Singing Home the Whale

by Hager, Mandy

  ‘Yeah.’ Will eyed Hunter, who didn’t seem to take the hint to move away. People round here talked as if the guy was thick — and there was no denying that he looked it. Big hands. Big head. And wing-commander ears. The awful haircut didn’t help: it looked as if he’d been attacked with hedge clippers.

  As Dean reached down to take his lunch, Will murmured in his ear: ‘Gabby Taylor’s seen the video.’

  Dean nodded, clearly not at all surprised. ‘Yeah, Bruce said.’ Pity lurked behind his eyes.

  ‘You knew?’ The betrayal stung. ‘Why the hell didn’t you warn me?’

  Dean shrugged, lowering his voice as Hunter watched with a disconcertingly blank gaze. ‘What good would that do, mate? As it is, you hardly leave the house.’

  ‘Not true! I come out here. I sail every—’

  ‘Listen, Will. Running away—’

  ‘How can you say that when you know what happened?’

  Dean straightened up and rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. ‘Let’s talk about this tonight, eh? Meantime, how about you concentrate on catching us a decent cod for tea?’

  Will merely grunted as he pushed the Zeddie off the pontoon.

  ‘See ya,’ Hunter Godsill called. He waved his giant hand and blushed as red as lethal sunburn. Will nodded back.

  He drove the yacht hard into the wind, tacking tight to outrun the anger pulsing in his head. He had to let such feelings out, that’s what the counsellor told him, or else the headaches would continue to drive him nuts. You need to avoid stress, she’d said, as if the calls for Will to top himself, to ‘rid the world of freakish losers’, were in his head alone. What he needed was anonymity. A safe place where he could let go all the hurt. And he thought he’d found it, too — exiled down here, away from everyone he knew — but if Gabby lived up to her name, he was screwed.

  He sailed out towards the head of the Sound, a further hour’s zigzag past the other salmon farms and baches, the exclusive private lodges and the run-down farms. The place was beautiful, no doubt of that; drowned river valleys formed after the last big ice age, with steeply wooded hills between the fertile strips of land. A tourist mecca, though the only people rich enough to stay and not merely pass through these days were all from overseas. Meanwhile the locals (with the exception of bosses like Bruce Godsill) were feeling the recession hard.

  Will knew all about that. One moment his life was all happy families in the capital city up north, wanting for nothing, performing in shows at school and hanging out with a great group of friends; next thing his parents lost their public-service jobs — austerity to ‘help’ the banks — and they’d had to rent their house out just to keep afloat.

  It might’ve been all right if they’d both found new jobs. But when neither had any luck they’d ended up staying with friends, not even able to rent some rat-shit dump or they’d default on the mortgage for their own house.

  This is what those pricks who thought they knew him from the YouTube clip just didn’t get: he could’ve won — could’ve eased his parents’ problems and they’d not have ended up slogging it out, helping shift truck-loads of toxic waste from Aussie’s Ranger Mine. Goddamn, he missed his mother’s reassuring smile, his father’s try-hard jokes.

  Coming here was meant to be a break from all the flak after the clip had aired. He’d been amazed what pleasure people took in watching others fail. Over and over, millions of hits. Good old social media. Pretty damn anti-social, when the chips were down.

  It was his own fault. He’d signed up on the day the producers announced the try-outs. A Star Is Born. Nice irony, in the light of what came next. He’d lapped it up when people said he should apply. Had hoped it was his first step on the road to fame — and, better, that the hundred grand would save the house.

  All this because he had a crazy inbuilt urge to sing. Perfect pitch by three — and once puberty had done its worst he grew into a clear full-bodied tenor voice.

  The thrill — the sense of utter calm — that overtook him when he sang was almost indescribable. All he had to do was open up his mouth and breathe. He loved opera, always had, since he was small, loved pure emotion synthesised through sound, though not so much the cheesy plots, which were the musical equivalents of daytime soaps. It was the music that he loved. He wanted to be part of it — the sounds, the drama, the feeling of elation and control when he stepped onto the stage — not trapped here like a head-case with a bunch of small-town hicks.

  At Brookes Bay he lowered the sail, eyeing the gnarly trees and wind-frayed ferns that lined the rocky shore. He dropped the anchor on the leeside of a shingle bank and baited a hook with scraps of octopus still chilly from Dean’s freezer. Cast the line and wedged it through a cleat, then stood balanced in the centre of the yacht and closed his eyes. The lapping water beat a rhythm; birdsong tuned his ear. He filled his diaphragm, ribs stretched wide. Drew the air low into his belly until it pressed against his spine. Now he opened his mouth and released a steady flow, feeling the first note reverberate through his skull. Ah, home.

  With eyes fixed on the sunlit hills he sang his doomed audition piece from La Bohème. ‘Che gelida manina! Se la lasci riscaldar …’ All the hurt poured out of him: his parents’ forced eviction, their departure overseas, the YouTube clip, the headaches, anger, paranoia, the sad farewell to all his friends … Weeks and weeks of humiliation wrapping the bay in heartfelt song.

  He was halfway through the second verse when something moved. He turned just as a dorsal fin slipped beneath the yacht.

  Will lurched backwards, his foot caught in the sheet rope. Stumbled, a comic-book pratfall of flailing limbs as he scrabbled to regain his balance. Instead, the rocking yacht pitched him straight overboard. As he resurfaced, something brushed past his thigh. He lunged upwards and vaulted the gunwale, all the time expecting the whomp of jaws connecting with his skin, his bones.

  That was way too close. He raised himself and peered over the side to see how big a shark it was. A head burst from the water, rounded, soft lined, black and white. Holy shit!

  It was an orca, a young one, bobbing right in front of him, mewing like a baby in need of milk. Its body mass was not much bigger than a full-grown dolphin. Its mouth, which curled up at the edges, looked for all the world like it was smiling — and that smile served to split the border between black and white. Black above, over its blowhole to its slightly cock-eyed dorsal fin, a yellow-tinged white below, and white-on-black in two neat patches just behind its eyes. Those eyes: they studied him with such intensity, emitted such a desperate loneliness, they drew Will close.

  They were like no other eyes he’d ever seen; their oily coating glistened as it held his gaze. The shifting liquids changed the colour of its pupil, a subtle kaleidoscope, one moment blue, the next a brownish grey. Longing and sadness lingered there. He dragged his gaze away and scoured the bay and open water for the rest of its pod. The seascape was deserted.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’

  It dipped its head to one side, holding his gaze, and nudged closer. Its reply — almost a whistle — formed a melodic cavatina. Will sang the notes back to it but it slid under the water. Disappeared. He cursed himself for frightening it, then heard a splash behind him and spun around. The little orca exposed sharp baby teeth and shrilled again.

  Will pitched across the deck, echoing the orca’s call, and it lifted itself high enough to rest its head on the side of the hull. Before he even thought it through, Will reached over and rubbed its rounded rostrum. The skin was pleasantly warm and lush. He held its searching gaze and ran his hand towards the blowhole further back. Stroked it, fondling its alien skin.

  He crooned, the kind of voice his mum would use to reassure a flighty kid. ‘What’s happened to your family?’

  It bunted at his arm and squeaked. He laughed and it quivered as if laughing back.

  Behind Will, the fishing line clattered. ‘You stay there.’ He reeled it in as fast as he was able, singing something from last year�
�s school production to distract the whale from the struggling fish. ‘A wandering minstrel I — A thing of shreds and patches, Of ballads, songs and snatches …’ The words had never seemed more apt.

  He landed the fish, a good-sized cod, before the orca twigged. Slammed it on the deck like Dean had shown him, stunning it before he killed it with a quick jab in the head. Next, Will dislodged the hook, all the time still singing under the orca’s watchful eye. It seemed the most natural thing to offer the cod, which he dangled by its tail over the side of the yacht.

  The orca nosed up to the fresh fish and Will released it into the whale’s open mouth. The fish flashed silver against the baby pink of its wide serrated tongue before it swallowed the cod down.

  ‘There you go, mate, a tiny offering.’

  It rolled onto its back, lounging beside him with its pale belly skyward. He could feel the need radiating off it, like a puppy angling for a scratch. He leaned right out and ran his hand along its strip of white. The little creature blew bubbles, squeaking like a waterlogged Donald Duck.

  Will dropped his head down and blew a series of watery raspberries in return. It rolled and sprayed Will with fine mist as it exhaled.

  He laughed again, amazed by its dexterity as it rose out of the water to meet him eye to eye. Its head jerked backwards as if urging Will to join it in the sea. Why not? If it was out to eat him, surely it would’ve made a grab for him by now? What the hell … it couldn’t be any more dangerous than a run-in with three meth-heads on a cold dark night.

  He stripped down to his boxers and slipped over the gunwale, his heart beating staccato quavers. But as the orca edged towards him — looming large, now that Will’s head was all that bobbed above the surface — Will panicked. He spun around to haul himself back on board. Too late. The orca bumped against him, dense flesh velvet against his own.

  He turned to face it as it bunted him again — shy, enquiring, maybe even a little scared. He held his breath as it caressed the whole length of his body with its own. It emitted little mews and clicks, as though scanning the mass of him, his shape, his human make-up. When it circled back and nudged against him on its second sweep he reached over and wrapped his arms around its meaty form.

  He could feel the orca’s warmth and soft surrender as it stilled beneath his stroking touch. He swallowed back a sob. It was the most amazing thing, to offer such a wild creature comfort — and to feel, oddly, like the orca gave it back. Its pectoral flipper curled around his neck just like a baby clasps its hand around a finger. That’s all it was: a baby. As frightened and helpless as any toddler cast adrift — except he couldn’t simply pick it up and take it home.

  ‘What am I going to do with you?’

  He could have sworn the orca sighed.

  It may seem strange I put my trust in him, a boy formed from the same species — same blood and bones — as those who stole my mother’s life. These fifty-one years on, all I can say is that he filled a need. Warm flesh. Kind eyes. A sense he shared my pain.

  He wrapped me in his reedy upper limbs, my hurting heart banging to the beat of his. I hoped he’d never let me go. But when we each came to a place of peace then we began to play. I flapped my fluke, he lashed his limbs. I breached to bury him beneath a spray of sea. He bunted me back to the surface like a callow calf.

  When he was spent he climbed back in the tiny boat and stroked my snout, crooning, chuckling, calling sounds I did not understand. But I could feel the goodwill gushing off him and it helped to ease my grief.

  As the day started to dim — shadows shifting, currents cooling — he heaved aboard the heavy weight that tethered him. The boat bucked in the breathy breeze, its white wing waving as he hauled it high above his head. All the time he called I heard the ripples of regret that threaded through his strange sad sounds. He was leaving, I could tell, and I was swept by pangs of panic so intense my insides ached.

  Perhaps he sensed my great forlornness: as the boat began to pick up speed, another of his soothing songs skimmed on the air. It egged me on, delving deep into the break between the hump of hills. I took the risk of following, my muddled mind still far too tired to fight the urge. The further in, the more I felt the thrust of other thinking minds — of Hungry Ones — but fear of being so soon parted from this kindness kept me in his thrall.

  Trust me, my friends, our kind were never meant to be alone.

  Between the limbs of land we started passing structures sunk into the sea, with scores of salmon so hemmed in I took a closer look. It set my gut a-grumbling, so much food in such a penned-in place. But the nearer in, the more I felt the hate-cloud of the Hungry Ones, smothering my senses like storm-spread silt. It mingled with the misery of all those swarming salmon, dark as deep-sea ditches and as foreboding as the flying thing that struck my mother down.

  I shied away, back to the boy, relieved to chase his calming call. The sun was sinking, shadows shifting, seabirds stirring as they sensed the nearing of the night. He led me through a channel between fallow flats of mud, into a bay where boats branched out and dwelling places poured out lightning from within.

  The boy bundled in the wing and beached the boat as I hung back. He hauled it up onto the shore then swam to me to say goodbye. One last caress.

  He spoke in soothing tones and pressed his strange flat face to mine. I sent a plea for him to stay but, though I sensed he understood, instead he sang — a sweet slow song, so very soothing — and then he waded from the water. Left.

  I waited as the night turned dark. Could feel the Hungry Ones’ thought-traces hanging in the chill night air. Their minds were still so strange to me; I could not match their blood-lust to that feeling boy. My mother said that some among our tribes were known to hunt the other Warm-bloods, single-minded, cunning, killing with no care. They merely wished to sate their guts while we, who feel our prey’s panic and pain, maintain more mercy. In this the Hungry Ones are much the same. Some good. Some bad. Some scratching to survive. Back then, so filled with fear, abandoned in that inky waste-filled water, all I could think to do was call — keening for my family, and then, when no one answered, for the boy.

  In truth, I thought no Being had ever suffered such a loss as me. And though I now know differently, I find no comfort in the fact my pain was shared by so, so many, over such a stretch of time. In the dreadful Days of Blood the Hungry Ones hunted us — we were bludgeoned, stabbed, exploded, drowned, defiled, cleaved in two. And they grew fat upon the killing of our kind, slaughtering on such a scale our many tribes were broken, driven to the brink. Whole families gone. Whole generations lost. My mother’s death was but one drop in the ocean of our blood.

  I waited, panicked, in that place, with hunger gnawing at my gut. My loneliness, my fretful fear, arose again inside, the horror of the Hungry Ones bleeding back into my bones. It drove me off, back out towards the bay where I first met the boy.

  I passed the pens of salmon, the feelings of those frightened fish storming me. They knew that I was stalking them; grew fidgety. I could have broken through the barriers but, in the end, their distress drove me off. My nerves were still too shattered; my hunger no match for the memories meddling with my mind.

  At last I slept, and the boy’s song melded with my mother’s in my moonstruck dreams. I felt so warmed I did not want to wake.

  Will ran up the slipway, bursting to share his news with Dean. He quickly changed into dry clothes and mopped the floor. Peered in the fridge, relieved to find a bacon pack stashed at the back. Dean would be tired and hungry, and the cod Will promised was now digesting in the orca’s gut. He smiled as he went out to the chicken coop to fetch fresh eggs. The way that little orca looked into his eyes had seemed so human. It was the most uplifting experience he’d ever had — even more fulfilling than playing the male lead in The Mikado last year.

  He shoved the cooked bacon into the warming drawer as Dean’s car pulled up. Went out to greet him before he came inside.

  ‘You have to come!’ Will said. �
��Now! Down by the slipway!’

  Dean slammed the car door shut and locked it. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve screwed the boat?’

  Will grinned. ‘Come on, you’re not going to believe this!’

  He raced ahead of Dean, down towards the water. As Dean trailed after him, Will began to sing the Handel aria he’d crooned to the orca as he’d said goodbye.

  ‘Lascia ch’io pianga mia cruda sorte, e che sospiri la libertà …’ He loved this one, even though it was first written for a female voice. Let me weep for my cruel fate, and sigh for liberty. May sorrow break these chains of my sufferings, for pity’s sake … He knew so many lyrics now they formed a constant soundtrack to his thoughts. Sometimes it drove him nuts.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ Dean said.

  ‘I was out at Brookes Bay and there was this little baby orca—’

  ‘An orca?’

  ‘Yeah, and it was all on its own and really bloody lonely. I sang to it and played with it — you wouldn’t believe it, Dean, it wasn’t scared of me at all. And when I sailed home it followed me.’ He squinted towards the dark water, hoping for a sign.

  ‘Jesus, you brought a frickin’ orca right into the Sound?’

  ‘I think it’s been deserted. It was—’

  ‘You’d better hope it’s got more sense than you and buggered off.’

  Defensiveness balled in Will’s chest. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Christ, Will, there’s a good twelve million dollars’ worth of sea cages out there full of salmon, and you invite the sea’s most deadly predator to play?’

  Will’s joy evaporated. He could hear Gabby Taylor snarl bloody townie in his head. ‘It was abandoned, man. No more than a baby.’

  ‘Then pray that baby pisses off before Bruce gets wind of it.’

  Dean turned and trudged towards the house. His shoulders slumped, tiredness radiating off him like torpid heat. Will cast around one last time, but if the orca was still there it wasn’t showing. Damn. Why did everything that felt so full of promise turn into a crock of shit?