Chasing the Sky Whale by Spencer Orey
Even if no bells had clanged in alarm, even if there’d been no screams from the shore, I would have known what catastrophe was falling upon us by the dirgeful swoop of whale song. This should not yet have been our sky whale’s time to die. She’d calved not so long ago, hardly a year. And yet, this song could only declare her final plunge into our harbor.
The bay churned, frantic with activity. Fishing boats too distant to attempt a return rowed frantically for open water. On the beach, people I’d known my whole life scrambled to help haul the closer boats to land.
I knew I should help. If not with the boats, then by helping the feeble to flee uphill, where they might yet escape the great wave that would soon strike our village. Every song-struck wasted moment could mean someone’s drowning. And yet, I was far from the only one caught in rising grief, unable to do anything but stare into the darkening sky in a captivated vigil for our beloved sky whale. I wasn’t ready for her to die.
Her songs had filled so many of my nights. As a child, too afraid of flickering firelight shadows to close my eyes, I’d listened to her and found comfort that she could sing such joy high above in the darkness. Later, her songs accompanied my shy twilight flirtations, then soothed my every awkward failure. And as I’d aged, unpartnered and unwanted, she’d duetted with her calf while I in turn rocked my brother’s children to sleep. My brother’s family left, along with so many others who searched for better-paying work away from the sea, while I stayed with all those who couldn’t imagine our lives apart from our sky whale. Even when loneliness itself kept me awake, I knew that while she sang, I’d never be truly alone.
Her song was broken now, rattled and gasping. It did not sound angry, but her joy was gone, replaced with a pain that dug into my chest with a new hollowness of loss.
A wet thump and sharp scream of pain drew my attention to the rocky shore. A dropped boat had pinned a young man’s leg. Instead of helping, the other fisherfolk fled, leaving the young man behind while whale shadow spread across the beach.
I could not blame them for fleeing. They all had reasons to flee, or others to flee to, friends, children. I had only the sky whale.
The pinned young man screamed for help, then screamed for my help, voice gurgling in the crashing waves, and I understood that I could answer or let him drown.
I answered. I knelt in the cold saltwater and scooped away cold handfuls of coarse mud until he slipped free. He looked younger than me, with a face lightly scarred by hard work on the fishing boats. Any other day, I would have known his name and family. His leg was crushed, but with his arm wrapped tight across my shoulder, we limped uphill as the ground darkened.
Coward that I was, I was thankful not to watch her final plunge, not to see her mighty form tumble emptied and weak out of her long-triumphant sky.
We were halfway up the sloped path when she struck the water. She did not strike fast, sparing us from a single terrible explosion of water, but she’d always been larger than any dream, and even slow, the water she displaced began to spread in devastation. Her song faded to one last rasping gurgle, and then she truly was gone.
The air grew thick with salt-wet dust and the slurp of rising water. Even then, I couldn’t look. Water surged over our feet, and when it swept the young man’s good leg out from under him, he pulled me down. I should have felt afraid for myself, but I felt only the new loss of the sky whale, the pure truth of her absence.
The young man clawed at the path, clutching at stones, at a fencepost. When I flailed out, a hand brushed mine.
My villagers, the people I’d always known but still barely knew, chained their hands to reach us, to pull us to safety. They reached the young man first. My grip slipped, but he found new purchase on my forearm, holding tight as we were pulled up in a flood of bodies, all lifting one another out of the still-rising nightmare. We crested the dry hilltop, where the young man’s family took him into their arms.
Only then, soaked but still alive, did I turn to face the water and acknowledge the sky whale. Her death was scraping away our lives, our whole village. But perhaps all that could be an offering in her honor. She’d begun her life in our harbor and shown us all how to truly transcend into flight and song.
Next to me, an old woman pointed across the twinkling bay to distant fishing boats in the open ocean, dark oars raised in celebration to show us they’d survived.
On the hilltop, we listened to the silence left behind in the sky, the empty clouds and harsh sunlight. I realized I was waiting. For another whale, maybe, one of her calves or perhaps a pod, to sing her the honors she deserved.
No other whales came. I do not think I was the first to try singing. I do not even know what we sang when I joined in. When voices broke with fear or still-gasping breaths, others sang for them, together. Gentle hands found mine as they did before, no longer pulling but simply joining. Together, we sang, and we searched for a way to rise out of loss, to somehow reach the sky.
