Water was not really a place for humans, but Witka the whale hunter had courage. He had practiced holding his breath from childhood in preparation for this role. Only for this. He was born to it and his parents were unhappy about it. When he went beneath water, they stood in their clothing woven of sea grass and waited for him to surface. But they couldn’t hope away his destiny. He was born with a job set out for him and his life was already known to them. He wore white cloth that set him apart so the others would know and remember what and who he was. That way they would treat him well. He learned the songs and prayers. By the age of five he had dreamed the map of underwater mountains and valleys, the landscape of rock and kelp forests and the language of currents. He had an affinity for it. He saw it all. At night he dreamed of the way it changed from day to day. They were beautiful dreams and he loved the ocean world. “You should see the circle of shining fish,” he told his mother.

“Oh my,” was all she could say in return, creasing her embroidered handkerchief, wiping her eyes.

Later, as a man, he visited the world he dreamed. He traveled there. A person could always think of the old man in any way they wanted, but usually they saw him in their mind’s eye as the old whaler who went underneath the water, white hair flying in the currents, old dark face even more wrinkled from the salt water, the man who was a medical oddity, a human curiosity, a visionary, a hunter and carver, and a medicine man who could cure rheumatism and dizzy spells.

His knowledge of the ocean was so great that scientists came to question him. Scientists and anthropologists then wrote papers about what he told them. Doctors from as far away as Russia came to find out how he held his breath and stayed beneath water for as long as he did with no ill effects, how he could remain in a hibernating state without breathing. “He’s like those men in India who do yoga,” said one of them, thinking if they could learn it what a weapon it would make.

Once Witka remained for part of the time with an octopus. It was a larger one, a fifteen-footer all stretched out, Witka caressing the tentacles. Of course, he could have exaggerated. Who would ever know? The octopus, who had the gift of feeling its way into small places, searched out his pockets and took several coins. It then worked the wedding ring off his hand. That was how they knew what the octopus loved. Witka told them all about it, laughing, his missing tooth showing when he laughed. His left hand he held up for display, naked of the ring. “And not a single tentacle print did it leave!” he said.

All this was in the days when the women would sing the whales toward them. Witka’s wife, too, was a chosen one. That’s how they came to be matched. She was one of the whale-singers. As for whaling in those days, nothing except the women who sang the whales toward them was more serious than Witka’s knowledge of the sea. When he walked into the cold depths of the ocean, or slipped so carefully out of the canoe, he began in earnest a hunt for the whale. When Witka went into the ocean, everyone and everything on land was still. The town stopped living. No one labored. No one bought or sold. No one laughed or kissed. It was the unspoken rule. All they did was wait, the women singing, eerily, at ocean’s edge. They were solemn and spoke softly and they considered this the great act of a man who sacrificed for them. All they did was think of him out there in the sea and of the whales that would approach. For them. The people of the water. People of the whale.