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Anna and the Whale
By Susannah Kenton, Isis, Demeter Kenton-Dau Balboa Press
Copyright © 2014 Heart Space International
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-1497-0
CHAPTER 1
Anna loved whales. More than anything she wanted to meet and befriend one. But Anna lived in the Arizona desert and the nearest whales were a long way away.
Luckily, she had an amazing imagination. She'd been training it since she was very young. She began, like lots of us do, with cloud gazing. She would lie on her back on the red rocks behind her house and look up at the sky. For hours she would watch all sorts of faces and animals emerge from the fluffy whiteness and then transform into something new.
Recently, she'd taken her imagining to a whole new level. It was after a long shower, one day, when her bathroom was filled with a giant cloud of steam. Anna drew a small circle on the mirror with her fingertip and looked through it into the reflection of her eye. She softened her gaze and breathed gently. As she did, an underwater kingdom began to emerge. Anna was enchanted. First, she saw hazy crystal pyramids rising up from the ocean floor. Then, a group of lacy sea dragons danced by. And finally, way in the distance, she made out a pod of exquisite humpback whales.
Anna couldn't believe her luck. It was the best thing her imagination had ever seen and she rushed downstairs and into her dad's workshop to tell him all about it.
"Dad, Dad!" Anna called as she tumbled through the door. "I've seen whales in the bathroom mirror."
Her father looked up from the garbage disposal unit he was trying to fix. "Anna, what on earth are you talking about?" he said.
"Whales!" Anna cried. "There's a portal to the ocean right in our bathroom."
Her father shook his head and sighed. "Anna," he said gently, "You really must stop your day dreaming and try to live in the real world – especially now Mom's no longer with us. Remember, honey, there are dreamers and there are do ..."
"I know," Anna interrupted, "And you want me to be a doer like you. But Dad, even you were once a dreamer too. Remember when we used to hunt for dinosaur eggs in the canyons? Or look for flying prairie dogs in the night sky? We never play games like that anymore," she said, her lower lip starting to quiver, "And you've stopped calling me Anna Banana."
Her father smiled sadly and stroked Anna's hair. She was right. Since his wife's death so much of the fun had gone out of their lives.
The following month was Anna's eleventh birthday. Her father knew she loved whales more than anything and that they both needed a break. So, he used his savings to buy her the best birthday present ever. It didn't look like much – just a plain envelope on the breakfast table that read "Happy Birthday, Anna."
But when Anna opened it she discovered plane tickets and reservations to swim with humpback whales in the South Pacific. She let out a cry of joy, leapt up on the kitchen counter and did a jubilant dance, spilling her milk in the process.
"Anna, get down at once!" her dad scolded, trying to mask his amusement with a frown.
That night, and every night until the trip, Anna practiced snorkeling in the bath. She imagined the beautiful whales she would get to meet and communed with them through her portal, letting them know she was on her way.
Finally the day came and Anna and her dad flew on three different planes to get to their destination. Within just a couple of hours of touching down, they were sitting on a boat in wetsuits, masks, snorkels and fins, ready for their first whale encounter. Anna was really excited, but secretly afraid too. The thought of being in the water with creatures the size of a bus was scary, but she used her imagination and pretended to feel brave.
The boat's captain was legendary for spotting whales when no one else could. "There's a mother and calf at 11 o'clock," he called out from the helm. Anna rushed to the front of the boat and sure enough saw mist spurting up from a whale's blowhole, followed by its beautiful glistening back arching above the surface. "That's the baby," the captain told her. Even the baby looked huge to Anna.
"We have to earn their trust," the captain said. "Make sure you slip into the water very carefully so you don't scare them away."
Everyone scrambled to the edge of the boat, tripping over each other's fins. Anna tried her best to slip in gently, but in her enthusiasm ended up making a huge splash. She looked apologetically back at the captain, but he didn't seem to mind and neither did the whales.
"I must look very small and un-scary to them," thought Anna.
As she put her mask in the water, Anna saw the huge mother whale dive down with a flip of her tail and come to rest about five yards below the surface. Then the baby did its own mini tail flip and went down to join its mother. It nuzzled up next to her and began to nurse. Anna watched in awe. She didn't feel frightened one bit. The whales were so peaceful and gentle that Anna felt safe and at home.
Back at the resort, that evening, Anna swapped whale-swimming stories with the other guests. One lady had swum with a playful baby whale who'd found a palm frond on the water's surface. "He was tossing it around with his fins like a ball," the lady laughed. Anna imagined what fun that would be.
That night was stormy and Anna had lots of wild, whale-swimming dreams. She tossed coconuts with them, then oranges, and even watermelons. She tried to teach them to play piggy-in-the-middle, but the whales all wanted to be piggy, so there was no one to catch the melons.
The next morning, Anna ran down to the beach before breakfast to see if she could spot any blowholes or breaching whales on the horizon. The water was calm and she saw no sign of her beloved buddies. But on the opposite shore, on a small, uninhabited island, she did see a large object lying on the sand. She ran back up to the resort and nearly bumped into the boat captain, who was staring through his binoculars in the same direction.
"There's something on the other beach," she told him breathlessly.
"I know," he replied, "It's a baby humpback that must have been washed ashore by the storm."
"Can we go and see it?" Anna pleaded.
"We can," he answered, "but I warn you, it's probably dead."
Anna wondered to herself: "Why is it that grown-ups often use their imaginations to see things in the worst way?" She preferred to imagine the whale was still alive and just resting.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Anna and the Whale by Susannah Kenton, Isis, Demeter Kenton-Dau. Copyright © 2014 Heart Space International. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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