“To show him we have no harpoons. They’ve probably seen the Eskimo doing subsistence hunting. Or heard about it from other whales.” The massive head slid from sight again.
“Heard aboot?”
“Their songs can be heard across oceans. Swim, eat, gossip with your cousins a thousand miles away; the life of a whale.”
Ariana screamed as the orca’s head appeared again, this time right next to the kayak, rocking it wildly. Its mouth gaped open, showing huge snow-white teeth and crimson tongue. The second scream caught in her throat as Nathan reached out and started to rub the tongue. He turned and grinned cheerfully. “They love their tongues to be rubbed. He must have been released from a marine park.”
“An how da ya know tha?”
“My son, Lance, is a marine biologist. He did a summer internship at Sea World. He snuck me in after hours to help with the feeding and the training. They also needed a volunteer to hold a fish in his mouth while 12,000 pounds of toothy muscle rocketed out of the water to snatch it. It doesn’t help to close your eyes; trust me on that one.”
Terror was rapidly replaced by annoyance, which wasn’t helped by a second, smaller whale head rising out of the water and sliding over the side of the kayak next to her. Her Irish femininity took over and she snapped,” Don even think aboot it.” The whale’s face had no expression, but it radiated disappointment as it slid from view. “An can we git goin? We are in a race, ya know.”
“Okay. Time to go fella, say goodbye to the pod for us.” The larger whale slid from view and she joined Nathan in waving goodbye for the look of the thing and the image for the camera.
They had continued across to be warmly greeted at an Eskimo village where Tom proclaimed them Team Number One, and they were barely able to make it off camera before they collapsed. But that hadn’t been the end of the….
“Ariana! Team Number One agin! Twice in a row. That is sooo wonderful!” Cassie gushed. Ariana shook herself, for just a moment she had felt just as cramped and cold as she had when Nathan had lifted her out of the kayak, but she had demurely accepted all of the congratulations, shaken off the only-to-be-expected wheedling for hints about the next episode, and even put up with doing a quick jig with Linnae to the blaring sound system. She had answered their questions about all the tasks over pizza, and had slipped off to her privacy bunk as soon as she could.
There was an e-mail from Nathan. Once again it had been sent one minute after the episode aired. Once again it had an attachment, which she archived without reading. The note was brief, upbeat, and didn’t remark at all on the fact she hadn’t responded to the first episode e-mail. She stared at it and drifted off thinking about how the day had really ended in Alaska….
The teams had dared each other to try muk tuk, whale blubber, with dinner. She had glared enough that no one had dared ask, and Nathan had declined, quoting Doctor Doolittle – “One should avoid eating one’s friends.” The other teams had wanted to hear about the orca encounter, and Nathan had described sea kayaking around the Hawaiian Islands in his ‘younger days,’ as he put it.
The snag had come when the bonfire burned low and the exhausted teams had dragged themselves off to bed down. There was one team left to cross, and race start was to be after sunrise. Each team had a single, small native shelter of hides and whale bone for their use, which left she and Nathan with a dilemma, which he solved by declaring he wanted to sleep under the stars, and mounding furs by the campfire. The shelter had smelled and was less than comfortable, but it was warm and she was deep in dreamless sleep before she could yawn twice.
She had been dredged up from the depths of slumber by a shaking and a whistling, which at first she thought was a storm.
“Ariana, get up. Come see this.”
It was Nathan’s voice, sparkling with excitement.
“Gae away. I’m asleep. I can no hear ya.”
“You won’t want to miss this.”
Sighing, she had crawled out of the warm furs, and, certain there were no videographers around at this ungodly time of night, was readying a cutting remark, when she emerged into a rainbow.
Sheets of green and red flame darted to and fro across the darkened sky, leaping in curls and waves like the froth on the surf. The utterly gorgeous display was perfectly silent, and lent an unearthly illumination to the land and sea around them. The only sounds were the quiet slurping of the low, slow waves on the shingle, and the explosive little gasps of whales surfacing and submerging further out.
Ariana had stared at the sky, part of her mind just enthralled by the display, and part of her mind wondering what song she would sing to a backdrop like that, and if any effects supervisor could actually duplicate it.
“Sorry to wake you, but I didn’t think you’d want to miss it,” Nathan had said. For a moment she had panicked, thinking that he might try to kiss her, with all the implications and complications that foreboded, but he had only smiled engagingly, bid her a second ‘good night,’ and padded off softly back to his mound of furs by the embers in the fire pit.
She didn’t remember the rest of the night, except that she had left the flap of the shelter open so she could see the sky as she lay.
Waking in the morning she had wanted a shower, a hot breakfast, and a double strength cup of Irish Breakfast Tea, in that order. What she got were some environmentally friendly, biodegradable, hypoallergenic moist towelettes, runny eggs and charred toast, and some American label tea with a slightly fishy aftertaste.
As they had stood ready to resume the Race, she had turned to Nathan and said, with a sour smile frosted with brittle humor, “Well this answers one question.”
“What’s that?”
“The race people are no intendin on goin easy on us because we are celebrities.”
“I’m wondering how they are going to edit all of this to fit in a one hour episode,” Nathan chuckled.
“We’re not.”
Ariana and Nathan turned to see Tom walking toward them. “This season is exciting a lot of interest. So the Celebrity Fantastic Race is going to be broadcast in two hour episodes.” He smiled. “So we have to fill them up with interesting tasks.”
“As long as they are no death-defyin,” Ariana shot back.
“At least any more death-defying than we’ve already faced,” Nathan added.
Tom smiled wickedly. “No promises. Are you ready to go? You are scheduled to leave in ten minutes.”
She had chuckled to herself in her sleep, just before jumping to wakefulness as Marie knocked on her privacy closure and chanted through the intercom, “We are entering Tulsa, and Daniel hae approved a rest stop. Ya kin hae yer waffle this mornin.”
[Canadian hockey player and his wife last team to arrive and eliminated]
CHAPTER 5 [Third Leg (Alaska to Okinawa) — Nine teams remaining]
The theater had had a natural gas leak and the performance had been set back 24 hours, which would use up most of the contingency in the schedule; but it did mean the troupe had a night off and were free to move around the town, explore the local pubs, and try thirty different kinds of chili – including rattlesnake, if they were so minded. It came as a bit of a surprise to Ariana that, when faced with an evening full of drinking and carousing potential, every single one was back well before eight o’clock, and had commandeered the large screen TV in the hotel’s bar to watch the Race episode. Ariana perched in the back and practiced smiling mysteriously when teased about how bedraggled she had looked at the end of the last episode.