The tinny voice of a guide greets them through the speakers positioned around the boat. He walks them through the safety instructions, interrupting himself to point out a family of otters floating on their backs. Greta squints but can’t make out the shapes. Ben nudges her with his elbow and hands over a pair of binoculars.
“You’re so prepared,” she says, peering out at the sunbathing otters.
“I was a Boy Scout.”
“Of course you were.” She hands them back. “Have you ever seen one before?”
“A whale? Not up close.” He looks a little wistful. “I really hope we do. They seem impossible, don’t they? Something that big. That ancient. There’s something almost holy about them.”
Greta turns to face him. “How are you having trouble writing about Melville? You clearly love this stuff.”
“Well, it wasn’t all whales with him.”
“Want to know what I think?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I think you’re afraid to move on,” she says. “You had a good thing going with Jack. He’s what you’ve always known. So it’s daunting now, the idea of figuring out someone new.”
“Are we still talking about dead authors or is this a metaphor?”
She laughs. “You’re the writer.”
“I think I prefer subtext,” he says with a grin as a few people in brightly colored jackets begin to emerge from down below, clanging up the metal staircase.
They sail deeper into the wilderness, the tiny speck of Icy Strait Point getting more and more distant in their wake. Everything in Alaska feels like the middle of nowhere, but they’re especially isolated now. The guide comes over the loudspeaker to point out a bald eagle overhead, and Greta can see the flash of brown and the white head. Ben hands over the binoculars again, and it takes her a minute to find the enormous bird as it slices through the sky.
“Okay, folks,” the guide says over the loudspeaker as the engine sputters off and the ship bobs like a cork in the sudden quiet. “We got word there was a pod here this morning, so we’re gonna hang out for a while and see if they feel like saying hello.”
Greta leans against the cold railing, her eyes raking the water. Ben wraps his arms around her, and she’s grateful for the warmth, and for the weight of his chin on her shoulder.
“Sometimes it just takes time,” the guide says over the speaker, and so they wait, everyone on the boat unnaturally quiet, everything around it too. It feels like they’re all holding their breath, like someone has hit pause on the world.
And then, just like that, there’s a break in the water.
From a distance, it could almost be anything. Just a dark smudge amid all that blue. A dorsal fin, moving in a slow, graceful arc as a humpback whale breaks the surface before disappearing again.
Greta surprises even herself by letting out a cry of delight. Around her, others exclaim too. Cameras shutter and click and beep. And everyone from the other side of the boat rushes over, eyes on the water, hoping for another glimpse.
“Did you see it?” Ben whispers excitedly, moving to stand beside her at the rail. Greta nods but can’t bring herself to talk. She’s too busy keeping watch.
The entire boat is silent again.
They wait. And wait.
Finally, there’s another slight disruption in all that blue, and then a faint spray from the blowhole. But nothing else.
Greta’s eyes start to water. She’s afraid to blink.
When the humpback surfaces again, there’s nothing subtle about it. The whale comes bursting out of the water, tall and straight as a torpedo, its body sleek and powerful, and Greta watches in astonishment as it does the world’s most dramatic belly flop, sending up an explosion of white. Everyone is gasping and cheering like it was a show put on just for them, a feat of athleticism or an especially impressive magic trick.
A classic story of the frozen North, Greta thinks, looking out at the place where it disappeared.
They spot the whale only one more time before they move on. A flash of tail so perfect that it almost seems cartoonish. It’s rare to see something in real life that actually matches up with all the many imitations you’ve seen, Greta thinks. It’s rare to get that chance, to watch a whale’s tail disappear into the peaceful water in a place like this, the sky like a deep blue bowl set down above them, the mountains and trees as soft and blurred as watercolors around the edges of it.
She and Ben look at each other, but neither says anything, and she knows that he’s moved by it too, that whatever happened out here was almost too big for words.
She takes his gloved hand and gives it a squeeze.
On the way back, they pause once more for another pair of whales, who mostly just float, their enormous backs cresting every now and then. But it’s nothing compared to that first one.
As the boat picks up speed, Greta watches the churning wake. They’re once again alone on the upper deck, and though her fingers are frozen and her nose is running, she doesn’t yet feel ready to go inside, to break the spell. She leans into Ben, and under her breath, so quietly she’s not even sure he can hear, not even sure she wants him to, she begins to sing.
“Baby beluga in the deep blue sea…”
It’s not the jaunty version, the one children sing. It’s slower and softer than that, something entirely new, something she’s halfway making up as she goes, and it’s almost haunting, the way it mixes with the wind.
“Swim so wild and you swim so free…”
Greta closes her eyes.
“Heaven above and the sea below…”
Ben’s head is cocked as he listens.
“And a little white whale on the go.”
When she’s finished, she opens her eyes again, and Ben leans forward, resting his elbows on the rail. Beneath them, the boat sways.
“I sing that to my girls sometimes,” he says.
She nods. “My mom used to sing it to me.”
“It’s beautiful,” he tells her, “the way you did it.”
They’re still far from shore. Everything out here feels untouched and pristine, clean and uncomplicated. She turns to face him, her heart quickening.
“My dad asked me to come back,” she says. “Just before my mom died.”
He looks at her but doesn’t say anything.
“She’d been having these headaches, and he was worried. I was in Germany for a show I’d been looking forward to.” She closes her eyes. “We’ve always had this way of hurting each other, of pretending we don’t care what the other thinks. I figured he was trying to make me feel guilty because I was so far away.”