“This time it will be Mozart.”

Her careful hands plucked the record from its sleeve, and gently placed it on the ancient record player, so delicately balanced on the empty wooden barrel. The ocean lapped at the dock, laughing and quivering in the night. She turned the crank and let the needle rest upon the vinyl, and in moments, the air was alive with the tinny, remote sound of musicians in a faraway land, playing music from a faraway time.

“Do you like this song, papa?”

Just the faintest hint of a nose appeared next to the wooden pillars, smooth and dark, like the record that played. The nose only hinted at the enormous body, the great flippers and flukes, that idled lazily while the girl on the dock let her feet dangle off of its edge. Soon, the great snout appeared, hiding its baleen beneath great leathery lips. It sang out a response.

“I thought you might. It’s the brass, isn’t it? So deep and brooding.”

The whale sang the melody as embodied by the violins, then switched to the bawdy noise of the trombones, then meandered through the piano’s left hand, treating the song more like an ocean than a concerto, swimming freely, yet deeply in tune with the greater movement. The girl listened.

“Mama misses you. It’s been hard, here. But it’s made easier when I know you’re not gone.”

The whale song stopped as it heard her speak.

“The fishing boats don’t go out anymore. The fish are all sick, the sailors said. The men from the government tell them to go and fish, but they won’t. I hope you are safe in this water.”

At this, the whale sang a soothing reel. The girl stood and felt its rhythm, felt its rhythm intertwine with the laughing, lapping water and the concerto as it finished its first movement, and she felt her feet move. It was not quite like dancing.

The bells tolled in the night, a church far away sounding out a humble knell.

“Mother will need me to clean the kitchen and put Liam and Sylvia to bed. I need to go.”

She put her hand on the protruding nose of the whale, feeling its tough skin against her fragility, then pulled away. The concerto ceased. Mozart returned to his sleeve, and the record player went aboard a red wagon, carted away over the hill, whence it came.

And the whale waited patiently for her return.