Chapter One

They stood on the dock, looking out at the ocean. The water was dark, with whitecaps, and there were even darker clouds in the sky. The winds were so strong that Dylan felt like they’d be blown away. Looking up, he could see an eagle being pushed along by the wind. Rather than soaring, it looked like it was fighting to get back to the shore. Dylan could feel spray on his face from the waves crashing on the rocks.

“Isn’t it stunning?” his father said.

“What an incredible painting this would be!” his mother exclaimed.

“I’ll try to capture it for you so you can paint it later.”

His father pulled out one of his ever-present cameras and began taking pictures.

Dylan’s dad was a nature photographer, and his mother was a landscape painter. The three of them had lived on this little island for over ten months now, while his parents painted and took photographs. It was beautiful and wild and isolated. For them this had been a paradise to capture and recreate in photographs and paintings.

Dylan loved being with his parents, and he loved their island home, but he found it a little lonely. It had been better in the summer, when there were other people on the island, living in their vacation homes. But through the winter months Dylan and his parents had been almost all alone, except for a few short visits from family and friends or the occasional summertime family checking on their property.

Dylan was being homeschooled by his parents. Instead of going to school with other children, he did most of his lessons at the kitchen table. He liked that the lessons were different from those he’d had at his regular school, but he missed having other kids around. He missed recess. He missed gym class. He was looking forward to people coming back in the summer. It would be nice to have kids to play with again.

“It’s hard to believe our time is almost up,” his father said.

“We still have more than four months,” his mother answered.

At the end of the summer still to come, they’d go back to their house on the mainland, and Dylan would go back to school. It made him happy thinking about going home to their house, his school and his old friends. He was looking forward to all of that, but he would miss their island home too. He’d miss spending so much time with his parents. He’d miss sitting by the fireplace at night and reading. He’d miss their walks through the woods. Most of all, he’d miss living by the ocean. He loved walking along the beach with his parents and watching the water. And even when he couldn’t see it, he could always hear it.

“The waves are so high today,” Dylan said.

“It’s pretty rough,” his mother agreed.

“It looks like there’s a storm blowing in,” his father added.

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen too soon and that the waves aren’t too high for the supply ship to dock,” his mother said.

“And for Dylan’s grandfather to get in,” his father said.

That was really what Dylan was thinking about. His mother’s father was coming on that boat. He was going to spend the rest of the spring and summer with them. After all, this was Grandpa’s home. He’d lived here as a boy, and he came back every summer.

“Do you see them?” his mother asked, pointing.

“Is it the boat?” Dylan asked.

“No, it’s the pod,” his mother said.

His eyes followed her arm.

“I see them!” Dylan exclaimed.

The dorsal fins of three or four orcas broke the surface. Seeing them made Dylan smile. There were eleven whales in the group that lived in the waters around the island. The group was called a resident pod. He loved seeing the pod. The orcas fed on salmon and often used the cove to trap schools of fish. There were eight adults, two “teenagers” and one younger orca in the group. His father had taken so many pictures of them that when the orcas were close enough, Dylan could tell them apart by their dorsal fins. He and his parents had given them names and gotten to know them. Dylan had called the little one Oreo because both the whale and Dylan’s favorite cookie were black and white. They could tell Oreo was a boy by his dorsal fin, which was more triangular in shape.

Dylan and his parents hadn’t seen the orcas only from the shore. They had also kayaked among them. One of the things Dylan loved most about living here was being out in the kayak and watching as the whales worked as a team to capture fish. He was going to miss this pod as much as anything else when they returned to the city.

“The orcas don’t seem to mind the rough seas,” his father said.

They watched as the pod swam, dorsal fins appearing and disappearing under the waves, until it vanished around the point and was gone. Then the boat appeared.