Singing Home the Whale

by Hager, Mandy

  An extraordinary story, from an award-winning New Zealand author, of how the arrival of a baby orca whale threatens to tear apart small fishing community and forever changes the life of the boy who first finds it.

  Will Jackson is hiding out, a city boy reluctantly staying with his uncle in small-town New Zealand. After he discovers a young abandoned orca, his life is further thrown into chaos when he rallies to help protect it against hostile locals.

  The boy and the whale develop a special bond, linked by Will’s love of singing. With echoes of the classic book and film The Whale Rider, this is a strong, exciting and beautifully written story and a compelling exploration of many global concerns.

  For Luna

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  ONE The Chronicle

  TWO Megaphone Mouth

  THREE An Ancient Ailing Bag

  FOUR The Boy

  FIVE Further In

  SIX Will Of The Living Dead

  SEVEN A Flood Of Fleeing Fish

  EIGHT A Wandering Minstrel

  NINE Fellowship Foundering

  TEN Cue Tribal Drums

  ELEVEN Chronicles Past

  TWELVE Anchors Be Weighing

  THIRTEEN Close Calls, Dead Certs

  FOURTEEN Alone, And Yet Alive

  FIFTEEN Only Haters Feed On Hate

  SIXTEEN Oh Willow, Tit-willow, Tit-willow

  SEVENTEEN Lusts Looming Large

  EIGHTEEN A Diminutioner

  NINETEEN Night-time Natterings

  TWENTY Was Blind But Now I See

  TWENTY-ONE Baited By Fate

  TWENTY-TWO A Dish Best Served Cold

  TWENTY-THREE Wanton Wildness

  TWENTY-FOUR Speak Of The Devil

  TWENTY-FIVE Wild Unfettered Waters

  TWENTY-SIX Singing Home The Whale

  TWENTY-SEVEN Boisterous Bliss!

  TWENTY-EIGHT Done, Dusted, And Deeply In The Shit

  TWENTY-NINE Fondled With Such Fawning

  THIRTY Awesome Singing Baby Orca

  THIRTY-ONE Wishing He Would Wend My Way

  THIRTY-TWO One Year On

  THIRTY-THREE Fifty Years On

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Copyright

  I was born on a night the moon drew the sea high towards her face. As the swell lifted my mother I slid into the tide tail first, the cord snapping as she nudged me skywards to the icy air. Below me rang my family’s welcome, lapping love around me as I nosed towards my mother’s milk.

  For those first few hours, days, weeks, months, I clung to her calm company, never roving from the reach of her all-seeing eyes. When we travelled with our group I nestled in the curve of her slick satin side, her slipstream aiding any feeble efforts of my own. At two months my top teeth broke through; by four the lower row took root. My first flesh food was salty squid. I can still recall its death-throe tickle on my tongue.

  It took some time to learn the breadth of all my family’s store of sounds. Their songs told tales of times long past; their wails, our wash of woes. They showed me how to pulse our notes to cut through the great swathes of sea; how to send clicks and calls to sense the secrets of the other beings who share our sea-bound world. But the markers that made plain my family’s moods I never had to learn. Oh no, these I always knew. Each yearning bleeds an inborn stippled charge — and when it hits I feel it as my own.

  Right from the start I was a seeker; wanted to explore the workings of the waters we called home. I glided between peaks and spurs, rocky spines, and boiling vents that bubbled from the belly of the ocean’s core. I was the minnow of my mother’s clan, pandered to by parents, uncles, aunts; and with my cousins by my side, we cruised through coral coves, skimmed stands of kelp and bladderwrack, and swam through swaying sea-grass meadows that split to single stems as we eased through.

  Our days were filled with feeding, feeling, floating, amid the currents’ great convergence and the pull of moon and tide. We goaded flying fish, dangled driftwood from our snouts, racing, chasing, breaching: such playing taught me how to grace the gifts of my sleek shape.

  From the rush of air above to the press of trenches, pits and chasms in the lightless lands below, I wondered at the beauty. I felt no one had ever known such sweet fortune as the likes of me. So if a ship stormed through the waters where we passed I found myself drawn to its throaty call. I paid no heed to my dear mother’s fear. In my eyes she was all-powerful, while the Hungry Ones who trod the decks seemed small and weak. I could not grasp how they might ever do us harm.

  My mother said that in the early times we watched the Hungry Ones when they first crowded to the coast. She said we listened and we learned and matched their sounds with what was trickling from their thoughts. But we have lost this melding of our minds; must, drop by drop, relearn if we are once again to live in peace.

  I am The Chronicle, and this will be my last song. Like the ones who came before me and the ones who will come after, in my final hours it is my duty — no, my joy — to share all I have learned in my long swim through life.

  Will hovered outside Blythe’s general store, the plastic envelope sweaty in his hand. He’d already learnt to steel himself before he took on Gabby Taylor.

  His first day here, six weeks ago, she’d cornered him.

  ‘So you’re Dean’s boy.’ She hadn’t even tried to hide the sneer that curled her upper lip. She’d eyed him head to toe.

  ‘Nephew,’ he’d said, heat swarming up his face. Though probably not much older, she had the power to switch his ever-present nausea to high gear.

  She’d reached under the counter and fished out Dean’s mail, her small brown eyes bright with gossiper’s fervour.

  ‘So, what’s your name?’

  ‘Will Jackson.’

  ‘Where’re you from?’

  ‘Up north.’ Dean had warned Will to keep the fact he came from Wellington under his belt. The locals down here hated it; said it was full of politicians and greenies who had no understanding of the real world.

  ‘How long’re you here for?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  Her nostrils pinched like he’d dropped a fart. ‘Well, best you get over yourself, Will Jackson. We’ve got no call for freaks down here.’

  ‘What the hell did that mean?’ he’d asked when his uncle came home from work that night.

  ‘Well, doh! You dress like that, they’re going to react.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Dean rolled his eyes. ‘Jesus, Will, you look like you’re the bloody Prince of Darkness.’ He held up a hand to temper the insult. ‘Hey, I don’t care what you look like, mate, but this place is a time warp — the last time they saw someone pierced and tattooed was in the Māori wars. You might recall it didn’t turn out too flash for them.’

  Still, Will was buggered if he’d ditch the piercings — they were part of him, proof that he’d once had a life. But he’d tied his long black hair back and stuck with plain black tees and jeans from there on in. Better to be bland than take more shit. His nerves were still as shot as hell.

  Now he leaned against a lamppost, watching as a family of tourists eased out of a camper van, their oversized shorts and tourist T-shirts revealing folds of dimpled sunburnt flesh. Perfect! He slunk in after them, careful not to catch Gabby’s eye, and nudged the envelope of completed assignments over the counter, hopefully just out of her line of sight.

  She was busy poring over a map with the two parents, pointing out the ‘must see’ sights of Pelorus Sound.

  ‘… and then, of course, there are the salmon farms. My uncle …’ She stopped and stared straight up at Will. He felt his balls retract. ‘I saw you,’ she said, a smirking great white shark. ‘On the i
nternet.’ Glee and scorn shot off her like a volley of poisoned darts.

  Will turned and bolted from the store. Ran all the way back to Dean’s shabby wooden house on legs that threatened to give way. Goddamn. Now the megaphone mouth of Pelorus Sound had seen the clip, he was twice doomed.

  He collapsed on the doorstep, shaking as he struggled to regain control. He tried the breathing exercise the counsellor had shown him. In, one two three, out, one two three … Even so the YouTube clip materialised in his mind in all its gothic splendour. The angry mottled swelling of his eyes. The bruising around his throat. His broken nose. The unfocused — concussed — struggle with his words. Viral in the real sense, jumping from one user to the next, each new posting another kick in his already battered guts. And while the producers of A Star Is Born denied all knowledge of who was waging this attack, they must have loved it all the same. A heap of free publicity for their shitty, parasitic show.

  When we left behind the White World for the warmer waters in my second year, we young ones were a brazen band, given to rough and tumble games. Our elders, betters, bore us for the most part, with only the odd side-swipe from a flipper or fluke to hinder our hot-headed play.

  I learned the joys of cruising in the company of the ones I love: the shared rhythm that settles in once we are under way. Warm bodies brush past in casual caress. Feelings and minds merge. It is this harmony that forms the backbone of our world; connects us to each other — and to all else. This, too, I learned.

  Then came the day my mother taught me to track through the seas. There is a Pulse, she sent, that weaves its way beneath the oceans and the land. Pathways of Pulse. North, south, east, west; as charged as the gleam that washes White World’s midnight skies. Her steady eye met mine. Clear your mind now. Try to hold off other thought. Just listen … listen and feel.

  At first all I felt was the twitch of my tail and the hammer of my heart, and the crush of currents in the sea’s embrace. Nothing else. I wiped away all thought and drew a mighty breath and dived. Five times I dived and four times failed to feel the planet’s pulse. But the fifth time … ah, the fifth time … It came upon me suddenly, a feeling like fingers of kelp sliding along my spine. Then every pulsing part of me fell into line with it and I could feel its tingling charge.

  I raced from one pulse to the next, breaching with pure delight. Plain foolishness! The current I was chasing drew me back towards the ice. I did not hear my mother’s worried warnings until, at last, she overtook and barred my way. How long had I been speeding through the sea? So long my cherished clan were simply sprigs of spume.

  My mother called the clan to tell them I was safe. Swim on, she sent, we’ll catch you up. My aunt bounced back an offer to return. No need … Be happy … He has felt The Pulse! The whole group sang with pleasure and I plumped with pride.

  So when I heard the distant drumming of a ship I sped to it, arguing with my mother, wheedling, pleading, to take a closer look. I ignored the worry washing off her as she tried to steer me back on course. I would have none of it. I was a fat little calf who thought he owned the seas.

  Just as the ship was well within my sights, crawling with hairy Hungry Ones up on the deck, my mother bit me by the fluke — not hard, but firm enough for me to falter. Can you not feel the threat? Her thoughts were steeped with such a dread it haunts me still.

  But did I listen? No, not I. I spy-hopped, splaying fins to hover upright and (to my never-ending shame) exposed.

  Dive! my mother moaned, but I was too intent on trying to read the twinkling lights now trained on me. She knocked me off my axis. In the name of the Great Mother, dive!

  Already there was a shift in the thrumming of the ship, as if its heart was speeding up. While seabirds squabbled in its wake, it changed its course and started making straight for us.

  I heaved in air and dived down after her, seeking out her slipstream as her tail threshed to pick up speed. I had no chance of keeping up; was bludgeoned in the backwash of her wake. She circled back and clutched me to her side, and I could feel every muscle, every sinew, strain beneath her silken skin as she steered me on.

  Hush, she sent. Put your will into the task and do not look behind.

  A fearsome pounding pocked the air, growing ever louder until it drowned her urgings out. My mother’s eyes had never shone so bright, as if by force of will she could conceal me in their protective pool. But as I spat my blowhole open to expel the stale air the maelstrom roared right over us. I risked one backward glance: the ship was speeding to us fast, but, worse, a whirling creature buzzed low to the sea, the source of this unearthly roar.

  My mother’s wail was like the winter winds that howl through White World’s ice. She pushed me down, tail slapping as she tried to bolster me beneath her bulk.

  A crack of thunder split the sky. I felt her jolt and heard a grunt. Read her shock before she rolled. Time crawled, so slow I heard the water shift as blood bloomed from her broad black back.

  I was flummoxed by the pain and desperation flooding off her. Circled, calling, crying, as the sea stained red. I nudged her, stroked her, pressed my flippers to her flesh. Go, she groaned. Leave me now. But I could not.

  So rising from her pain she fought, lob-tailing with the full force of her fluke before she shot skywards to confront this flying foe. Mid breach, the thunder struck again. It tore into her lower jaw. Smashed bone and flesh right down her throat.

  The ship was nearly on us now. Mother, come. Mother, please. I nuzzled, seeking comfort, but no milk came forth. Instead, I felt the terror as her pain-filled heart pumped out her life.

  Tell them, warn them. Go.

  As if this plea stole her last leaking air, I felt her shock as something detonated deep inside. She shuddered once. Her heartbeat stopped. The very motion of the sea stopped too.

  I couldn’t understand her silence. Couldn’t grasp the void. I circled, prodding, pleading, when she failed to answer back. I lost all track of time.

  I hid beneath my mother’s blood shroud as the flying fiend descended to the ship. The Hungry Ones fired hooks into her flesh and hauled her up its shell-encrusted side. Blood sweated from her skin. Red against white. Crimson against black.

  They hung her by her tail, her shattered face lapped by the swell. She looked so small. Reduced. One thrust a blade in her and heaved on it, stiff-armed, the tool splitting her belly open, fore to aft. All the workings of her bundled out.

  Ah … Forgive me. I had wished for my last song to be as calm as those of the wise Chronicles who came before — I have told it many times without this hurting heart, shared all my secrets — but this day the memory bobs around me like a bloated corpse. Grief never leaves. Nor pain. Nor the licking loneliness of loss. They only ever limp towards accommodation.

  And so you see me as I truly am: an ancient ailing bag of wretchedness and thorny love still pricked by anger and regrets. I am the unwise wise one tasked with passing on my past. Life flees as fast as foam upon a windswept wave.

  Be still. Bear with me, travellers. These are the wanderings of a dying mind …

  After the ship had fled, I drifted in a nightmare world of windborne tricks: I’d hear my mother call, and race towards the sound, only to find nothing, no one in the formless sea. Time and time again those taunts would snare me. Time and time again I ended up alone, and wished the Hungry Ones would take me too. But on the fourth day I sensed land, and I was torn between two tides of thought: the urge to hide did battle with the need to rest with something solid at my back. Rest won.

  The sun rose to full force as I passed landforms skinned with grass and trees. Between the leaves, small buildings blinked. I hugged the coast and wished this world was fashioned from a pressing of warm bodies; I craved my mother and my clan. I could not eat. Each time I tried to swallow, my mother’s death swelled in my throat. Sluggishness stalked me now.

  I rounded still another spit of land and thought those teasing trickster winds were back.

  I heard a so
ng. It soared — tuneful and fully voiced — a sweeping, airborne song that steeped into my skin. Its bleakness spoke to me. Its grief akin to mine.

  Drawn by a need I had no strength to fight I slipped into a sheltered bay. Lush trees lined rocky outcrops; a stony beach lay to one side. The sunlight licked the leaves deep coral-gold. I edged around a shingle bank, the unknown song enthralling as I rose for air.

  That’s when I saw the boy.

  Will trundled the old Z-class yacht down to the slipway and rigged it up. Six weeks of daily practice (thanks to Dean’s expert tutoring) had cured his greenhorn fumblings, and he pushed off now and jumped aboard, sliding in the centreboard as soon as he cleared the mud. He guided it out into the channel between the mudflats without a hitch. Sailing was one of the few times since he’d moved here that he felt in control. He loved the tug-of-war with the sail as he worked the sheet rope, and the slap of water as it hit the sailing dinghy’s prow.

  By the time he’d cleared the bay, his nausea was easing. He stretched his spindly legs; leaned back and drew in a deep breath. Get a grip. Maybe Gabby wouldn’t talk. Though, how’d she even found the clip? And who else knew? Could Dean have told? It was all so incestuous down here: Dean working for Bruce Godsill, Gabby being Bruce’s niece — hell, half the town were interbred.

  He stewed over this as he tacked his way up the main channel of the Sound, setting his course for the salmon farm near Franklin’s Cove. Twenty-five minutes later he pulled up alongside the main pontoon, brandishing the bag of sandwiches his uncle had left behind.

  ‘Special delivery for Dean,’ he said to Hunter Godsill, the boss’s sullen son, who caught hold of the bow of the Zeddie to hold the yacht in place.

  ‘Deano!’ Hunter roared, ignoring the proffered bag. ‘Your lunch is here.’

  Dean emerged from the crate-like shed, grinning as he walked over. ‘Thanks, mate. You get your schoolwork sent off?’