Ceto was, of course, only a child's name, a term of endearment to a whale that had not been called to the open sea. It was a common nickname for such young ones - it meant something not unlike a cross between urchin and nuisance and babe.
Ceto was unhappy. He and his mother were cross with each other, though they had formerly been close, their relationship had begun to deteriorate into something like bitterness. Ceto blamed most of this new friction on his aunts who were not friendly to him.
"Little Sisk," his aunt Skimmer called him with a hiss, and the others laughed, "Ugly little Sisk who won't find a cow."
Skimmer had always had a cruel streak. She was the oldest of his aunts and the queen of their business.
Sisk was the word for runt in the language of his folk. It was a kindly word when used with a bull of small years, but when applied to an adlo it was a shaming word - it meant one who would not learn to swim or catch his own food; one who would die of weakness.
His mother permitted him to be called names like this because he had begun to worry her. He was small for his age and had been in her keeping longer than was ordinary. Also, the hallmarks of his character, his dive and his spout were odd and un-beautiful.
"Stop doing that!" she said when he let loose with his spray at the end of a dive, "It splits. It's not normal."
"I like it," he said obstinately, ignoring her obvious dislike of him, "It's fine."
"It looks weak," he caught her muttering to herself on many occasions, loud enough for him to hear - he thought.
He longed for the solitude that would come with his coming of age. He hated the constant enforced togetherness of the maternal pod. It suffocated him. He wanted to see the open waters and hear the sounds of the deep ocean. He wanted to fish for the wild squid that frequented the deepest waters. He wanted to learn to sing with the mighty singers of his father's folk who could make the waters carry their songs across the deep mountains of the south.
But when that day would come was not certain.
To leave the pod and be acknowledged by the folk of the waters, his father would need to return to the River Canyon and call him out.
His father. His father. Ceto had heard many tales of his father.
"A fearsome bull," Fisher had told him, "A swimmer who has touched the ice mountains of the Imprisoner and the dark water of Tenah."
This was, of course, only figurative language for any bull, but it was seriously meant. Ceto dreamed of his father's return and longed to be called out. He had never seen him - which was not unusual - and wished to understand the stuff that he came from.
Fisher was the ancient bull that grazed in the waters near the atoll that Ceto's pod called home. He had long retired from the deep places of the south. The driving spirit had left him and he had returned to the middle waters to await the last season of his days. Fisher had taken his name for obvious reasons as he was a skilled squid hunter and had a marked scar from the great monster squid of the south.
"Never had a chance to catch him," Fisher had told Ceto truthfully once, "Lucky actually, he never got a good hold of my nose. Felt like hot ice those tentacles of his."
Fisher went on short journeys, but was never gone for more than a week at a time. And though he could still mount to the depths of the river, he mostly sang in the regions close to Ceto and his maternal pod. He was Ceto's only real friend and he missed him when he was away.
It was on this day that Ceto heard what he had heard only once or twice before in his life, the sound of a boat. It was a strange scraping sound on the top of the waters; not like the rushing noise of another whale skimming the surface; but a rough scrape. It hurt his sensitive ears to listen to. But he was also attracted to the noise.
"Water demons," Skimmer had said ominously, "Death, surely."
On an impulse, Ceto ascended from the depth that he had been swimming at and rose to the level of the surface. His nose breached the water and he felt the air on his body and across the sensitive area of his eyes.
A whale's eyes are very weak and they were not his primary way of navigating or knowing where he was. Still it was pleasurable to see when there was something to look at, and Ceto had better eyes than some. Looking sidelong in the distance, he spied a dark irregular shape skimming the surface of the water. It was as large as a full sized bull, but it did not move with flexes and bows; it moved at a steady clipping gait. It was not moving towards him, but away; away out towards the deep water of the middle abyss that he had never crossed.
"Like my dream," he thought, remembering the strange squared shapes filled with the hue and cry of voices that he had never heard, "I wonder what it means."
He did not follow the boat. He watched it for a time until it drifted out into a tiny speck and was swallowed up by the dark mass of waves.
He returned to the water to find that he was being called for. The voice was steady but urgent.
"Ceto! Ceto! Ceto!" it was his aunt Grayer.
"What," he asked from across the span of water that separated them, "Can't I have a little peace."
"Not today, not today," she said excitedly, "Come back, come back."
"Why," he asked half curious, half suspiciously.
"Meeting day," she said gasping with excitement, "Meeting day. Their voices... can't you hear them. Your father might be among them."
