Glooskap and the Giants of the Deep

  Before the rivers learned their song,
  Before the stars were named,
  Glooskap woke from dreaming earth,
  By spirit fire aflame.
  He shaped the mountains with his hand,
  He carved the bays and coves,
  He whispered words to sleeping trees
  And taught the wind to rove.
  He hunted shadows through the mist,
  He stilled the giant’s roar,
  He tamed the whale to guard the deep,
  And walked from shore to shore.

  The seal pup lay alone on a slate-cold rock where the tide breathed in and out like a wounded chest. His whiskers trembled, and his cry fogged the air with each thin breath. The sea stretched wide before him. Glooskap knelt beside the pup, the stone warming beneath his feet.
  “Why do you call to the empty water, little swimmer?” Glooskap asked.
  “My mother sang to me here,” the pup said, pointing with his nose toward the dark swell. “My father watched the water so I could sleep. The long-toothed ones came—the black and the white. They did not hunger. They laughed.” The sea shuddered. Far out, a fin cut the surface like a blade remembering its work. Glooskap closed his eyes. He heard the sound beneath the sound—the water remembering violence.
  “I will speak for your pain,” he said.
  The pup pressed close. “They will come again.”
  “They will,” Glooskap answered. “But not unchallenged.”

  That night, Glooskap walked into the ocean. The water rose to meet him. Salt clinging to his hair. The moon shattered itself into silver pieces around his shoulders. Fish parted. Kelp bowed. Even the current slowed. Down he walked—beyond light, beyond blue—into the deep dark where pressure teaches bones to remember their first shape. There, the great whales circled, vast as moving islands, singing songs older than ocean salt itself. One turned her eye upon him, the Great Mother of the depths, bright and dark as polished stone.
  “Why does the land-walker tread our silence?” she asked, her voice rolling through the water like waves of thunder.
  “Because the balance has been wounded,” Glooskap said, placing his hand against her flank.
  “We know the black-and-white hunters,” the Great Mother said. “We have watched them take life for pleasure. We have seen them teach their young joy in killing.”
  Another whale rose beside her, bearing white scars along his jaw. “We are great,” he said, “but our hide is thin. Must we sacrifice for those so small?”
  “I will make your hides thick,” Glooskap replied. “Your muscles strong. I will make you sovereigns of the sea. You will turn aside those who kill for sport. You will lift the small ones from their teeth.”
  “We will remember this law,” the Great Mother said.
  “Then swim,” Glooskap said. “Swim not only for your own calves, but for the seals, the slow, the ones who are small.” The whales circled tighter, the water vibrating with their shared thought. “We will guard the deep,” they said in unison. “We will rise when the hunt cuts the water. We will place our bodies between teeth and innocent breath.”
  Glooskap bowed. “Now I will speak to the hunters.”

  The killer whales came at dawn, their fins slicing the surface, their voices sharp with triumph.
  “You have taken what was not yours,” Glooskap said, standing where the waves broke against his shoulders.
  They laughed, a sound like ice cracking. “The sea is wide. The weak are many.”
  Glooskap’s eyes hardened like flint. “You hunted for sport. You taught cruelty as craft.” The water churned. Behind him, the great whales rose—immense, silent, unyielding.
  “You will keep your cleverness,” Glooskap said. “But not your teeth.”
  The sea stirred. Black fins twisted. Bodies stretched. Flukes split. Limbs broke forth where none had been. Cries tore the air—no laughter now. Where killer whales had ruled, humans floundered onto the shore, clutching unfamiliar legs, tasting dry earth for the first time.
  “You will learn hunger,” Glooskap told them. “You will learn cold. You will learn the long work of living without.” They crawled inland, weeping. Offshore, the whales moved like living mountains, slow and watchful. The sea breathed easier. And to this day, when a great shadow rises beneath a frightened seal, the whales remember their promise—

  Glooskap taught the people kinder ways,
  The making of the bow,
  The rhythm of the drum and dance,
  The seeds the hands should sow.
  When greed and pride grew strong again,
  And hearts forgot his song,
  He turned his face toward the east—
  Where first he came along.
  The dawn still burns where he will stand,
  When humankind is true;
  Glooskap waits beyond the light,
  And watches what we do.