And here was Mia, tromping through the nighttime woods with her father, hunting for mushrooms. Mist oozed through the bracken, moss-furred boulders and thick-waisted firs. Meteors strobed the sky. She told him about finding a hole—a big hole—but he didn’t listen. When she grew tired and whiny, Jack loaned her his phone. She perched on a stump and watched cat videos and played games. Until she heard something. A damp sound. Like tongues moving in mouths or worms twisting out of their tunnels. She set down the phone, hopped off the stump, and took a few steps. And then her foot wouldn’t move. She wondered if her shoe was caught by a root, but she couldn’t see through the mist swirling around her ankle. Then the earth opened up and swallowed her down.

There is a lurch and at first Nora thinks it’s in her mind before realizing she is lying on the floor of the boat’s cabin. Mia is kneeling beside her, and Jack is asking if she’s all right while reversing the throttle and saying he’s sorry but they hit something, they hit something big.

Out on the deck it is difficult to tell the difference between rain drizzle and salt spray. Dawn is coming, and the clouds pulping the horizon are a sick green. Her shoes slip in the damp and she returns to the cabin door and clutches its frame. She isn’t sure where they are, but with the black walls of forest all around them, she can tell they’re inland. She guesses the Salish Sea, if not past Port Townsend.

Jack usually saunters more than walks, but on the boat he moves with a steadier sense of confidence than she. He rushes over to the starboard and then the port side, leaning out over the water and saying, “Shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit.” The boat—its engine idling—begins to drift in the current. The yellow haze of the fog lights sparkle on the water.

A metal ladder leads to the gun turret. His feet ring out as he climbs up it, not answering her when she asks, “What? What is it? Did we hit a shoal?”

The boat rocks. The waves slap. A frond of salt water hisses across the deck. Finally his voice calls down from above. “Climb up and see.”

“I don’t want to climb up and see!”

Mom!

It’s not something Nora hears—it’s something she feels. She is being called with some urgency. Inside the cabin she finds Mia standing on her tiptoes, staring out the rain-speckled window at something visible over the bow. Nora joins her there.

“What is it?”

At first it is difficult to understand what she is looking at—maybe a black slab of rock jeweled with barnacles—and then it bobs and rolls over and she sees the white underbelly and understands. It is a whale. An orca.