Rip Tide by Ally Kennen Page 3
I’m calm now, but I’m pretty mad at myself; at how I freaked out and lost my cool. I look at the big old cranes looming over the other side of the river and imagine them in the old days, unloading massive sacks and containers of stuff off ships. Now they’re a museum exhibit and a perch for gulls.
‘Oh God,’ says Moz. ‘look at that.’ She points to the water.
In the murky water, something enormous breaks the surface and moves out of the light, slipping through the darkness.
I stop dead
‘Oh Moz,’ I breathe. For the second time tonight my life is turned upside down.
It’s coming closer, whatever it is.
‘What’s that?’ Moz clutches my arm and pulls me close.
It’s a giant thing in the river. It breaks the surface and its vast black skin reflects the multicoloured lights of the SS Great Britain submarine? An animal? A massive fish? An alien? Something bad? I see a small triangular fin and it breathes out and the noise of whooshing air echoes across the river. Then I am splattered with foul-smelling liquid.
‘What?’
‘I think it’s a whale,’ says Moz. ‘A whale.’ She grabs me so hard it hurts. I’m terrified and delighted and shocked all at the same time. Then I see its head and it’s big and round and has a sort of beak. The whale moves down into the water and it’s gone. The night falls silent except the slapping of water against the river wall. I breathe out.
‘Are we seeing things?’ I ask Moz, gently, prising her fingers from my arm.
But there it is again, and now it is so close I can smell it. Or I think I can. It’s like oil and water and warm salt and fish and old vegetables all mixed together, or maybe it’s the docks I’m smelling.
‘But it shouldn’t be here,’ I say. ‘It should be out in the ocean. It must be lost.’
More and more of it is coming out of the water and we both give a little gasp and step back. It’s dark, right, I can’t see much, only from what I can see, this thing is enormous, at least six or seven metres long. I have to get closer. I’ll never see anything like this again. So I go right up to the fat metal railings and step over them so I’m right on the edge of the quay.
‘Lexi, what are you doing? ‘ Moz’s voice is fading away. Everything is fading, what happened in the club, the walk here, the orange night sky, the SS Great Britain and the iron cranes. There’s nothing except me and this massive creature. Its body is submerged again but I can see a dark shadow just under the surface of the water. Then it moves up out of the water and it’s like a star has fallen in the river and is twinkling at me, and I realise I’m looking into the whale’s eye, and it’s looking right back at me. I’m seeing a long, long journey through blue and grey sea tunnels and I see brown slicks of mud and I feel like I am suffocating, then I see calm green sea and swooping sea birds and boats bobbing in the waves. I’m still being watched. This must be the most important moment in my life.
‘You’re a long way from home,’ I whisper, ‘You’d better turn round and swim back.’ I’m sad because I think this creature is probably going to die, stranded up here in this city.
The creature sinks and the water closes over it.
Now I can hear Moz again, she’s calling my name and touching my shoulder.
‘I thought you were going to fall in,’ she says. Then she guides me back over the railings.
‘Let’s watch from this side,’ she says. We sit on the rails and burst out laughing because it is so amazing. Moz talks about phoning the police and the RSPCA and the newspapers but I just sit and watch and watch and wait for the whale to come back up again, but the water is dark and nothing is moving except the wind. And soon enough Moz is on her phone to just about everyone and I keep watching, scanning the water up towards the centre, and down to the big bridge.
‘I wish I knew about tides,’ says Moz, snapping down her phone. ‘Then we’d know if it had a chance.’
It’s all quiet now except a siren far away. We sit quietly, waiting and watching the water.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t wait for you,’ I say. ‘Back there in the club.’ Though what I really mean is. I’m sorry I only thought to save myself.
‘Muppet,’ says Moz. Then she screams and leaps to her feet. ‘Look, look!’
And way down river, heading towards the bridge, a black hump crests the water and slides under again. ‘She’s going the right way,’ screams Moz and I laugh with her and we do a mad little dance, hopping and swinging each other round. We run down the quayside, panting and laughing. We are up on the bridge in time to see her shadow pass underneath, like the underside of a mighty ship. By now the gravel in the road is biting into my feet but we scrabble over the road and get hooted at by taxi drivers as they screech to a halt as we fly over the road and up onto the Portway. The water is still high. The suspension bridge twinkles high, high above.
‘Whales talk by sonar,’ says Moz. ‘Maybe hers got messed up.’ We run on above the river. Every now and then we glimpse her humped back coursing through the night air then vanishing.
‘She’s going to make it,’ I say. ‘She’s going to get back home to the sea. She’s going to be safe.’ We do another little dance on the pavement. I love dancing.
We can’t keep up and soon we just stare after her. She’s just a dot now, sometimes appearing, mostly not. But then I lean forward. I swear I saw two dots, not one.
‘Moz,’ I say. ‘Did you see that?’
Moz smiles. ‘They must have got separated,’ she says. ‘I think it happens when they get disorientated.’
We watch the river and think of the whales, swimming out to sea.
