The charcoal-rubbed houses had black openings and windows and it was a bleak scene. The people were mourning. They, too, had loved the boy who lived with them for so many years. He had been the future. Unlike the fast that had been observed on the other side of the great bay, they had been eating. They ate smoked fish to keep up their strength and their dugout canoes had been pulled far onto the sand, where they looked like dead fish turned on their side.

“It’s over,” an old man said, his clothes hanging as if on sticks. “But you, you are a strong woman. You fought, you love your people, and we thank you.” He patted her shoulder. “They say when a real whaler dies at sea he will become a great whale. Maybe Marco will travel on. Maybe he will return one day and feed his people.” He tried to sound hopeful, but Ruth saw that he was bent more than before. “When they are ready.”

Ruth touched his face and felt the unshaved roughness. “I was worried about you. I couldn’t see your houses from the other side.”

“We’re okay over here. But night is coming on.” Ruth could smell it, the fresh scent of darkness. “You must stay,” he said, breathing the same deepening air, the wind that had no name in English.

She merely nodded her agreement.

Inside a blackened house, a woman, Hali, made a bed for Ruth. She set about the task in a full skirt, her long hair down her back. Tule grass with soft-woven blankets over it. And Ruth, without even eating, fell asleep and cried all night without knowing it, tears falling from her eyes, running down her temples into her hair and the blankets.

“Look,” Hali said to the others. “She mourns in her sleep.”

The next morning, with damp hair, Ruth drank strong coffee. And then the old man gave her Marco’s things in a bag, some clothing, a canoe Marco had carved, stones he had gathered that were alive from the mountains. Ruth said, “Thank you.” She hugged each person lightly before she left. Some cried and patted her on the heart.

“Be careful on these waters,” said the woman with hair that looked like string.

“You know,” said the old man, Feather, who knew Marco’s skills well, “I can hardly think it was an accident. Marco knew the ocean. He was strong. He could swim forever.”

“I know.” Ruth looked into the water again, as if for her son.

“Mark my words. There’s going to be a drought. A wrong thing was done. Maybe more than one wrong thing. There will be a drought,” the old man warned Ruth. “Get ready for it. N’a sina.”

PART TWO

HE BUILDS THE FENCE

As predicted, the drought begins, but at first no one notices. Everyone is busy with their lives. Ruth has nets to set. People go to work and home, and Thomas has moved into Witka’s old gray house with the woodstove and the shelves with yellowed, patterned paper remaining from the 1930s and the kerosene lamp, the old Frigidaire. He had forgotten there was electricity and if he felt like it he could put in a light. He thinks how they used whale fat to see in the dark. The people say the whale always brings light. It enlightens. The whale is illumination. They have always meant this in the many meanings of the word.