Odie and the Space in the Song

Bmmm, went the water under the boat. Low and long, so low that Odie felt it in her hooves before she heard it with her ears. Odie was a sea unicorn, small and cream colored, with a silver horn no bigger than a seashell and knees that never once slipped on a wet deck. She lay flat on the ferry planks with her chin on her folded forelegs, listening. That hum meant the whales were waking up.

The ferry was named the Sifter, and she was flat as a leaf and patient as an old chair. Tonight she carried nine jars of honey and three bales of sweet hay across the silver channel to the island where the goats lived. Faye stood at the steering oar with her sleeves rolled past her elbows, humming, because Faye hummed the way other people breathed.

A path of moonlight lay across the water, shaking itself out and settling again. The smell of salt and warm seaweed came and went with the swell, and every so often the whole sea seemed to lean back and sigh. Odie loved that sound. It was the sound of the evening doing its ordinary work, and it made her feel as if the world had been swept and tidied and was ready for the night.

All day the water hurried and tumbled and went wherever it liked. But when the whales began their long, deep hum, the tide lay down like a blanket being smoothed. That was when a ferry could cross, quiet as a whisper, on water flat enough to read.

Everyone on the channel had a part in the crossing. Faye steered. Old Brum, the deepest whale, hummed the bottom note, the one that made the deck shiver under Odie's hooves. And Odie's part, the smallest part, was four notes up.

Four notes up. Then four counts of quiet, one count for each slow breath. Then the whales hummed four notes down, low and warm, and the song was finished and the water was still. Faye had explained it a hundred times. "The last four notes aren't yours," she said. "Your job is the four up, and then the quiet." Odie nodded every time. And every time, when the quiet arrived, she filled it up with humming, because quiet made her nervous and humming made her feel brave.

She had practiced all summer. She practiced into the honey jars, because jars never laughed, and she practiced into her hay bale, which was a very good listener. But she had never sung her four notes alone, at night, with the whole sea waiting. When she thought about that, her stomach went fizzy, like a bottle of bubbles with the lid left off.

"You'll be fine," said Faye, which was kind but not useful. Then she said something Odie did not understand at all. "The sea always leaves a space for you. All you have to do is breathe in it." Odie turned that over like a smooth stone in her pocket. It sounded like a riddle from a grandmother who liked riddles better than answers.

Then the whales hummed again, and Faye nodded, and Odie stood up and planted her four hooves on the deck. Up went her first four notes, clear as water drops off an oar. Lovely. Then came the quiet, and the quiet felt enormous, so Odie kept humming. She hummed a fifth note and a sixth note, and then a note that wasn't a note at all, and the song turned into a tangle, like yarn slipping off a spoon.

Her jaw went tight. Her ears went hot. Being cross felt like a prickle that started somewhere behind her ribs and climbed all the way up to her horn, and it made her want to stamp. So she stamped. "I had it," she said. "I had it, and then it went." "Nearly," said Faye. But Odie could see the moon path breaking into pieces, and the Sifter swinging a little on the swell, and she knew that nearly was not the same as done.

Faye set the oar in its notch and came to stand beside her. "When I get cross," she said, "my thoughts go fast and jumbled, like gulls over a dropped crust. So I slow them down. Breathe in through your nose, like you're sniffing warm bread. Count to four. Then breathe out, slow, and count to four again." She did it herself, eyes shut, cheeks puffing out like a chipmunk's, and Odie laughed in spite of her prickles.

Odie tried it. In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. The prickles did not vanish, but they sank down a little, the way sand settles after a wave goes over it. She stood up and sang her four notes again, and they were sweet. Then the quiet came, and her count slipped sideways, and she filled the quiet up with humming all over again, twice as fast as before.

Now she was cross with the water, and cross with the moon, and cross with her own small voice. When she was nervous, Odie counted things. She counted the nine honey jars. She counted the planks under her hooves, eleven and a half, because one was split. Counting planks had never once made her feel better.

"Odie," said Faye, very quietly, "stop trying to sing the whales' part." Odie blinked at her. "It's only four notes," she said. "It's my part, and I keep losing it." "Listen," said Faye. "Slow breath. Listen underneath."

So Odie breathed in, one, two, three, four, and she listened. Under the boat the whales hummed, and then they stopped, and the stop was four counts wide. It was not an empty hole. It was a space left open, the way a chair is left pulled out at a table, waiting for somebody to sit down. Odie's eyes went wide. All summer she had thought the quiet was a test she kept failing. It was a seat, and it had her name on it.

She stood up and sang four notes up, small and true. Then she did the hardest thing she had ever done on a boat. She stopped. She breathed in, one, two, three, four, and let the quiet be quiet. And the whales came in underneath her, low and warm, four notes down, and the song closed like a hand closing gently, and the water went flat as a made bed. Her silver horn went warm from tip to base.

Odie laughed out loud. She laughed so hard that Faye laughed too, and old Brum hummed a note that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, and the Sifter slid forward along the moonlight with the honey jars chiming softly against each other.

They crossed the channel slowly, the way crossings should be done. The moon path held steady, one long silver road from the boat to the far shore, and the smell of salt and warm seaweed came and went, and the whales hummed the tide down, lower and lower, until the water was barely moving at all.

Odie lay down on the warm planks again with her chin on her forelegs. She counted her breaths instead of planks. Four in, four out. Four in, four out. Somewhere under the boat, Brum hummed along with her, so low she felt it in her hooves, and the last of her prickles drifted off like a leaf on a pond.

Faye hummed at the oar. The moon path softened and widened. And the sea, which always leaves a space, rocked the small ferry gently on the quiet silver water, and the night went on, slow and soft and warm, all the way home.