Rowan Sharp

Whaler’s Blessing

Bone spines jutted out of Novak’s right forearm, with broken veins forming inkblot patterns of black blood just below the skin. A red line at his elbow separated the half-formed limb from the intact flesh right above it. Novak’s left hand was unblemished and held a long-stemmed pipe; the broken joints of his right hand clutched a match. As he tried to light the pipe, his arm shook so much that he almost extinguished the match’s flame.

Beside him, a young merchant named Artois tried not to stare. His eyes kept flicking to Novak’s arm and then back to the sky until he ran out of patience.

“Here.” Artois said, taking the match and holding it to the bowl of the pipe until the air turned sour. His movement was smooth, but his eyes looked away, a reflex honed over the past few days. Malchance, the sailors whispered behind Novak’s back. The good luck he would have brought as a blood mage was tainted by his deformed arm.

“Thank you, Art.” Novak said.

“Those smoking leaves are expensive, right?” Artois said, voice high with forced levity. “I always wanted to take up the habit, look like some sort of sorcerer—impress the girls in small ports, y’know? Never had enough gold for it though.”

“They’re cheap back home. They gave it to us as part of our rations—helped with the smell of corpses when we dug mass graves.” Novak said.

Artois fell silent after that. Novak’s mouth turned into a small, bitter smile. His ploy for silence was successful. Still, he hoped the merchant wouldn’t leave. Novak didn’t want to talk, but he didn’t want to be alone, either.

Novak leaned over the ships’ edge and watched the waves churning below. When he exhaled the smoke formed lazy spirals in the still air. Artois started fidgeting, pulling a cutlass from his side and testing its edge with his thumb. Novak tried to ignore the weapon. It had a heavy, curved blade, not unlike the cavalry sword that had severed Novak’s right arm from the elbow down. Eight years later, with as many blood rituals as he dared to try, still every attempt to remake it had resulted in deformed limbs that drew stares and whispers.

Novak spoke, then, to stop Artois from continually thumbing the cutlass. “The sun’s about to rise. We should feel the Whalers’ wind soon.”

“Oh, yes! They’ll be here today, I know it. The captain says they always come four days after their scout birds, but that’s not right at all. I know it’s three. I can’t wait to hear their song, too.” Artois said, obviously relieved to have the silence broken.

“You look forward to the whale songs?”

“Yes, of course. I like everything about the Whalers. One of the main reasons I went to sea, actually.” Artois said, a little sheepish. “Don’t you?”

“They’re fine.” Novak said, not wanting to reveal his distaste. A sailor like Artois would think that only provincial idiots were afraid of the Whalers.

They both noticed the pipe’s smoke floating towards them. The breeze then hit their faces, growing stronger by the minute. With it came a haunting, ethereal sound. A mimicry of whale song, flowing from throats thick with magic. Artois closed his eyes. Novak shuddered, the voices setting his skin crawling. It sounded like the funeral laments back home.

“Why do they sing?” Novak asked, “It sounds almost guilty, like they mourn what they’ve killed.”

“No, I heard one of the translators ask them—they said it was about honor.”

They both listened to the sound, for a space, each searching for different meanings in it. Soon dawn set the water around them alight, and a bellowing voice called the sailors to work. Artois left Novak with a hurried goodbye and then disappeared up the rigging. Novak went belowdecks to mend the bone-and-blood talismans the sailors used to stay warm in winter—his price for passage.

Around midday a cry rose from the crow’s nest. They’d spotted a cloud of birds on the horizon. Everyone aboard who could spare the time, and a few who couldn’t, crowded on the port side of the ship, watching for the Whalers. They kept a respectful distance from Novak.

The flotilla materialized over a quarter hour. Rafts, double-hulled canoes, and long ships with triangular sails formed a floating city on the horizon. An urban sprawl of masts and ropes and birds and whalebone. The crafts were built half from wooden logs and half from massive bones marked with glowing blood runes, which fueled the winds they directed.

Novak sharpened his vision with magic, the veins around his eyes glowing red-hot. He was looking for signs of a mage. He could only make out the inhuman figures of the Whalers. Their torsos were almost like a person’s, but with a single appendage where legs should be, reminding Novak of a snake’s body. Four arms sprouted from their backs, and their heads were flat and reptilian. Whalers wrapped around masts, and those on the decks of ships hunched over, their whole bodies forming an “S” shape.

His eyes slid past the serpentine figures, searching for something human. He sifted through the flotilla until he saw it: a small ship, single dyed-blue sail, made of wooden boards with bones tied to the outside—not Whaler made. On it, Novak hoped, was the mage that people only spoke about in hushed breath. Her name had only become more legendary once she had disappeared to live among the Whalers.

As the Whalers’ flotilla neared, sailors brought trade goods up to the deck. Metal tools, spices, strange liqueurs, gemstones, and other valuables competed for space. The Whalers, for their part, began to lash together their rafts and ships, forming a network of gangways and rope bridges. Soon a handful of their ships pulled alongside the human’s vessel and laid down wooden ramps to connect them.

Novak queued behind the merchants and sailors that made their way to neighboring Whaler crafts across one of the smaller walkways. He weaved through the translators conversing with the Whalers in their guttural, yet melodic, native tongue. His eyes were on the mage’s small ship, its small blue sail almost lost in the forest of other masts. He traveled across the network of bridges, passing over flat rafts filled with Whalers butchering tiger sharks, through a double-hulled canoe packed with crates of furs, and walked onto a ship made purely of bone. Whalers dipped their heads to Novak as he passed, their eyes not even lingering on his arm. He was soon in front of the mage’s craft, feet hesitating for a moment in front of the piece of driftwood that acted as a bridge. How would she respond to him, Novak wondered, after having gone so far to leave civilization?

He boarded the ship with soft steps. “Mélisande?” He said to the air.

A tall woman emerged from the small cabin at the back of the ship. She wore robes made from the skins of sea creatures and carried a bone harpoon half marked with red runes. She looked Novak over in the space of two breaths, then sat down on the deck, busying herself with the harpoon and a vial of blood.

“The arm, is it?” She said without looking at him. “I’m sure you think I can heal you. Is that mockery of a limb your handiwork?”

“It is. I’m no flesh smith.” Novak said, trying to keep the nerves from his tone.

“Evidently not.” Mélisande said, then locked eyes with Novak. “How did you find me?”

“I’ve been living on ships for the past few months. I’ve watched every Whaler flotilla for a human craft. It wasn’t hard. I imagine no one else was persistent enough to try.” Novak thinks for a moment, and decides honesty would be the right approach. “Or desperate enough.”

“I suppose not.” Her tone had less acid than before. “Why me, then? Surely it would’ve been easier to find a mentor willing to take you in.”

“I didn’t learn in an academy, or a monastery.“

“You got your gift in battle, then.”

“Yes, as I was bleeding out.” Novak said, rubbing the line between natural and grown flesh at his right elbow. “It saved my life.”

“Self taught. The Whalers are, too. Yet they get their gift through meditation.” Mélisande swept a hand around her, pointing to all the Whaler ships. “Almost every one of them in this flotilla is a mage. Can you imagine what that changes? How they see the world?”
        “Is that why you’re here?”
        “One of the reasons. Another is that the mountains are already too crowded with hermits and rich academies—the ocean is all that’s left. But enough about that. Why are you really here?” Mélisande looked at Novak’s arm. “Why do you want it back so badly? To stop the stares, the whispers, the pity? Or maybe its regrowth will fix whatever’s misshapen inside of you?” Her tone demanded an answer.

“I used to play the lute, once.” Novak gave her a hint of a smile. He didn’t bother making it sound convincing. “It takes two hands. With one all I do is smoke.”

The mage looked at him for a long while. Her gaze made his right arm tremble, but he didn’t elaborate. He thought she’d like that.

“It’ll take years. You’ll have nothing but me and the Whalers for company. Most of your days will be spent gutting fish, maybe drying whale meat. Is it worth that much to you?”

“It is.”

“Then I’ll expect you on this ship before next sunrise. And get rid of that embarrassment before I see you again.” Mélisande said, looking at his arm. Then she turned away, resuming her work on the harpoon. Novak clenched his right fist open and closed a few times, and returned to the mess of bridges that connected the floating city.

Later, as moonlight slid into the waves and Whalers climbed their masts with glowing song-filled throats, a small splash next to the human ship went unnoticed. A slender mass of bone and flesh disappeared beneath the water. Novak walked across the driftwood bridge to the mage’s craft, winding a bandage around the stump of his right elbow.