JESSALOUP’S
SONG
Hester Velmans
Copyright
2011 Hester Velmans
Published by van Horton Books at Smashwords
Jessaloup’s
Song is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person or whale
is purely coincidental.
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ISBN 978-0-9835505-7-0
Once
I sat upon a promontory
and heard a mermaid on a dolphin's
back
uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
that the rude
sea grew civil at her song
and certain stars shot madly from their
spheres
to hear the sea-maid's music
— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's
Dream
Here they come: one by one, in two long
snaking lines. The young whales first, jostling one another to be in
front. Behind them the families, the mothers with their
half-yearlings. Finally the elders come sweeping up alongside:
Momboduno, with Onijonah on his right; Bonadiboh, Lord of the Ice
Floe, and General Trogulo, the old battle-scarred warrior, on his
left. As they pass him, each gazes deep into his unblinking eye.
Although he is anxious to be off, to start on his fearful adventure, he patiently endures the endless farewell. For each member of the tribe must be given a chance to donate a token of fortitude to the great store of courage he will be needing to complete his quest. It is ordained in the Song.
Even the seaweed is waving farewell. The light above has faded to a dusky, ominous green. He blinks, makes an effort to stay still in the prescribed position, although he is itching to flap his flukes, to shake his head, to twist his body and release some of the pent-up energy that has been building up in him and is about ready to explode.
There, at last, is Indigoneah, Keeper of Songs. As always, she is the last in line. Instead of gliding past him, she stops as she draws up alongside. He can sense the whales behind him settling into their positions. Without needing to look, he can tell that they are drawn up in great concentric semi-circles back there, like tiers of spectators in a Roman theater.
Nobody moves. There is a thick, expectant hush. The whole ocean seems to be holding its breath.
Then, finally:
“Courage, my son,” Indigoneah intones.
“Courage,” comes a hushed whisper from the whales behind him.
“Follow the Way of the Song,” she continues.
“Follow the Way of the Song,” hums the chorus at his back.
“May you succeed in your task,” rumbles Indigoneah.
“Succeed in your task,” sings the chorus, louder now.
“May you survive unharmed!” she bellows.
“SurVIVE unHARMED!” It’s a deafening roar.
An involuntary shiver twitches all up and down his spine.
“Go now,” Indigoneah exhorts him, “and make us proud. Save the HUMANS!”
The cry “SAVE THE HUMANS!” lifts him up on a tidal wave of sound as he sets off in the opposite direction, and it goes on ringing in his ears for many a mile as he
ONE
Often at night,
with the wind rattling my window and the rustling branches outside
swelling, crashing and ebbing away again like the sea, I’d suddenly
find myself sitting up in bed, wide awake. Joy and sadness inflated
my stomach like a balloon, and next thing I knew, I was kneeling at
the window — my turret window, at the top of my family’s blue
Victorian house on Cape Cod. Once my eyes had grown used to the dark,
I was able to make out the sliver of sea that was my sea, the
narrow slice of ocean wedged between the hardware store and the
marina. I could kneel there for hours, until my knees were numb and
my eyes dry from staring.
What I was hoping to see out there was clearly impossible — it was too far away, and too dark, and too deep. Still I would keep waiting, and yearning… hoping. There! That glint on the horizon, gone in a flash. Could it be…?
And then, warmed in the pit of my stomach by that little crumb of hope, I would finally crawl back into my bed, and shut my eyes. And I dreamed I was being called back to the sea.
TWO
“Isabel! Are you
dreaming, Isabel? I asked you a question!”
I looked up, startled. Mrs. Stiglitz was mouthing words at me, words that echoed hollowly in the neon-lit classroom. There were charts on the wall, a whiteboard, kids slumped all around me in little desks. There was a notebook open in front of me, I seemed to have a pencil in my hand, a pencil with a tassel on the end of it, but for a moment I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing.
“Uh… Could you repeat the question, please?” I stammered.
“I said, have you got your final assignment for me? Everyone else has handed it in except you.”
I fumbled around, peered under the book on my desk. Sure enough, there was a sheaf of papers, paper-clipped together, hiding underneath. I pulled it out and, pushing myself sideways out of my desk, stumbled to the front of the classroom.
“Sorry,” I muttered, handing her my assignment. The bell had rung, and everyone was making for the door.
“Isabel. A word.” Mrs. Stiglitz’s voice was stern.
“I have to get to Spanish class…” I said feebly.
“I don’t know what is with you these days. You were always such an excellent student. Now you’re constantly off in some never-never land, it seems. And your work is suffering. You’re just not concentrating enough. Are you getting enough sleep? I shall have to speak to your parents.”
I mumbled something about insomnia, and escaped.
In the corridor, I ran into Tom, my ex-boyfriend. I’d broken up with him weeks ago, but he still acted as if he hadn’t gotten the memo. “Hey, Isabel,” he said. “What’s up!”
“I’m late for class,” I panted.
“Haven’t seen you around at all,” he said reproachfully. “You avoiding me, or what? Battle of the Bands day after tomorrow, you know.”
“I know!” I yelled over my shoulder.
“Don’t forget!” he shouted after me. “You gotta be there! Promise!”
In Spanish class, my best friend Molly had saved me a seat. She looked at me quizzically.
“The Stick has it in for me again. She says she’s going to have to talk to my parents,” I moaned. “I’m ‘just not concentrating enough’, she says.”
“Well it’s true,” Molly said, “you do seem kind of out of it.”
“And Tom keeps bugging me about the Battle of the Bands.”
“Come on, aren’t you even a little excited about Tom and his band? They’ve got a good chance of winning, you know.”
I shrugged. “He acts as if we’re still together. I mean, as if he didn’t even hear me when I told him I wanted to break up.”
“I don’t think he believes that’s the way you really feel. He thinks you’ll change your mind, especially if his band wins.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Pretend everything’s fine, and scream my head off when it’s his turn to play?”
“Plenty of girls would love to take your place, you know,” said Molly. “Everyone thinks he’s way cool.”
“I know,” I sighed. “It’s just me, I guess.”
Molly patted my hand. “You can’t help feeling the way you feel. But I do wish you wouldn’t act so gloomy. Cheer up, can’t you? I mean, we’re nearly done for the year. Almost three whole months of freedom ahead of us! What is up with you anyway?”
“Nothing’s up,” I shrugged, rifling through the stack of books before me to find my Spanish textbook. “Nada, uh, esta arriba,” I clarified in my best stab at Spanish, pointing up at the ceiling and snapping my fingers. “Olé!”
Molly snorted. “You make me laugh, Señorita.”
“I do?” I said.
“You still do,” she said. “Sometimes.”
THREE
But it was true, I
was feeling gloomy. I had nothing to cheer up about.
Today was the anniversary. Three years!
That was what was so upsetting: it had been three whole years, and I was still leading this perfectly predictable, perfectly uneventful landlubber life.
Three years of carrying a secret I couldn’t share with anyone.
Three years since something had turned my world upside down.
Three years since I was changed forever.
Something had happened to me three years ago, something that had changed everything, and people kept expecting me to get over it, to forget it, to put it behind me. My friends. My parents. My brothers. I felt bad about letting them down, but I couldn’t help it. I felt different.
I had tried for a while to get along with Tom, flattered that he liked me. I’d tried to be this happy, cheerful, grateful girlfriend he expected me to be, but it kept getting harder and harder. In the end I just gave up, because I realized Tom and I weren’t at all interested in the same things. We didn’t even like the same music. He always made me feel whatever he was doing was more important than what I wanted to do.
And what I wanted to do was sit on the jetty somewhere. All I wanted to do was dive into the waves and go for a long swim, or sit on the beach and stare out at the sea.
My parents didn’t like me going swimming. Actually, they didn’t want me going anywhere near the sea these days. If it was hot, I was allowed to go swim in a friend’s pool, but I had to get special permission to go to the beach, and I was absolutely forbidden to go on a boat, any boat, ever — whether it was a sailboat, a ferry, or even a dinghy, anything that bobbed up and down in the water was a no-no. So unfair! So I was constantly sneaking around behind my parents’ backs. It bothered me that I had to lie to them, but the ocean kept pulling me back.
That wasn’t the only thing we were butting heads about. When I came home I’d head straight up to my room on the third floor, my sea-green cocoon, where I felt snug and safe. My parents didn’t understand why I didn’t hang out downstairs with them. I wished they would just come out and say it, I wished they would yell at me for being such a pill, I wished they didn’t think that I’d get over it. They were so sure that this was just a phase, that it would pass, that I’d grow up a bit and in the end I’d be happy living in their world again.
I wished I thought they were right. But I didn’t.
You know what it’s like to go through a turnstile — you’re on one side of the barrier, you push the slick, cold metal bar in front of you and — click — you’re suddenly through to the other side? Well, that’s what it was like, for me. Before, and After.
On one side of my life, the past side of my life, I had been an ordinary, happy-go-lucky girl living an ordinary, happy-go-lucky life in Provincetown, trying to please my teachers (sometimes), squabbling with my brothers and having fun with my friends, hanging out in my turret-room, teaching myself the guitar, sitting down for meals with my family, shopping for clothes, listening to music, texting and I-M-ing and all that stuff. I was content, I suppose: I just took it all for granted. I didn’t know any better.
And then this thing happened — click — I passed through that turnstile, and found myself in a whole other world, living a very, very different life, and experiencing a very, very different kind of happiness. (Thinking about that happiness now really hurt. It felt like two fists pressing on my chest so that I could hardly breathe. How come the memory of being so happy can make you feel so bad?)
Then, a year later, I was forced to go back again — click, back through the turnstile — and, even though it was all as it had been before, everything had changed. Suddenly my life, my regular, ordinary life, struck me as weird, or maybe just different — just one possibility out of thousands of other possibilities, thousands of other ways to live on this planet.
Sometimes, in the middle of brushing my teeth, I’d freeze, and stare at the toothbrush. What was that thing in my hand? Why was I jiggling it that way inside my mouth, spitting out foam? Who was that creature in the mirror, the one with strands of straight brown hair on either side of her cheeks, with a nose and two nostril holes, and two furry arches above her eyes — what were eyebrows for, anyway?
You can make yourself crazy that way.
FOUR
It had started
innocently enough. At our school, the fifth grade traditionally went
on a whale watch, an outing I had been looking forward to ever since
I could remember. I knew more about whales than anyone else in my
class. Even as a little girl I had always been obsessed with whales.
I read about them, I had a stuffed-animal collection of them, I wrote
reports about them for school. And I often dreamed about them.
I remember how excited I was the morning of the whale watch, three years ago. I had this strange feeling bubbling up in the pit of my stomach that something important was going to happen.
Once we were out at sea, Mr. Peake, our teacher, told us we’d have to be patient, and for a long time we didn’t see anything except gulls. But then, suddenly, the most amazing thing happened.
The sea seemed to come alive!
From one moment to the next, we were surrounded by a great ring of spouting, whooshing, grey and black bodies — hundreds of them. As far as the eye could see. Even the boat’s crew had never seen so many whales all in one place. The whales were pressing in on the boat, as if they wouldn’t let us pass. All the other kids and adults on board were scared, but I remember just feeling excited. I felt an immediate affinity with those great animals; I thought they were trying to tell us something.
Then, while trying to take their picture, I leaned out too far… just as the boat was rammed from behind. My camera slipped out of my hand, I made a grab for it — and I fell overboard.
I thought it was an accident, but later I wasn’t so sure.
I’m told that the Coast Guard put on a huge search for me after I went down, but they found no trace of me anywhere. I had vanished without a trace. In the end they’d had to give up and call off the search. Everybody assumed that I had drowned.
But I didn’t drown.
Right after hitting the water, I was transformed. I blew up into this huge whale. I don’t know how it happened. It just did. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true. In a matter of seconds, I turned from an eighty-pound girl into a forty-thousand-pound humpback whale!
Compared to the other whales, I wasn’t even that big. I wasn’t full grown, of course. Some of them were twice as big as me.
But the most amazing thing was that the whales had been expecting me. They had known I was coming. They said I was a Chosen One — that’s a human who is destined to come to them. It was foretold in their Song, they said.
Once I got over my bewilderment — how could something like this ever happen? — I decided to make the best of it. I had no other choice.
I lived with my whale family — my pod — for one whole summer and one whole winter. I tagged along when they migrated up north to feed and stock up on blubber, and then I swam with them all the way south, to the place the whales call Home, where they mate and breed. They taught me their language, their ways, and their history. I learned to be resourceful in ways I had never dreamed of, and even though I did sometimes miss my family and friends back on land, I grew closer and closer to the whales who were now my family. I loved my life out there in the vastness of the ocean. I can’t even begin to describe what it meant to me, being accepted by the whales, and learning all about their awesome way of life. I even found out the significance of their Song.
But then I had a close call. On our return journey north we were attacked, first by a whaling ship and then by sharks. I managed to stop the whaling ship by jamming a wooden boom into the rudder, but my tail was badly injured in the process. The wound became infected, and the elders decided that the only way to save my life was to send me back to dry land, where I could be treated by human doctors, in a hospital. I didn’t want to go, but they insisted; they said I would die if I stayed.
So in the end I had no choice. I beached myself and – lo and behold — I turned back into a girl. The whole thing sounds incredible, I know, but it really happened.
At first, once my leg was healed, I was kind of happy to be home. I had missed my family, and they were so overjoyed to have me back. But it wasn’t long before I started being desperately homesick for my other family — Onijonah, my whale guardian, and Mistenbel, her baby, and most of all Jessaloup, the coolest young whale you’ll ever meet. So much cooler than any of the boys at our school.
And the worst thing was that I had to lie to everyone about what happened to me after I fell overboard. I told them that I’d been washed up on some desert island, and survived like Robinson Crusoe. I told them that in the end I had made myself a raft that brought me home. I thought people would think I was completely cuckoo if I told them that I had turned into a whale. I mean, who wants to end up in an insane asylum?
So here I was, with my big secret, pretending to be “normal”. Whatever that meant.
FIVE
When I got home
from school, my mother looked up from her computer at the desk in the
kitchen and asked me, as always, how my day had gone. I shrugged.
“OK, I guess.”
“Are you sure? I had a call from one of your teachers — Mrs. Stiglitz? She wants to have a conference with Dad and me before school is out —”
I let out a groan. “I’m still getting A’s and B’s, I don’t see why…”
“But Isabel, she’s not the only one who is concerned about you. You seem to be in this dream world lately, walking around like a zombie. And school’s almost out, and you haven’t made any plans for the summer yet, have you.”
“Whatever,” I said.
“You know your dad and I expect you to find a job. You can’t just hang around here all summer.”
“I know,” I said.
“Is something up? Can’t you tell me what’s wrong? Are things still OK between you and Tom?”
I sighed. My mother was always probing, always trying to get me to talk. I remember when I used to tell her everything. But it was getting harder and harder for me to do so. I hadn’t even told her about breaking up with Tom. I didn’t think she would understand what I was going through, and I didn’t want to have to deal with her questions.
My brother Jacob came storming in just at that moment, cutting the interrogation short. He was waving his cell phone in the air. “Joey just called me. Everyone’s up at Race Point Beach. There’s a stranded whale…”
Suddenly there was such a banging in my chest that I thought I was going to pass out.
“A… WHAT?” I cried.
“A whale. Beached itself. Gotta check it out, dude.”
“Wait! It could be dangerous —” my mother began. Jacob, heading for the door, told her not to worry. “It’s fine, Mom. There’s a whole crowd there already. I’ll be careful.” His booming voice sounded so confident, so like Dad’s, that she caved in immediately with a weak, “Well, if you’re sure…” If it had been me asking, she would have put up a huge fuss. She hated to let me out of her sight these days.
“Mom!” I cried. “I’m going too!”
“Isabel, I’d rather you stayed here. You know we don’t like you going near the… I’d rather you didn’t go to the beach.”
“That’s so not fair! Why won’t you let me go? If he’s allowed to go, then I should be allowed to go too! What is wrong with me going to the beach?”
My mother hesitated, as if she was about to explain something. But she didn’t. She looked at me guiltily. Then she said, “Well, all right then, I guess. Go. But don’t go in the ocean, and don’t go anywhere near the whale, you could get crushed. And I want you both back in time for dinner. Understand? Jacob — keep an eye on your sister!” she shouted, pushing open the screen door.
“Wait, Jacob!” I yelled. I grabbed my backpack that happened to have my bathing suit in it, squeezed past her in the doorway and ran down the steps. “Wait for me, I’m coming too!”
“Sure you are,” he said. “Is that how you ask?”
Jacob was a senior, and he had a car. At fourteen going on fifteen, I wasn’t old enough yet to drive. That was why I had to suck up to him whenever I needed a ride. But I wasn’t in a mood to go, you know, all p-pretty-please…? I jumped in the passenger seat of his Jeep.
“You’ll have to get in the back. We’ve got to pick up Stephanie first.”
I wasn’t in the mood to argue either, especially when it came to his darling girlfriend Stephanie. I dived into the back, my mind racing. Which whale? Was it one I knew? What if he or she was dead, or dying? I had this bad, really bad feeling churning in my stomach.
“Did Joey say what kind of whale it was?” I asked.
“He didn’t know, but he did say it’s much bigger than the pilot whales that beached themselves a couple of years ago. It’s probably a humpback, from his description.”
At Stephanie’s house we had to wait at least five minutes for Jacob’s girlfriend to make an appearance. I was going out of my mind. I thought I might have to puke. “Come on, hurry up, Stephanie!” I yelled.
“Stop banging the back of my seat,” Jacob said.
“I’m just changing into my suit,” I told him. “Don’t look.”
“You’re not supposed to go in the ocean,” he reminded me.
“I know. But that’s so unfair, you’ve said so yourself!” I complained, wriggling into my bathing suit and then putting my sweat pants and hoodie back on. It wasn’t exactly a sweltering day.
“Yeah, I know they’re being a bit unreasonable about it. You’re a good swimmer, I’ll give you that, but hey…”
I looked around. My neck felt stiff and tense. Still no sign of Stephanie. “Can’t we go now?”
“We’ll get there when we get there,” he said.
“Oh yeah? What if we’re too late?” I snapped.
“If the whale really got itself stuck high and dry, it’s going to be there for a good long time,” he said condescendingly, suddenly the big expert on marine life. “It’s almost impossible to get them to turn round and swim back out to sea. They’re too dumb to find their way back.”
I was fuming, but kept my mouth shut. I remembered all too well what it felt like, being beached. It had happened to me. Like drowning in the dry sand, suffocating under your own weight. Like being forced to lie on a bed of a gazillion sharp nails.
Stephanie finally came sashaying out of her house. She was wearing a spaghetti-strap top and shorts, and gobs of makeup.
“OK, let’s go!” I said.
Stephanie ignored me. “We have to pick up Jenny first,” she told my brother. “She wants to come too. And let’s stop for a sandwich, I’m hungry.”
“Oh, great!” I yelled. “Let me off here, in that case. I’ll just get there myself!”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Jacob stopped at the corner of our street and I jumped out. I raced back to my house, darted into the shed and pulled out my bike. Pedaling down the street as hard as I could, I headed for Race Point beach, moaning, “Please — please — please — don’t let me get there too late…”
SIX
Almost fifteen
minutes later, my lungs bursting and my legs burning, I pulled up to
the beach parking lot. I flung my bike on the ground, kicked off my
shoes and sprinted barefoot along the path through the dunes. I saw
people standing in a group down by the water line, scratching their
heads, pointing. They were peering at a large dark object partially
sticking up out of the water.
A very large object.
A large, immobile, torpedo-shaped object with scalloped, white-tipped flippers that, rocked by the waves, bobbed around a little on the surface…
I’d have recognized those flippers anywhere. My legs buckled under me. I landed on the sand with a hard plop.
For a moment I didn’t know where I was.
I blinked. I was sitting on the sand, my legs sprawled out in front of me. Down the beach, the crowd of gaping bystanders hadn’t noticed me. I didn’t know if it was from the wind or the shock, but I felt tears drying on either side of my cheeks, tickling my earlobes. I scrambled to my feet. The old scar on my right leg pulling and throbbing, I started loping awkwardly down the beach, down to the water.
As I drew closer, I knew there was no mistake. It was Jessaloup, my best buddy. The awesomest, most athletic whale in our pod of humpbacks, or, as they prefer to call themselves, Sirens: The Singing Ones. Jessaloup, the whale I had never stopped thinking about, not a single day since I’d found myself back on dry land, three terribly long years ago. It was Jessaloup, and he was hurt, he was in trouble, he was dying…
“Hey, watch out there Miss — Where you goin’? Don’t you go no closer!” A man in a baseball cap held out his arms to stop me from wading into the water. “It’s dangerous!”
My anxiety turned to rage — fury at this man who knew nothing, nothing, nothing at all. I was so angry that I couldn’t get any words out. I just elbowed him out of my way and splashed past him as if I hadn’t heard him.
There he was – Jessaloup, lying flat in the surf. Waves crashed over his back, and with every surge, his flippers rocked up and down like two great inflatable pool toys. At least he was alive — a weak puff of spray came bubbling out of his blowholes every thirty seconds or so. The rest of him wasn’t moving at all — his jaw, his pleated belly, were stuck in the sand; I saw that he was pinned to the bottom by the undertow. I waded over to his right side, reached out my hand, and touched him. His great eye, just below the water line, was closed.
“Jessaloup,” I whispered.
The eye opened, and gazed at me.
“It’s me, Isabel. I’m here.”
The eye blinked. Then again.
“It’s me, Jessaloup. Say something!”
I heard a faint click-rumble, somewhere deep inside.
He knew.
“Oh, Jessaloup, what are you doing here!” I groaned. “What were you thinking?”
SEVEN
There must be a
reason, I thought to myself wildly. Jessaloup would never
accidentally beach himself. Jessaloup would never get himself into a
fix like this… Was it because of me?
Had he missed me as much as I’d missed him?
I touched him — gently, I didn’t want to put any more pressure on him. I stretched my arm up to stroke his head. The part I could reach felt dry. Too dry. I cupped my hands and started splashing seawater over him, taking care to avoid his blowholes.
I sensed a commotion behind me. I turned to look at the beach. The crowd was gesturing at me wildly. Then I saw that one of the desperately waving people was Jacob, and he was splashing through the surf toward me. In less than ten seconds he was at my elbow. Before I could explain, he tackled me, and, grabbing my arm in a viselike grip, hauled me back onto the beach. I fought back, but he was too strong for me.
“Stop!” I yelled, trying to kick at his legs. “Stop it, Jacob! Let me go!”
“What are you doing?” Jacob hissed. “Didn’t you hear what Mom said? It’s dangerous to get so close! That thing could roll over on top of you, it could kill you with a flip of its tail!”
“No! Get off me, you jerk! Let me go!”
Next thing I knew I was on my back on the sand looking up at him, gasping for breath. He had my wrists pinned above my head and was holding down my legs with his knee. We’d been rolling around in the sand, fighting like little kids.
Jacob backed off, sat back on his haunches and then got to his feet. “Cut it out, stupid. You’re making a complete ass of yourself!”
“Who, me? I was just…” I sobbed. “You don’t understand…” I gave up, helpless. I didn’t even know where to begin explaining to him what he didn’t understand.
The crowd had turned its back on the sea in order to stare at the two of us. Scrubbing at my tears, I struggled to my feet, suddenly horribly self-conscious. Stephanie and Jenny had their hands over their mouths, stifling giggles. I smiled sheepishly at them, slapping the sand off my shorts.
Just then a huge wave crashed way up onto the beach where we were standing; I tottered, nearly losing my footing again. The tide was coming in.
There was a shout.
“Hey — Look! What the…? Where’d he go?” someone was yelling.
All heads swiveled back to the water. Out there, where a minute ago everyone had clearly seen the broad back of a massive whale, there was nothing but… sea. Waves. Horizon.
“Where did it go? It’s gone!” people were yelling. “The whale’s swum off!”
“Must have been that big wave just now,” said the man who had tried to stop me from getting close. He lifted his baseball cap to scratch the bald spot on the top of his head. “That’s what did it. Tide coming in. Must have given it just enough of a cushion to let it swim away.”
“Where is it? Can you still see it anywhere?” squealed Stephanie, hanging on to Jacob’s shoulder.
Everyone was staring at the water, hoping to see a tail, a spout, somewhere out there.
Finally Jacob shrugged. “It’s gone. Too bad. Well, good for the whale, I say. Let’s hope it’s learned its lesson, not to come in so close again.”
My heart was beating so wildly in my chest that I was sure everyone could tell. I was about to explode. Except that no one was looking my way. No one was looking in the direction I was looking in. No one saw what I saw.
Out there, just beyond the crashing surf, there was something in the waves. Or, rather, someone. A boy. Just some kid out for a swim; nothing out of the ordinary. None of the people on the beach paid any attention.
Except for me. Because there was something very familiar about that dark head bobbing in the waves.
The crowd started to disperse. “Come on, Steph, Jenny,” said Jacob. “Let’s go. Nothing to see here anymore. You coming, Izza?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry I was a little rough with you, just now,” my brother said. “I was only trying to protect you…”
“I know. It’s OK, don’t worry. You guys go on ahead. I think I’ll stay for a while. I feel like going for a swim,” I said as nonchalantly as I could.
“What, are you crazy? It’s not even July yet! The water’s too cold!” Jenny squealed.
“She doesn’t mind, do you, Izz?” Jacob said, kind of proudly. “My sister’s like those polar-bear club nut jobs. She’ll swim in any kind of weather. Although she’s not supposed to.”
“What do you mean, she’s not supposed to?” asked Jenny.
“My parents have this thing about Isabel going near the water,” Jacob explained. “They’re kind of paranoid about it.”
“But why?” said Jenny. “I mean, if she’s such a good swimmer?”
Jacob shrugged. “Just some weird notion my parents have.”
“Isabel almost drowned once, when she went on a whale watch with her class,” Stephanie informed Jenny. “Before you moved here, Jen.”
“That explains it,” said Jen.
“Yeah,” said Jacob.
I had already wriggled out of my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the sand. “Don’t tell on me, all right?” I begged.
“Do I ever? See you at home then. Don’t be late, you’ll get me in trouble. You know Mom will kill me if she finds out.”
“I won’t say anything if you don’t,” I said.
“Deal.” My brother, Stephanie and Jenny started trudging back to the parking lot with the rest of the crowd.
I ran into the surf. The cold water snapped at my skin like a stack of rubber bands. In less than a minute I was within a few feet of the boy – the human boy — bobbing up and down in the waves.
“Jessaloup?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
EIGHT
He didn’t answer.
But I knew it was him. The eyes. I’d have known those large,
wide-set eyes anywhere. They were looking a bit panicky.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of the water.”
His eyes grew even wider.
I took hold of his arm, and pulled. “Come on. Being on land won’t hurt, I promise. Just follow me.”
I turned toward shore and caught a wave, keeping a grip on his arm. His human arm! When we hit the gravel strip I stumbled to my feet, but he stayed in the surf, on his stomach, the waves lapping over him.
“It’s OK,” I shouted at him. “You’re not stuck. Try it. You can get out.”
He started pushing himself up on his arms, and it suddenly occurred to me that he was naked.
“Oh — wait,” I yelled. “Stay there. I’ll get you some clothes.” I ran back to where I had left my sweats, and returned to Jessaloup with them. “Here,” I said, and then, when I saw that he still didn’t understand, I showed him, by putting my right leg into one pant leg, and then the left. Then I pulled them off again. “Now you try,” I told him.
He sat up, with his back to me, and tried to pull on the pants. After an awkward struggle he managed to get them on, although they were much too short on him.
I shook my head. I was suddenly feeling very short of breath, and I felt tears springing into my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. Was this really happening? Jessaloup, here beside me? My head was spinning…
A big wave came skidding sideways up toward where we were sitting, splashed around our feet and ankles, then slid back into the thirsty sand.
“Come on,” I said, hooking my arms under his armpits from behind, because I realized he didn’t know how to walk. “This way.” I started dragging him backwards up the beach, onto dry sand. I couldn’t make it more than a few feet, though, because he was pretty heavy.
I sprawled in the sand next to him. “Say something!”
He opened his mouth. A low, growling noise came out.
I was going to have to teach him everything.
NINE
When I had first
turned into a whale, I too had had to learn everything from scratch—
how to swim, how to dive, how to navigate, how to feed, even how to
sleep so as not to drown. Because even whales can drown, if they
don’t come up for air. They put me in a class with the yearlings.
It was like being sent back to kindergarten. It was humiliating. So I
knew just how he felt.
“Just nod your head — like this — if you understand me. OK?”
Jessaloup nodded his head. But, I suddenly thought, panicked, what if he’s just copying me like a parrot, and he doesn’t really know what I’m saying?
“Do you know that I’m Isabel?” I asked.
He nodded. And again, vehemently.
I turned my head away, because I didn’t want him to see the tears that I felt prickling my eyes again.
I took a deep breath and started again. “Do you understand what’s happened to you?”
Another nod. I felt his hand on my arm. I gazed down at it. His hand was warm. His skin was dark, almost as dark as his whale skin, but the palm of his hand was almost white, like his flippers and flukes. Resting my cheek on my knees, I peeked sideways at his face. It was different — a boy’s face. A serious face. A handsome face, I couldn’t help noticing — but what did I expect? Now that he was a boy, not a whale, he looked different, of course, yet everything about him was familiar to me. Even the matted black hair, which fell in wet dreadlocks in his face. Everything about him was just — Jessaloup. The way I remembered him. Especially his eyes, clear as sea glass…
He was waving his hand at me. His other hand, the left one. He was shaking it, wanting me to look.
I stared at it in shock. It was — oh no! Not a hand. Not a human hand, anyway. The long, knobby fingers, except for the thumb, were webbed and fused together at the tips. I touched it gingerly. It felt just like his other hand, only it looked like a flipper. The tip of Jessaloup’s pectoral fin. Only a lot smaller.
He stared at it ruefully. “Oh dear,” I said.
He started poking it with his other, normal hand.
“Yes, I see it. But it’s no big deal, Jessaloup. It hardly shows.”
He hung his head.
“It’s OK, really,” I comforted him. “We’ll make it so no one will notice.”
A seagull sailed down very close to us, and Jessaloup, shaking his hair out of his eyes, snapped his jaw at it — the way he would have if a bird came and bothered us while we were group-feeding, gulping down herring in the icy seas. I shook myself. A hand that wasn’t a hand but a fin was the least of my worries. I had to civilize him!
“OK — first we’ve got to get you to walk. I’ll show you. OK?”
Again he nodded his head, more slowly this time.
“Look at me. I’m getting up now.”
I brought my heels in close, planted my hands in the sand on either side of me, and pushed myself up slowly, first in a crouch, to find my balance, then unfolding myself until I was standing upright. “Do you think you can do that?” I asked. I walked around behind him, and as he bent his knees and brought in his legs, I wrapped my arms through his armpits and around his chest. “Here, I’ll help you up. One — two — three!”
One heave, and he was on his feet. I kept my hands on his back, though, because I could feel him teetering backwards.
“No — wait — you’ve got to find your center of gravity. Not too far back, and not too far forward. Feel it?”
Jessaloup swayed, then steadied himself. Frowning, he nodded.
“OK…” Slowly I withdrew my arms, and moved around to face him, taking hold of his hands. “Now, try and take a step. Pick up your leg…”
He lifted his right leg, and nearly keeled over sideways. “Steady!” I murmured. He recovered, and put his leg down in front. “That’s it,” I said, “and now the other one.” He took another step. “Perfect!” I encouraged him, walking backwards and pulling him along. “See? You’re walking!”
I saw him frown and realized I was talking to him as if he was a little baby. But I couldn’t help feeling proud of him. He was taking his first steps, after all…
He pulled his hands free, and pushed me aside. Slowly, with exaggerated care, he lurched forward, his hands stretched out in front, lifting his knees unnecessarily high in the air. “You’re getting it!” I laughed. “You’re really getting it!” He looked like Frankenstein’s monster, swaying from side to side like that, but I didn’t tell him. I decided to save it for later, when it would be OK for us to tease each other the way we used to. I could tell he was a bit touchy right now. It couldn’t be much fun for him, having to take direction from me, the clueless girl-whale he used to call “Hump,” who three years ago had to be taught every little thing — how to dive, where to find the best krill and how to gather up your strength to leap clear of the waves.
TEN
After about ten
minutes of staggering up and down the beach, Jessaloup was beginning
to get the hang of it, and his walking began to look more normal, his
arms swinging by his side like mine. Then I showed him how to run,
which was a whole new set of moves, something I’d never really
thought about before — how you have to bend your knees and push off
hard with the ball of your foot to get yourself going. After one
false start and falling flat on his face, he began to get it. It
wasn’t long before he was able to keep up with me.
“All right,” I panted, plopping down on the sand. “Let’s rest.” He sat down with a surprised look on his face, pointing to his open mouth, then at mine. I laughed. “Yeah, we’re breathing hard,” I explained, “because we’ve been running. When you’re human, you run out of breath much faster than when you’re a whale.” I took a deep, exaggerated breath, and he did the same. “Our lungs are smaller, I guess.” We sat there panting self-consciously for a while, slowly getting our breath back.
“Now,” I said, “you have to learn how to talk human. It’s a bit different from whale talk. Look. Watch me. The sound comes from up here, in your throat.” I took his hand and placed it against my throat. His fingers felt cool to my skin. I started getting this squirmy feeling…
Concentrate, Isabel!
“Aaaa…” I said. “Feel it?”
Nodding slowly, he put his hand against his own throat and opened his mouth. “Aaarrr..” he said.
“Great!” I said.
“Aaarrhhh!” he rattled. “Rrraaarrhh!”
“OK,” I giggled, “that’s good, but if you want to be understood, you have to learn to make different sounds, to form words.”
He frowned at me, then opened his mouth again. “Ehhhrrrr…” he said solemnly.
It’s harder than you think, teaching someone to talk. Especially if you haven’t ever really given it any thought before. I suppose I did learn to talk once, but it was so long ago that I can’t remember how I did it. At least I didn’t have to teach him the sense of the words, since he seemed to understand everything I said. He just didn’t know how to make the sounds. First I taught him the vowels — a, e, i, o and u. He was good at those, and quickly got the hang of them. Then I showed him how to use his tongue, the roof of his mouth and his lips to form the hard, soft or clipped sounds — the consonants. Those were harder for him to master.
“Buh,” I prompted him. “Ccc. Duh.… Now you.”
He nodded and repeated the sounds. We went through the whole alphabet that way, with only a couple of mishaps. “Don’t spit!” I laughed, wiping my face. Then I showed him how to string the sounds together to form the words. “Water,” I said. “Waves. Whale. Beach. Sand.”
For a few seconds he was silent, as if thinking it over. Then he opened his mouth experimentally.
“Iz-zabel,” he said.
It was his very first word.
ELEVEN
Teaching Jessaloup
to walk and talk had taken up the whole afternoon, and I suddenly
realized that the sun was low in the sky.
“It’s getting late,” I said anxiously. “I’ve got to think about getting home.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Home?”
“Where I live,” I explained quickly. The word “home” means something quite different in whale-speech, of course. To the whales it’s the place they migrate to once a year, down south, in the tropics, where they go to relax and choose a mate, and where they have their babies. “With my family. My pod. In a — house.” I pointed to the roofline of a group of oceanfront houses in the distance. “Like one of those.” When I had been a whale, Jessaloup and his cousins had been curious about our way of life here on land, and I’d learned that it isn’t easy to describe the stuff you’ve always taken for granted, like living in a house, watching TV or needing money to pay for things you want to buy.
“House,” he said. “Home?”
“Yes,” I explained, “Home is inside a house.”
“Why?” he said. “Why” was one of the first words I’d taught him, and he was making good use of it.
“Because — that’s where we live,” I said lamely. “And also,” I realized, “it’s to keep us safe from… from wild animals and bugs, and burglars and storms, and…” OMG. I jumped to my feet, slapping the sand off my legs. “We’ve got to find you a place to spend the night, Jessaloup!”
“Why?” he said, patting the sand on either side of him.
“No, no, not here! You can’t stay here, you’re human now, you’ll be miserable if you stay out here all night long without a tent or a sleeping bag or anything! And what if some cop came and asked you what you were doing—”
He pointed at the water with his flipper. “Then there.”
“You can’t sleep in the sea, you’ll drown! And besides, without your whale-blubber, it’ll be much too cold for you tonight. Believe me, you won’t like it. It won’t feel the way you’re used to. You’ll freeze. You can die of hypothermia.” My mind was bouncing around inside my skull, thinking of all the possibilities. Take him home with me? No, I couldn’t do that, not now — not yet. How was I going to explain it if I brought home a total stranger with a deformed hand who could barely speak English? What would I tell them if they asked me where he was from, what he was doing here? A motel? No — I didn’t have a credit card, where would I get the money? And besides, wouldn’t it look suspicious, a kid all by himself, without any luggage?
It was going to take some time to work it all out, and to make Jessaloup a bit more… presentable. Polish him up a bit. The fact was, he was still a little too rough around the edges, a little too weird. There was a whole lot more I was going to have to teach him about acting like a real boy before I could present him to my family or anyone else.
I suddenly remembered the abandoned fisherman’s shack down by the old wharf, where my dad kept his old lobster boat. “Come on!” I said. “I know where you can spend the night. Let’s go!” I grabbed his hand and pulled him up, flinging my backpack over my shoulder. Stumbling up the beach hand in hand, I felt excited, but also scared. What had I got myself into? And yet my dream had come true… seeing Jessaloup again — wasn’t that what I’d been wishing for, ever since I had left my ocean life and gone back to living on land? But never in my wildest dreams had I ever imagined this — that Jessaloup would come here, beach himself and turn into a boy!
I peeked sideways at him. He was frowning, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other in the spongy sand. Did he still like me? Or was I being too bossy, was it too hard for him, being human; was he disappointed, did he wish he had never left the ocean?