But these underwater canyons? The rainwater plopped a tale that this canyon was deeper than the tallest building in the city stacked on itself again and again and again and again and . . . well, the raindrops just kept saying “and again.” How deep could that be? Very deep.
The wind moaned, shoving at the water.
The boy was there.
The boy was right below him.
It circled and paced, and then it jumped back, startled.
A giant leviathan rose from the depths. Saltwater-gray, twilight-eyed, and slick-bodied.
Oh! Yes!
The wind rushed at the sperm whale, catching the hot mist shooting from the whale’s blowhole. The mist flashed in rainbow shards, and the wind sped through it, scattering the rainbow.
Down, it shrieked. Down, down, down.
The whale sucked in a lungful of air. The vacuum of it yanked the wind. It grasped the fleshy tube and dove into the whale’s lung.
Down!
The expanding walls of the lung were hot, spongelike, and wet. The wind circled the lung, swishing impatiently with the salty air. The brine and bitter seaweed scent stung and poked at the wind.
Then it trampolined up as the whale crashed through a wave and dove.
Down, down, down, the wind chanted.
It poked at the fleshy lung, prodding the whale to dive deeper, faster. Down! How far could a sperm whale dive? Could it outrun sunlight? Could it flee the twilight? Could it survive in midnight waters?
Down!
The wind cautiously climbed the long, warm tube toward the whale’s blowhole. The descent was dizzying, and it kept falling back into the stagnant-air lung. It tried to rise. It tried again. But each time the whale’s dive jarred the wind and sent it tumbling back down the wet slide into the lung.
It was a cage, and the wind feared it would be trapped, until the whale breached the surface again and shot it out in a spray of mist.
No. The boy needed the wind. And the wind was a daring, courageous being who rode inside whales to the bottom of the ocean. A slick blowhole would not conquer the wind.
So as the whale shot into the depths, the wind climbed to perch at the edge of its blowhole. But the hole was covered. It was sealed. It was a locked door without a keyhole. There wasn’t even a tiny crack for the wind to slip under. The whale was sealed tight, and the wind was sealed in it.
The wind shoved at the whale’s pink flesh. It bounced and kicked and shoved. And then a drip, drip, drip began. It was a slight, rainfall echo. The wind swirled about, testing the bars of its lung cage. And yes, just there, it found a space where something as diffuse as the wind could slip through. It only had to make itself very small and very thin. It had to make itself into almost nothing at all.
It whispered though the tissue. These were microscopic, spongelike holes, and the wind wound through the maze of them. The tissue pulsed with the giant’s heartbeat, and each pulse squeezed the tissue walls closer around the wind. It was a desperate, stupid thing.
The wind had traveled to many dangerous places for secrets. Secrets lasted a long time. They kept the wind company. It could pull them out and flip through entire epochs of them.
It had never traveled to a dangerous place for something as temporary as a human. There weren’t even any secrets here.
It sighed and finally burst free of the whale’s lung. It clung to the edge of the blowhole, gripping the fleshy lip. The ocean was dark. Not midnight-dark but instead the cold, gray light of twilight.
The sun, as mighty as it was, could only reach this depth in blues and grays. The wind shivered as the cold saltwater waterfalled over it. How long could it grip the whale’s exterior before diving back into the lungs?
The wind vibrated as the whale clicked. It was a rapid noise, like a human dragging their fingernail over a plastic comb’s teeth. It echoed through the water, and far-off, something rattled in response.
Where? Where? Where was the boy?
There were large, black shadows that must be fish. Squid creatures darting and dodging. Tentacled things. Otherworldly, alien things. The current pulled, but it wasn’t as free as the wind, and it didn’t chatter this deep; instead, it moaned in a mournful bass note.
The wind longed to be free. It longed to soar and to run and to fly. Where was the boy?
