Nora and the Lighthouse Whale
When the lighthouse lamp goes dark in a storm, a girl named Nora and an old whale find another way to bring the little fishing boats safely home.
Nora lived in a white house at the end of a stone harbour, where the sea was grey in the morning, green at noon, and silver just before bed. Her grandmother kept the lighthouse, and Nora kept the lighthouse cat, which is nearly the same amount of work.
Every evening at dusk, her grandmother climbed the hundred and one steps and lit the great lamp, and the light swept out over the water: one long turn, then another, saying to every boat still out there, here is the harbour, here is the way home.
One night the wind came in from the north with rain in its pockets, and halfway through the evening the lamp went dark. Not dim. Dark. Nora's grandmother came down the hundred and one steps with wet hair and said a word Nora was not allowed to repeat.
"Three boats are still out," her grandmother said. "They will not find the mouth of the harbour in this." And she went to the shed for tools, and Nora went, because she could not help it, to the end of the sea wall.
The sea wall was slippery and the rain came sideways, but Nora held the rail and looked out at all that dark water, and she thought: somebody has to tell them where the harbour is. And then, quite close, something enormous breathed.
It was a whale. An old one, with barnacles on her jaw like little grey islands, and one eye that turned and found Nora in the dark the way the lamp used to find the boats.
"I know you," said Nora, although she was not sure she did. "You swim past the harbour every spring." The whale breathed again, a long warm sound, and Nora understood something without being told: the whale could not see the lamp either, and had come to find out why.
"Can you sing?" Nora asked. "They cannot see us. But sound goes through rain." And the whale sank, and the water closed over her, and for a moment Nora thought she had said something foolish to a very large animal in a storm.
Then the song came up through the stones of the sea wall and into Nora's feet. It was low and slow and it went out across the whole bay, further than any light: one long note, then another, exactly like the lamp used to turn.
On the boats they heard it. They could not have said what it was, and afterwards each of them told the story a little differently. But they all turned toward it, because it came from the harbour, and it did not stop.
One by one the three boats slid in past the sea wall, rain streaming off their bows, and the men on them looked up at a girl with wet hair holding the rail. By the time the last one was tied, the whale's song had stopped, and the bay was only wind again.
The lamp was mended by morning. But every spring after that, when the old whale went past the harbour on her way north, Nora walked out to the end of the sea wall to wave, and something enormous breathed, once, just for her.
That night Nora slept in a dry bed with the cat on her feet, listening to the rain give up little by little. She dreamed of a long low note travelling out over dark water, finding boat after boat, bringing every single one of them home. Good night, Nora. Good night, sea.
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