Ada and the Waiting Stone

Pfft. A small wet puff came up beside the boat, and Ada leaned over the wooden rail to look. Ada was a small owl, brown as sand, with tufty ears and a beak like a tiny hook. She was out on the moonlit ocean with Grandma Fern, and the water was so smooth it held the moon in one piece. The puff came from Benji, a whale calf who swam alongside with one round eye above the water. "That was my spout," said Benji. "It's still little," said Ada. "It will grow," said Benji. "Take your time," said Grandma Fern, and she pulled the oars, one, then the other.

Grandma Fern pointed to a path of moonlight lying on the water. It was silver and wide, and it wobbled where the little waves moved under it. "When that path reaches the boat," she said, "the big whales come up to breathe. Their backs are like slow wet hills, and their spouts go up like fountains, all silver in the light." Ada's eyes went round and round. She wanted to see a hill of whale. She wanted to see a fountain of silver. "Can it come now?" she asked. "Not yet," said Grandma Fern. "Whales don't hurry, and neither does the moon. Slow and low, the silver goes."

Grandma Fern lit the little lamp at the back of the boat. It made a small gold puddle on the water and a gold patch on her feathers. Ada breathed in the smell of salt and warm seaweed and wet rope, which was the smell of the sea's own kitchen. The boat went up, and the boat went down, and Benji swam beside them blowing his little puffs at the bow.

Ada sat on the wooden seat and swung her feet. Her feathers felt prickly, all over, like a coat that didn't fit. Her tummy felt wobbly inside, the way it does when something good is coming and it won't come yet. Grandma Fern reached into her pocket. "Here," she said. "This is a waiting stone." It was a smooth white pebble, worn round by a hundred years of sea, with a little dent in the middle the size of Ada's wing tip. "Turn it over while you wait," said Grandma Fern. "It gives your wings something to do."

Ada turned the stone over. Then she counted the silver speckles on the moon path. One, two, three, four, five. She counted them again, because the path had stretched and there were new ones to count. Six, seven, eight, nine. "Slow and low, the silver goes," she said, the way Grandma Fern said it. Then she looked up. The path was still far off, a long shining finger on the dark water. "Is it time?" she asked. "Not yet," said Grandma Fern. "But look how far it's come." Ada looked. It had come a little. She turned the stone over again.

Benji dove down and came up with a strand of seaweed draped over his nose. It was warm and salty and it smelled like a picnic. Little pods grew along it, round as beads. "Pip," went one pod when Ada pressed it with her wing. "Pop," went another. "Pip, pip, pop." Ada giggled so hard she had to hold her beak with both wings. Benji ate his seaweed in one gulp. Ada did not eat hers, because owls don't, and because the popping was the good part.

The moon path seemed to stop growing. Ada waited and watched, and watched and waited, and it stayed exactly where it was, a long silver finger pointing at nothing. Ada sighed a big owl sigh. "Waiting is slow," she said. "Waiting is very slow." Grandma Fern patted the seat beside her. "Come and be slow with me," she said, "and we'll listen to the boat."

Ada listened. The boat said tup, tup, tup, and the water said shhh, shhh, shhh, and Benji said pfft, pfft, pfft, which wasn't a boat sound but it fit. She put her ear against the warm wood, and the wood said nothing, which was also a sound, if you waited for it.

"Did you ever wait for whales?" Ada asked. Grandma Fern nodded. When she was a small owl, she said, she waited a whole night on this very boat. She counted the waves, and she made up a story about a fish who wore a hat, and just when the story ended, up came the whales. "A fish in a hat," said Ada, and she laughed. "Tell me the hat part again."

She checked the moon path again. It had reached the middle of the water now, and it had little wrinkles of light where the waves folded and unfolded. "Is it time?" Ada asked. "Not yet," said Grandma Fern. "But something has changed. Can you tell what it is?" Ada looked down at her own wings. The prickly feeling was gone. Her feathers lay flat and soft and warm, and her feet had stopped swinging.

So Ada hooted her soft owl hoot into the dark. "Hoo. Hoo-hoo." The water sent it back to her, muffled and round, so she hooted again, quieter. Benji tried a hoot of his own and made a bubbly "blup" instead, and the two of them laughed until Benji rolled right over on his side. The waiting stone was warm in Ada's wing now. It was smooth and heavy and good to hold, like a small patient friend. She turned it over once, slowly, and noticed her wobbly feeling had gone quiet too.

Then Grandma Fern whispered, "Look." The silver path had come all the way to the boat. It lay against the wooden side like a little bridge from here to the moon. The water swelled. Up came a whale's back, huge and slow and shining, a hill that had come to visit the moon. Its spout rose in a silver fountain and came down in a soft whispering rain. Then another whale rose, and another, breathing and blowing and sinking away again.

Benji blew his own small spout. "Pfft." A big whale nearby answered him, "Whooosh," and the sound rolled over the water like a warm wave. Benji wiggled all over and his eye went shiny. "She heard me," he said. "She did," said Ada. She looked at the waiting stone in her wing, and then she held it out to him. "You keep it," she said. "For your waiting. Until your spout grows big."

Benji took the stone gently in his mouth and swam off to turn it over. Grandma Fern turned the boat for home, and the oars went "tup, tup, tup," slow as a heartbeat. The whales sank down one by one, and the moon path closed behind them like a drawer sliding shut. The last spout was far away and soft, the sea letting out a long breath. The waves folded onto the sand, shhh, shhh, shhh.

Ada leaned against Grandma Fern's warm wing and yawned a wide owl yawn. The boat rocked her, one small wave at a time. "Slow and low," she whispered, "the silver goes." Her eyes closed, and the whole wide ocean breathed in and out beneath her, quiet as a sleeping hill.