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feet. She made her way through her house, to a ladder that led up to the attic. She climbed it.
    Unlike the rest of the empty house, the attic was packed with things—boxes, old furniture, children’s toys, and stacks of picture frames. Everything was coated in a thick layer of dust. Across the creaky attic was a window—the only window in the house without a slab of wood covering it. Hanna walked over to it and sat down.
    The window looked out into Snowbrooke, over the neighbouring rooftops. From that little attic window, Hanna could see the whole town—what wasn’t obscured by snow, at least. She looked out into the sea of snow-covered rooftops, under which was the occasional orange glow of another human life—another sleepless insomniac—another complex set of problems, anxieties relationships and ambitions.
    Hanna opened up her notebook, and began to write.

CHAPTER SIX
A WHALE NEAR FIJI
    There was one particularly warm light glowing in the dark snowy town...
    Down at The Winter’s Den, the night was as lively as ever. A few more college students had trickled in, and a few more drinks had been consumed. One particularly rowdy and drunken group of students insisted on having the music in the bar turned up louder—a request which was normally denied. But that night, a rare exception was made.
    As the music became louder, the voices became louder. The drink orders became more frequent, and the patrons became more outgoing.
    Kane, who had been relatively silent all night, had migrated over to the bar, where he patiently watched the joint become more and more lively.
    Andrew was recounting tales from his four year long adventure at sea. Connor was fascinated with Andrew’s stories. He leaned in closely and listened.
    “The ship’s instruments were all spinning around in circles, and it was impossible to figure out which direction we were heading. The fog hadn’t let up for three whole days, and it had been nearly two weeks since we’d seen land.
    “The only time we could figure out where we were was at night. There was a single hour in the middle of the night where the fog would be thin enough that we could see the stars. My dad knew the constellations—we followed Cassiopeia all the way from the middle of the South Pacific, about five hundred miles off the coast of New Zealand.
    “As we crossed the thirty-fifth parallel, it started to pour rain—a couple hundred miles from Fiji to the north,” Andrew continued. “And when I say rain, I don’t mean like the rain we get here. When it rains on the South Pacific—it really rains—torrential downpour.
    “We were struggling to keep our masts up. The winds were blowing at over eighty miles an hour. In order to stay upright, we had to turn our boat off course. Waves were literally rolling over the twenty-foot high deck, just narrowly missing the main mast. If the mast had gone down, we would have been sunk—dead.
    “Three straight hours of King Tide and then the biggest wave of the storm hit us, knocking us all off of our feet. As we all stood up, it was totally calm. The rain seemed to suddenly stop and the water became as still as glass. All around us we could see these massive, white-capped waves, and sheets upon sheets of rain. It was like we were in some sort of impenetrable air bubble. We were right in the centre of it all—the eye of the storm.
    “We all stared out, into the storm. It was unlike anything you’d ever seen in your life. There was no sound—nothing. And then, as we all stood dripping wet and frozen, we heard this deep groaning noise. I didn’t know what it was—but my dad knew—he’d heard it before.
    “He walked slowly up to the edge of the boat and looked down as the noise got louder and louder. Then, the most unbelievable thing happened. A massive blue whale—the largest living creature on the planet—in our entire solar system, rose up right next to our boat.
    “He was enormous—easily twice as tall as our big boat. It