She ran over and climbed up beside him.

“You too!” He turned toward us.

We piled onto the rusty vehicle, all six of us, and drove back to the camp. The thudding sound of the tractor vibrated inside me.

To move like this, without any exertion . . . It was such a given, but yet something I’d never thought about before, back when I was driven and transported around all the time—by cars, buses, trains, and airplanes. I hadn’t needed any effort, any energy to move about. It had been so simple.

I took pleasure in sitting like this, carried along by the noisy engine. But the tractor didn’t hold out for long, just a few hundred meters. Then it ran out of electricity.

We left it behind, in almost the same place where we’d retrieved it, and had to walk the rest of the way to the camp. But we walked with light steps.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Signe

Chapter Twenty-Five

Signe

The fog lifts, the wind picks up, and I take hold of the sheet to unfurl the headsail. But something, a disturbance in the water, causes me to stop. The surface remains unbroken, but nonetheless there is something down there, far below me.

A sound, a loud sound, of rushing air. I whirl quickly around toward the port side and there it is: about fifty meters away from the boat a tall geyser is rising out of the water. The whale sings, has its own language, but the song can’t be heard up here, only this strange, almost mechanical sound of water gushing out of its blowhole.

The bluish-black back draws closer, gliding toward the boat. It is long, good Lord, so long, maybe twenty meters—twice as long as Blue. A finback whale, it must be a finback whale. The second-largest species on earth after the blue whale, found in all waters. I’ve seen whales before, but never one so large, never at such close range.

The body is an arc on the surface until it slides underwater again and is swallowed by darkness.

Where are you, where are you? Disappear now, swim calmly away from here.

But then it returns, just a few meters away from me, swimming alongside the boat. It must be a female, they grow the largest, maybe fifty tons, maybe sixty, compared to the Arietta’s meager 3.5 tons. A single flick of its enormous body and Blue will be destroyed. A mere flick and there’s nothing I can do—so huge, so heavy. It can hurt me if it wants, hurt the boat, place its back against the hull, capsize Blue, taking me along with it.