It was a typical grey and overcast Pacific Northwest morning in the middle of February. Low lying fog, thirty six degrees, the crisp feel of winter still fresh in the air by the looks of the frost blanketing the vehicles and bare alder branches. The Puget Sound had an eerie calm to it. The lack of migrating Canadian geese honking, the absence of the sound of a ferry crossing, as well as the void of humming overhead aircraft that should have been descending into Seattle Tacoma Airport was disconcerting.
And then suddenly, the skies seemed to open, and the appearance of what looked like a vortex of fog began swirling overhead. It wouldn’t have been unusual for this hemisphere, except for the luminescent coagulant object suddenly appearing over the water.
Globally, we would soon discover.
CHAPTER 1
“Hmm. Well that’s odd.”
Zoe Blackstone smacked her chapped lips and squinted as she perched on a rocky cliff at Lime Kiln Park in the San Juan Islands. An intern at the Whale Research Institute, she was taking another look through her binoculars at the Orca pod in the not so far distance just due Northeast. It was a clear and balmy sixty-eight degrees on a beautiful August afternoon. Although the waters were choppy, it still made for a perfect day for observation.
She reached behind her under her favorite spot, a secluded picnic table where she liked to view the pod. It was her place of refuge from the barrage of tourists that infiltrated the island during the summer months. Especially when word spread that the whales were in sight, the park would become crowded. Underneath the weathered bench, she reached down for her hand-written notes kept secure in tattered black leather case, pulled it out and was running her fingers across several jottings she had taken on previous expeditions there. A family with a small child coming down the rocky trail talking about their excitement to see the whales momentarily distracted her, as she looked up over her shoulder just in time to catch a squealing toddler, who's feet got a little bit ahead of him, tumble into the scrub and blackberry bush at the bottom of the trail in front of the bench. Zoe exhaled and tucked her notes back inside, and walked over to gently extract the child out, who only had a few minor scratches on his leg and hand him to his relieved mom. She then turned to grab her notes again, and counted under her breath, then put it back in the case. Exasperated and trying to focus, she put the binoculars back up to her tired eyes with one trembling hand while the other tried to keep her bright magenta mane from whipping her face, but the frigid waters of the Haro Strait was stinging her instead. She tried to blink away the fogginess and counted again.
“Shit.”
For as long as she could remember, Zoe was obsessed with whales. That obsession grew into wanting to learn more about and study them after seeing one beached when she was ten. She had always lived near the water around Washington state, from the coast to various rivers and lakes, to the sound and now on an older but refurbished floating house on Lake Union. Her mother, a talented and eccentric free-spirited artist would go where the jobs and money were, promising her aquatic loving child that no matter what, they would always live near or on the water. Zoe never got a chance to meet her father, who died before she was born. All she knew is that he was a member of the Suquamish tribe, and was a champion for whale preservation. That, and being that the tribe’s name translates to “people of the clear salt water”, Zoe always felt a connection to him and the Suquamish. Her mother concurred that she did inherit his philanthropic nature as well as his ebony eyes and caramel skin tone.
