He simply did not exist. No dreams, no memories, no anything of what life had been.

He lay in the bottom of the canoe unconscious, unknowing, for a time he could not even fathom. A day into night and then another day into night and floating, floating back and forth and around, caught in the moon-currents, the canoe a deathbed, where he would die, knew he would die, covered in his own filth, vomiting, finally, just where he lay. Too weak, too soft and weak even to raise up and vomit over the side.

Once his eyes opened briefly and the sun shone down on Little Carl, and Leif could see his greyness, see that the little boy’s ghost had gone over the bridge but he could do nothing. Could not move. His body racked with bone aches and deep pain, pushing his mind back down into the pit.

And no movement.

A blankness.

And in that, into his unconsciousness, there came the large sound of breathing. It came – though Leif did not know it – from next to the canoe as a pod of the black-and-white whales came near the boat and nudged it, played with it, pushed it back and forth. One and then another of the young ones rose up above the canoe and looked down on Leif and the body of Little Carl in open curiosity but did not find them very interesting, and when one of the mothers made the sound that called to them, they sank back down in the water and moved off.

Young whales, above all, love to play and the young ones did not see danger in the perfect toy – so light and quick to the nose-touch that it slid like a wooden feather on the water – and they were soon back at it, pushing the canoe back and forth across the surface. It was a game they loved, a kind of catch. They played it with a large fish or a small piece of wood, sometimes a small seal, which they’d throw and tail-slap back and forth to one another.

They nudge-pushed the canoe between them across open water, slipping it to and fro on the smooth surface until they came to a small inlet – there were, literally, thousands of such places – surrounded by trees. Here one of the mothers, fed up with their play, came among them, pushed the canoe onto the rocky little beach with a hard shove, and chased the young whales away before any of them could get hung up on the rocky shoreline. Getting stranded on a rock-strewn shore was a great danger for young ones who did not always understand their limitations. It could, and sometimes did, lead to a slow death and this time they caught the urgency in the mother’s command and listened and moved out of the inlet.

And the canoe sat.