Hilcias and the Sea

"I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live." - Albert Schweitzer 

Hilcias loved whales. 

He would walk beside his abuelo down rows of tomato plants and peach trees, shielded from the sun by his trusty cap with a whale on the front of it, and think, "A blue whales heart is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. A beluga whale is called the canary of the sea because it sings so much. A fin whale can make a sound on our side of the Atlantic Ocean and another fin whale on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean can hear it."

As he sat beside the ocean in the early morning light, a tooth washed up on the shore. He knew immediately it was a sperm whale's tooth. Of all the kinds of whales in the world, the sperm whale was his favorite. The first picture he had ever drawn of a whale, before he had visited the public library and checked out every book he could find about whales, before he had memorized the field guide to whales, he had drawn a picture of how he thought a whale should look, and this picture was a picture of a sperm whale.

He picked up the gigantic tooth. It was a foot long, shaped like a cone, and made of ivory. "This came from the lower jaw of a sperm whale," he thought, "Because they don't have any teeth in their upper jaws." He knew that if he could slice the tooth in half, it would show the age of the whale like the rings of a trunk shows the age of a tree. 

He couldn't believe his eyes or his luck.

He gently laid the whale tooth beside him in the sand.

He picked up the conch shell with both of his hands. "What a wonderful shell," he thought. He was amazed by the shape and color of the remarkable looking shell.

It’s shape, he knew, was a common shape in nature. It was formed by graphing the numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13..., the Fibonacci numbers, a shape that appears many times in geometry, art and architecture. 

By nature it was a mysterious, wonderful shell.

It's color, he knew, was a common color in nature, too. It was three shades of yellow. It's spine was the bright yellow of the sun that very morning. It's siphonal canal was the quiet yellow of the corn he and his abuelo shucked in August. It's aperture was the deep yellow of sunflowers in a field.

He raised the shell to his tiny, listening ear. 

Someone told him once that if you hold a conch shell to your ear then you can hear the ocean. 

"I wonder if it's true," he thought. "I can take it home to our bus and listen tonight and see if I can bring the ocean with me wherever I go. If I can, then, in a small way, I can bring whales with me, too."