Marco had a picture of his father, a man in the war, in the clothes of a soldier, the greens that didn’t really match any jungle. He’d seen these men on television at his grandmother’s. He had pictures of his father in his mind, pictures that didn’t fit this man.

How Marco wished he could snap his father open and see what might fall out.

But if he did he would be surprised to find that the room would fill with visions of fire, and a woman blown to pieces, not just one woman, but many. A little girl would fall out of him, his daughter, Lin, in the other country. His remembered and cherished childhood with Ruth. The days they loved in the green house by the river.

The meeting began. It was exactly as Marco thought. The few women arguing. The men implacable, like walls, their faces growing red, unchanging in their opinions, wanting the women to just say, Yes, sir.

But Marco had been the child listening to the stories during long nights, the one who went to the stone petroglyphs hidden in the rock world, the one of the whale who gave birth to the humans, the beginning of the octopus and other creatures of the sea.

At the meeting, Marco sat at the table in the center. His arms were powerful and strong. He listened to the other men and had his own thoughts.

There was so much darkness in the room. Light was swallowed by the lies and thoughts and hopes of what used to be that would never return.

The men were unmoved. It was decided still that they would hunt.

Come near me. Hear me. I am asking for you, whale.

Hold tight, old Wilma thought. You are only mortals, not at all as constant as the sea, as day and night.

More than one of the elders dreamed that night. Their territory seemed small by day, but when they were quiet or slept it was large and vast. Someone go tell the sea to keep its creatures away. They said this to Ruth in their dreams. Somehow she heard, and she stood outside singing, her hair blown across her face.

That night on his mother’s boat, Marco was awake listening to night birds, and remembering how when, as a boy, the people had come for him, and his mother had known they would.

By now the wind was howling outside, moving the dunes. A body of sand turned over.

HUNT

On the day of the whale hunt, the gray day, only three women had the courage to stand at the shore facing the ocean fog as it lifted. Far out was the roar of water, the sound of a storm beginning in the lead-colored sky. Their eyes closed, the women sent their hearts across the water, willing the whales not to come near land. Ruth was one of those women. Old Wilma was another. Delphine, the heavy, sweet-faced granddaughter of Wilma, was the third. Wilma, whose face could sag with sorrow or crinkle with happiness, was the daughter of treaty-signers, the daughter of one of the last true whalers, one of Witka’s crew. She had also been the keeper of the women’s songs and washing houses. She alone knew how to play one of their musical instruments, a metal hand instrument always painted red and sounding like the songs of seabirds. In fact, it spoke their language. Her granddaughter aspired to be like her grandmother and watched her closely, always, and practiced the sounds of the birds without even using the instrument.