Song Beach

The dead whales are on the beach again. Mother doesn't believe in them because they don't look like whales once they leave the water, but I do. I can still hear their songs as wisps of steam flee their corpses.
Mother leaves the compound even though I beg her not to. She wants to get a closer look at the massive dark object that has washed up.
No one tries to dissuade her but me, they assume she's calculated the dangers, but I know my mother if nothing else. She has underestimated the danger. So did father, and he's been gone three months now.
I listen to the sounds of that feint whale song knowing it will take three days to finally fade but today it sounds stronger and I frown, trying to comprehend why that could be. There was a mild storm last night but not a hard enough storm to bring the whales, not to this side of our small inlet.
I wake up on the plush carpet of an empty conference room still thinking about the strength of the whale song. The map of our island is laid out on the table and papers are strewn about along the edge of it.
I look, eyes darting frantically in search of my mother but she isn't here. I walk through the dimly lit halls in search of her and try not to think about how pressing the weight of the building's roof above me feels.
I catch up with her and tug her hand, silently asking her not to go, but she slips gently out of my grip. Not even bothering to look at me, she continues talking to Gen. He's in charge of cameras and security, so it'll be him she puts in charge of watching over me while she's out there. I wait patiently.
She turns to me with a slight frown and I'm not sure if it's because she's thinking of my warnings or because she never wanted to be a mother to such an odd child in the first place.
I slide my eyes away from her unspoken reminder and say, "I'll behave."
She ruffles the top of my head into spikes and turns to leave without saying anything. I can't help but call after her, "if you get in trouble listen to the blue and white songs, not purple or red. They're the only thing that can lead you home."
She's not the only one that stiffens at that. Gen looks at me pityingly but the others don't look at me at all. Half have their eyes glued to their stations and the rest look to my mother for cues on how to interpret that.
She sighs softly enough that I might be the only one that hears it, and steps over the door's seal. The other crew members take that as their cue and ignore what I've said too. Going back to their tasks of helping my mother suit up. I watch her until they close the hatch door, then wheel around and race for an empty room.
I find an empty conference room easily and dart around the table and chairs to the windows. I press warm hands to cold glass and ignore the haze of fog that starts to surround my hands almost immediately. My eyes are locked on the beach.
The stones, deadfall logs, and coral-covered rock formations make it difficult to spot wash ups on the beach but I already know what my mother is looking for and where it is, so I keep my eyes on her. She's wearing a silver safety suit with the helmet secured, but the plastic lens is open.
  I frown at the open helmet but there's nothing I can do about it and she wouldn't listen to me even if there was. I take my makeshift radio out of my jacket's inner pocket and unfold my headphones, resting the thin orange foam ear pieces over my ears.
I'll probably be in trouble for having modified them, but only if I'm caught listening to the wrong frequencies.
"Doctor Fressa to base."
"This is base, go ahead."
"I'm seeing a lot more debris than usual. Must be caused by the storm moving offshore last night."
"We'll make note of it, Doctor Fressa."
"Good. I may be out here a little longer. Some of this wash up is unusual so I'm going to take samples before I attempt analysis of the large unidentified object."
My eyes stay locked to my mother and I match my breathing to the toss of the waves just beyond her. Beyond the corpse of the whale too, though no one seems to think that that's what it is. I ignore Gen but turn off the radio as he comes into the room behind me even as he stops just behind and beside me.
"Tyde."
"Hm." I reply, not willing to look away for a second.
"Your mother knows what she's doing, you don't have to worry."
"So did my father." I reply distractedly, not really thinking about the effect my words would have on him. Gen had grown up with my father and the two were closer than brothers.
He flinches back and I jerk my head down between my hunched shoulders and squeeze my eyes shut, expecting a blow.
It doesn't come. Instead, Gen's clears his throat and looks away, waiting for a beat before speaking.
"Your father never should've been out there that day Tyde, you know that."
I stay quiet, looking back out the window, I find a rock formation to stare at.
"I know." I say, but my voice is quieter than I mean it to be. It always is.
I keep my eyes glued to that rock no matter how badly they want to stray to the right, towards the drawbridge I can't see from here, even if it hadn't been destroyed in that storm.
We'd been unable to raise the lighthouse keeper on the radio.  My father decided to try to get to the other side of the inlet and relight the beacon himself. He never made it.
Gen's thoughts have no such reservations, and his eyes stray to the right as if he could see where his best friend fell before sighing. It deflates him a little before he turns back to me.
My eyes slide further to the left when I realize he's watching me and my hands tug the too-long sleeves of my jacket over them nervously.
The sun glints off of my mother's safety suit and draws my attention back to her. I chide myself internally for forgetting to watch her progress. Panicking a little when I realize the whale's song is still getting louder and she's still out there. She's almost to the whale's corpse and has already been out there longer than the allotted ten minutes during this choppy wave weather.
I turn the radio back on to hear my mother excitedly chattering away about her findings so far, narrating what she sees for the recording.
"-scinating. I've never seen a pilot fish this big before, it's almost 81 centimeters. And in such unusual colors too, it's showing up a purple color under the uv light."
My hands come up to the glass of their own violation as though trying to snatch my mother away from that fish. I don't know if the uv light has anything to do with the colors of the sea's songs but I don't want to take the chance.
"Oh!"
My mothers voice has a note or surprise in it that grabs my attention as well as the base command.
"What is it Doctor Fressa?"
There's still a note of apprehension in her voice, though she keeps her professional tone when she replies.
"The large unidentified object appears to be a whale, I'm guessing sperm whale simply due to size. It's fluke just surfaced on the last wave, it appears to have gotten caught in one of the rock formations off shore."
"Ty?" Gen says. "What's wrong buddy?"
But I don't answer, my heart is so far up my throat, it's blocking my vocal cords.
I clap both my hands on the glass in warning as if my mother would be able to hear it over the distance and crash of the waves. I can barely hear it over the whale song, still getting louder.
"I'm going to wade in and take a sample. We've never seen a whale wash up here and we should try to get more data for research."
Gen crouches down next to me to try and get my attention and calm me down.
I nearly knock him over when I bolt for the door. I don't hear base reply because my headphones tear off in the door handle and it's only my frantic grip on the radio in my pocket that keeps it from getting yanked away too.
I'm going too fast and slam into the wall across from the doorway but my feet keep moving and I trip the first few strides down the hall until I catch up to my balance again. I slide under the station table in the hall's crossway to the alarmed cries of three people working there, getting carpet burn on my palm as I do.
I skid to stop in front of the hatch out to the hanger, punching the nine digit code I wasn't supposed to know in from memory.
If they didn't want me to know the code they should've made the keys sound the same when you pressed them.
The hatch swings open with a not-so-gentle push and I trip over the doors seal and towards the exit.
I ignore the cries of surprise and indignation from two mechanics working on an ATV and stumble my way to the exit hatch.
I spin the wheel to release its seal and throw most of my weight against it. It opens with a deep creak at being pushed so sharply and I yank my arm from the grasping hands of one of the mechanics and run to the rocks.
The whale song is much louder out here. It's deep and sonorous and mournful. Death and life, journey and sorrow.
There's darkness in the water around the whale corpse but I can't tell if it's because of the impending storm off shore, or something else. I'm wary of it though, because the closer the shadow gets the louder the whale song becomes.
Once I get past the first pillow basalt I slow down and head towards my mother knowing protocol dictates that no one can come after me if I'm past the first two rock formations.
I stumble across rocky sands, brushing trembling hands against coral and bones and coral again as I look towards the whale corpse that still rocks in the waves.  My mother is next to its flipper taking measurements when the corpse starts moving.
The fluke of the whale corpse disappears into the waves first, dragged off by a shadow under the waves. I push off an old fossilized whale flipper and slip on its surface, scraping my leg on a rock.
I try to get my feet under me but trip on the heavy wet sand. I watch as my mother gets caught on the fast moving flipper, scrambling for a hand hold on the slippery surface as the wake sends water swamping over her.
I'm knee deep in the water before I realize that -despite the futile situation- I was still trying to get to her. I'd already lost my father to this beautiful, unforgiving island. I wasn't willing to lose my mother too.
She's shouting something by the time I lose contact with the sea bottom but I can't hear her over the whale song, now so loud it's practically vibrating in my ear drums.
I pretend I don't see her yelling and focus entirely on grabbing hold of any part of the whale corpse before it disappears beyond me. The whale's side slides past me with barnacles scraping my hands raw as I try to catch hold, I inhale some water in my panic as the head of the beast comes up beside me and I lunge for it, grabbing hold of a spike I'd mistaken for white water in the smear of my watery vision.
I cough burning salty water from my nose as I'm dragged off to who knows where, blinking desperate burning eyes open to scan the water for my mother.
If she manages to let go of the whale I'll jump off myself but something tells me she hasn't. This won't end with just a glancing blow from two worlds meeting.
My mother can't hear the whale's song. None of the others can. I knew that when the first whale corpse washed up and the notes it made were almost ethereal. I listened until I cried, cementing myself as the slightly off kid. 
So I'll let myself be dragged to who knows where with no plan back just on the off chance I can understand more than my mother, who is deaf to their voices.
I blink the water dripping from my hair out of my eyes and shake my head in an attempt to keep it out.
Once we break past the waves, the whale corpse's heavy skull sinks down more than the rest of the body, leaving me scrambling to keep my head above water. I end up completely submerged a couple times, following the unsteady rhythm to try and guess when I should hold my breath.
It's only when I see the lighthouse towering above us on its sheer cliff that I realize we'd already reached the mouth of our small inlet.
If mother lets go after we've already left the inlet, the drift would be impossible to overcome. With what little energy we had left after holding on for our less than ideal ocean voyage, we'd never make it back.
I hum frantically to the pattern of the dead whales song, stopping only when the water and salt choke me. Louder and louder, trying to hear my own voice in the song reverberating in my ears. Then we stop moving. 
The water washes over the corpse, settling back into place with the sudden stillness. I go quiet to see if I can hear my mother, but the whale song doesn't stop and I hear nothing.
I sniff back burning water and dash a wet sleeve across my eyes, peering around the massive whale head to look for my mother. She's still clinging to the corpse's flipper, bobbing gently in the water. Even though I can't hear the noises she makes over the whale song, I can tell that she's more panicked than I am, thrashing as she tries to climb the whale corpse.
She throws herself onto the flipper but falls back into the water when her hand slips from the barnacle. I lose sight of her to the white water and try to tamp down the rising panic when she doesn't immediately resurface. But it's been half a minute, then twice that.
After she's been under for two minutes I take a deep breath and duck under myself to look for her.
My eyes burn from the salt water and I close them on reflex for a moment, readjusting my grip on the spike and waiting for all the bubbles to clear before I try looking again.
I nearly gasp at the world of color that greets me. I'd seen plenty of footage from the monitoring screens of our underwater cameras and footage of diving expeditions before they were banned.
I had practically memorized some of the rock formations in our inlet to the point that I would trace them with my hands when I was concentrating hard. None of it prepared me for this.
Streaks of colors trail after schools of fish like beams of light though a stained glass window. Yellows, greens, and blues interrupted by the streaks of purples and reds as predators dive into the schools to feed.
I'm distracted from my task by the sight, mesmerized by a world I'd never seen before but the song of the corpse whale drags me back on task and I turn back to look for my mother.
I study the corpse whale for a second, trying to see what she could've gotten caught on. if there was seaweed or netting caught up on the corpse but I see none, nothing but the color. The sound of the song.
The song doesn't feel as deafening out here, below surface. It's as if this was the way it was designed to be heard. The color of it is a soft blue with dots of dying white. It laps around the corpse with none of the vitality of brightness the other streaks of color have.
I drag my eyes off the color and ignore the urge to hum with it, which sits in my throat heavier than my need for air.
I surface for air but immediately dive back under. Most of my urgency was directed at trying to find my mom, but it was joined by an intense need to see those colors again.
I search each inch of the whale but when I finally spot her she isn't tangled in anything. In fact she's not even touching the whale. Not the dead one anyway.
I only find her because the movement draws my attention. Not her movement, but the massive creature behind her.
It pulls her from the whale corpse with massive teeth and lets go, watching her frantically swim back to the corpse.
Mother manages to pull herself up the flipper to breathe before the whale pulls gently on her leg, dragging her back into the water. It's as if the creature is curious, likely having never seen a human before.
It hums at her and I nearly inhale a lungful of water at the vibrancy of the colors that radiate from the creature's head, nothing like the dull color of the corpse whale's song. It's yellow with strong streaks of white that radiate out from her head in ripples of color.
They surround my mother as she grabs onto the corpse and uses its flipper to drag herself to the surface.
The living whale's song changes when she touches the whale corpse. No longer yellow, it has shifted to orange and is growing darker with each note change. The whale dives a bit, circling down. I don't know why the color panics me.
Usually from shore, only purple and red scare me but right now, I can't think of a color more frightening than the orange that's directed at my mother.
I swim to her but realize I won't have time to reach her or to surface and tell her to let go. I'm out of plans and out of time when the whale below turns back to face us and opens its mouth, showing teeth longer than I've ever seen.
I still hear the song of the corpse whale behind me, though its nearly drowned out when the orange song of its kin washes over me, I still manage to find it.
Concentrating on its song, I begin to hum along. I close my eyes to focus on it and how much air I have left in my lungs rather than the fact that I'm pretty sure I'm about to be eaten by a giant toothed whale.
The touch is gentle, more of a nudge than a headbutt. I open my eyes wider than I should in the salt water when I realize the creature I thought was going to kill is just booped me. It's nose is massive, just the length of it is as long as I am tall and that's the shortest aspect of the creature.
Gently it pushes me up to the surface and I pull in crisp air before it sinks away beneath me. I slide off its nose but keep humming to the dead whale's song. The living creature listens before echoing it back.
It ripples out from its head in a much more vibrant blue, the white center a bright,  connected line through the center, unlike the dead whales' dull white dots, like dead air bubbles, not rising to the surface.
I hum along, following as the whale slowly changes the notes to something else. It's the same song, but instead of the heartbreak I always feel hearing the notes, I find contentment, then peace, then joy.
The whale has shown me the difference between its song and the corpse's song. One is a song of death and mourning, the other a song of life and peace.
Once I'm able to follow the new song, it falls silent. Turning sideways so it can see me. I stop humming too and it bumps into me gently before drifting past to bump into the dead whale.
It changes its song back to the mournful tune as it does and closes its eyes, bumping into it again before opening its eyes to focus on me, repeating the sad song.
I swim over and reach out to touch the corpse whale too, humming the sad song with the last of my air.
I meet its eye and nod at the creature, wanting it to know I understand. When the song ends, the whale shifts closer to me, bumping me with its flipper until I hold onto it. It nudges me to the surface again and I find myself right next to my mother, who is still clinging to the corpse whale's flipper, shivering more from the adrenaline than the cold.
"Mom, let go and come here."
I hold a hand out for her to take, but she doesn't react at all, still staring into nothing with wide eyes. I grab her hand and pull her off the corpse whale gently, not wanting to startle her.
I don't know how I knew it would be dangerous for her to stay there. Maybe it was something in the song that told me. All I knew was that the living whale wanted us away from its dead kin and I didn't question it.
Once she lets go of the corpse I swim us away from it, flicking water drops at her face until she turns her head towards me.
I mimic deep slow breaths until she's matching me for a few seconds before I take an exaggerated deep breath, then I pull her down below the surface with me.
I hum the mourning song before letting it warp into the life song the whale had taught me. It does the same and drifts closer to us, reaching its flipper forward and I drag my mother's hands forward until we both grab hold.
The whale pulls us away from the corpse and turns back to face it drifting closer, humming the mourning call deep and slow like a final goodbye before it switches to the life sung for a single note. 
Then it opens its mouth and sinks its teeth into the dead whale's side.   My mother screams bubbles and I clap a hand over her mouth to make sure she doesn't lose all her air.
There's not much blood when the whale tears itself away, leaving a sizable chunk missing. The whale doesn't turn back to the corpse of its kin as the surrounding predators begin to tear into it.
Instead it heads back towards our inlet, as if taking us away from the danger of the swarming predators. The whale hums the morning song slowly at first, but it changes as it picks up, adding notes of yellow and green and blues to it. It's like the whale is telling a story.
The more I listen and let the notes wash over me the more sure I become. This whale is telling the life story of the other whale, going backwards from end to beginning. Even when the whale surfaces to let us breathe I don't want to leave the water for fear of missing some of the notes.
The years pile on quickly at first, not much changing in its adulthood but it begins to slow again as we reach the beginning. The dead whales' first migration, first hunt with the pod, first time to the surface.
I can feel it all in the song. The last notes ring out with the finality of letting go and something in the song has me watching my mother. I stare at her even as we surface again for air. Only then realizing the connection.
This whale was a mother. She had raised the one she'd dragged from our shores, burying her child at sea to nourish new life. The corpse whale had quieted its song when the living whale had begun its mourning song, quieting entirely when she had taken a piece out of its side.
I ponder this sadly as I process the fact that the mother whale really is taking us back towards our beach.
The song ends as it began, bursting forth with life in one final, triumphant note before petering off as the colors ripple out and into silence.
We surface to breathe one more time in the silence before our beach comes into view. The mother whale swims with the silence and my heart is heavy with her loss, like it's got anchors attached to it.
I ignore my churning emotions and throw my attention into watching my mother. Afraid that she's not present enough to signal when she needs air.
White strands of color like the hiss of waves breaking on rocks alert me to our arrival, but I don't want to say goodbye.
I'm not ready, but my mother is. The second she sees one of the rock formations leading to shore, she lets go of the mother whale's flipper and swims. She clings to the rocks with the same intensity that she had clung to the corpse and I frown, worried she'll cut her hands on the jagged coral indents.
I too let go of the mother whale's flipper, but instead of trailing after my own mother, I swim to face the whale.
I hum softly to her the part of the mourning song that reminded me of parting, humming it to the lighter notes of the life song. It's not necessarily grief or death that I want to evoke, just farewell. She hums back the same notes in the same key in reverse before swimming forward.
She pushes me over her flipper again and up to the surface to breathe. She showers me with water from her blowhole as she takes a breath herself, then she goes alone, leaving me to swim after my own mother. I do.