When a whale strands itself on a beach they say a child has returned home. The eyes tell the sadness of the deep. And the mammang and the kila, warm-blooded mothers suckle their young, lead them into the chill of the ocean. Caves comfort the spirit children who hide and seek the dark walls and call the waves to play. They leave their bone and shell in the brittle seascape, search the wide blue for a place to land. Silver gulls cry like the dead. An invisible line links the mainland to this island of birds. Pelicans know, the osprey…