Today the morays were expecting her, swaying halfway out of their holes, some holding themselves in shafts of light as if to show off their elaborate patterns. There were her favourites, the huge dark blue and black one with the mottled brown spots, and the livid yellow and green one with the grey lines. Others remained in camouflage, thick shadows with yellow eyes. They made no attempt to be friendly and expected no courtesies and Ea was glad to see them. She had just taken a large diving breath to go down to visit, when a distant howl came through the water.
It was not one of the frightening noises deep in her head nor was there any pain in her sonar melon. It was a real sound from a living being, but coming from further away than a dolphin could click. There it was again, fine and distant and so precise that she knew it was not the cry of an attack or of being wounded, nor the music of the ocean, because no one would spin to that. Someone was sending that sound out across the vast. It was a message.
Ea positioned herself the better to receive it. She had an odd sensation in her heart, as if it were swollen and tender. The sound 鈥� and then silence. She listened with all her attention. There was nothing for so long she thought she might have imagined those new sounds, which would be an improvement 鈥� but then it came again. This time it was a cacophony of booms and slams, then silence, then one more howl. There was a pattern.
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It was a whale, it had to be. Ea had never seen or heard one before but she knew they were distant cousin kin. Though she couldn鈥檛 decipher the meaning, the sound pulsed in her blood. Was the whale singing in Old Pelagic? No one used it any more, but the Longi click derived from it, and she remembered her mother telling her it used silence as well as sound. Ea went to where the black wall was crumbling, the better to listen.
The distant whale boomed again like faraway thunder. Then as his great billows of sound were still travelling across the ocean, he wailed across the top of them in a harsh and soaring lament that filled Ea with sadness and rage. It faded away, and the silence that followed had a different quality. It was over. The whale had passed on, leaving Ea with the ache of relief that someone else understood loneliness and pain.
Extract taken from (Corsair paperback out now, 拢9.99), the latest pick for the 快猫短视频 Book Club. Sign up and read along with us 丑别谤别听
