“Let me try!” Rio said desperately. “Please let me try to find her!”

“How?” Marina asked, puzzled. “She’s too far away to hear, otherwise you’d have heard her by now. What’s changed?”

And then the answer came, as if it had been there all along. “Because I wasn’t listening with my heart.”

37

Listening

Rio closed his eyes and listened.

At first, there was nothing apart from the beating of his own heart, pitter-pattering in his chest. He hadn’t noticed how fast it was before. Jittering and skidding this way and that. Even though his eyes were closed, he could still feel Marina’s and Birch’s gazes upon him, and he shuffled awkwardly from one foot to the other.

He took a steadying breath and listened harder.

He heard the normal stuff. The creaks and groans of the boat, the drumming of the waves and the flapping of the flag.

And so, he dropped deeper.

To a place where there were things most humans never stopped to listen to. Had forgotten how to listen to.

He heard the creaks and moans not just of the Spyhopper—but of all the individually hand-crafted planks of wood that made up the hull, the towering oak trees they had come from, and even the rich, fertile soil from which they had been born.

He heard the sky—the whisper of the clouds scudding far overhead and the sacred silence of the blue space above them.

He heard the wind—caressing his face, whispering messages from far afield.

He heard the sea—not just lapping against the boat, but how it breathed in and out as if it were the lungs of the earth.

He heard inside the sea—the silvery sparkles of fish, the dolphins, the turtles, the sharks, and he heard the voices of each of them: curious, friendly, and often fearful.

He heard the animals at the bottom of the ocean—where mysterious creatures made noises no human ear had ever heard before.

Rio stretched himself to the farthest he could go. To a place where his heart was as open and as full and as alive as it had ever been.

Until finally, all that was left was him, the boat, and the soul of the earth.

It was there that Rio realized something remarkable.

The ocean wasn’t just a body of water—something that linked all the landmasses together. It was far more formidable than that. It breathed just like he breathed. It got angry just like he got angry. And sometimes it got sad, just like he got sad.

The ocean wasn’t separate to him. It was part of him.

And then he heard something else—something echoey, eerie, and beautiful.

The unmistakable sound of a whale.

Rio’s eyes snapped open, and to his surprise, the outside world didn’t look a single bit changed. But inside his chest, his heart was pumping and roaring and spurting with life.

“That way!” He pointed to the far horizon. “White Beak is over there.”