‘When we heard the news of you,’ Alkurah said, ‘we swam down from the north to meet you.’
For the rest of the day, we exchanged stories. Alkurah told of a narrow escape from an armada of boats that had pursued them on their flight from the Institute; then she moved on to the account of how, many days later and after so many, many days and seasons of trying, she had finally become pregnant.
‘We met up with the Amorous Flutists in the Pearl Sea,’ she said, ‘and I took my pleasure with many brothers and cousins of their clan. It may have been Fornacis or Yildun who fathered my baby.’
No young whale now swam near her, and I waited for her to say more.
‘When I felt Baby Avior quicken inside me,’ she said, ‘I was as happy as Zavijah had been when she gave birth to Navi – happier, I think. I spoke to Avior night and day. So many times I called him to come out and see the world! He moved with so much life! He never, though, came out as I’d hoped. When I miscarried, I was afraid that he might have sensed my dread of the humans and decided to die rather than be born. Now, upon reflection, I think otherwise. You see, the day before Avior grew still in my womb, I ate some bad fish, and was very sick. I feel sure the fish were contaminated with an abortifacient or some other human drug.’
Her silence carried me far away to sorrowful seas. I touched her side and felt her shaking with memory.
‘I am sorry,’ I told her.
‘It does not matter now,’ she said. ‘Avior swims with Baby Electra and my sisters, and soon I will join all of them.’
The Wailing Moon crested the horizon in the east, towards which we would soon swim. A reddish glow touched the water. We talked together into a clear and star-streaked evening as we waited for other families of orcas to join us.
‘Do you think they will come?’ Unukalhai asked me.
‘Yes, they will come.’
‘And the other whales across Ocean – do you think they will rendezvous at their meeting places?’
‘I know they will.’
‘Then our dreams will become our fate,’ he said. ‘In three more days, when the Blood Solstice dawns, nothing will stop the Day of Death.’
In my silence, Alkurah detected a note of disquiet. So did Unukalhai, who could zang my psyche more clearly than anyone except my Grandmother.
‘How long, Arjuna,’ he said to me, ‘have we who have once broken the Covenant yearned to break it completely and for all time?’
I did not answer him directly. I said, ‘I have yearned too long to taste the humans’ blood. And I have wondered what moral principle beyond the Great Covenant we should follow?’
‘Principle!’ he shouted. Then his cry broke apart into angry laughter. ‘Morals! You have become too human, brother. The humans have morality; we whales have true nature. What we will do on the day you have chosen will come from our hearts and will occur far, far beyond good and evil.’
Was that really true, I wondered? With the wind stirring up little waves upon the water, I faced east toward the dark, bloody continent lost in the night. How very soon we would swim in that direction and know at last the great and terrible thing that nature called us to do!
23
As I had promised, over the next two days other orcas arrived: those of the Scarlett Song Keepers and the entire clan of the Grateful Bluenight Listeners. For hundreds and thousands of miles up and down the coast to the north and south – and along the coasts of all the continents east and west – the orcas would be gathering, along with our cousin dolphins and the great, great whales.
On the eve of the solstice, we began moving away from the island. Gabi, Helen, and Baby Electra – and many of the Old Ones – accompanied us. The moon rained down unending showers of white sparkles onto the sea. In silence we swam through this delicious shimmer. We knew very well where the humans’ beaches were. How had the humans supposed they could swim in the ocean and not be molested by sharks? Had they ever given thought as to how ‘their’ beaches were protected from the tigers, makos, and great whites – and who protected them?
I pointed the way toward a white-sand beach that one of the Song Keepers had described to me. I knew it from Alnitak’s maps. I had also seen this broad beach from various vantages in one of the humans’ videos. For every year, on the Summer Solstice, the humans held a surfing competition here. In only a few more hours, women and men would brave the breaking waves with their flimsy plastic surf boards as thousands of other humans thronged the beach to watch. They would use their cameras to snatch images of the surfers standing on top of the water in defiance of good sense and gravity – images that would be cast around the world.
‘The sea is calm tonight,’ Unukalhai said, playing with the words of a human poem. ‘The tide is full, and the moon lies fair upon the sea.’
‘Let us be true to each other,’ Alkurah replied with a deadly seriousness. And then she said to me: ‘We will move as you move, think as you think, breathe as you breathe. We will dream your last dream.’
We neared the land, and the great eastern sun of a long, long day broke upon the waves in a reddish-pink glister. Many people stood and sat and lay upon the beach looking out to sea. The surfers on their colorful boards splashed into the water and began paddling out toward us. We hid far out behind the swells as best we could, for we did not wish anyone to espy our fins and sound an alarm.
‘Is it time?’ Alkurah said to me as the sun rose higher and blistered the blue sky.
Her new family was to swim with us straight ahead toward the surf beach. The Scarlett Song Keepers would cover the beach to the north, while the Bluenight Listener Clan would attack the many beaches to the south where many people bathed and swam.
‘Almost,’ I said. ‘I am still hoping the dolphins will join us.’
The sun grew hotter on the black skin of our backs whenever we surfaced to breathe. Then the dolphins, who have little sense of time, finally arrived: the entire clan of the Mellifluous Vermillion Exhilarators. A few of their younger ones could not restrain their excitement. They leaped out of the water in a squeaking, chattering display that drew the humans’ attention.
‘Surely it is time now?’
This came from Kumaia, one of the orcas who had joined Alkurah’s family. Alkurah did not like this little whale from the western isles speaking in her place. She did nothing to discipline her, however, and repeated the same question.
‘Let the sun,’ I said, ‘warm the water just a little more and draw more of the humans into the sea.’
‘Very well,’ Alkurah said in her best matriarch’s voice. Then she surprised me, saying, ‘I will wait upon you to lead forth on the charge toward the beach.’
The sun grew ever hotter. The shallows to either side of the surf beach teemed with humans like vast brown and white and black schools of salmon.
‘It is warm! It is warm!’ one of the baby dolphins shouted.
I breached, and the water slipped down my fin as I drew in a great breath of air to give the command. However, the breath bruised my lungs, and I could not speak.
‘Courage, brother!’ Unukalhai called to me. He knew me too well. ‘The humans wait before us! Let us play a game of their making in order to inspirit each other.’
He suggested that we recite lines from the Bhagavad Gita that a god and a human hero had spoken just before the battle of Kurukshetra.
‘I will be the blue god, Krishna,’ he said. ‘And you will be … Arjuna.’
Along the beach, many humans gathered and gazed out to sea.
‘All right,’ I said with a harsh laugh.
And then he replied, ‘There is a war that opens the waters of heaven. Happy are the warriors whose fate is to fight such a war.’
‘My fate is my fate,’ I said, ‘but when I see all my kinsmen who have come here today on this field of battle, life goes from my flippers and fins and sinks into the sea. My mouth is sear and dry; a trembling overcomes my body, and my skin shudders in horror.’
And he replied: �
�Thy tears, Arjuna, are for those beyond tears. The wise grieve not for those who live; and they grieve not for those who die, for life and death shall pass away. For we have been for all time: I, and thou, and all the mothers and the grandmothers of the peoples of the sea. And we shall be for all time, all for ever and ever.’
The sun rose an inch higher before us. Harpoons of light struck down into the sea. The sound of humans screaming out encouragements to the surfers carried over the sparkling waves.
‘It is time!’ I cried out. ‘It is time!’
I moved forward beneath the surging waters. So did Alkurah and the rest of her family who swam close to her. Unukalhai passed my cry to the Scarlett Song Keepers to the south, who began closing on the beaches in front of them. So it would be around the world on all the beaches the humans favored, even those sunk into the twilight of evening or the glittering blackness of full night.
A line of surfers out in the sea sat on their boards. They waited to take their turns riding one of the waves that gathered beneath them and moved them up and down. One of these boards – all orange and yellow and streaked red like the sun – caught my eye. I could barely make out the female to whom it belonged. I descried a bit of black hair and a strip of pink fabric around her chest and hips. I zanged her to gain a better sense of her shape and precise position. Then I gulped in a breath and dived.
I would, I promised myself, wait until she had caught her wave. Then I would rise up beneath her board as I once had with Gabi in the big pool at Sea Circus: I would propel both board and human into the air in a feat somewhat mimicking the ‘rocket.’ As the human screamed and reached the apogee of her unexpected flight into space, I would open wide my jaws and snatch her out of the air. This spectacular wipeout would provide a great opportunity for a very memorable photo. After the surfer and I had splashed down into the water, I would let her go. The humans on the beach, perhaps, might think I was only playing. And so I would, seizing her once more in my teeth and grinding down until her leg bones snapped. And again I would release her and return to her; I would play with her, biting off a hand or perhaps her face, playing and playing as the horror built and the thousands of humans watching felt helpless to rescue her – even as we whales feel helpless to rescue ourselves from the humans. Then would come the grand finale in which I would tear the human into bloody pieces and rip out her heart.
I swam in closer. I waited near the bottom of the sands that sloped out from the beach beneath the water. The surfer’s orange board above me began moving as a wave swelled and began breaking toward the beach. It quickly gained speed. I rose then. Straight up I swam in a burst of driving flukes and all my fury to close with the surfer. Water streaked over my skin; bits of churned-up sand and shell stung my eyes. The orange board grew larger and larger. I came up beneath and pushed my face against its center. How many times had I performed similar feats? Up and up I moved, breaching into a shock of cool air and sudden sun, and my explosion into space flung up the spinning orange board and the now-flying surfer.
‘Mada!’ another surfer cried out from her board a few dozen yards away. ‘Mada!’
Suspended in space just beneath the human named Mada, nearly frozen in a moment of time, I opened my mouth to catch her before she tumbled back into the water. Two things, however, kept me from doing so. As Mada’s face turned toward my own, something about her struck me into stillness. I looked and I looked at her black, sodden hair whipping in the wind, and the sight of this disquietingly familiar human whipped me back into time. It was the woman of my dream, I realized, the dream I had dreamed during my first journey to the humans! Except for her pink swimsuit, she was all golden skin from her face to her feet; and her eyes, fixed on my eyes even as we fell, were as bright as black pearls. Her lithe limbs and perfectly formed body, curved with flowing muscles, moved as if completely comfortable in the air. That was the second thing that saved her from my original intentions. With a rare grace lovely to behold, she gathered herself about her center and managed to recover from the pell-mell tumble through the air. Somehow, she pointed her hands toward the water, and her arms, shoulders, breasts, belly, legs, and feet followed in a flawlessly executed dive. I splashed down almost on top of her. She kicked up to the surface and gasped for air, and the other surfers gasped in astonishment at what they had seen. A few of them clapped. The sound of their wet hands coming together cracked out over the waves, and I heard the fainter applause of the hundreds of hands of the humans along the beach.
‘Mada de la Fuente!’ many voices called out. ‘Mada! Mada! Mada!’
The woman I had failed to crush at the first pass looked at me a few feet away in the breaking waves, and she laughed out in delight.
‘Let’s do that again!’ she called to me.
She started swimming toward her orange and yellow board, caught in the churn of the surf.
‘Brave human!’ I called back to her. It seemed she could not understand Wordsong. ‘Foolish human – have you no fear?’
I moved through the waves, and pushed her board away from her reaching hands. This did not dispirit her. She was a strong swimmer – the best human swimmer I had ever seen.
‘So you want to play!’ she shouted to me as she treaded water and fought to keep the sea from filling her mouth. ‘Come here then so we can play!’
I looked at her more closely as water glistened on her beautiful face. Her eyes, now as big and bright as black moons, pulled at me with a strange gravity. She gazed at me through the spray and drank me in. I zanged her – she was red, red, flowing and flaming red with all the fires of life. Her whole being was pregnant with blazing purpose! In her womb, a little seed of a girl child had sprouted and now grew in a pulsing of blood and deep, deep hope.
‘Thy tears,’ Unukalhai said from somewhere near me, ‘are for those beyond tears. Grieve not for those who die.’
Two humans, then, I would need to slay with a closing of my teeth.
‘This cannot be the way!’ I shouted.
Between the beats of my heart, from very, very close, all of Ocean shouted back: ‘The humans must be no more!’
I moved closer to Mada. So trusting she seemed! So certain that I had come here to cavort with her in the froth and turn of the waves!
‘Mada, Mada, Mada,’ I murmured in sounds that she could not understand, yet strangely somehow did. ‘Mada!’
I asked her if she was ready to die. And then, in the fire of her eyes, in the fury of her blood, in the wild fountain of life pouring out of her and into the sea, she said … No!
I did not want to believe what I heard. In amazement, I asked her again. Her answer to me rose with all the power of the unceasing surf, and in a terrible question of her own cracked out like thunder: ‘Are you ready to live?’
I moved closer to her. The water moved with me. I looked into her eyes, her large, liquid human eyes. No fear could I see there! And that was very strange, for I felt her awareness of me awakening her whole being to the reason why I had come here today. Somehow, perhaps through her will to smile upon the world, her fear had flowed into fascination. Perhaps she possessed a new lobe to her brain. She knew that something terrible worked at my soul – and was aware that I could apprehend this awareness spreading like cold water through her. She knew something else, too, that I could not quite see. I felt it swelling within me like a dark, dark wave.
‘Are you ready to live?’ she asked again as she swam toward me.
An entire sea built and pressed against every part of me. Overflowing with the hurt of it, what should I answer her?
‘Yes,’ I said.
The sound of my assent broke me open. It was as if a hammer had caved in a conch shell. Yes, I am ready, yes, yes! Mada swam closer through the raging surf, and her mouth opened in a smile of recognition that there was something I wanted much more than her slaughter.
‘Go away!’ I shouted in a language that she could not possibly comprehend.
What did I really want? I asked myself. And th
e angry ocean answered back: ‘The humans must be—’
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘I will not do this thing!’
But then my heart raged with the wrath of blood that moved it, and I longed to drink in the blood of Mada’s furiously beating heart. I could almost feel the tangy red liquid hardening inside me like iron and pulling me down to the ocean’s cold, lightless bottom from which nothing can arise again.
‘Arjuna!’ my grandmother called to me. Her voice sounded through the sea from far away – but also from impossibly close. ‘Remember the charm!’
Before Mada could swim a foot nearer, I opened the charm. I had done so, of course, many times. However, although I had listened to the many pretty songs it contained, I had never been able to apprehend its deeper contents. That is something that the humans have never really understood about our language: that a whale can hear all of a song or a rhapsody only through the consciousness of the one who created it. Into the charm my grandmother had placed all of her love for me, and her voice had sustained me during the worst moments of my journeys. Now, though, only moments away from the very worst moment of my life, with my heart opening to my grandmother’s heart and all that she most fervently felt and knew, I realized that love itself, like the red, red petals of one of the humans’ flowers, opens outward and downward through infinitely many layers. What dwells at the very center? What sounded from within the heart of my grandmother’s charm? Only the deepest and most dreadful truth of love: that we cannot love one thing without loving everything.
‘Arjuna!’ the human named Mada cried out to me as she pulled at the sea with her golden arms and all her will to reach me. ‘Arjuna, Arjuna!’
What did the world really want from me? I opened my mouth to greet her, and she closed the last distance between us and wrapped her little, knowing fingers around one of my teeth. At her touch, in a sudden understanding that zanged through me like a shock of lightning, I realized a thing: I did not hate the humans – not just. I loved them.
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