He nosed the canoe against the rocky bank, pushing forwards just hard enough to raise the bow a little and keep it in place on the rocks. Beneath him the salmon rolled and pushed to get into the mouth of the stream, and he leaned carefully over the side, held the spear’s point down in the water, and when a salmon presented itself, hesitating and holding for just an instant, Leif slashed down with the spear and took the fish just in back of the head.

It seemed to stiffen with shock and before it could start wriggling, he swung the fish up and over and inside the canoe. With a twist of the wooden shaft, he plucked the barbed point out of the fish, left it flopping, went back to peering over the side and quickly took another one.

At this time, and suddenly, their numbers grew rapidly, explosively, as if the fish were in a frantic panic. They were running so jammed together he could almost hit without aiming – like a carpet of live fish, some even slamming into the bottom of the canoe – and he took four more, silver sides flashing in the sun, before he heard the distinctive whoosh of an exhaling whale and turned to see he was all at once most decidedly not alone.

Killer whales. Again.

As before he was not sure of the number. Four or six, perhaps, and he couldn’t initially identify them. Just the same clean lines as they took air and he could see their beauty through the clear water. But finally, one rolled and when the dorsal fin moved past the rear of the canoe he saw the diagonal scar and knew it was the same one he had touched previously.

They had talked, had known each other, and Leif felt a brief pleasure after expecting never to see them again.

Only this time it was different. Vastly different. There was not the playful air about their coming. None of the rolling on the bottom rocks or trying to keep the young ones in line.

They were there to hunt, to kill, to eat, and they went about it with a calculating, practised – cold-blooded, savagely focused – force that came suddenly, as suddenly as the fish going into panic, and it was clear that nothing outside the hunt, the killing, the eating mattered. He had no time, half a moment, to make a startled sound and then it was as if Leif, the canoe, were not even there – were in fact only another obstacle to overcome and they promptly did just that and simply nosed and shouldered the canoe out of the way. They did it so abruptly, and roughly, that he nearly capsized, slid jaggedly across the water away from the rocky ledge and out where it was deeper, and still further out until he was well away from what they were doing.