The Whaler's Daughter

by Jerry Mikorenda

  “That’s what I came to talk about,” I told her, pulling her note from my pocket.

  “This whole situation is out of hand,” she said. “Father is distraught over your treatment at the theater and the whaleboat thing; he had no idea that happened.”

  “I’m more interested in what you know,” I said, “and freeing our orcas.”

  “Whatever do you mean?” she asked, with a cold glare. “Those men with the explosives have been apprehended. Father gathered up those beasts for their own protection.”

  “That spectacle he’s planning isn’t saving anything.”

  “Sadly, an ocean expert found all those orcas are diseased. They must be destroyed for our own safety, especially yours. It’s all on the up and up.”

  “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

  “The facts speak for themselves,” Arizona said stiffly, sitting up straight.

  “Well, here’s one that needs explaining,” I said. “How did the good trawler captain end up with your old gig?”

  “I wasn’t aware he had it,” she replied airily. “Perhaps Father sold it to a broker or Mr. Speedwell purchased it. We’re constantly ridding ourselves of useless things.”

  “One of those useless things was Kayle, a little orca who loved to play by boats and trusted people,” I said, moving toward the balcony. “Now she’s gone.”

  “Trust is often misplaced,” said Arizona.

  “Trust isn’t a place you can force people to go,” I said. “It’s letting the hurt of the world in so the scars it brings won’t change you. That’s how my mum saw it, my da, and me too.”

  “I fought my better nature to trust you, and look how you repaid me.”

  “Trust doesn’t come from a bank,” I said, brandishing her note. “Why’d you leave this?”

  “Because I felt for you, alone on that stage,” she said, looking down. “It reminded me of the all the times Mother put me on display for suitors, like I was a pig at auction. I’m nearly sixteen, you know. My own window for freedom is rapidly closing.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” I said. “You can still be who you want.”

  “Don’t nauseate me with your whale stories and how much they mean,” said Arizona.

  She threw open the balcony doors and walked out into the late afternoon air. Arizona leaned on the railing and shouted, like a captain degrading a crew.

  “I came halfway around the world and nothing has changed,” she yelled, staring at the empty yard. “I’m still the girl everyone wants to use but no one trusts. If that’s the way it is, so be it. I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone.”

  “But you don’t—”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d leave now, Savannah. You know the way.”

  I was ashamed of the thoughts that gathered in my mind, yet they lingered like funeral smoke. I was still unable to believe her. Trust wasn’t there, but maybe something else was.

  “I can’t give you what no one else can,” I said, taking a step closer to Arizona. “But what I can offer is acceptance. I’ve learned being accepted for who you are is a lot better than having someone trust you because they think you’ll change.”

  Arizona turned away, trying to escape my words. A cold breeze blew the curtains across the room.

  “What’s done is done in my book,” I said, opening the door to that long spiral staircase. “The past won’t improve none for all the wishing we do on it.”

  I was nearly at the bottom of the stairs when the bedroom door slammed shut. I didn’t know if it was the wind or Arizona’s anger.

  The reverberation echoed through the house and out into the empty street.

  30.

  I had to see the orca pen again.

  The early red sky gave way to a purplish then cobalt blue. There would be no sailor’s warning this day. Figgie arrived at the café after brekkie so we could sneak over to the Cow Bight pasture that sloped down to Snuggler’s Cove. The workers were busy moving rocks from the end of the jetty to the opening of the Bitter Ditch. I wanted to tell Figgie about my confrontation with Arizona, but I decided that matter was between her and me. I had tried to recruit her with forgiveness, without realizing that some people didn’t want a pardon.

  My failure had condemned the pod to their fate, I realized with a heavy heart.

  Figgie and I considered swimming up to the fence and snipping the wires underwater, but the guards had taken care of that too. They’d poured animal blood and chunks of horsemeat around the perimeter, and the water was teaming with pointers and other sharks.

  Papa was right, no one could go near the place.

  “Think that’s Bittermen’s racehorse they’re chumming?” I said to Figgie, poking his ribs.

  We laughed with a sense of gloomy resignation. There was nothing more to do. We sat, sadly, watching a giant banner being erected over the completed grandstand. Some of the old salts sat down because their joints were hurting. “A storm is coming,” they complained as we laughed again, squinting in the sun. Across the fluttering white banner, red letters proclaimed: Man Conquers Nature.

  I looked up at the green sloping hill that lead to the pasture, then turned toward the town. The sky was an artic blue-green without a single cloud. I couldn’t remember a time when it had looked more like Paradise. The comet was gone, but it had left a legacy of fear.

  By afternoon tea this spectacle would be over. The orcas made high-pitched moaning sounds, like the ones I’d heard Jungay make the previous night. Miah swam frantically around her mother. I ran down the pasture toward the bight and stopped at the canal. No one would shoot a girl, and maybe, if I stayed with the orcas, I could find some way of saving them. Figgie grabbed my arm before I got too close.

  “Think about what you’re doing,” he whispered, trying not to draw attention to us.

  “The orcas will protect me and them,” I said, pushing past Figgie.

  “You’ll never make it to the water without being snagged,” he said, glancing at the guards.

  “I need to do this,” I said, twisting away from him.

  “Just what are you trying to save, your pride or the orcas?” Figgie asked.

  I folded my arms across my chest, saying nothing. I really hated it when Figgie knew me better than I did myself.

  “What you need are more helpers so the guards can’t focus on one person,” Figgie said, drawing me over to the shade of a gum tree. “Others we can trust who are willing to go into the pen.”

  With our midday meal approaching, there was little time left to prepare. We started the long walk back to town. As we climbed up the pasture, talking through our plan, a passing drizzle began to fall. Along with the two of us, we figured Aiden had something to prove; Corowa and Ghera were fighters and good swimmers. We planned to jump into the pen right as the event began and not leave until the orcas were freed.

  “Do we even have time to contact them?” I asked.

  “I already have,” said Figgie. “We are meeting at Mr. Brown’s bridge construction site by the canal.”

  “Well, I’ll be,” I said, with a grin.

  “A leader leads all people, someone once said,” added Figgie.

  “You’re a good friend, mate,” I said, punching Figgie in the arm. “I wish I was half the friend you are.”

  “Savannah,” he said, his arms outstretched, “I’ve visited worlds with you that I would never have seen in ten lifetimes. It is I who should be thanking you.”

  “Really?” I said, moving closer.

  “Keep your dirty hands off her, ya fizgig,” a voice growled. Lon knocked Figgie to the ground and ripped the sacred copper medallion the villagers had given him from his neck. I could tell by the smell of him that Lon was already shaking a cloth in the wind.

  “You’re nothing in this country,” Lon slurred, holding the necklace over
his head.

  “Don’t do this, Lonny!” I shouted as he knocked me down too. “I’m not your donah, never was.”

  Figgie locked his legs around Lon’s neck and pulled, choking him. It was raining steadily now, making it harder for me to pry them apart.

  “Stop, both of you!” I yelled, slipping on the grass. “Give me the medal, Lon. Give it to me!”

  “Did he tell you he started the round robin?” barked Figgie, scissoring his legs around Lon’s neck like a vise.

  Lon gasped for air but managed to toss the necklace into the ditch. Figgie might have killed him if I hadn’t finally pried the two of them apart. The three of us lay on the muddy grass, winded and wet.

  “Lonny, how could you?” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he wheezed, rolling over.

  Lon said he was leaving Dawson Station and heading for the backblocks of Gippsland to play for the East Melbourne Cricket Club. He staggered to his feet. No wife of his would ever work a whaleboat, he said, stumbling away. A heavy roll of thunder drowned out whatever else he had to say. As I looked to see if Figgie was all right, the others, who’d heard us from the bridge site, came running over. Corowa helped Figgie get back on his feet.

  The sky was dark as iron-gall ink and the wind nearly knocked Aiden down. A light drizzle turned into a downpour as we searched the ditch for Figgie’s medallion.

  “Keep looking,” I said, shielding my eyes from the rain. “It’s down there in the muck somewhere.”

  With a storm coming, the bridge crew might return from tea to collect their things, so we called off the search and headed back to the cove to go over our plan. Aiden was scared by the thunder.

  “This will all be over in a few minutes,” I said, wiping the tears and water from his face. “I’ll show you through my spyglass.”

  We stopped far down the pasture in the open space. Before checking the weather, I focused my spyglass on the orca pen. Heavy water drops fell faster and faster, pockmarking the cove until it was indistinguishable from the fog and gray sky. At the back of the pen, several black top sails were periodically illuminated by lightning, a reminder of why we had come.

  I looked westward toward the ocean with my glass. The sky was green. Lowering the scope, I saw a fifty-foot-tall wall of brown water bearing down on us. It was as though the hand of god had descended, pushing all the water on earth our way.

  The cyclone hurtled at us with the ferocity of wild beasts.

  “Run!” I screamed, grabbing Aiden by his shirt.

  There was no time to make it back to the Gordon Arms, so we sprinted up the hillside as the foaming wall came ever closer. I could feel the ground rumbling as if a band of brumbies were upon us. Aiden fell, twisting his ankle. Figgie tossed him over his shoulders. I grabbed Ghera’s hand to pull her along. Bailed up, we needed a bolt-hole faster than Duffy needed a land map. At the crest of the hill was an abandoned lodge used by goat and boar hunters. The five of us crammed into its meat-hanging cellar. Figgie tied the doors shut as we held each other tight.

  Time slowed as we waited for the inevitable. The cellar doors shuddered and rattled. We heard the windows smash one by one. Nails pulled out of the walls and floorboards. I felt the house rumble and shred to bits above us as the wind skirred through, devouring everything with savage claws. The doors to the root cellar jerked violently until Figgie couldn’t hold them any longer and they burst up into the air. We screamed and pushed ourselves down as hard as we could into the belly of the earthen pit embracing us.

  Though I was afraid, I lifted my eyes.

  The angry face of a vengeful god mocked us.

  “Leave us alone!” I screamed as sand, wood shards, and hailstones pelted our upturned faces and huddled bodies.

  

  Several inches of water and floating debris had filled the cellar by the time we finally ventured out. The lodge had disappeared entirely, wiped from the hillside as if it had never existed. Bittermen’s Man Conquers Nature banner lay flailing in the branches of downed trees by the shore.

  When I looked toward the crater rim, hoping the orcas had escaped, I saw to my dismay that they remained imprisoned. The inlet was blocked with construction rubble and two abandoned half-sunk drifters with their fishing nets all in tangles.

  The rest of Paradise was in a sorry state. The harbor wharves were submerged, and a sailboat had been deposited by the bank on Studsberry Street. Pleasure craft of the well-to-do, anchored in Purgatory Bay, lay smashed together on the shore. With blustery winds and high tide nearing, the waters wouldn’t recede for hours yet. Ten- and twenty-foot waves still pounded the shore as we headed to where Water Street used to be.

  Then, to our astonishment, a powerful gust of wind blew a rogue wave across the bay, holding the Pelican House on its crest, spinning like a top. Brennan sat on the roof, his arms wrapped around a chimney, a pelican on his shoulder. His white beard blew back as he rode the wave like a bronco-busting Father Christmas. Behind him, tied to the opposite chimney, was the trawler captain’s blue carriage, skipping over the waves in dinghy-like fashion with the captain leaning out one window, screaming for mercy.

  There was some justice in that, I thought, with satisfaction.

  “Hooroo!” Brennan shouted, waving to us as he surged by. “I’m whaling again with no one ta stop me! Once ya got whale in your blood, yer can’t get it out. I’d rather be a-whaling than king of the world. Give me an iron and a piece of bark, and I’ll bring back a hundred barrel! A whaler I am, and a whaler I’ll always be…”

  Brennan, the blue gig, and the Pelican House disappeared into the surf foam and fog.

  We stood stone silent, jaws dropped, unable to believe what we had just witnessed.

  “Well, that’s putting the house before the cart, isn’t it?” Figgie said, as serious as can be. We all burst out laughing. Aiden, with his old limp back, couldn’t stop talking about seeing the real Saint Nicholas.

  “You told me I had to find Calagun’s medal,” he went on. “Will Father Christmas still visit me if I can’t find it? The water in the ditch is too deep now.”

  “What’s that, Aiden?” I asked, turning my attention to him.

  “The water’s really deep in the ditch,” Aiden repeated.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it,” I cried, running toward the canal.

  The water was lapping at the grass. I recalled the drawings I’d made for Mr. Brown’s bridge. They showed that the canal had a width of thirty feet and a depth of twenty-five feet.

  “That might be just enough room for seventeen orcas to file through,” I said, excitedly. “If we can get them to swim in single file.”

  With the guards gone, we raced to the cove in our wet, muddy clothes. The pen was still intact and the orcas seemed none worse for wear. While the water level was much higher, it was still not high enough for them to jump out of such a confined space. Bittermen’s grandstand lay in shambles at the opening to the canal. It looked like a schoolbook beaver dam, and it stood between the orcas and their freedom.

  “Even Jungay cannot make that jump,” said Figgie, pointing at the mound of wood.

  Everyone just stared at the remnants of the grandstand with no idea of how we could move it. The fog was settling in so fast that I could barely see the barbed-wire fence. Wading to the pile of wood, I hauled out a two-by-four.

  “Well, that’s a start,” I said, heaving it onto the shore.

  The water line was beginning to dip, lowering to the top of the canal bricks. We only had a few hours before it would fall too low for the orcas to escape. Just as the others were about to join me, we heard a heavy series of thuds that grew louder and louder, until the white head and mane of the Town Horse—or Briggen, as we now knew him to be—appeared out of the fog.

  “What are you doing here, old boy?” said Figgie, rubbing Briggen’s forehead while the horse nuzzled him b
ack. A moment later, a chestnut mare appeared. Briggen whinnied loudly, shaking his head. “You got yourself a girl, haven’t you?” laughed Figgie as the others petted both horses.

  “And we got ourselves some muscle to move that pile,” I said, recognizing the chestnut as Arizona’s hat-wearing mare.

  Corowa and Ghera went back to the bridge site to find rope, pulleys, and grappling hooks. I asked Aiden if he felt strong enough to walk back to the Gordon Arms to get Papa and the rest of the crew to help us.

  “I can do it, Savannah,” he said, limping proudly away.

  When the girls returned, we set out to methodically dismantle the jabberwocky of timber, poles, and boards that blocked the canal opening. Although Bittermen’s ditch had never floated a single paying barge, his failed feat of engineering offered us the best chance to save our orcas.

  We tied two ropes from the horses to the grandstand stairs jammed at the center of the blockage. The mare matched Briggen’s motion as Figgie coaxed the horses onward. Their hooves slipped on the wet grass and mud. Muscles strained, the horses brayed, but the stairs didn’t move. The three of us got on top of the twenty-foot-high wreckage and pushed against the staircase with our legs. There were creaks and groans and a few stray planks of wood hit the water, but nothing more.

  I found an iron rod and we climbed up on the pile. I wedged it as deep as I could behind the stairs and yanked on it. Corowa and Ghera pushed hard with their feet, as Figgie pulled on Briggen and the mare again.

  We bucked, jumped, and pulled in unison.

  I strained, driving myself against the rod.

  “Ghera, leap like you’re going to the stars!” I shouted, the metal rod near breaking.

  Ghera catapulted into the air. Her powerful legs slammed on the wood as I threw my body against the rod with all my might.

  The stairs snapped loose. As the wood structure collapsed around her, Ghera lost her footing and toppled over the embankment, toward the darkened water.

  31.

  I froze, watching Ghera’s arms and legs flail in slow motion, her mouth and eyes open in full scream with no sound coming out as she helplessly plunged underwater.