The Whale Watch – Part 2: Tail Fluke

The whale came on the fourth day.

The sky had cleared in the night. The fjord lay flat and blue as slate, with a long pink glow along the horizon where the low sun hung. Snow gleamed on the peaks. The air was perfectly still. The little boat idled in the calm, engines murmuring, its passengers dozing on the benches.

Hana stood at the rail, in her orange suit, with her binoculars. Sverre stood beside her. Neither had spoken for an hour.

"There," she breathed.

A breath of mist rose from the dark water, fifty metres off the bow, a soft grey plume hanging in the cold air. Then, slowly, impossibly, a great shining black back rolled up out of the sea, as long as the boat, glistening. A tiny dorsal fin. A slow, rolling arch. Then the vast tail rose, dripping, a wide black wing marked with white, and hung in the light for a single endless moment before sliding into the deep.

Nobody breathed.

"Humpback," whispered Hana.

"Yes," said Sverre, hoarse.

"Did you see the fluke?"

"I saw."

"It's the one with the white marks. It's a known animal."

"Are you crying?"

"It's the wind."

"It is not the wind," said Sverre, with infinite gentleness.

She laughed, wiping her eyes. A second blow rose in the distance, and then a third. A pod. The passengers woke, shouting, scrambling for cameras. The skipper cut the engine. For an hour, the whales rolled and breathed round the boat, slow and glistening, in the pink light.

Afterwards, on the afterdeck, with the crowd still chattering and the whales gone, Hana sat on a crate with a mug of hot chocolate, shaking. Sverre sat beside her.

"I waited eight winters for a day like this," he said.

"I waited for three days."

"We waited together."

"Can I ask you something?" said Hana.

"Yes."

"May I kiss you, Sverre? It seems the right moment."

"Yes," he said, very softly. "And if you say stop, you must stay for the herring run."

"I'd stay for anything."

She kissed him, salty and cold-nosed, a gloved hand rising to his white-blond hair. He kissed her back with a slow, glad tenderness, tasting of chocolate and sea. The sun slid down in a blaze of rose and gold. The fjord lay still and bright.

When they parted, both of them were smiling.

"Green?" he asked.

"Green," said Hana. "Very green."

She stayed for the herring run. She stays for every one. The whale from the fourth day has a name now: Hana's Fluke. It has returned each winter.

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