Somewhere during the time that the sickness took him – he could not reason nor would he ever be sure how much time had passed – the sickness brought him down and down and down, mentally and physically, until he lay, almost pummelled, on his stomach in the mess that was in the bottom of the canoe.

With great effort he opened his eyes and raised his head slightly and found himself looking directly at the lifeless body of Little Carl. In his delirium he thought he had dreamed it all and was horrified to see it hadn’t been a dream, it was real, the little boy was dead.

Some . . . thing, he thought.

Some thing had to be done.

Something.

He tried to rise, to pick himself up in some fashion, but found he was stunningly weak. As if his muscles had become beaten and wounded rags hanging on sticks of bone.

Muster strength. Had to find it, some strength.

Another heave and this time up his arm went and over the side of the canoe. And he hung that way for a gasping breath. Then another. Elbow hooked over the gunwale.

Yet another heave upward and somehow he jerked, a forced, painful twist, and the front half of his body scrambled – almost on its own – to follow the arm over the side and his legs also followed as he rolled like a sack of loose dirt out of the canoe and onto the pebble rocks of the shoreline.

The canoe was only a short way from the water where the mother whale had pushed it – though he did not know of her effort. He wondered vaguely how the canoe had come to be shoved so far up on the shore. He rolled out of the canoe on the side away from the water and lay, catching his breath, then pulled himself in a sliding crawl around the stern and into the water.

He was covered in filth – dried blood and excrement and vomit – and the fresh-cold seawater closed cleanly, wonderfully around him as he lay in the shallows. He wiped his body down with his hands again and again, pushing the dirt away.

Pushing the sick away.

Until all he could feel was clean skin sliding under his palms.

Let the waters, he thought-chanted.

Let the mother waters take it all away.

Away.

Away.

Let the mother waters take it all away.

When at last he felt clean – and chilled, for the northern waters were always cold – he crawled back to the canoe and using it for a brace, a kind of low crutch, he pulled and forced himself to stand.

Still weak, weaving, he held the top edge of the canoe to steady himself.