“Dad,” she said. She needed to tell Hawley about this. She needed him to know.
And then all at once the whale’s open mouth pushed through the waves, its rostrum crusted with barnacles, the figurehead of a lost and forgotten shipwreck returning from the sunken depths. Loo could see the baleen lining the inner edge of its jaw, like the comb on Mabel Ridge’s giant loom. The whale turned and there was its eye, black and shining beneath heavy folds of skin, set above the jagged grooves of its thick, expansive throat. She could not tell if the whale was looking at her. She could not tell if it was thinking anything at all. The creature rolled sideways, a rotating school bus, and lifted its pectoral fin high in the air and then it spun easily and dove, showing the full running slick of its long back, until there was only the fluke rising, the tail’s ragged edge flecked with white, bending and scraping the surface of the heavens and then plunging deep, until all that was left was a rippling circle, that widened as it reached the Pandora.
The seagulls moved off, heading north. Loo pulled tight on the mainsheet. She set a course and followed the birds and the whale. A hundred yards ahead she saw the spout dimly against the stars. On the next surfacing Loo could hear only the blow. The tight noise of air released.
On the opposite bench, Hawley’s cigarette had gone out. Loo scrambled over and pressed her ear to his chest, felt his throat with her fingers. His heart was still there. Still beating. Loo’s face and hands came away wet with blood.
She leaned over the side of the boat. She touched her palm to the surface of the ocean. There were tiny things shimmering there in the water. Phosphorescence stirred up from the depths by the whale. Dinoflagellates and phytoplankton sending out an ethereal, muted green pulse that mixed with the reflection of the stars above, all the heroes and legends in the sky. The light was strong enough to cut a path through the swells. Bright enough for Loo to watch the blood leaving her skin. She lifted her head and saw a string of beacons, blinking in the distance. There was a boat. And then another. And then another.
“We’re here,” said Loo. “We made it.”
She grabbed the flare. The plastic piece felt flimsy and light, even after she jammed in the cartridge. The gun was like a toy in her hands. A weapon transformed into a thing of wonder. She climbed onto the bow of the boat. She clung to the mainstay. She tried to get as high as she could, to set her sights in the right direction.
Her father’s voice came out of the darkness.
He asked her, “What you are going to shoot?”
“Everything,” said Loo. And she raised her arm and pulled the trigger.