to quenge. Would you not be better off dead?’
‘I would be, yes,’ I replied, ‘if I had no hope of regaining from the humans what they have taken from me.’
‘You are a wonder of a whale,’ Agena said to me. ‘You are inquisitive and strong and brave, but you are also prideful and not a little foolish to think that you have been called to speak with the humans. Such hubris, if you persist, will be punished.’
‘How so?’ I asked.
I did not wish to dispute an elder, particularly not a mother of another clan. I waited for Agena to say more.
‘Do you have any idea of how many of the Word Painters have tried to speak with the humans?’ Agena slapped her tail against the water and whistled out into the morning air. ‘I cannot say whether or not the humans have language or might be sentient, but this I know: if you cleave to them too closely, either their insanity will become yours or else they will murder you.’
This warning more or less ended our conversation, for how could I respond to such bitter despair that masqueraded as wisdom and even prophecy? I did not want to believe Mother Agena’s fraught words. I could not believe them. And so when it came time to part, I sang farewells and blessings with all the polite passion that I could summon.
‘Goodbye, Bright One, marked by lightning and beloved of the sea,’ Mother Agena said to me as she nudged the scar over my eye. ‘We will not remain in this unfortunate place, which was once our home. It is yours, if you wish. Therefore, you are welcome to all the fish you might find – if the humans let you take them.’
As she moved off with the Word Painters, I pondered the meaning of her last words. Her voice lingered in the water and broke apart into quaverings of ruin that I did not want to hear. I was hungry, and fish abounded all about me. I made my way into the sea’s inky forebodings to go find them.
For three days of wind and storm, I ranged about the channel hunting salmon to my belly’s contentment. I came across many boats. Most of these, while moving across the greenish surface of the bay, emitted a nearly deafening buzz from their underbellies, near their rear. How could these human things make such an obnoxious noise? An impulse drove me toward one of the boat’s vibrating parts, obscured by churning water and clouds of silvery bubbles. I wanted to press my face against this organ of sound as I might touch my mouth to the swim bladder of a toadfish to determine how it could be so loud. A second impulse, however, held me back. In a revulsion of ambivalence that was to flavor my interactions with the humans, I realized that I did not want to get too near the boat, which was made of excrescence as were so many of the things associated with the humans.
At other times, however, my curiosity carried me very close to these strange, two-legged beings. On a day of gentle swells, when the sky had cleared to a pale blue, I came upon a boat whose humans busied themselves with using strands of excrescence to pull salmon out of the sea. What a clever hunting technique! I thought. I swam in close to the boat to investigate.
One of the humans sighted me, and barked out what seemed to be the human danger cry: ‘Orca! Orca! Orca!’
How could I show them that I posed them no threat? Perhaps if I snatched a salmon from the excrescence strands and presented it to them, they would perceive my good intentions. I swam through the rippling water.
‘That damned blackfish is after our catch!’ A hairy-faced human called out.
His top half nearly doubled over the lower in that disturbingly human way of exercising their strangely-jointed bodies. When he straightened up, he clasped some sort of wooden and metallic stick in his hands.
‘What are you doing?’ his pink-faced companion called out.
‘Just shooting at that damned blackfish!’
‘I can see that – but what are you doing? Do you want to go to prison for killing a whale?’
‘Who would know? Anyway, I’m just going to have a little target practice to scare him off.’
‘Put your goddamned gun away!’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill him – unless he tries to take our salmon.’
A great noise cracked out; just beside me, the water opened with a small hole which almost immediately closed.
‘How did you do that?’ I shouted as I moved in toward the boat.
Again the stick made its hideous noise, and again the water jumped in response.
‘Once more!’ I said, taking a great liking to this game. ‘Make the water dance once more!’
I swam in even closer, and the holes touched the water scarcely a tongue’s lick from my face. What beguiling powers these humans had! Orcas can stun a fish with a zang of sonar, and the deep gods – who have the Great Voice, the voice of death – kill swarms of squid in this manner. No whale, however, can speak and make the very waters part.
‘If you shoot that orca,’ the pink-face called out, ‘I’m going to shoot you!’
The human holding the wood and metal stick lowered it, and the water moved no more.
‘Please, please!’ I said. ‘Let us play!’
If the humans, though, could not understand the simple word for water, how could they comprehend my more complex request? To show my gratitude that they had possessed the wit to play at all, I caught a salmon and swam right up to the edge of the boat.
‘I think he wants us to have it!’ the pink-faced human said. ‘He’s giving us his fish!’
I pushed up out of the water, with the salmon still thrashing between my teeth. Hands reached out to grasp it and take it from me. Then I dove and caught another salmon for the humans, and another. They seemed to like this game.
During the days that followed, I ranged the channel and played games with other humans. Some were as trifling as balancing pieces of driftwood on my face, while others demanded planning and coordination. The humans seemed titillated when I rose up from the deeps near their boats and flew unannounced high into the air. Many times, I surprised their littlest boats, propelled across the channel by lone humans pushing sticks through the water. It was great sport to leap over both boat and human in the same way that Kajam had once leaped over Alnitak’s back.
In the course of nearly all these encounters, the humans involved made various vocalizations, for they proved to be among the noisiest of animals. Their voices seemed to reach out to me with a terrible longing, as if the humans hoped to find in me some ineffable thing they could not appreciate within themselves. I sucked up every sound they made and examined their incessant barking and crooning for pattern and possible meaning:
‘Hey, look it’s Bobo! You can tell it’s him by the scar over his eye.’
‘I hear he likes to play.’
‘What a joyful spirit!’
‘He’s the spirit of my grandfather who has come to tell us something.’
‘I heard that some fisherman took shots at him.’
‘He was brought