‘Nearly there,’ said Dawn, her voice strange and horrible from her shark-toothed maw. ‘Look to the left.’
Arthur looked down. All he could see for miles and miles was the sea, a blue expanse flecked here and there with white. Then as his eyes blurred from the rush of the wind, he saw something long and white, reaching up to the horizon. A mountain chain. No, a mountainous island. It was long and narrow, and the snow-covered central ridge looked like it rose higher than Arthur and Dawn were flying.
‘We’re going to an island?’ he shouted, his words almost smothered by the constant flapping of Dawn’s wings.
Dawn laughed, a scornful laugh that made Arthur shudder. There was something intrinsically wrong with a laugh coming from a winged shark.
But there was reason for her scorn, Arthur saw as he looked again. What he’d thought was an island was moving. He could see the vast white wash behind it, which he’d mistaken for surf breaking on a very long reef. And the size and shape of the island changed, as it rose and fell in the water.
It wasn’t an island. It was a gigantic white whale. A Leviathan. One hundred and twenty-six miles long. A Behemoth. Thirty-two miles wide. A mouth ten miles wide and two miles high — Dawn stopped flapping her wings and began to glide slowly down.
Down towards Drowned Wednesday.
‘Hey!’ Arthur shouted. ‘You said Wednesday was going to be in human form!’
‘She will be. She eats tons of fish and krill until the last moment, to satisfy her hunger. You see the ship in front of her?’
Arthur peered down. He could see a tiny brown fleck at least a hundred miles ahead of the vast white whale. It was like a speck of dust on the floor, with a commercial cleaner’s mop heading straight for it.
‘Yes!’
‘Milady has already begun to reduce, and will be fully in human form by the time she reaches it.’
‘What happens when she needs to change back?’ asked Arthur.
Wednesday’s Dawn did not answer, instead diving more sharply, her wingtips lifting and angling to control their descent.
‘I said, “What happens when she needs to change back?”’ Arthur repeated, knowing it was important.
‘We flee,’ said Dawn.
‘What about the people . . . the Denizens on the ship?’
‘There are none,’ said Dawn. ‘The ship was readied at my orders and the crew taken off. It is not an important vessel.’
‘Right,’ muttered Arthur. More loudly he said, ‘Don’t forget your promise.’
‘I will not forget,’ said Dawn. ‘In any case, you are probably milady’s only hope.’
‘What?’
This time Dawn did not answer at all. As they glided steadily down, Arthur watched the approach of the Leviathan. Maybe she was getting smaller, but she still looked like a mountainous island, with enormously high cliffs of chalk at the front. Something too big to be mobile.
Then she raised her tail. Even though they were still twenty miles away or more, Arthur flinched in Dawn’s tentacular grasp. The tail rose up at least a mile and came crashing down with a rumbling explosion that Arthur could feel through the air as much as hear. He could see the wave it generated too, and was surprised that by the time the wave got to the ship it was just a slightly higher crest in the swell.
‘She’s changing,’ said Dawn confidently. ‘Already only half her normal size.’
Arthur found that hard to believe, but he supposed Dawn would know. They were circling above the ship now, still a long way up, but disturbingly no higher than Wednesday’s mighty white brow. It loomed closer and closer, and Arthur started to use his hand as a measure, holding five fingers out at arm’s length and counting the number of fingers from sea level to the top of the whale’s head. It wasn’t very scientific but Arthur was somewhat relieved to see that by this crude measure, the whale was reducing in size.
Not that it looked any smaller.
‘Shouldn’t we fly up a bit?’ he asked, repeating the question in a shout when Dawn did not answer.
‘No,’ Dawn roared. ‘That would show disrespect. I trust milady!’
Arthur took another measure from sea level using his fingers. The whale was definitely getting smaller, but she was still what he could only think of as humungous.
‘I don’t think it would be disrespectful to not go any lower,’ shouted Arthur. ‘I mean, I’m the visitor. Shouldn’t we let her get on the ship first?’
Dawn didn’t answer. But she also didn’t fly any lower.
Arthur kept looking at Drowned Wednesday. Because of her enormous size, he hadn’t really taken in how fast she was approaching. The distance between them was rapidly disappearing, and she still loomed higher than they were flying. He felt like an ant watching a freight train approaching, and he was stuck to the railway line.