Storms

She heard the words like they were said out loud. She heard them every day. From Phoebe, Bess, Mum. Dad. He said it every chance he got.

‘Well, sod you, Dad,’ she said into the wind and rain. ‘He’s coming!’

Then she saw something, through the sheets of rain, at high tide, on the sea’s edge.

At first she thought they were rocks. Six or more. Huge, smooth, black boulders. Big as upturned yachts. Bigger.

They were rocks. They had to be. The storm must have stripped the sand off them. But, at the same time, she knew they weren’t. They were too dark, too rounded, too perfect in their shape.

So what were they? Beano ran straight to them, barking.

Only when she got close did Hannah see the white patches like giant eyes, the dorsal fins like great black knives on the creatures’ backs. The tail flukes lying useless and still on the sand.

Orcas. Killer whales.

She ran to the first one, the largest. It wasn’t moving. Its blowhole was closed and its mouth was open, showing a row of perfect, shining teeth. Its oddly human tongue hung out of the side of its mouth, limp and dead. Its eye was human-like too. But there was no light in it. It stared, unseeing, at the grey sky.

She checked the next one. It was half hidden in orange fishing net and seaweed. It was smaller, with a short fin. A female. Also dead.

The third one had fresh scars on it. They were pink and gaping: the telltale cuts of a whale tearing its flesh to escape netting.

This was what a loose net could do. She imagined the whales, trapped, holding their breath till they suffocated. Struggling uselessly against the nylon nets.

Three hundred thousand whales and dolphins died this way, every year. One every two minutes.

‘Jesus Christ,’ she said. Warm tears, mixed with rain, fell down her cheeks.

She stood, useless and tiny, next to these great, dead whales.

She’d always wanted to see orcas. Now she had.

‘Fuck!’

Beano was standing fast by one of the smaller whales, barking at it, then running away, coming back, front paws and head down, pointing and barking.

‘Beano, leave it alone,’ she shouted. But the dog ignored her, growling and barking ever louder. ‘I said, leave it alone!’

She wanted some dignity for the poor things. She grabbed Beano by the scruff of the neck, and yanked him away. It was a young one, this whale, half grown, maybe a year old. Its mouth was open, its tongue lolling. It was just as dead as the others.

She put a hand on the young whale’s head, stroking the rubbery skin, and felt suddenly ashamed of being human. Of what humans do.

She looked into the whale’s eye. ‘Sorry.’

That black pupil moved. A huge, rolling marble. The eye looked at her, glinting bright and fierce. It set Hannah’s skin on fire, being looked at this way. A loud phoosh sound burst through the wind and rain as the whale breathed out of its blowhole, filling the air with a fishy stench.

Even in that mad second Hannah had a clear thought. This wasn’t like a dog or horse looking at you. It wasn’t like any animal, or human, looking at you. It was something else.

Beano was back, down on his paws, barking.

‘No, Beano. Stay,’ she shouted, letting the dog know to behave. Not to bark and run around. Not to make the whale more scared than it already was.

Then a cry came from the whale. A long, desperate whine. The eye swivelled, looking at the other whales.

‘Bloody hell,’ said Hannah, her voice trembling.

What to do now?

She stroked the whale, blown away by it, gazing at her. Like it was looking into her.

What to do?

She wanted to comfort it, to talk to it.

But that wouldn’t save its life, would it?

‘Come on, Hannah, come on. Think!’

She stood back and checked the whale over, the biologist in her getting to work. No net injuries. A female. Juvenile. It had probably followed the others in.

She reached into her coat for her phone. She’d call Jake and tell him to get help. Then she remembered: he was surfing.

‘Damn you, Jake!’ She’d phone Dad instead.

There was no service.

She’d have to start sorting this herself.

She took some pics with her phone, running around the group of whales, getting photos from all angles. Seven of them in all.

She saw two move, heard their phoosh breaths.

‘Don’t panic, stay calm,’ she said. She tried to fight the tears. They wouldn’t help the whale any more than words.

Hannah searched her mind for what she knew. For the options. The sea was just starting to go out. She could see the tideline. It’d be hours before the sea came back and covered the whales. The tide might free the live whales. But then they might stay with dead or injured family members. Or be so exhausted, so heavy and so robbed of the buoyancy of salt water that their internal organs would collapse.

If there was hope – any at all – Hannah would need people, trained MMRs: Marine Mammal Rescuers. They’d need blankets soaked in buckets of seawater to keep the skin supple. Floats, inflatables, boats. Fish? Would she need to feed them? How would they drink if they were out of the sea? Cetaceans desalinate water. How could they do that on land? There was so much she didn’t know.

Even while she was working out what to do, who to call, what she needed, a part of her was panicking.

Why this? Why now?

Right, she told herself. Get organised. Steve Hopkins, her old biology teacher. He was an MMR. He’d done seal rescues and some dolphins. She’d call him as soon as she got back.

Please don’t die, whale.

She knew people with boats. RIBs, rigid inflatables. Could they get pontoons too? All the rescues she knew about had been dolphins or seals. The young orca was bigger. But not that much bigger.

Please. Live.