CHAPTER EIGHT
Life continued in sweet monotony. We journeyed with the
tides and moved about the world. The bright light and night of
the silverside moved in an unrelenting blur of activity, all of which
I turned to song. It was on the tenth journey back from the cold
summer feedings that I heard the classical tones of Philosophy
once again evoking a philosophical change in the song. The pod
stopped silent in the seas.
Philosophy, who seemed as old as the song itself, had lagged
far behind. Objectively, I drew away from the main pod to seek out
this old whale and see what new theme he was creating. What I
found was sad indeed–a whale that had grown so old and feeble he
was barely able to move. His mind had gentled, and he sang now in
monotone. I followed and listened as he moved with deliberation of
purpose toward the pod.
He had fallen so far behind that it took the good part of the
golden tide for him to join the main body of the pod. There at the
edge he stopped, floating deathly still in the water. When asked if
all was right, he sang in a reedy voice that he had been slowed by
a deep trance and that from these dreams was a new theme for the
song itself. He needed a tide or two to finish his vision. The pod
was patient and took this time to feed heavily on all those sweet
things that can be found to eat in the warmer waters.
Early the next day, when the bright lights of golden tide had
overshadowed the night of the silverside, Philosophy began to sing.
At first it was only a gentle harmonic rippling the water, but slowly it
crescendoed into a demand that the pod gather about him. From all
points and depths of the sea, they came. We moved and surround-
ed this aging whale of wisdom and dreams.
“I am old,” he said. “I am about to slip from the waves that
rock the sea and fall like a rock to the deep! As is my wont, I wish
to reunite myself voluntarily with the waters of life and give up that
which was given to me.”
The pod buzzed in excitement but quieted again as the old
whale continued, “I have over the past several tides been visited in
dreams by the Narwhal of the Horn. They have presented me with
new thoughts and perspective of life. I have been much moved by
their arguments in my dreams. It is with the counsel of those pro-
phetic dreams that call for my right as dictated within the Holy Song
of Truth as sung by the Narwhal of the Horn . . . for the THOU-
SAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER.” Then in dramatic
punctuation, he floated there, quiet still rocking side-to-side with the
waves, singing nothing. But from the pod there was a silent expec-
tation of more and a searching for understanding of his request.
My charge was to record all, as part and parcel of the song.
While Philosophy sang, I remembered the ghostly pair I had met so
long ago who had first sung of the “death.” I silently recalled my
dreamlike meeting with the Narwhal and their call for the ultimate
revenge, wherein a pod would drive themselves upon the shore in
obscure protest. I tore deep into the heart and soul of the very
song itself searching for a melody or a verse that would guide me to
accept or refute Philosophy’s demand that the pod should commit
such a massive suicide and if that request should be honored. The
pod turned to me and waited in nervous anticipation.
How long they waited or how long I searched I do not know,
but suddenly from the very beginnings of the song I found that pas-
sage, that same passage that was later sung to me by the Narwhal
in my youthful dream in the ice flow.
At first as a gentle humming and then to full voice, I sang,
“There will come a time when the song as sung need not be sung
any more. There will come a time when one amidst the pod will call
for the THOUSAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER, to force the
pod to the dryside in silent protest of all the wrongs the sandwalkers
have committed in the sea. The pod must agree in majority and be
willingly to give up that which was given to them, life itself. The
requesting whale, so honored, will be allowed to lead the pod to the
dryside, there to leave the waters of life forever and die, never to
return to the sea.
But the decision is great for the pod. For, with the honor of
the THOUSAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER, the pod song
is ended. All must go. All must sing the final song with the one
so honored. All must gloriously rush to the shores of the dryside
and sing the final stanza in protest to those that wish us gone from
the sea. This is not an ignominious death, but rather a rapturous
crescendo honoring all of those who have swum and still swim the
waters of life. So it is sung in the Song of the Sea.
As I finished, the seas went flat, not even a breeze ruffled the
waters. The pod floated as if suspended in time and place reflecting
on what I had sung. All, every member of the pod from Progeny
to Philosophy would die if the request was granted, this honored
death. Right or wrong, I knew not which, but a feeling of waste
pervaded my very soul. Surely the pod would see the futility in this
gesture of ending the song. I was but the Scribe. I was the singer
of the song and could not, would not enter the debate as to the val-
ue of this decision. I was charged with listening, detached, a part,
yet not a part. I waited as all those others waited for a new song
to be sung to end the anticipation of this frightful request. Surely
Philosophy had grown mad with the aging. Surely the pod would
not agree.
Dark had come with the rising of the silverside and the melt-
ing of the bright golden light. Nothing moved but the waters them-
selves. The tiny bright flashes of the far above watched and cooled
the seas, but still no one moved. Everyone, young and old alike,
silently sang the song that had been sung.
Much later as the tide changed and the bright light skipped
across the rolling waves like some great silvered fish, without cue
the pod began to sing as one. ‘We greet the golden tide. We greet
the sea. We honor those that have gone before. We honor those
still living. We now honor Philosophy with the beginning, the end.
We gladly go as one to sing this the final passage to the Song of
the Sea. We will freely die to protest the sandwalker and the evil
that he brings to the sea.”
As long as I live, as long as I swim the seas seeking some
form of destiny, I will hear those hollow lyrics that were added to the
song. My mind reeled as I recorded all, as was my charge. For the
moment, I was caught in the very same excitement, the fever of this
momentous decision and I too began to sing the acquiescence. I
hummed, and my blood boiled with the power that comes in being
one with the pod. It was done. The pod had decided and the insidi-
ous wave had begun its ominous roll to the shore.
I, too began to sing the acceptance, pledging my body to
the THOUSAND DEATHS OF THE SANDWALKER, but the old,
cracked voice of Philosophy cried out bringing me to my senses,
“No, Harmony! The entire pod must go as one save for one . . .
the Scribe, the sentinel, the singer of the song. You must stand
away and record the final notes. You are charged, as you have been
charged before, with watching and recording. There is no other way.
When all is done you must sing the song in all its finality to another
pod so that the traditions will be passed on. As you sing the final
notes of the song, then and only then will you enjoy the rapture of
all that we have enjoyed. Then shall you have your end, your be-
ginning. This is the way it has been. This is the way it shall be.”
Silence once again knifed through the pod but in the air was
the blood call of the decision. So numbed was I, that I simply re-
corded and thought not at all of what would come later.
As the pod sang their song of expectation, I heard, in the
distance, the angry bellowing of Cacophony as he breached from
the deep. “It was mine. The song was mine. Mine to sing. Mine to
listen. I agree with the pod, but I do not want to die!” Only I heard
this passionate outburst, like many small verses. It was followed
by silence, as Cacophony sounded deep and disappeared from the
song for a time.
The pod did not move; the pod did not sing. It lulled in the
waters off the shore and waited for the darkness of the silverside.
For this was the time of great madness, as the silverside pulled not
only at the tides but twisted our sanity and reason. With the si-
lence and the quiet of the pod, I dropped from the world to reflect on
the fullness of the song. The music of all the histories reeled in my
mind and I sought some form of escape from the decision of Phi-
losophy. The music whispered like a quick wind that blows, but no
remedy came.
I found in the song in tides long past other Scribes who had
traveled long distances until they found our pod. They had come
shrouded in the anguish of their aloneness and to sing their song
one final time. Always when finished, as they sang the final chord,
the crescendo, of their now-extinct pod’s song, they died becom-
ing one with the sea, their song echoing forever in the verses of
our pod. For being a Scribe without an active song to sing has to
be loneliness so painful and deep that the only cure is the end,
the beginning.
But also in the song was one Scribe who came not alone.
He came with a mate. I was there, a young whale, and as this
Scribe from some unknown, long-departed pod sang, his mate
joined him with a gentle harmony. At the final crescendo, they end-
ed their lives together.
I could take a mate!
It was always known to me that should I wish, I could take
a wife, and it was always assumed that in some tide, Melody and
I would be one. Now was my final chance to join, to have a com-
panion to ease the lonely tides as I searched for a pod to pass the
song to. A mate. An interlude in my personal song in which I could
reflect and join and become one for a time. No time for calving, no
time for child, but still something to grasp on my journey to the end.
Without thinking, I breached and called loudly for Melody. Her
name echoed about the pod as they floated idly in deep contempla-
tion of all that was, and was to be.
The waters seemed to sweeten as I felt her come near, her
song questioning my need. The wind whipped at the waves and
froth, in the form of tiny bubbles lifted in the air reflecting the laven-
ders and blues of the twinkling lights overhead. She sang a gentle
blush and brushed against me as the swell of the waters lifted us
both in unison. We became one for a moment, there in the bril-
liance of the reflected silver light, and for that moment, forgotten
was the world.
The forgetting seemed forever. There was not yesterday, only
the sweet promise of now, but like the tides that roll in and out,
tomorrow crept upon us. What had been only two in the world be-
came all things of the sea, and a pod that demanded to sing a fatal
song. I regained my senses.
“Stay with me Melody,” I rushed. “As is my right as Scribe for
a pod that seeks to end its song, I may choose a mate. Stay with
me and listen to this strange glory. Our tides will not be long, but
we can see what we can as we seek another pod to sing our final
song.”
She sang nothing for a time as we rode the crest of the silver-
side tide, then slowly she pulled away. “I, too, had a vision from the
Narwhal. In my dream I was told that I must succumb to the will of
the song. The Narwhal said that I would be tempted to stray, but
that I must be true of course and sing with those I have sung with
always. Philosophy has called for the finale to our song and of that
honor I should sing. But, I also long for your song. I wish to sing
both songs but I cannot.”
“But,” I protested, “it seems so futile, such a waste of life and
the song. We have lived, frolicked, and swum the seas. We have
run from dangers. Have we survived only to drown in the dryside?
What makes Philosophy right? What makes the death of all for the
death of one so glorious? Who has a right to ask us to give up our
world for the sake of an old whale’s pride? Don’t sing with them,
sing with me! It will give us tides together before we, too, sing the
finale of the Song of the Sea.”
In answer, Melody slowly drifted from my side by the tide of
the night of silverside. “Let me think,” she cried as she turned.
“Let me think of that which I should do.”
I found myself alone, wrapped in my own self-pitying song.
Pity always wraps those who sing of it in a numbing blanket of false
warmth and security. I heard not the rush and swell of the seas, nor
the simple tunes sung by the others that swam nearby in the waters
of life. I could only hear my own song as I lamented a love lost.
So dulled was I by my saddened introspection, it was some
time before I realized that something was very wrong indeed. I felt
the waters begin to churn as I was tossed this way and that. Blink-
ing my eyes in confusion, shaking off the lethargy that had envel-
oped me, I was tossed again violently as a giant fluke smashed me
full in the face.
I turned and looked but could see nothing. Then, from the
murkiness of the depths was a shape and form I knew only too
well–Cacophony! His eyes were glazed and shot with the raging hot
blood that coursed in his veins. Full into my side, he hammered,
and I felt the bone and cartilage splinter and crush. I twisted in
slow agony trying to hold to conscious thought, but the darkness of
the silverside was getting darker, and I could not react as he struck,
again and again.
I floated, unable to defend myself, all the sweet dryside airs
driven from my body. I could only listen as Cacophony railed, “Die,
white whale, die. Die not the honorable THOUSAND DEATHS OF
THE SANDWALKER, but die just the same. You have taken the
song that should have been mine. You have changed my life. You
have made all the wrongs seem right. You might have had the hon-
or to stand aside and listen as we all sang the final song, but I take
that honor. I take back that which you have taken from me!”
He receded into the gloom, and I could barely discern his
form as he prepared to deal the final blow. As he charged, I steeled
myself for the end, the beginning. Just as he was about upon me,
a tiny form leaped through the waters and deflected his blow. Like
a dolphin, darting here and there, was Progeny. Progeny, my tiny
friend, was no match for this monster of the deep but a match he
made.
“You must leave him be!” Progeny sang in his child-whale
voice. “You must be gone from the crystal seas.” He rammed the
much larger whale square in the eye, and Cacophony was blinded
on one side. Progeny darted this way and that, and before Cacoph-
ony could react, this silvery missile smacked into his other side,
rendering the mad bull totally blind.
“My son,” croaked Cacophony in shock and disbelief, “you
would side with him who has taken the song from your father?”
“Yes,” cried Progeny, “I learned from Harmony to give all for
the song.”
“And, I suppose,” continued the blinded whale in gentler
tones now, “that dear, sweet Harmony has sung all sorts of ditties
about your father. I suppose he has sung in a loud voice all the
wrong that he felt I had done.”
“No, father. Harmony has not sung of you at all. He has
avoided all melodies with mention of you for fear of turning me
against you. No, father, the song I sing is one of observation. I
have watched. I have listened. You are an evil in the waters of life!”
Cacophony paused in silence as he thought on all that had
been spoken. Then, he softly spoke, “May chance you are right,
my son. May chance I have squandered the wealth that the waters
of life gave me. I am so sorry. I have not been a father to you at all.
I have ignored you and I know not your song. Come closer so that
I may see you, for you have blinded my eyes and I can barely see.”
As Cacophony spoke, the child’s angry resolve softened
and then turned quickly to pity and shame. “Father,” cried the tiny
whale as he cautiously slipped to Cacophony’s side, “I have hurt
you so, but I only did so to save another.”
Progeny moved near to his father and began to sing a song
of gentle healing, as he brushed against the eyes that could not
see. Round and round, round and round, he swam about the injured
whale, as he tried to heal the injuries that he had caused.
Suddenly, the older whale twisted his massive body and
with one mighty blow, smashed his tail with all of his weight into
the tiny whale.
With a burst of bubbles, Progeny softly sang, “Father, why?”
“Why? Why?” his father laughed, “You are my son, and
you have to ask why? Anyone who dares to strike at the mighty
Cacophony shall not live long in the sea. Adagio, the fat whale;
Tympani, my learned father; Harmony, the great white; even you, my
son, none shall live that fail to understand–I am he that controls the
sea.” And with a crash of body on body and a cackle of laughter,
Cacophony ended the just-begun life of his son, Progeny.
I lay there still in the water. “Oh, my dear sweet child, Prog-
eny. Yours was a special gift of laughter and mischief. Yours was
always to give to me, and now you are gone, involved in that which
you did not belong!”
My lament was broken again by the discordant voice of Ca-
cophony, “Now, white whale, as my vision clears, we shall finish
that which is ours to finish.” He began moving towards me and I
once again steeled myself for the end. Droning a senseless tune,
he moved in the ever-tightening circle of the death spin. I had just
begun to sing my final song, to quietly ease what pain was coming,
when Cacophony stopped.
The waters surrounding us were filled with such frothing that
as single-minded as was his intent, even Cacophony stopped. But
the water wasn’t truly frothing. The waters were dancing with the
unified voices of the entire pod, singing the first chorus to the Song
of the Sea, the prelude to the death of Philosophy. The notes of
the song were accented by each of the pod, from the smallest to the
largest, and it caught them all in a fever of finale. Whale by whale,
they breached between Cacophony and me, and whale by whale,
they separated us. Cacophony bellowed in rage as he was carried
along, but no one in the pod reacted, for the ritual had begun.
“Stop!” he cried, “I am Cacophony. I will not lower myself to the
clamshell level of you . . . you followers! I am the leader.”
But the pod ignored his protestations pushing him toward the
shore behind the slowly swimming, age-mad Philosophy.
Cacophony began to panic as he realized he was trapped at
the head of the procession. “You kelp heads, you crusty-coated
feathered furies, let me be! I should have been the Scribe. The
song should have been mine to sing.”
But the pod continued to sing as one. The mad bull tried
vainly to swim through the pod and back out to sea, but the crush
of whales was so massive that in their fervor, they could not let
him go. He battered and slammed at the moving wall of flesh but
they were resolute in their determination. All the while, Philosophy
moved through the break line of the crashing waves, closer and
closer to shore as he hummed a sweet gentle tune in counterpoint.
As the pod passed me by, so did Melody, and the waters
seemed saltier still as rainbow-hued tears welled in her eyes. “I
love you, Harmony. I want that noted and reflected in this, the final
crescendo of the song. I wish I could stay. I wish I could live a
moment more with you by my side, but I cannot. I will be with you
forever in song.”
I was mortally injured and could do nothing but listen. I float-
ed in the sea, charged with the responsibility of those things that
had been sung before. I could not interfere. I could not be involved.
I was the Scribe . . . the singer of the song. I was to listen and to
remember, not necessarily of choice but rather by chance alone.
The pod moved by and I was left alone in a sea awash with
the music of the honor and vengeance of the THOUSAND DEATHS
OF THE SANDWALKER. I heard and remembered tens and hun-
dreds of simple verses as the pod moved where the waves broke
upon the sands. I heard short tunes of love lasting forever, and
mothers cheering their children, and the children nervously respond-
ing, not truly understanding all this stuff of traditions. I listened as
Cacophony bellowed, at first in rage and then in total fear, for his
end was very near. Though he thrashed and tried to force himself
back to sea, the press of flesh was too much, and he was rolled in
the waves that crashed up on the shore.
The entire pod was embroiled in personal verses, all of which
became part and parcel to the final singing of the song. At the head
of this senseless procession was Philosophy, and slowly I began to
isolate his ending song. I expected something deep and meaning-
ful but instead I heard a silly lullaby, a song a mother would sing to
a child. His sing-song voice rocked with the waves as his ancient
form began to grate on the sand. This was not the tune of some
great member of the pod. This was the song of a whale gone mad.
This tradition, this death of the sandwalkers, was the whim and
wish of senility. It was off tune.
The sea now rang with other noises, the rattle and the grated
clackings of the sandwalkers as the shore filled with their scores.
Why were they here? Why would they mingle with us? Why would
they interfere with the song as it was sung in all its glory in protest
of their lives?
Finally, I began to realize that in a way maybe Cacophony was
right, and all of this was senseless waste and carp bile. I started to
move my aching limbs and began to shake myself from the lethargy
of tradition. This was wrong! This hideous act must be stopped!
Waste, what a waste, all the pod, all the lives thrown to the shore
to end all, to honor some whale who now sang of chasing tuna-tails
and butterflies. I pushed my way through the mass of slick flesh
that blindly moved to a sandy death.
“Stop,” I cried, “Go back. What you do is wrong! Stop the
singing! Stop the song! The final test is the sanity, the rightness,
of him who calls for the death. Philosophy is not right with the
world. He has failed the test. This death should not be!” But my
pleas fell on ears deafened by that which has happened before — tra-
dition. As I tried to turn the tide and force them back to sea, some
were already singing their final melody. I pushed and shoved, bit
and battered at them, but they would not be dissuaded. Back and
forth, my belly dragging upon the sand as my great fin stood from
the water like some sagging white sail, I swam, trying to stop all
from this stupidity. The waters frothed about me as I sought Melo-
dy. Surely she would listen to the logic of all this insanity.
v oices began to drop out from the song as they passed over,
gone forever. I lashed at some, battered at others–anything to get
their attention. Some of the babies, the smaller whales, frightened
by my machinations, moved miraculously back from the shore, but
it was all I could do to keep them away from the death, for they did
not understand, wanting only to be near their mothers and fathers.
Mixed in with the rocking bodies of the pod were the hideous, frail
sandwalkers who strangely moved in the waters with us.
Before me, closer to the shore, I could hear the beautiful bell-
like sounds of my beloved Melody, as she reached the goal. “No!” I
bellowed. “Do not die, my sweet. You can live. This final song is
a lie. It should not be sung.” I flipped and pulled at these waterless
sands forcing myself higher and higher into the dryside and closer to
my Melody. I must save her. I must force her back into the waters of
life, back to sensibility.
As I pushed forward, I felt myself being pushed back. Not
by the sea, which was rushing to the shore, but by the dry-skinned
fins of the sandwalkers. “Let me be!” I sang, but as I noted be-
fore, these strange creatures know not how to sing, and worse
still, would not listen to my song. I fought against them. I pushed
and twisted and hammered myself closer to my love, my life itself.
They pulled; I pushed.
Then to my horror, I heard the final, gloriously dreadful sound
of Melody singing her last. She sang the song of love, the song of
my life as she saw it. She sang a song of calves not born and the
golden light we would never see again. “I loved you, Harmony,” she
sang in a whisper like the wind. “I loved you then; I love you now,
and I dedicate my end, my beginning to you!” And with that, the
waves seemed to stop and the seas went flat. The song ended. The
song was no more to be. For the first time in my life, I heard a silent
world, a world without a song.
I paused in my grief and stared with great unblinking eyes at
the shore that was now strewn with the bodies, the hulks of all who
I had loved and come to know. How long I floated there, I do not
know. I felt myself at some other time being pressed back to the sea
by the strange sandwalkers. But I cared not, idly floating and allow-
ing the waves to move me to the shore. Now I too had reason to
die, for I had no reason to cling to a hollow life, empty of song. The
song that I had been charged with singing was a flat buzzing sound
of memory only. It was then that all around me faded to black and
cooler grays.