by Edith Cohn
He struggled to regain control of himself—to regain his life. He fought to the surface, kicking and pushing the water away from him. On the surface, he broke for air, only to have angry waves lash at him. He coughed out the water he’d swallowed only to swallow more. The wind was relentless. It whipped him until he experienced a terror he’d never known possible.
The waves towered above him like giants. They moaned the same hauntingly guttural echo he’d heard earlier in the day. Was it the wind?
It was almost impossible to see anything but water. He lost sight of his home, his beach, his island. He lost sight of Whales’ Cove. The whirling, frothing foam encased him until a calm settled where he swam. The storm’s eye.
For a moment, he stopped fighting, he gave himself up to the will of the storm. The calm allowed him to wait, to listen, to hear the deep ringing in his ears like a gong. It was so incredibly loud. The terrible moaning was joined by the familiar sound of blowing. A bluish light appeared from the depths of the sea arching through the water in humps. Above him a glistening mass, darkened the sky, jumping over him, its hairs grazing the top of his head, its tail a fanning before him.
The calm gave way to waves again. One took him up, higher and higher, mounting him above the seething water until he could see it all.
Whales. Everywhere there were whales. Not one, not two, but hundreds. Mama whales, baby whales, whales so great in size, for a moment he forgot his fear and simply stared in amazement. The same blue light that he’d seen arching over Whales’ Cove also ran around the whales.
They glowed.
The wave he rode began to sink down to rejoin the ocean. “Wait!” Tuckitor shouted. He wasn’t finished watching the incredible scene before him. Several glowing humps of the whales ran together forming an ocean dragon. A dozen whales making one huge monster surfing the waves around him. A deafening sound blew from the beasts, their spray the world’s most miraculous fountain.
He forgot to be afraid. He forgot to close his mouth. He forgot not to breathe in water. He nearly forgot his humanity until a baby whale playfully nudged him just as it had nudged the Hatterasks’s whaling ship the day it was killed. The day his family held it captive and screaming. Held it until its mother came rushing through the waves to join it for the slaughter. It’d been a dirty trick. His family had sworn they’d never do such a thing. But desperate times made kindness seem a luxury he couldn’t afford.
Guilt harpooned his heart.
Why had he done such an awful thing? Tuckitor had his own child now. He’d give his whole world to protect him. He begun to weep—his salty tears a nothing drop in an ocean of tears.
He screamed until his throat burned. He shouted his human moan, which was no match for the moan of the whales. He shouted and shouted. He shouted until his moans became words. “Calf!” he cried. “I’m so sorry!” He lost his voice to weeping. “You were just a baby. You deserved your life. Please! Forgive me.” But the whales swam faster and faster around him. Their fury mounted the ocean into a mountain of terror above him. The wind whipped the wrath of a storm intent on killing him.
“Grab on!” A woman’s voice cried.
“Mimi?” Atop of one of the whales rode his grandmother, her thin, human arm extended for him. She latched her glowing brown hand into Tuckitor’s solid brown one, helping him onto the whale’s back.
“Hang on!” she shouted. Tuckitor fixed his arms around his grandmother’s glimmering waist, and together they rode the majestic creature. “For every wrong-doing there is a cost,” Mimi said.
Tuckitor looked around. They were surrounded by more whales than he had ever seen in all his years whaling.
“We owe each of these creatures a life,” Mimi said. “The debt for our family is great. We have done wrong for many generations.”
Realization thundered down on Tuckitor. These were the whales his family was responsible for killing. “I’m sorry!” he shouted to them all, but their anger seethed through the epic storm of terror before him.
“A child for a child. A mother for a mother,” Mimi explained. “This is how we pay.”
His wife. His child. The whales would claim them.
“NOOOOO!” Tuckitor screamed at the giant beasts. “Please,” he begged. “Take me instead!”
But the only reply was Mimi’s. “You are only one. I am only one.”
There were so many whales to atone for. How could his family ever make it right? “I beg you!” He shouted as loud as he could above the mighty storm of the whales’ making. “Take me, but spare my family.”
Mimi gently rubbed the head of the whale beneath her. “I have given my life for this fellow. Now he and I have made our peace.”
“I want to make my peace with the mother of the baby I killed,” Tuckitor called out. “Show yourself to me so I might plead for my child as you pleaded for yours.”
He found himself face-to-face with the mother whale’s craggy eye. “Please,” he wept and moaned his pitiful plea. “Be merciful. You know what it is to lose a child. I beg you to spare mine. My family has done a terrible thing. Many terrible things. We do not deserve your mercy. We deserve to suffer, but not in death—in life. Take everything we work for. Take everything we build. Let nothing stand. Take my families’ houses and everything in it for all eternity!”
The mother whale’s massive body leapt from the ocean to slam down a hurricane of vengeance which would swallow Tuckitor, the Hatterasks’ last remaining ship, his house, the photograph of Mimi, Grandpop’s blubber fork, the bag of oysters on the counter, the tea kettle. Everything would be destroyed. All but an eagle scrimshaw, safe in the top of the lighthouse. The Hatterasks would be forced to rebuild. Again and again for eternity. There would be days of hunger, but Tuckitor’s family would live. His wife, his son, his father, his grandfather, every life would be spared except his own. The revenge of the whales would take everything but lives, because a mother whale was merciful. Tuckitor’s soul rose from the depths of her belly to ride atop her back. The trade was made. This was Tuckitor’s last and most magnificent swim.