The male Spiral Narwhal roared, unleashing a tremendous pressure wave that crashed over everyone aboard. "What is it trying to do...?" Wally Laren Ctiton felt, for the first time, a genuine flutter of fear. "Why is it looking at me?" His eyes locked with the pale yellow gaze of the massive leviathan. "Why is it staring only at me!?"

  "Get below deck, prince." Henris seemed deaf to the prince's frightened questions. "Move, you lot!" the old man shouted to the crew. "Raise the sails! Full speed ahead!"

  The female Spiral Narwhal sang again, angry this time. She looked at the ship, not the prince. "Gods, what do they want?"

  The female whale twisted her colossal body with astonishing agility despite her size, crashing into the two Sea Serpent Class galleys trailing behind the Narwhal as casually as a man might crush insects underfoot. Her mate followed suit, swinging his enormous tail fin—broad enough to blot out the sun—creating a devastating wave that capsized vessels and extinguished lives in its wake. They attacked every ship in sight with blind fury—galleys, triremes, longboats, even the smallest lifeboats—sparing only the Narwhal from their wrath. The Shahani prince stood transfixed, forced to witness the merciless carnage.

  "It's crazy!" Henris Weber Ian said.

  "They're crazy!" the crew said.

  "...They're all crazy," Wally whispered.

  After the twenty-seventh vessel had vanished beneath the waves, the leviathans finally began to calm. "Prince, this is our chance!" The old man tugged urgently at Wally's arm. "Our only opportunity to escape..."

  "It's watching me..." The prince remained motionless. "As if it wishes to speak."

  "Don't be foolish, Your Highness. Spiral Narwhals only sing—and their songs bring nothing but death."

  "It is singing." The male Spiral Narwhal's gaze focused intently on the Narwhal's hull, its pale yellow eyes tracking over each embedded young spiral narwhal bone. With every fragment it observed, its eyes grew dimmer, more desolate. Wally Laren Ctiton recognized that look—the same expression Solomon Laren Ctiton had worn after his son and daughter's reckless, youthful deaths at sea: utter desolation and inconsolable grief. Finally, its gaze settled on the short spiral horn mounted at the ship's prow.

  It released a long, resonant cry that echoed across the water like a human wailing in unbearable anguish. The mother whale answered with the same heart-rending tone. Their songs intertwined, rising and falling in mournful harmony, moving everyone who heard them to unexpected tears. When the final note faded into silence, the male Spiral Narwhal hurled his massive body back into the sea with such violence it seemed he sought to shatter himself upon the waves. The mother whale cast one final tear-streaked glance at the small horn before following her mate into the blue depths.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "We killed their baby."

  "We merely borrowed their child's remains," Henris corrected gently. "We never harmed the young spiral narwhal—at least, not while it lived."

  They tallied their devastating losses and endured the heaviest night since their voyage began. Wally Laren Ctiton leaned against the railing, watching dawn break in the east. "Leave it be," he instructed the old man. As he gazed at the white clouds drifting against the pale blue sky, he continuously saw the silhouettes of spiral narwhals among them.

  "With this easterly wind, barring any misfortune, we should reach Bellita Village harbor within a few days."

  The prince offered no response, or perhaps he simply didn't hear.

  From the eastern horizon came a terrible, bone-shaking roar.

  "...What now?" Henris Weber Ian raised his monocular.

  "What forces have we provoked?" The Shahani prince gripped the railing tightly, sighing in resignation.

  "Nina. That's the seventeenth time you've giggled this morning."

  Kadenford's early light was gentle, almost tender. The slightly hazy sunbeams filtered through the beech branches, casting docile patterns of shadow and light across the ground. Two fair-faced young women sat properly at the base of a tree, their thin, slightly-too-short skirts draped demurely over their knees—occasionally offering fleeting glimpses that would have fueled the imagination of any young bachelor. Nina and Amphinelos were engaged in needlework.

  A moment passed before Nina Panning realized her lapse in composure. She allowed her needle and thread to slip from her fingers as she hastily covered her smiling lips. "It's just black veils," Amphinelos said, tilting her head quizzically. "Something every grown girl in Kadenford—no, every engaged girl—makes. What could possibly warrant seventeen silly smiles in half a morning...? Look!" She nudged her friend playfully. "That makes eighteen now."

  Nina leaned back against the tree trunk, still smiling. "You really should snap out of this trance, Nina," Amphinelos advised, retrieving her friend's fallen needlework. "He's just an ordinary boy, darling—not some lord's son or a princess's brother. He's somewhat handsome—though if you ask me, still rather childish. He can't possibly be as perfect as you imagine, my dear. And you've only met him nine times—don't let your hopes soar too high."

  "You keep remarkably precise count of everything," Nina replied, her voice slightly husky as she cleared her throat.

  "I'm particularly attentive to such matters." Amphinelos shrugged. "Sometimes, life requires careful accounting." She tossed her unfinished black veil onto her friend's lap. "Look at us—we've already wasted six spools of thread on these two veils."

  "Only five and a half, Anni," Nina Panning corrected, sitting upright and brushing dust from her back. "And," she met her friend's dark eyes directly, "why call it 'waste'? Why isn't he worth a few spools of fine cotton and nineteen silly smiles for a veil of his own?"

  "The veil is meant for you, silly girl." Amphinelos draped her own unfinished work over Nina's head. "He may be a squire in Baron Penlico's service, but what of it? Yes, he's certainly preferable to those dim-witted temple novices, but he possesses no title, no lands, not even the lowest rank of knighthood."

  "Remember our own origins. We're commoners ourselves."

  "As is he—at least for now." Amphinelos persisted undeterred. "I haven't forgotten who we are, Nina. I simply believe that Nina Panning—the loveliest girl in all of Kadenford—deserves someone better."