She didn’t have the heart to tell this to her mother, but Marco knew. He heard it from one of the older people. And he came to be with his mother when they wrapped Hoist in blankets and gave him to the sea.

Ruth knew that someone had come out and boarded the Marco Polo while she slept, so quiet she never heard them, nor had the dog barked. Perhaps it was someone familiar. The boat seemed dirty to her now. She scrubbed it down. She hoped her father was watching over it. For the first time she was lonely. She cried as she wiped oil soap and water across the surface of everything. Worrying about her safety, Marco came to stay for a while, but nothing could fill the emptiness.

At her home Aurora discovered the thieves had taken the old photos. “Those are the most precious,” she told Ruth. They were photographs of the twenties, the old canoes, the people in their woven clothing and harpoons and spears, evergreen hats, shell necklaces. They were the flensers, whale-cutters, at work with their tools. Witka with his hair askew, and Aurora’s father with him.

For Ruth this was a revelation. “I think they want to know. They want to remember. It’s so the men can try to remember, try to do the whale hunt like they did in the old days.” She knew this without doubt. They were lost and needy and inside them all was a drive from the past they carried like DNA, a drive to return. She also knew there was another facet to the story. They’d been offered money for the whales. For the meat and fat. And their attempts were all wrong. They hadn’t even gone to the elders.

“Where’s your dog?” Aurora looked at her daughter. “Oh no. Not that, too. Oh, we should have kept silent and left them to their plans.”

Ruth continued her stand against them. She picketed meetings. She wrote letters. Even Thomas, she realized with her broken heart, only came home to strengthen his identity, to reach for something lost, to join the whaling crew. She stood against this man she had known all his life and always loved.

“What about this?” she said one night at a meeting. “The ones who saved them? What about our ancestors calling them spirit fish when the white men called them devils? What about the whalers who helped the ones that were stranded in the sudden ice farther north? They used everything in their power to save and free the whales.” She looked around. “And who here has the kind of relationship to the whales that our ancestors had? Who among us knows the songs and the correct way to bring in the whale? Who will prepare by fasting? Who will sew its mouth shut so it doesn’t sink to the bottom of the ocean? Which of you knows what our grandparents knew? We can’t jump into this because someone has made an under-the-table offer of money. We know this.” She looked at Dwight. Dimitri. “We’ve all heard about the offers. It’s no secret. You’ve been offered large amounts but we have to do things right, and look at us. Just look at us.”