Then I spotted something slicing slowly through the water towards me. It was a fin. Shark! I thought. Shark! And a warm shiver of fear crept up my back. Then I saw the head and knew at once it couldn’t be a shark. It was more like a dolphin, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t quite the right shape. It was too big and too long to be a dolphin. It was big enough to be a whale, a real whale. Now I knew what it was. With a face like that I knew at once that it had to be a bottle-nosed whale. It’s the only whale that’s got a face like a dolphin. (I know quite a lot about whales because my uncle sent me a whale poster he’d got out of a newspaper, and I’ve had it pinned up in my bedroom over my bed ever since. So that’s why I can recognise just about all the whales in the world – narwhals, belugas, sperm whales, pilot whales, minkies, bottle-nose whales, the lot.)
To begin with I just stood there and stared. I thought I was still dreaming. I couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I mean, a whale in the Thames, a whale in Battersea! He was close to the shore now, in shallower water, and still coming towards me. I could see almost all of him, from his head to his tail. But after a bit, I could see he wasn’t really swimming any more, he was just lying there in the shallows, puffing and blowing a bit from time to time. He must be resting, I thought, tired out after a long journey perhaps. And then I noticed he was watching me as hard as I was watching him, almost like he was trying to stare me out, except I could tell from the gentleness in his eye that he wasn’t being unfriendly towards me. He was interested in me, that’s all, as interested as I was in him.
That’s when I knew – don’t ask me how, I just knew – that he wanted me to come closer to him. I climbed the wall and ran along the shore. The tide was already going out fast. I could see at once that he was in great danger. If he stayed where he was, he’d soon be stranded. I was walking slowly, so as not to alarm him. Then I crouched down as close as I could get to him, the water lapping all around me. His great domed head was only just out of my reach. We were practically face to face, eye to eye. He had eyes that seemed to be able to look right into me. He was seeing everything I was thinking.
I was sure he was expecting me to say something. So I did.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him. “You’re a bottle-nose whale, aren’t you? You shouldn’t be here at all. You don’t belong in the Thames. On my whale poster it says you live in the North Atlantic somewhere. So you should be up there, near Iceland, near Scotland maybe, but not down here. I’ve seen bottle-nose whales on the telly too, on Planet Earth, I think it was. There were lots of you all together. Or maybe it was pilot whales, I can’t remember. But anyway, you always go around in schools, don’t you, in huge family groups. I know you do. So how come you’re all alone? Where’s the rest of you? But maybe you’re not all alone. Maybe some of your family came with you, and you got yourself a bit lost. Is that it?”
He kept staring back at me out of his big wide eye. I thought the best thing I could do was to just keep talking. I couldn’t think what else to do. For a moment or two I didn’t know what else to say, and anyway I suddenly felt a bit stupid talking to him. I mean, what if someone was watching me? Luckily, though, there was no one about. So instead, I looked upriver, back towards Battersea Bridge, to see if any of his family might have come with him, but everywhere the river was empty and glassy and still. There was nothing there, nothing that broke the surface anyway. He was alone. He’d come alone.
And that was when it happened. The whale spoke! I’m telling you the truth, honest. The whale spoke to me. His voice was like an echoing whisper inside my head, like a talking thought. But it was him talking. It really was, I promise you. “No,” he said. “My family’s not with me. I’m all on my own. They came some of the way with me, and they’re waiting for me back out at sea. And you’re right. We usually stay close to our families – it’s safer that way. But I had to do this bit alone. Grandfather said it would be best. Grandfather would have come himself, but he couldn’t. So I’ve come instead of him. Everyone said it was far too dangerous, that there was no point, that it’s too late anyway, that people won’t listen, that they just won’t learn, no matter what. But Grandfather knew differently. He always said I should go, that time was running out, but there was still hope. I was young enough and strong enough to make the journey, he said. One of us had to come and tell you. So I came. There are some things that are so important that you just have to do them, whatever anyone says, however dangerous it might be. I believe that. And besides, I promised Grandfather before he died. I promised him I’d come and find you. And I always keep my promises. Do you keep your promises?”
I could just about manage a nod, but that was all. I tried, but I couldn’t speak a word. I thought maybe I was going mad, seeing things that weren’t there, hearing voices that weren’t real, and suddenly that really terrified me. That was why I backed away from him. I was just about ready to run off when he spoke again.
“It’s all right,” he said. “Don’t be frightened. I want you to stay. I want you to listen to me. I’ve come a very long way to talk to you, and I haven’t got long.”
His tail thrashed suddenly, showering me with water, and that made me laugh. But then I could see it was serious. He was rolling from one side to the other, rocking himself violently. Now I saw what it was that he was struggling to do. He was trying to back himself out into deeper water, struggling to keep himself afloat. I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how. All I could do was stand there and watch from the shore. It took him a while before he was out into deeper water and able to swim free again. He was blowing hard. I could tell he’d given himself a terrible fright. He swam off into the middle of the river, and then just disappeared completely under the water.
I stood there for ages and ages, looking for him up and down the river – he could have gone anywhere. I was longing for him to surface, longing to see him again, worried that he’d never dare risk it again. But he did, though when he came back towards me this time he kept his distance. Only his head was showing now, and just occasionally his fin. “I’ve got to watch it,” he said. “The tide is going out all the time. Grandfather warned me about it, they all warned me. ‘Stay clear of the shore,’ they told me. ‘Once you’re beached, you’re as good as dead.’ We can breathe all right out of the water, that’s not the problem. But we need water to float in. We can’t survive long if we get stranded. We’re big, you see, too heavy for our own good. We need water around us to survive. If we’re not afloat we soon crush ourselves to death. And I don’t want that to happen, do I?”
Maybe I got used to him speaking to me like this, I don’t know. Or maybe I just wanted to hear more. Either way, I just didn’t feel at all scared any more. I found myself walking back along the shore to be closer to him, and crouching down again to talk to him. I had things I needed to ask him.
“But I still don’t really understand,” I said. “You said you’d come to talk to me, didn’t you? That means you didn’t get lost at all, did you?”
“No, I didn’t get lost,” he told me. “Whales don’t get lost, well not that often anyway. We tell each other where we are all the time, what’s going on all around the world. What we see we share. So each and every one of us has a kind of map of the oceans, all the mountains and valleys under the sea, all the rivers and creeks, the coast of every continent, and every island, every rock – it’s inside our heads. We grow up learning it. That’s why we don’t get lost.” He paused for a while, puffing hard through his blowhole. Talking was exhausting for him, I could see that.
“But we do get tired,” he went on, “and we get old too, and we get sick, just like people do. We’ve a lot more in common with people than you know. We’ve got this earth in common for a start – and that’s why I’ve come all this way to see you. We don’t just share it with whales, but with every living thing. With people too. I’ve come to help you to save yourselves before it’s too late, because if you save yourselves, then you’ll be saving us too. It’s like Gran
dfather said: we can’t survive without you and you can’t survive without us.”
I didn’t have a clue what he was on about, but I didn’t dare say so. But I felt his eye searching out my thoughts. “You don’t really know what I’m talking about, do you?” I shook my head. “Then I think the best thing I can do is to tell you about Grandfather, because it all began with Grandfather. When I was little, Grandfather was always going off on his travels, voyages of discovery, he called them. All over the world he went. We hardly ever saw him. Sometimes he was away for so long we all thought he was never coming back, and he wasn’t all that good about keeping in touch either. He was a sort of adventurer, my grandfather, an explorer. He liked to go to places where no whale had ever been before.
“Then one day – it was some time ago now, when I was quite little – he came back from his travels and told us an amazing story. Ever since I first heard that story, I dreamed of going where Grandfather had gone, of seeing what he had seen. Grandfather had gone off to explore an unknown river, to follow it inland as far as he could go. No other whale had ever before dared to go there, as far as anyone knew anyway. All he knew of this river was that a couple of narwhals had been beached there in the mouth of the river a long time ago. They never made it back out to sea. The warning had gone out all over the oceans, and that was why whales had avoided the river ever since.
“It took a while for Grandfather to find it, but when he did he just kept on swimming. On and on he swam right into the middle of the biggest city he’d ever seen. It was teeming with life. Everywhere he looked there were great cranes leaning out over the river, and towering wharfs and busy docks. Everywhere there were boats and barges. He saw cars and trains and great red buses. And at night the lights were so bright that the whole sky was bright with them. It was a magical city, a place of bridges and towers and spires. And everywhere there were people, crowds of them, more than he’d ever seen before, more than he’d ever imagined there could be. He wanted to stay longer, to explore further upstream, to discover more. It was a wonderful place, but Grandfather knew it was dangerous too. The further upriver he swam, the shallower the waters around him were becoming. There were boats and barges everywhere, and he knew that if he wasn’t very careful any one of them could run him down, and be the death of him. When a propeller took a nick out of his fin, he decided it was time to leave. And besides, he was weak with hunger. He knew he couldn’t go any further.
“So he turned round and tried to swim back the way he’d come, back out to sea. But that was when he found that the tide was going down fast. He was having to keep to the deep channels, but so were all the boats and barges of course. There was danger all around him. He was so busy looking out for boats, that he didn’t notice how shallow the water was getting all around him. Grandfather knew, as all whales do, just how easy it is to get yourself stranded. He always said it was his own fault. He lost concentration. But Grandfather got lucky. Some children saw him floundering there in the shallows, and came running down to the river to help him. They helped him back into the water, and then stayed with him till they were sure he was going to be all right. They saved his life, those children, and he never forgot it. ‘When you get there, find a child,’ he told me, ‘because children are kind. They’ll help you, they’ll listen, they’ll believe you.’ So you see, it was only because of those children that Grandfather managed to find his way back out to the open sea again, and come back to us and tell us his story.”
That was when I noticed that all the birds were back again, the egret too on his buoy out in the river. They had gathered nearby. There were pigeons and blackbirds perching on the trees behind me. On the shore not far away from me a beady-eyed heron stood stock still, and there was a family of ducks bobbing about on the river, a couple of cormorants amongst them, all looking at the whale but none of them too close. And like me, they were listening. Even the trees seemed to be listening.
The whale spoke again. “Grandfather told me exactly how to get here, just how many days south I had to swim. He said I had to look out for the fishing boats and their nets, not to hug the coastline, because that was where there were always more boats about. He warned me about the currents and the tides, told me where the deep channels were in the river, and not to show myself till I had to. I mustn’t stay too long. I mustn’t swim too far upriver. I mustn’t go any further than I had to. ‘You’ll want to,’ he told me, ‘just like I did. When you find a child that’ll be far enough. And when you find him, tell him all I’ve told you, what we whales all know and people refuse to understand. Tell him it’s our last chance and their last chance. And you must make sure it’s a child you tell. The old ones are greedy. They have hard hearts and closed minds, or they would not have done what they have done. They’re too old to listen, too old to change. The young ones will listen and understand. Just like they saved me, they can save the world. If they know, they will want to put it right – I know they will. They just need telling. All you have to do is tell them.’ That’s what Grandfather told me. So that’s why I have found you, and that’s why I have come.”
That was when I saw he was drifting closer and closer to the shore again. I was just about to warn him when he must have realised the danger himself, because suddenly his tail began to thrash wildly in the shallows. The birds took off in a great flurry of panic. The whale didn’t stop flailing around till he’d found his way back out into deeper waters, where he dived down and vanished altogether. This time I wasn’t really worried. I knew in my heart that he would come back, that he had much more to tell me. All the same, he was gone a long while before he appeared again, and I was so pleased to see him when at last he did.
It was the strangest thing, but when he began speaking to me again this time, I found I wasn’t just hearing his words and understanding them. It was as if I could see in my mind everything he was telling me. I was seeing it all happen right there in front of my eyes. He wasn’t just telling me. He was taking me round the world, round his world and showing me.
He showed me the bottom of the sea, where a coral reef lay dying and littered with rubbish. I saw a sperm whale being winched bleeding out of the sea, a leatherback turtle caught up in vast fishing nets, along with sharks and dolphins. There was an albatross too, hanging there limp and lifeless.
I saw the ice-cliffs in the Arctic falling away into the sea, and a polar bear roaming the ice, thin and hungry.
He showed me skies so full of smoke that day had become night, and below them the forests burning. An orang-utan was running for her life along a beach, clutching her infant, the hunters coming after her. I watched as they shot her down, and wrenched the screaming baby out of her arms. And then he showed me people, thousands upon thousands of them in a tented city by the sea, and a skeletal child lying alone and abandoned on the sand. She wasn’t crying, because she was dead.
“Grandfather said all this killing has to stop. You are killing the sea we live in! You are killing the air we breathe. You are killing the world. Tell a child, Grandfather said. Only the children will put it right. That’s why I came. That’s why I found you. Will you put it right?”
“But how can I?” I cried.
“Tell them why I came. Tell them what I said. Tell them they have to change the way they live. And don’t just tell them. Show them. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” I cried. “I promise!”
“But do you keep your promises?” he asked.
“I’ll keep this one,” I told him.
“That’s all I needed to hear,” he said. “Time for me to go now. I don’t want to get myself beached, do I? I like your town. I like your river. But I’m more at home back in my sea.”
“But what if you are beached?” I asked. “What if you die?”
“I’d rather not, of course,” he said. “But like I told you, I had to come. It was important, the most important thing I ever did. I promised I’d do it, didn’t I? Now I’ve done it. The rest is up to you.”
And away
he swam then, blowing loudly as he passed upriver under Battersea Bridge, so that the whole river echoed with the sound of it. There was a final flourish of his tail before he dived. It was like he was waving goodbye, so I waved back. I stayed there watching for a while just in case he came up again. All around me the birds were watching too. But that was the last we saw of him.
And that’s the end of my story.
Mrs Fergusson was so delighted to see Michael writing away that she let him go on long after the others had finished. That’s why she let him stay in all through breaktime too. She stayed in the classroom with him because she had some marking to do anyway. Every time she looked up Michael was still beavering away at his story. She’d never seen him so intent on anything, and certainly not on his writing. Until now, he’d always seemed to find writing rather difficult. She was intrigued. She was longing to ask him what he was writing about, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.
Michael finished just as the bell went and everyone came rushing back into the classroom again, filling the place with noise. When they’d settled down Mrs Fergusson thought she’d try something she hadn’t tried before with this class. She asked if any of them would like to read their story out loud to the rest of the class. It was the last thing Michael wanted. They wouldn’t believe him. They’d laugh at him, he knew they would. So he was very relieved when Elena, who always sat next to him, put up her hand. He was quite happy to sit there and listen to another of Elena’s horsey stories. Elena was mad about horses. It was all she ever wrote about or talked about, all she ever painted too. Mrs Fergusson said it was good, but a bit short, and that perhaps it might be nice if she wrote about something else besides horses once in a while. Michael was looking out of the window, thinking of his whale deep down in the sea with his family all around him. So it caught him completely by surprise when she suddenly turned to him, and said, “Well, Michael, why don’t you read us yours? What’s it about?”