Luce saw the same idea occur to Dorian; his brows lowered and his eyes flashed around, searching for a way out. There wasn’t one. Luce began wondering if she could possibly raise a wave big enough to carry the boat safely over the back of a whale, steady enough that Dorian wouldn’t be thrown out. But if the whale chose that moment to dive, lashing its enormous muscular flukes into the air, the boat would certainly be crushed and Dorian with it.

A hovering soprano call moved in the water, welling up from the shadowy green below. It was like whale song, but also, Luce instantly realized, utterly different. The black eye closest to her seemed to glow with recognition, and the long head leaned deeper into the sea. Suddenly Luce and Dorian sailed up on a huge billow of displaced water as the whale dipped away, and Luce’s whole body shook to the high pulse of its answering song.

The voice from the deep cried again, in a long, alluring vibrato. Nausicaa, Luce realized with amazed gratitude. Nausicaa was calling the whales away so that Luce could get Dorian out of there. And one by one the enormous bodies curved downward, sweeping away in dark arches, plunging like waterfalls. The boat lurched up rising slopes of water, and Luce dipped underneath, supporting the hull with both arms to stop Dorian from being flung overboard. The dim space around her began to brighten as the whales dove away, their huge shapes sailing below her like the shadows of clouds on a hillside. As soon as everything was calmer, Luce surfaced again. Dorian’s face shone with sweet amazement, and Luce felt a kind of joy as acute as grief. And then Dorian was pointing again, out behind her.

Thirty feet away from them one of the grays threw itself high above the surface, its whole streamlined form in one long balletic curve, fins sweeping by its sides. Sunlight sharp as shining wounds flashed in the ruffs of water flying from its tail. Then it curled in space, racing downward into the vanishing green of the deep.

14

Darkness

By late November the sun barely had the strength to heave itself in a low arc above the horizon. Even at midday the light looked bluish and tired. The endless, somnolent dusk set in by early afternoon and slowly fell into the yawning nights. It was hard not to get depressed, to feel starved for scraps of daylight. Dorian got used to meeting Luce after dusk, to watching the dim glow of her body parting the smoke-dark water. It was a beautiful sight but also lonely somehow. And it made his time with her seem even more remote from the rest of his life. The rooms of his school and house seemed like brightly lit boxes sealed to keep out the darkness where dangerous secrets leaped and swam.