The Secrets of the Sea - The Fine Art of Surfacing
Lost in the opportunity I hadn't taken time to see where we were or what else was going on. I didn't really care about anything. Even the hunger seemed little more than a burden.
Finding myself pregnant after all that happened seemed unreal. A scene badly written in which I was forced to play. But I was ready for a baby. It would have been the beginning of my family, my life. Instead it was the end of everything.
Everything is over.
It's not that I feel bad now. I just don't feel anything. I don't even hate them for what they did. I'll never understand what's happened, but it's the future that's become the greater mystery. I'm in a fog. In dirty water. I know others look out into the future and see everything their imagination can dream of. Anything they can hope for the future can hold. Add to that their Mom's dreams, and their family's. It's all the future you could fathom. When I look out to the future it's black and silent, and alone. It's made the time and the events of the last two years pile up. It's like it's all happened at once in the same dark silent meaningless place as the future.
My baby is gone.
And then, at the Gathering, I heard a sound.
The sounds at the surface of the sea are so different than the deep.
In the deep sea the sounds rumble my body. I can feel the ocean. The things I hear happen inside of me. And the darkness changes things too. It makes you notice the little things. In the deep is where the sounds of our thoughts get loud. The past is down there with all its voices. It waits for me along with the fear – the fear of the future, and fights. I'd never go back again if I didn't have to but... food.
Lots of whales go deep and never come back. By the time you're old enough to remember you've known one or heard the story. The mystery. It's the nature of it. Families can never really know what happened. I 've thought about it. I know even in our deepest dives we're nowhere near the ocean's bottom. We don't know what's down there. Yet eventually, that's where everything goes. Everything dies. Still the light beyond the surface above attracts me. That's where I wanted them to put baby. I take another deep breath. And the air when it fills my lungs carries me always upward. Somehow all the forces balance. And I'm caught between.
I wish the sadness of the deep would suffocate me too. But I keep going to the surface. I keep taking another breath.
At the surface of the sea where the wind and waves roar, that's where the world seems biggest. The sounds are endless. They are near and far. But the sound is outside of me it's not me. No sounds are more entertaining and interesting than the sea surface.
When I want to stop thinking; when I want the past days to stop pounding on my mind; when I want the future to stop scaring me; I just listen.
At first I just hear the regular things: the wind and waves roar, the water rushes around my body. But there's more layers and layers of sound. The more I listen the farther away I can hear. Sounds unnoticed a moment before can sing and before I know it the whole of the ocean is an orchestra of sound and many miles of passed where I've just danced along to the long slow song of the sea. The rhythm of my breath keeps time with the ocean. Breaking the surface creates a beat. Everywhere we go the songs are different. There are some I long to hear again and again, and others that remind me of home. I like the songs that feel free and fun. I spent the days of my youth dancing to the music of the sea. It's the only way my memories would leave me be. Now, there's only silence except for...
At the Gathering I took my breath and I listened.
The first thing I really heard was the sound of PONTUS voice. How do we know when a voice is really trying to reach us? When someone is working to cross the sea between us? I don't know. But I knew I could hear PONTUS. He was smart. I don't know how I knew he was smart. He hardly said anything and what he said barely made sense. But it fit into the song of the sea and I knew he was speaking only to me.
When I took time to look at him PONTUS was average in almost every way for a whale of his age, they're all big, he was weary in ways, but somehow he was still young, like he was just getting comfortable with himself, like he was still learning, just figuring things out. In some ways I felt older than him though I was only about half his age. PONTUS had an unusually large fin on his back that swept forward. It made him look like he was leaning in to everything he did. It made him seem childlike and a little awkward but it always gave the impression that something was about to happen. It was smooth though and all black. Almost unusually average – no white markings to make him special or memorable. It was very different from mine, which is – was – perfectly shaped with a white mark on front and now scarred with a gash on back from the dark days.
I don't know if PONTUS heard the song of the sea as I did but after the gathering we danced out for days full of herring and feeling safe to be near the others. We didn't really talk as I thought he would. He left me to my thoughts. At first I just went as far as I could still hear my family in the fjord. I knew they would be relieved that I was moving, that I was doing something and that would overcome any worries they had. After a while though I was lost in the music and we were far up the twisted coast.
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As the days passed things got worse in my head. As the fog lifted I wished it would come back. It revealed a turmoil like I've never known, even with everything that went before. I never dared to sleep. No dream would be good. I just kept visualizing what happened over and over. I felt sharp spasms of grief more than pain and attacks of panic. The more I thought about it, the more the world lost it's meaning. The more everything seemed like a burden.
I started more than once to speak to PONTUS about what happened.
I couldn't.
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The Shark
With the ocean music playing loud on the windiest of days at the surface I raced out far ahead of PONTUS into the clear sea. I was surprised to look up and see where a sea lion, nearly 1,000 pounds was lingering near the surface above a tall kelp forest.
Food.
He was big. The first food I'd seen since the Gathering. For the first time in a long time I was hungry. I knew what to do and decided almost without thinking. I strike the sea lion hard and fast, pushing him to the surface. I learned this trick from my mother. As both of us break the rough water I pivot and bring my tail down on the sea lion - over 15 tons of force directly on the animal's head, which is crushed instantly. The sea and air fill with blood juice and spray as I turn to get the first taste. It only takes a minute and I hear the birds all gathering in to join this feast. The music plays louder.
Lost in the opportunity I hadn't taken time to see where we were or what else was going on. I didn't really care about anything. Even the hunger seemed little more than a burden. At least the awesome ocean music was still a loud distorted wall around me.
I didn't circle. The circling and worrying of some hunters always bored me, now even more so, and it makes them seem wicked thinking so much about what they're doing, what they're about to do, but there's a reason to worry. Anything can happen from any direction in the sea. "An attacking animal is a vulnerable animal." my grandmother used to say in her sing songing voice.
I didn't see the hungry Great White Shark lurking in the shadows of the kelp forest below. He was also contemplating the sea lion. Driven by his hunger he's the purest of hunters, but not noble, he took advantage of my distraction and the sea lion's dilemma to begin a circling attack. He used the blood and murk at the surface to hide his silent approach behind me.
Whether it was the shark's intention to attack me or just scavenge a bit of meat, I'll never know. I didn't hear anything. PONTUS had been silent. I had no idea where he was. From the corner of my eye a giant black shadow rockets across the sea at 65 Kilometres an hour (40 mph) creating a wave that enigmatically shrouds a clear view. The ocean is just a blur. But I knew it was a surface charge, one of a killer whale's greatest hunting tactics. The water streaming across PONTUS back gave the only impression of the speed of what was happening and his size. He was completely silent and nearly invisible in the water. The force of the huge shockwave created by the displaced water ahead of PONTUS knocks the shark on its side. PONTUS grabs the shark's soft underbelly. He's easily ten times the size of the shark.
Stunned, the shark has no way of escaping his jaws. The great white can be invisibly fast in short bursts. But not as fast as us. PONTUS, in a great killer whale move, something I'd never seen before, easily flips the shark on its back at the surface where the shark passes instantly into tonic immobility – alive, in pain for sure, but frozen still, unable to fight or even move. Calling loudly to me through the blood and confusion I heard PONTUS and was shaken from my mind, music and meal. I turned from my sea lion lunch and swam toward PONTUS mercilessly tearing at the shark; throwing pieces in the air in every direction. Sea birds begin to circle in the confusion and they are hit by flying bits of shark. It's a horror show of epic proportions and PONTUS is in his monstrous glory. He didn't want to eat the shark. In truth there's not much to eat on a shark; it's all armour and weapons, and there was plenty of sea lion for both of us and all the sea birds for 40 miles around. To show my appreciation, which I imagined he expected, I joined him and shredded the shark while he held it for me.
Even in the chaos it's noticeable how easy we are working together - cooperating, sharing, communicating movement. It was the best conversation I had with anyone in a long time. But still I didn't tell him what I knew of sharks like this and what they could do.
The smashing, grinding and breaking sounds reverberated into an echoing din. The image is a sea of blood punctuated by swirling parts of shark and sea lion. In the middle of it all there was one good part. Just below the shark's pectoral fin I tore out a large organ, the liver. The meat was so tasty and rich, tender and full of wonderful flavor. I was filled with guilt for enjoying it. It was all I could do to overcome my instinct to race away with the food. I stayed and shared it with PONTUS. He loved it. What a feeling to share such an experience and such food. I was proud. Proud of myself. And PONTUS epic battle. I'd never seen a great white taken before. Few animals end so easily. It was astonishing to me how PONTUS knew how to subdue as fierce a creature as there is in the sea. And for those violent moments I forgot.
As the sun set the wind calmed, and the blood finally darkened the sea to black. I left PONTUS to his thoughts, but I wondered what he was thinking, how he knew the things he knew - his point of view. – In the darkness of my thoughts I dove down a little deeper than I needed to and I found the shallow bottom littered by the MORMO and their steel. I moved a memory reminding me of what could have happened if he had been distracted by food like I was or hadn't been there near me in the sea. I just wasn't sure if it mattered.
Confronted by the grotesque shallow bottom I suddenly felt a frightening anger. The rumours and opinions. Who knows what they're saying about me back there by now. And how long will DOLOR and his wicked mother stay away? Who would have them back?
I may live. But I'll never go back. I can't tell PONTUS everything. But I can tell him we're leaving.