Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten

Weissenbaum's Eye - Stetten - Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

My whale speaks to me, as content and reassuring as the breathing of a lover. They are my teachers and make me see in all directions at one time. They use sound where we use sight. Their language is our music. I grasp at a rough line of words to pull after their image chirping through the water, to see for one bright moment their jeweled and streaked surroundings. My wordroots form upon my lips in simple appreciation.

There was a time when all whales were the same, and not divided as they are today into large and small, fish-eating and algae-sifting. This was a time before man, when water covered almost everything.

There was one whale who had, as a good friend, a fiddler crab whose love it was to scamper up the slopes of undersea mountains, and tumble to the valleys in between.

The little crab, who could not swim, climbed to the tallest top of the highest mountain. He looked up to see his friend the whale loom by. Higher still, the surface mirrored out the mysteries that lay beyond.

In his little crab voice he asked, "What is up there, beyond that shimmering layer?"

The whale, who breached the waves quite often, could no more describe the sky to one who had not seen it, than he could sing a silent melody. And so he said, "Catch hold of my flipper and I will take you up to see the sky."

At this, the crab was overjoyed, and very nervous. But when the whale came close, he reached out a claw and grabbed onto a giant flipper. He held tight and off they went.

After a long time they reached an island where, with a flip of his huge tail, the whale tossed the crab onto the dry beach. The little crab gasped, for the full sunlight was upon him for the first time. But the whale just laughed and said, "Stay here and watch. I'll be back tomorrow."

The next morning the whale reappeared, poking his head above the water. He asked, "Well, my little friend, what did you see?"

The crab was dancing with excitement. "The sky is bright with a burning hole that moves across it. Then the darkness is full of little crystals, that shine from the ceiling of the sky!"

"Yes," said the whale. "They are called stars."

"Stars," repeated the crab in awe. "I think the stars are made of salt, left behind when the ocean pulled down from the sky."

The whale, who had never thought to explain the stars, nodded his giant head wisely and said, "A good theory. Will you ride my tail back to the bottom now?"

But the crab seemed almost afraid.

"No," he said, "I want to stay here another night. I want to figure out this sky."

The next day the whale returned, and the little crab was silent, except to murmur something about clouds of hot gas shrinking into points. The whale could see that he would be unable that day to convince the crab to return to the bottom.

And so for many weeks it went, until finally the time had come for the whale to follow the seasons south. "This is goodbye," he said. "Will you return to the bottom now, or spend all winter here?"

But the crab spoke in a voice the whale did not recognize.

"I cannot go under water! My legs must walk on land! Oh, but if I could, I would go to that other island, way over there, where the sky is just pulling off the ocean. From there I could touch the stars."

He was pointing his little crab claw at a spot of land on the horizon, which he could have reached under the water. The whale felt pity for his friend.

"You have forgotten," he said, "that your legs could carry you where you want. But it is just as well, for you would only find that the horizon keeps ahead of you. So stay on your island, little crab."

And with that, the whale dove to join his pod, and to this day, the little crab is still working on his theory of the stars.

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