SilverMoonLight (SilverMoonSaga Book 1) (3 page)

»I’d
love to come with you sometime and have a go myself,« I said.

»You
paint too?«

»A
bit. Maybe it runs in the family.«

When
we got back to the house, the sun was shining over the garden. We sat down on a
small bench and enjoyed the warmth.

»You
didn’t answer my question earlier,« said Peter after a while.

»I
can’t,« I said. »I don’t know the answer.«

Chapter Two

»Emma!«
Amelie’s voice forced its way into my dream: »Wake up, sleepyhead.« She crashed
into my room.

I
turned over, pulled the blanket up, and buried my head in the pillow. Then,
realizing that
it
was useless to resist. I rubbed my eyes and struggled upright.

I
had been here in Portree for two weeks now. Most of that time had been spent
either in the house or by the sea. But now the grace period was over, and
tomorrow on I had to start attending school. It was something I would have
gladly delayed for much longer. The only silver lining was that I would have a
lot of classes with Amelie, who was just a month older than I. She had already
told me that the tenth grade here contained only forty-six students. That meant
the classes were small, and the teachers very attentive.

»Come
on, get up. What is this, naptime? We have to go; something happened down on
the shore and we’re going to see if we can help. Dad said you should come too.«

She
disappeared out of my room.

Groggy
with sleep, I padded into the bathroom. I brushed my teeth and splashed my face
with cold water, which quickly woke me up. Then I dried myself off, combed my
hair and pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt.

In
the kitchen, I was met by a cacophony of voices; everyone was talking over one
another.

As
Bree pressed a cup of coffee into my hands, I tried to decipher the reason for
the excited debate. At first I thought I had misheard, but it seemed they
really were talking about whales. Apparently they were stranded here on the
coast. The huge mammals I only knew from having seen them on TV. How could they
be stranded?

Peter
and Ethan were embroiled in a heated argument. I could only make out some of
what they were saying; something about sonar, echoes and sonic waves.

Bree
interrupted them. »Enough with the arguing. Eat up and then we can drive down
to the beach. They’re going to need all the help they can get.«

While
Bree and Amelie cleared the table, Peter and I piled all the containers we
could find into the car.

»Take
the spades, too,« Ethan called to us, before turning to talk to the twins. »Listen,
there’s nothing for you to do at the beach today. We have to see what we can do
first and it’s important that you stay home. Can we depend on you to do that?«

Amber
nodded, but Hannah was staring at him defiantly.

Ethan
shook his head and came over to the car.

»I
wouldn’t be surprised if they try to follow us,« he said with resignation to
Bree, who was sitting in the back seat.

»Shall
we bet on it?« asked Peter. But Ethan clearly wasn’t in the mood. He waved at
his daughters and started the car.

The
sky was thick with clouds, and even before we had reached the beach, fat
raindrops had begun to beat down on the windshield.

I
couldn’t have imagined the scene that awaited me even in my wildest dreams. As
we climbed out of the car, I stared at the shoreline in shock: Pitch-black
whales, easily a dozen of them, lay there in the wet sand.

Seeing
that other people had already gathered on the beach, we hurried over to them. »How
could this happen?« I asked Peter, who had walked over to one of the whales and
was trying to calm it down in a gentle voice. Clearly, he wasn’t doing this for
the first time. I was impressed by his courage.

The
panicked twitching in the whale’s eyes revealed how terrified it was. I
cautiously moved closer to the mammal and laid a wary hand against its
astonishingly soft skin.

»There
are so many.« His voice sounded despairing.

»We
have to keep them wet, otherwise they’ll die,« said a grey-haired man who had
walked across to join us. »Some are already dead.«

»Emma,
this is Dr. Erickson,« said Peter. »And this is Emma, my cousin from the
States.« Once Peter had introduced us, the man gave me such an intense stare
that I had to look away.

»You’re
Brenda’s daughter,« he said softly.

»Come
on, Dr. Erickson. We have to establish which of the whales we can still help,«
Peter interrupted him impatiently. Shaking his head, the man turned away,
leaving me with an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. But I didn’t have
time to ponder the encounter for too long; there was work to be done. Every
whale that was still alive had two or three helpers assigned to it. With the
containers everyone had brought along, each group tried to keep the mammals’
skin damp. Within a few minutes, I was soaked from running down to fetch water.

»Peter,
we won’t manage like this. The small amount of water we succeed to pour over
them is like a tiny drop on a hot stone,« I called out to him.

If
only the rain hadn’t stopped. We could really do with it now.

»I’ll
speak to Dad,« Peter replied, dashing off.

Amelie
and I tended to one of the smaller mammals. It must have been a calf, and I
wondered where its mother was. We ran back and forth until we were exhausted.
It was a hopeless battle against the wind, which was drying their bodies out
quicker than we could bring the water.

»Some
of the local women are fetching sheets,« said Peter, coming back over to us.

It
seemed to take forever before they came back. Once they did, we spread the
sheets out over the whales and saturated them with water. After that, our task
got easier.

»We
have to get them back into the sea somehow,« said Amelie. »We can’t keep them
wet forever. When is the navy coming?«

»Not
until tomorrow. They’re on a maneuver right now and can’t send anyone today,«
one of the men answered, waving a hand vaguely out at the sea.

»If
the tide rises, then a few of them might survive,« Dr. Erickson added. But I
could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn’t really believe it.

I
ran after him as he went back over to the mammals.

»You
don’t
think
we’ll make it,
do you?«

He
looked at me.

»Emma,
five of them are dead, and the others are very weak. I believe only a miracle
can
help us
now.«
He stared past me out across the sea. »A miracle,« he repeated, before turning
and stomping away.

I
ran back over to Amelie. Our little whale calf was breathing very shallowly
now. I laid my cheek against its cold skin and whispered: »You have to fight,
do you hear me? Fight!« As I stroked it and continued to speak in a calm tone,
its eyes seemed to flicker less erratically: »Everything’s going to be okay.«

I
grabbed my container and ran down to the water.

The
tide would come in soon, reaching the whales. I wondered how they would ever
manage to swim again; they were much too weak by now.

A
short while later, Amelie and I stood around the bonfire that the men had
built, exhaustedly drinking mugs of hot tea.

»We’ll
have to turn them around to help them swim.«

»Peter,
how are we supposed to do that? They’re too heavy,« said one of the men. »We
don’t have the equipment, only the navy do, and if they don’t come...,« he
shrugged with resignation.

»The
trucks of navy won’t get down here. They’d get stuck in the sand,« Ethan pondered
out loud.

»What
about our Jeeps?« I interjected. »Would we be able to manage it with the Jeeps?«

The
men looked at me skeptically. Then, one after the other nodded thoughtfully.

»We
could drive them down and tug the whales into the sea with the straps. We’d
need to wait for the right timing, though; the tide can’t be too high, or too
low,« explained Ethan.

»We’ll
have to hurry,« Dr. Erickson added. »And it’s dangerous. We don’t know how the
animals will behave once they get back in the water....«

»How
many Jeeps do we have?« asked one man, brusquely interrupting him.

Ethan
counted as each of the men who were willing to volunteer his vehicle raised a
hand.

»Five,«
he established. »That’ll be enough. We only have belts for one whale at a time,
so we can take it in turns.«

Ethan
rubbed his hands over the warm fire. »We should prepare everything now. We can
get started soon, I guess.«

While
the men went over to their vehicles, I ran over to my little whale calf. Amelie
had kept the sheet completely moist. I wrapped myself up in a warm blanket and
stroked the mammal reassuringly. Then I sat down in the damp sand, leaned
against it, and told it stories of the sea. I knew it couldn’t understand me,
but I hoped my presence would chase away its loneliness. A feeling I was only
too familiar with from the last few weeks.

I
was roused by the sound of the car engines. The men were carefully steering
their Jeeps down to the beach, the noise clearly unsettling the whales. I stood
up and stared over.

That’s
when I saw him for the first time.

His
cinnamon-colored, tousled hair was shimmering in the dying sunlight as he
stared at the whales with a somber expression. I had never seen someone so
handsome before. My heart took on a life of its own, hammering against my chest.
He was wearing a grey, close-fitting T-shirt that more than did justice to his
muscular frame, and a pair of black jeans. Even his ugly green rubber boots
looked good on him. The sight of him wearing so little in the cold wind gave me
goose bumps, for even my fleece jacket was barely keeping out the chill. But
the most striking thing about him was his face. It reminded me of the Greek
sculptures we had studied in Art class. His features were delicate and
pronounced at the same time, and in spite of the long winter, his skin had a
lightly tanned sheen. His lips were pressed together, as if he were angry. But
his eyes were gazing sadly at the whales.

Dr.
Erickson was standing alongside him, talking incessantly. I couldn’t hear what
they were saying, but the boy shook his head several times. Suddenly, as if he
could feel me staring at him, he turned to look at me. He stared at me briefly,
then frowned indignantly and turned back to Dr. Erickson.

I
got to my feet awkwardly and pushed the hair out of my face. This wasn’t the
ideal day to meet my dream man. Amelie giggled next to me.

»He
looks amazing, doesn’t he?« she whispered. »That’s Calum, Dr. Erickson’s foster
son.« I ignored her comment and turned around to our little calf.

»He’s
not doing well,« I said, noticing that my hands were shaking.

»I
know. I doubt he’s going to make it.«

»Of
course he will. We can’t give up on him,« I replied.

The
men were beginning to buckle the strap around one of the whales.

Slowly
and carefully, the car began to move. Walking over to lend a hand, I hoped that
the water level would be sufficiently high to pull the mammal far enough out to
sea. Combining all our efforts, we pushed and pulled the massive creature back
into the water. At the front, by the whale’s head, I saw Calum. He was
whispering to the whale the whole time. Fascinated, I looked at the expression
of concentration on his face. Did he believe the whale could understand him?
When the water reached the edge of my boots, I stopped. The cold, dark wetness
lapped down inside the heels in small waves. A long-familiar fear crept up
inside me.

Water.

I
had developed an intense fear of open, dark and unfathomably deep waters as a
child. It was something I had inherited from my mother. She had never allowed
me to go swimming in the sea, or in lakes. Swimming in bright, friendly indoor
pools, on the other hand, was something she had never been able to deny me.
There, I was like a fish in water. Carefully, step by step, I edged backwards,
struggling to suppress my fear. From the safety of the water’s edge, I watched
as the others unfastened the belt and pushed the whale farther out into the
waves. While one helper after the other came back to the shoreline, Calum
stayed alongside the creature the whole time. Before long, the water came up to
his chest, and it was finally deep enough for the whale. It turned its head
towards Calum. Even though I knew the thought was ridiculous, it seemed like
the creature was nodding in thanks. Then it gave a hefty swipe of its tail fin
and swam off. He had made it. We cried out with relief, and Amelie and I fell
into each other’s arms.

»I
knew Calum would manage it,« said Dr. Erickson alongside me, before walking off
to meet him with a blanket. But Calum just shook his head and pointed at the
other whales.