Isiah was awoken suddenly, pulled from a dream of home, and he almost fell from his burlap hammock as he came to focus in the dimly lit sleeping quarters of a whaling ship. His friend and shipmate, Cormack, was shaking Isiah with eyes wide in excitement. “It’s a whale Isiah! Our first whale!”
With a groaning lurch the ship turned suddenly, throwing Cormack backwards into the balanced arms of a heavily tattooed Greenlander who pushed him back onto his feet and bellowed, “Find your legs greenhorn, it’s time to earn your pay!”
The two sheepishly dodged more experienced crewmembers as they snuck topside, scanning the chaos for the first mate. They saw him holding himself above the main deck on some railing, shouting orders as the captain wrestled shirtless with the steering wheel behind him.
The first mate was a younger man, tall and thin with closely cropped sideburns. He had a kindness to him that not all of the seamen could boast of, so the two younger boys tried to stay within his eyesight. “40 yards off starboard!” hollered the captain as harpoons were passed out and whaleboats were lowered along the side of the larger ship. Isiah could feel his stomach turning in the excitement and a sour belch of pemmican and grog breached his lips.
The first mate pointed at Cormack and Isiah, “Greenhorns! Climb the mainmast and don’t let that whale out of your sight!”
Cormack sprinted ahead and jumped up the rope ladder, always having been the stronger of the two. Isiah followed as quickly as his unsteady feet would allow. Clearly there only needed to be one lookout, but both of the boys knew the order was to their benefit. This would keep them out of the way until they were adept enough to be safe amidst the action.
As Isiah neared the halfway point of the mast, his soft hands stinging against the rough salty ropes, a wild force knocked the entire ship and it lurched to the side. Isiah kept ahold of the rope, but the recoil nearly tore his arm from its socket. He could hear a commotion from below but was too afraid to look down. He regained composure and double timed his way up to meet Cormack in the crow’s nest, but his compatriot greeted him with a white face and wide eyes. Isiah turned back and looked down at the deck.
Several men had been thrown overboard by the shock, and a cacophony of curses rang out as some men threw ropes overboard in a rescue attempt. Others lay in pain, crippled with injury. “What did we hit?” Asked Isiah breathlessly. Cormack shook his head, “No Izzy, it’s what hit us. The whale hit us!”
The first mate was frantically sprinting about the deck, tossing men back to their stations and trying to unstuck the whaleboat that had gotten wedged to the side of the ship. He looked up at the gaping mouths of the two boys with eyes wide and fearful, “Greenhorns, where is that damned whale?!”
Without a word the two boys took to the different sides of the ship and began scanning, trying to ignore the furious curses of the captain as he yelled at them for losing sight. The captain’s left arm hung at his side as the muscles in his right arm furiously worked against the strain of the wheel.
Suddenly Cormack was hollering, “Whale! Port side! 40 yards! No, 30 yards-er, it’s coming for us!”
Isiah turned to see a small dark figure speeding towards the ship, not nearly the monster of a whale he’d imagined capable of such aggression. The first mate’s voice broke as he hollered, “Brace for impact!”
The whale actually leapt from the water, against the side of the ship, and for a moment before the impact Isiah could see a stark white form atop the whale’s head that resembled a foppish powdered wig. That was the image burned into his mind as the whale collided with the port side of the ship and the mast whipped to and fro, throwing the boys roughly against the sides of the crow’s nest. Isiah saw Cormack roll over a side, his fingers gripping the edge. Before Isiah could get his feet underneath him, the fingers disappeared and he could only watch in horror as his best friend fell quick and hard to the deck, landing with a sickening thud.
Isiah had no time to react, even if he could. The mast began to strain and splinter below and he felt his guts lurch as gravity betrayed him. The horizon turned on him as the mast rolled to the side of the ship and he jumped for the water before impact. The cold Atlantic water hit him like a wall, shooting up his nose and shocking his brains.
He instinctively fought for the surface and found himself surrounded by debris. A damaged whale boat floated nearby and he made his way, the strength of terror and desperation pulling him over the side as he gasped and shivered. Within the moment he came to his senses and sat up, looking over the side of the boat at the whaling ship that was now almost completely broken in half, the sides covered painted with a dark blood.
He had no oar and futilely splashed at the ocean with his arms trying to change course back towards some of the men struggling in the water, but he watched as one by one they were pulled down into the deep. It struck Isiah that this was still the work of the whale. It was methodically drowning each of the men, one after another. He realized that he was in as much peril as anyone, floating alone in this small whale boat and he fell back on his ass, frozen in terror.
As the last of the men were silenced, Isiah held the edge of the whale boat with white knuckled anticipation. Suddenly on the slowly sinking ship he saw the first mate standing tall, a harpoon in hand. The man screamed defiantly into the ocean and threw whatever he could, attempting to draw the creature in close. Isiah saw the back of the beast before the first mate could, it sped towards the sinking ship from behind the first mate’s sightlines. Isiah sat up and began to point and holler out, “Whale sir! The whale!”
The man turned towards Isiah just as the whale dipped below the surface, and saw Isiah waving his hands frantically but didn’t seem to be able to hear him.
Out of the waves leapt the monster, and Isiah saw it clearly for an instant. A small, dark thing. Harpoons and pieces of the ship hung off of its sides and the water falling from it as it breached the ocean surface was full of blood. For a moment, he thought the whale was attempting to jump over the entire ship and the first mate held his harpoon aloft toward the soft underbelly. But the trajectory slowed, and the mass of flesh came down directly atop the mate and the middle of the ship with a sickening and final crunch.
Isiah stared in disbelief and horror at the wreckage, the whale shuddered atop the mess and lay still. A deafening silence overtook Isiah as he sat alone in the only remaining whale boat, adrift in the ocean, watching the only ship he’d ever worked on slowly sink below the surface.
At night the moon dominated Isiah’s world. Everything else was blacker than pitch, but the moon shone bright and reflected across the water as a sheer white path, as if it was reaching out to him. His exhaustion eventually beat out the cold and uncomfortable oak bottom of the whale boat. Laying on his back, he was overcome with the sensation of sinking. He jolted awake several times expecting the boat to be taking on water, but as he adjusted to the feeling the sink became heavier and he let it drag him into sleep.
His mind exploded into a world of color and sensation. Isiah knew that he was dreaming, the trauma of the whale attack couldn’t have left his mind. He felt himself floating through his own mind, traveling rapidly through different memories. His father’s print shop, the smell of his mother’s hair, Cormack’s laugh. The experiences of a lifetime floated past him rapidly and he smiled in acknowledgement of them, but had no control to stop. It was as though he was being piloted through his own life, until suddenly the experience froze upon the face of Cormack. The young man smiled and spoke reassuringly. “Don’t worry Izzy, I’ll make sure you get home.”
When Isiah woke up, the whale boat was beached upon the sandy shore of a small island next to a freshwater inlet. He paced the beach at first, not believing his own luck. After drinking greedily and washing his face, he wandered back to the whale boat and sat in the morning light trying to come to terms with the previous events. He stared into the horizon as he remembered the dream state that he’d experienced. Had Cormack really appeared to him?
He looked down at his feet and noticed that next to the whale boat was a neat pile of shellfish and a few whitefish as well. After grabbing the bounty away from the surf he split a fish and began pulling at the insides, eating the flesh raw. He used a dull steel knife he’d found in the whaleboat and tested several rocks until he found one that reliably sparked against the metal.
Soon he had a fire going and cooked the crab and the fish, eating until his belly was warm and full. The speed at which his survival needs had been met left him with a rising emotional tide. All of the men lost, including his best friend, and here he sat fortunate enough not only to survive but to thrive through sheer luck.
Night brought no end to the survivor’s guilt that wracked his brain, and the constant nagging worry of what to do next weighed heavily on him. After hours of tossing around on the beach, he decided to give the hard surface of the whale boat a try, after all he had slept wonderfully there the night before. Sure enough, as soon as he’d laid down on the wood he felt the same similar pull and let himself go deep into his own mind. This time, however, he didn’t travel through his memories. Instead he found himself recounting all of the knowledge he’d learned in school and from his father at the shop. Even things that seemed simple enough to Isiah that he’d never given them a second thought. He found himself explaining the alphabet to himself and recalling the books that he’d read. Mathematics, the Bible, and whatever science he knew of came to the forefront.
Then he drifted passively across the land around where he had grown up, stopping to focus on odd things such as certain plants, animals and flowers. He was transfixed by a deer that he’d seen up close as a young boy and some chittering squirrels climbing up and down trees. And trees! He’d never thought twice about the forests near his home but now every moment he’d spent gazing at the old growth seemed weighted as emotionally as the faces of his family.
Isiah woke with the sun rising and once again found a curious pile of seafood piled up near the boat. Not knowing what to think, he wandered around the shallows looking for any hint of what could be causing his fortunate predicament but it wasn’t until he neared the boat that he heard a voice in his head that wasn’t his. “Isiah, do not be afraid.”
He jumped and looked around the beach, but no one was there. The voice wasn’t a noise, he wasn’t hearing it through his ears. It seemed to echo around his mind. “Who are you?” He asked the absence.
Suddenly his mind flashed to the first vision he had of the whale that had attacked, to the white mass on top of its head. He felt himself falling to his knees as a flood of experiences completely foreign to him rushed through his senses. The darkness of the ocean, fleeing from fish and other predators, swimming not with arms or legs but through an odd locomotion of a body he was unfamiliar with. He saw the whale in its own environment, he saw it allow him protection and he clambered upon it and entered the thoughts of it. He saw the world from the view of an aquatic mammoth. He saw the whale’s mother taking it up for breaths of air, nursing, learning how to hunt.
Most of all, he experienced the sounds. Isiah had always thought of the ocean as a silent place, but the rich and overwhelming songs that the whales were singing to each other were rich with meaning and intricately beautiful. He felt his physical body sob with emotion as his mind was worlds away, feeling the different echoes of the behemoths as if they were strokes of a paintbrush in his brain. He saw himself as the whale meeting an albino squid that was fleeing a group of hooded seals. He felt the squid gently wrap its arms around the whales head and he comprehended two non-human creatures communicating. He, as the whale, chased the seals off. The two animals remained paired and Isiah experienced a bond he could never have imagined.
Suddenly, as Isiah the whale surfaced for air after a morning of filter feeding the two creatures noticed a ship. Isiah instantly recognized the ship.
He tried to pull his mind out of this experience, screaming as he felt himself locked into the whale’s perspective as it was pierced with harpoons. He felt the panic, and the squid’s fury. The squid took over control of the whale in this moment, and the whale began speeding toward the ship in single minded determination. Isiah was split between the perspectives of control and helplessness, terror and fury.
Isiah lay exhausted on the beach, having lived through the life and death of the same animal he’d left home to hunt. Dried tears left rough patches of salt on his cheeks. When he was finally able to sit up, he noticed that the white mass of squid was peeking around the side of the whale boat. Somehow he’d already known it was there. Isiah crawled up and over the side of the boat and laid flat, offering his mind to the squid for communication. He felt forgiveness, and a communion of souls. He did his best to share the location of his home on the Atlantic coast, and the squid roughly indicated that it would be able to help him return.
The journey took a little over a week, the squid propelled the small whale boat while Isiah used a makeshift oar that he’d crafted from the island driftwood with the dull knife. The squid would stop for a few hours a day to hunt, and it always brought food for Isiah as well. He suffered a lack of water but the squid was able to communicate that the eyeballs of the fish it was providing were a source of refreshment, and rain came mercifully on the fourth day.
As they travelled, Isiah lay on the boat with closed eyes and communicated with the squid. It was beginning to learn to use rudimentary English and seemed to be excited by the concept of this new form of communication. Finally they reached the shore of Isiah’s small fishing village, and as they neared land a group of onlookers grew into a crowd as people recognized him. He was weak when they came out to rescue him, and his body collapsed almost as soon as he was in the hands of fellow humans.
It took him several weeks to recover, which he spent reading, to his father’s delight. Unlike other sailors that had been rescued from sea, Isiah did not show a shyness toward the ocean. In fact, as soon as he was able to, he wandered down to the shoreline and spent hours each day laying in the bay. His family and neighbors worried that the trial of his survival must have addled his mind in some way, but the doctor assured his parents that he was sound.
Isiah spent the rest of his days reading books and floating in the ocean, secretly allowing the squid access to all of the knowledge that he could attain as recompense for the death of the whale, and repayment to his aquatic savior. He never told a soul, for fear that the squid would be hunted and captured as a curiosity. In return the squid took Isiah’s mind places that no human could hope to experience, and the man’s life, though seemingly simple from an outside perspective, achieved a depth and richness so vast that as he grew to old age he only became happier and happier. Even as his body aged, he expressed to anyone that would listen that his life far surpassed what he could have hoped for. People listened in amusement, patient acknowledgement, and sometimes rude disbelief. It never mattered to Isiah.
After the old man finally passed away, his family honored his wishes. They took his body from his deathbed out to a small flat raft, that they pushed out to the sea, past the breaking waves. The whole town gathered to see him float away, in pious remembrance of a rare survivor.
The crowd watched in unknowing horror as pale white tentacles reached out of the water and enveloped the body, dragging it off the raft and down into the sea that he had known better than any human alive or dead.