A whale takes a wrong turning at the river-mouth and swims towards the city. Confused by the noise, it stops and lies on the silty bottom. It is remembering. Out in the wide ocean it swam with brothers and sisters, hundreds of them, gathered in a place not marked on any map – a place they felt with the compasses inside them, the needles quivering, jumping to the beat of their giant hearts. They came in vast schools – from warm island waters filled with rainbow coral and anemones, from the frozen waters of the north, where the sea is crowned with ice. Together they swam with the octopus and squid, in a circle a mile wide, beating their tails and frothing the water blue to white, whisking a cocktail filled with prawns and silver fish.