Lost on Brier Island (2 page)

“Time's a-wastin',” Gus said. “W
hat's
the problem?”

“Nothing.” Alex couldn't stop staring down at the space between the boat and the dock. She felt dizzy. Was it getting wider? What if she slipped and fell in?

“Bogs!” Gus said. His two plate-sized hands reached over, scooped her up, and plopped her down on the deck.

“Don't touch me!” Alex backed away from him. The deck moved beneath her feet and she wobbled slightly.

“Haven't got all day.” Gus gazed down at her for another second before turning and walking through the glassed-in cabin to an open door leading to the wheelhouse. Another, shorter, man was already at the controls.

Aunt Sophie was babbling away with the older couple, oblivious to Alex's plight. Some guardian she was. Lion man could have tossed her overboard. Alex spied the bright red life jackets and put one on. Her heartbeat slowly returned to normal. At least she wouldn't drown.

She retreated to the back of the boat and sat on the cushioned bench that lined the sides of the open deck. She pulled her bent legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Leaning forward, she rested her chin on her knees and stared at the shimmering water.

Soon they were chugging out of the harbour. Gus pointed to great blue herons perched in the trees along the shoreline. Alex had never seen one in real life, just on television. They looked like exotic birds from the Amazon rainforest.

The waves got choppier as they rounded the lighthouse and headed into open water. It was colder, too. The life jacket didn't do anything to stop the wind. Alex shivered and hugged her knees more tightly to her chest.

“Give Alex one of my sweaters, would ya, Soph? There's a stack over on the bench,” Gus bellowed from the wheelhouse. “Grab one for yourself too.”

Did he have
ESP
? Alex wondered. Or maybe eyes in the back of his head? How did he know she was cold? She didn't turn around as a knitted sweater was wrapped around her shoulders.

“Put it on, it'll keep you nice and toasty,” Aunt Sophie said. “Sorry, I forgot to bring jackets.”

The sweater was scratchy against her arms, which made sense since it belonged to Gus, the lion man. Scratchy, like she imagined lion fur would be. She didn't put it on but didn't shrug it off, either. At least it was warm.

Gus joined them on the open deck. “Got my nephew at the controls today. Susan, our biologist, is out sick, so you're stuck with me.”

The couple was asking Gus an endless stream of questions. What kind of whales would they see? What other wildlife? How long had he been doing this? What did he do when tourist season was over?

Half listening, Alex learned that with luck they would see humpback, minke, and maybe fin whales. Sometimes, there were sightings of right whales, an endangered species. She also learned that Gus fished lobster in the off-tourist season.

“Why are they called right whales?” the woman asked.

Alex was wondering the same thing. It was kind of a weird name for a whale.

“It's sad, really,” Gus said. “Whalers way back in the day named them that because they were the ‘right' whale to hunt. They swam slowly and close to the surface, so they were easy to harpoon. And, because they had a thick blubber layer, it made them float after they were killed.”

“Oh my goodness, how horrible!” the woman exclaimed.

Alex thought it was horrible too. Why did the whales do that? They should have been smart and swum faster and dove deeper. Then they wouldn't have gotten killed.

“Are you excited to see whales?” the woman asked her.

Alex didn't want to talk, but also didn't want to be embarrassed again by having Aunt Sophie call her rude. “Not really.”

“Oh.” The woman's smile faltered slightly. “Why are you out here, then?”

“My aunt made me come,” she said politely. Aunt Sophie frowned at her from across the deck, but didn't say anything. Well, what could she say? It was the truth, and she hadn't been rude.

“I see.” The woman's smile disappeared and she walked back over to stand beside Gus, resuming her questions.

Happy to be left alone, Alex looked towards the water again and gasped—she couldn't see a thing. Fog had crept in from nowhere and cocooned them in a world of white.

She heard Gus sigh at the same time the motor stopped. The boat drifted in silence. “Welcome to the Bay of Fundy!” he chuckled. “I had been hoping we would keep the sun, but apparently Mother Nature has other plans for us today.”

“Do we get a refund?” the woman's husband asked. “We were guaranteed to see whales. Who can see anything in this pea soup?”

Gus didn't get angry. Alex figured this must have happened before. “Don't give up. We don't use any fancy equipment or anything to find the whales. It's just keen eyesight looking for blowholes on the horizon. When it's sunny, that is. In the fog, we'll have to use our ears. You can hear them when they blow.”

The man frowned. “You've got to be kidding, right? Listen for whales on a whale watch?”

Gus smiled again, but Alex noticed his lips were more pressed together. She wondered what lion man was like when he got mad.

“We'll go ahead slowly for a bit, then stop, and we'll see what happens,” he said, pausing to yell the instructions to his nephew. “Be patient. The whales have a big bay to swim around in and we didn't tie 'em up the last time we saw them. You never know where they'll turn up. Besides, Bay of Fundy fog is a fickle lady—she could scurry off as quick as she came.”

They cruised around for the next half hour, stopping every few minutes to listen for whale blows. Alex didn't even know what the sound was supposed to be. Not that she could have heard anything anyway. The man was complaining more loudly by the minute about what a waste of money the trip was, and that they should have gone golfing in Digby instead.

When the boat stopped again, Gus disappeared up to the viewing deck. Sophie and the woman were on the other side of the boat. No one was talking to the man, and he had gone into the sheltered cabin section of the boat and was reading a magazine.

This stinks
, Alex thought. Plus, she was freezing. Looking around to make sure no one saw her, she pulled Gus's lion-fur sweater over her head. It fell below her knees and the arms drooped well past her hands. She rolled up the sleeves as best she could. Despite its scratchiness, the sweater was warm.

Wondering if she might be able to at least catch a glimpse of a nearby jellyfish through the fog, Alex leaned cautiously over the railing and peered down into the calm water.

A humungous eye was staring back at her.

Alex screamed.

Gus leapt from above like some kind of superhero and landed on the deck with a thud.
“What happened?”

“Over there.” Alex pointed a shaking finger. “There's something in the water!”

“Is that right?” Gus grinned and walked over to take a look.

“Watch out!” Alex couldn't help but cry. The thing was huge. What if it tipped their boat over? Or jumped up and knocked them into the water? She checked the ties on her life jacket to make sure they were still tight.

Gus started to laugh. “Well, well, we're in luck.”

Alex thought he must really be crazy. He should be trying to get them away from this thing.

“Thanks to Alex, we have our first whale sighting.” Gus beckoned everyone with a wave. “Come on over and say hi to Sockeye. He's a humpback, and he's one of our long-time visitors here in the bay.”

The woman whizzed by Alex and leaned over the side of the boat. “Oh my,” she gushed. She looked up at Gus and batted her eyes. “Are we in danger? It looks like he's under our boat!”

“We'll sue if anything happens!” her husband whined, striding over to stand beside her. He pointed at the water. “That doesn't look like much. How can you even tell it's a whale? Aren't they supposed to jump around or something?”

Gus finally lost the hold he had seemed to have on his temper. “Good grief, man, will you button that flapping trap of yours!” he roared.

The man twitched and ducked behind his wife. Alex watched him fiddle with his camera. He reminded her of a yippy chihuahua that had been barked at by a bigger dog and then turned tail and run.

When it became clear the whale was no danger to the boat, Alex's panic receded. She felt the apathy seep back into her limbs like a drug. It was as if the cold fog had crept inside her and was spreading through her body, numbing her.

Sockeye apparently didn't feel like putting on a show, either. Maybe he felt as lonely as she did out here. He kept coming to the surface briefly and then vanishing into the depths again.

The fog had finally vanished from around the boat, too. It was there, and then it wasn't—like it was alive, toying with them. But it hadn't gone far. Alex could see it just off in the distance, waiting. It looked solid as a wall. Could it be a portal to another world? She wished.

They decided to move on and see who else was around. As the boat zigzagged around the bay, they came
across a basking shark and a sunfish. There were tons of birds, too. Gus was rattling off their names—northern gannets, different kinds of shearwaters, and northern fulmars.

Suddenly, the boat jerked forward and they were steaming across the choppy surface. “Blow holes at ten o'clock!” Gus shouted, pointing to his left.

The couple whipped their matching binoculars up to their eyes in perfect unison as Aunt Sophie grabbed her camera.

What was all the fuss over more whales? Alex wondered. It seemed like they'd been out on this floating freezer for hours. Cold ocean spray from the speeding boat matted her hair and coated her skin.

“There they are!” Aunt Sophie cried.

“Try and get pictures of the flukes, would ya, Soph?” Gus asked. “We'll get them posted on the tracking website.”

“Tracking what?” asked the woman.

“Each tail is unique,” Aunt Sophie explained, grabbing a reference book. She opened it and pointed to one of the pictures. “See here? The different patterns, shapes, and markings on the tails are like fingerprints for whales. So, by photographing the tails, the flukes, we can identify the whales and track their migrations.”

“That's extraordinary,” the woman said.

“I know,” Aunt Sophie replied. “Researchers all up and down the East Coast post photos to log sightings. It's a very effective way to track the whales. For instance, we know Sockeye has been coming to the Bay of Fundy since 1984.”

“But we didn't see his tail back there, or much of anything, for that matter,” the man said. “How do you know the name of it? Or even if it was a whale at all?”

Gus let out another menacing growl and the man twitched again. It was much more entertaining watching this show than the whales.

“Sockeye might not be the best example. He got his name because of his unique underbite, not his tail. It makes him look a bit like a sockeye salmon. One of a kind, that fella. We know him very well,” Gus said. “Now, get ready. I think that's Rooftop and her calf.”

An enormous black form exploded from the surface. It seemed to hover for just a second before crashing back into the water, followed almost immediately by a smaller whale mimicking the same move—a baby whale. Despite her bored expression, Alex could feel her pulse quicken.

The baby jumped and flipped and slapped and rolled, smacking its flippers on the surface, all actions Gus had mentioned they might see if they were lucky. He had also talked about spyhopping, when whales poked their heads out of the water to take a look around. But spyhopping was a much quieter activity, and the baby whale seemed too excited for quiet, continuing to explode high into the air.

Alex leaned against the railing and watched the show. Rooftop, the mother, eventually seemed to get tired of all her baby's antics. She moved farther away from the boat, resting quietly on the surface.

“What's the baby's name?” the woman asked.

“He doesn't have one yet,” Gus explained. “The humpback calves are about seven months old and won't get an official name until they return to the bay on their own.”

“Rooftop's calf is a real daredevil, though,” Gus added. “I've never seen anything like it—disappearin' from its mother's side all the time. That's dangerous behaviour for such a young whale.”

Daredevil. That's what Mom had always called Adam, too. Mom would laugh when she said it, though. So would Adam. Then Mom would ruffle his hair while he tried to squirm away. Her brother had always gotten into trouble, and that had usually meant trouble for Alex, too. He'd get her dragged into his mess every time. She felt a lump form in her throat and sucked in a deep breath.

The ocean was so calm now that she wasn't nervous of the water anymore. Stretching her arms out, she could almost touch the surface. Thinking of Adam, Alex let out a heavy sigh and closed her eyes, her heart aching for things that couldn't be.

Alex jumped as something wet and smooth brushed against her outstretched hands. She gasped as she opened her eyes. The baby humpback's head was raised out of the water and it was totally still, watching her.

Holding her breath, Alex slowly ran her hands over its wet skin. The whale didn't move. This was the spyhopping Gus had talked about. Was the baby whale checking her out? Sounds faded away as the baby pushed its head gently up against her hands. The moment seemed to last forever.

The railing dug into her ribs, but she ignored it, leaning even farther. She kept stroking the baby's head—its skin was dark grey and it had a white shape like a sideways question mark over its right eye. Eventually, it sank back silently beneath the surface.

Alex stayed perfectly still, staring intently at the water until all the ripples had disappeared.

“Bye, Daredevil,” she whispered.