A Whale of the Wild

The narrative shifts back to Vega. She hears Deneb calling to her and cries out to him through the chaos of the sea shake. The sight of a family of porpoises hurrying by reminds her of Greatmother’s words: “When the sea shakes, the ocean is a refuge” (89). Vega calms herself by telling herself that her little brother is with the rest of her family and that Greatmother and Mother will lead everyone to safety. She navigates toward the ocean by memory, determined to find her pod.

The sea shake stops, and the water is eerily silent. Vega pauses to catch her breath, and a pair of scooper whales and a singing whale hurry past her. To her surprise, the other whales all say the orca word for “deep.” Feeling a kinship with the other sea creatures, she joins them in chanting the orca word for “deep.” The ocean is a day’s journey away, and Vega worries if she will be able to find her family. A net boat hauls up a catch of salmon, and she eats one of the fish.

Vega hears a sound “like the rolling of stones” (92), and the most powerful current she’s ever felt quickly pulls her toward the ocean. She hears Deneb’s voice and battles the current to join him and the Seal-eater. She’s alarmed to see her little brother with a stranger instead of their pod, but he explains that he rescued the Seal-eater and that the older whale saved him in return by leading him toward the ocean. Vega senses that danger is approaching and sees a wave that is as tall as a cliff. She screams for her mother, and Deneb tells her, “I’m right here […] I’m right beside you” (94). Vega pulls him close and tells her brother and the stranger to dive. They swim to the bottom of the sea, and she shields Deneb so he won’t be swept away.

When the three whales surface, Vega tries to be brave while looking at the wreckage around them. Deneb helps three humans find flotation devices. Vega assists with the third rescue although she feels conflicted because she worries poison from the overturned boats will hurt her brother. The siblings follow the Seal-eater to Land’s End, the last island of the Salish Sea, and wait for their family. They have to dive three more times to escape three giant waves. As the trio drifts further and further away from the Warmward Kinship’s territory, Vega fears that she will never see her home again.

The trio rests in the sunny waters along the coast of Land’s End. This is the spot where the pod is meant to reunite if they ever become separated in a crisis, but there’s no sign of their relatives. Vega feels guilty for leaving her family “in the saddest moment of [their] lives” and unworthy of Deneb’s great confidence in her (100). She tries to make herself as serene as Greatmother. The matriarch always warned Vega and her brother of the dangers of the open ocean, which the orcas call the Blue Wilderness. However, Vega declares that they must leave the Salish Sea because the sea shake’s wreckage is toxic: “Poison is spreading in our home waters and boats are going upside down and whole cliffsides and trees are falling in. We have to go!” (103).

The narrative moves to Deneb’s point of view. He tries not to distract his sister from her wayfinding, so he keeps himself busy by asking the silent Seal-eater whether he eats various types of sea life. Vega explains that the Seal-eater hunts by stealth, so Deneb’s chatter is driving away the whale’s quarry. Deneb wants to grow up to be “strong and fat and confident” like the stranger (107), so he quietly observes him hunting. Deneb loves hunting salmon, but he feels a little afraid of the stranger when he kills a seal because he’s never seen another marine mammal be hunted before. The Seal-eater shares his catch with Deneb, but Deneb can only stomach a mouthful of the unfamiliar food. The Seal-eater swims away, and the youngling wonders if they’ll ever see each other again.

Feeling lonely, Deneb swims to his sister, and she realizes that he’s eaten seal meat when he excretes blood. Although the youngling is starving, his stomach hurts so badly that he regrets eating the seal. Vega tries to soothe him and explains that there are different kinds of orcas: “They are not kin, but we help each other by keeping to our own food and our own ways” (110). She promises to find him food.

The narrative moves back to Vega’s perspective. She berates herself for promising Deneb that she would find food when she has no idea where the salmon are and barely knows her own location. The sea shake has made the once-familiar landscape unrecognizable to her. She finds a flat fish and gives most of it to her brother. They swim through the night and hear the howl of an unknown creature “grieving for its lost world” (114). Vega wants to mourn as well, but she forces herself to be brave for her brother. She decides that they have no choice but to try “the one place Greatmother told [her] never to go” (114).

Vega leads Deneb from the Salish Sea into the ocean. They swim all day and all night before stopping to rest. Both siblings are daunted by the endless stretches of water around them, but Vega tries to sound confident like Mother and Greatmother when she tells Deneb that all they have to do to return home is follow the sunrise. She tries to cheer him up by saying that there must be salmon in the ocean since they come from the ocean on their way to the Salish Sea. Vega knows that some fish are poisonous to orcas, but, after another day of fruitlessly searching for salmon, she is willing to risk eating an unfamiliar fish. However, a blue-gray whale so enormous that it makes Uncle Rigel look as “small as a herring” eats all the fish (118). Vega is filled with awe as she gazes upon “the king, the Chinook of whales” (125). She tells Deneb that the blue whale is an auspicious sign that they will find salmon and their relatives.

Vega watches the stars that she and her brother are named after. Although the sea shake has transformed her world, she takes comfort in the fact that the sky is unchanged. Recalling Greatmother’s wisdom, she draws strength from the stars’ beauty and resolves to find the way to her family.