He came to and there was light, and warmth.  Cold water slapped his face.  He spun to it, opened his eyes to the glare.

The yellow boy.  The ocean.  A mound of warm black whale beneath him.

The boy was looking out to sea.  Jayne craned his neck, tried to loft himself on still shaking arms, but like limpen struts of sea-leaf they jellied beneath him, leaving him pressed up against the slick black back of the Ptarmigan like a baby at breast.  He felt nauseous.

Somewhere distant, a blow-hole gusted spray up into the air.  It settled with the wind, stroked Jayne`s face as it came down.

There were whales all around them. 

Jayne could see them.  Black mounds, some finned, some mottled, some brown some black, all their backs and snouts and eyes breasting the still ocean top like dark yolks of egg splotched out on a ruffled grey table-cloth.

A second slap of water stung his face.  Salt stung his eyes and he gasped some in through his nose.  The child turned back to the patch of open water.  Jayne coughed, hacked, and the jolt rolled him off into the water.  He tried to swim but his arms and legs only trembled weakly. 

Something pushed up against him, lifted him from the brine and rolled him back over the black whale-back.

He gasped, choked, and blinked.

"This isn`t real," he croaked.

Lying on his back, the child stood over him, sun spun round his head like a halo. 

"This is very real," said the child.

Jayne stared up at him.  "You can speak," he said.

"No," said the child.  "You`re just losing your mind."

Jayne regarded him for a time, sunlight half-blinding him, the hot pulse of the whale thrumming on like the distant Grammaton beneath him.  Occasional steaming blow-hole gusts from the surrounding whales showered him with half-warm water.  The deadened waves sup-supped up the Ptarmigan`s rough-skinned side, licked at his fingers and toes.

"It seems real," said Jayne.

The child laughed at him.

"You`re a whale buster," he said.  "You know the symptoms of Caissons."