i.
I recall where I was when we found out we were in our final days. Each morning, I’d join the other children my age and forage for food on the great mountain back. I pulled stumpy carrots and mushrooms from the shaded side, where just enough moisture collected that such things grew.
I did this because that was where the best hauls were to be found, but also because the shade was a small reprieve from the sun, which rose and dipped in the sky but never dropped below the horizon. It cooked us, and at aged twelve we could only spend a little time topside before retreating below. It had baked the earth, too. All around us—forever around us—was endless white desert. Or so we thought.
It was nearing the end of my time topside. Soon it would be second landfall, and time for lunch. I stood straight, my carrier bag full, and wiped sweat from my face.
As I often did, I looked out at the endless desert. My people did not usually do this. They preferred not to think about the great white expanse, or the people we’ve lost to the still earth below us. When I look, I imagine what might be beyond the ridges of the horizon. If the desert is endless, then all manner of wonders must exist out there. But I couldn’t stare long, for the blazing light of the sun reflecting off the white dust burns the eyes.
That morning, I caught sight of movement further down the mountain back, where the slope led toward the Behemoth’s great neck, the head, the holy place. Despite the growing heat of the day, someone was running—cutting along the path. Whatever it was that made them run, it must have been urgent. I watched on, curious and a little unnerved that something so important might be happening. When second landfall hit, a tremble moving through us all. The figure stumbled, tripped, and I started downhill toward them.
ii.
The Behemoth. We know no other name for it. It marched through the desert since before we could recall. Each landfall of its great four feet marked out our days, trembling through us all. It was living stone and mountain, and in the shade of its underbelly we made our homes. We burrowed into it, strung the rope roads from it. We followed the words of the Whisperers, who climbed up onto the Behemoth’s head, spoke the ancient language into its ear, and knew in secret its wisdom. The desert it walked across we called the still earth. None returned from the still earth. To fall from the Behemoth was to never be seen again. To leave community—to leave the Behemoth—was death.
iii.
My mother waited for me where the steps were carved into the side of the Behemoth, leading down to the ropes. She always came topside to help me forage. By the time the running figure reached her, the heat must have been too much and they stopped, exhausted.
I adjusted the bag on my shoulder and crossed the mountain. I was curious to find out what was going on. In a community like ours, nothing much of interest ever happened. The worst I could imagine was that a Whisperer had slipped and fallen to the still earth when crossing the neck.
Despite such risks, I wanted so badly to be a Whisperer. To learn the secret knowledge, to have an important role in the community. To stand on the Behemoth’s head, the holiest of places, and to see the world from its perspective. Nan Frieda had been a Whisperer, and, for a while, even the Speaker. I wanted to follow in her footsteps. That I had been rejected once already wounded my confidence. I was tall among the other girls, and skinny. My legs were long, and I was clumsy. Too clumsy to pass the trial of balance.
iv.
To become a Whisperer, there are several trials one must pass. Whisperers are trained from childhood, for the secret language is difficult to learn. By the time I was ten, I had prepared myself all I could by annoying Nan Frieda with questions.
The first trial is a test of knowledge about the laws of the community. The first law is easy: we hold together. The community should always be unified and help each other. Other laws were a variation on this theme. Not to steal or act in violence toward others. There were rules about respecting the Behemoth, and obeying the words of the Whisperers. I passed that first trial easily.
But the second trial was the trial of balance. On the Behemoth’s back, under the baking sun, a trial area was erected. Two large mounds sat several feet apart and between them was strung an old rope. We stood in the heat until dripping with sweat in full Whisperer robes. Then we had to pass across the rope as it swung with the Behemoth’s slow motion, get to one side, and then cross back again.
“Don’t be nervous, Leah,” said Vin beside me. We’d been friends all our lives, and though he was not as driven to become a Whisperer as I, he was clever and graceful. When it came to his turn, he crossed the rope without difficulty. I watched on, envious as he passed across the rope barefoot like a dancer. No matter how many times I’d practiced the crossing, I could never get my long legs to move quite so confidently as he did.
When my turn came I climbed the first mound, took a deep, steadying breath, and stepped out onto the rope.
v.
It was Vin that had been running toward my mother. I could tell it was him before I reached them. He was panting in the heat, the Apprentice Whisperer robes heavy and his forehead shining with sweat. He’d succeeded in all the trials on his first effort. It had strained our friendship a little, mostly because we barely saw each other anymore.
“Come now,” said my mother, “take some water.” She handed Vin a water skin and he gratefully drank his fill. “You should know better than to be running in this heat, Vin.”
He ducked his head. He’d always been intimidated by my mother’s sternness. Even now that he was a Whisperer Apprentice and deserving of respect.
“Thank you, Miah,” he said, handing back the water skin.
“Is everything all right?” I asked.
He noticed me for the first time, and whatever instructions he’d been given seemed momentarily forgotten. He smiled a little and looked relieved to see me.
“Leah,” warned my mother. “It’s not our business to know the Whisperer’s ways.”
“Big, big trouble,” Vin told me, though my mother had given him good reason not to. “Whisperer Isa keeps the watch. She saw something.”
Now even my mother was curious. “Saw what?”
Both my mother and I stared at him, and he became shy. I thought he might recover himself, say something about secret Whisperer business, and be on his way. Instead he looked over his shoulder back toward the way he’d come, back toward the head of the Behemoth. Again he ducked his head.
“She said she saw…the sea.”
vi.
The sea. A word of stories. Like the underworld, or the land above the clouds. A word like city, like tree. The sea was a no-place, spoken of only in myths with unknown origins and unknown meanings. It was a place of danger and terror, but also of life.
Nan Frieda had told me the story of the old woman and the sea when I was younger. Before the land and sky were scorched, the great expanse was covered in so much water that people lived only on small islands, travelling from place to place using rafts. But during a time of conflict, the rains stopped falling. People grew thirsty and desperate, and the fighting intensified. One elder walked to the shore where the sea met the earth. She held her hands up high, calling on the ancient god of the water, pleading for rain to fall. On each visit, the god demanded the people make peace: with the animals, with the earth, with each other, with themselves. But each time she returned to relay this news, the fighting only intensified. Eventually, she herself was caught up in the conflict and killed. Her daughter brought this news to the god at the shore and it grew angry. With the pull and strength of the moon it surged great waves forth, sweeping the woman into the ocean. Great tidal waves flushed forward, flooding planes, valleys, and wiping cities from the earth. Salt water poisoned soil, leaving behind barren land. When the destruction was complete, the waters receded from where they came, past the horizon and still further, never to be seen again.
“The sea?” My mother scoffed. “Nonsense.”
But Vin had at last recovered from his run, and he wasted no time arguing. He carried on his way, down to see the other Whisperers. When I looked at my mother I expected to see her impatience there. Instead, I saw a look I’d never seen on her before. She was afraid.
vii.
On my way home, I stopped at Ron’s small stall just outside his home beside ours. He was large and genial, and everyone in our community traded with him. I swapped some choice mushrooms for some dumot pods, then entered our house.
My little brother, Yan, and Nan Frieda kept each other company while I foraged for lunch. Yan was still too young to spend any time top-side, and Nan Frieda’s many years as a Whisperer had scorched her eyes blind. She no longer left the house, for walking the rope roads was too dangerous. She remained home, singing songs, weaving fibres into ropes and telling stories from old times. Even with Yan’s help, she found it difficult to prepare food, and though she’d never once asked me to, it became my job to make us lunch each day while my mother continued foraging for dinner and my father worked in the mud mines.
That afternoon I was distracted, Vin’s words still swept through my thoughts like a dry, dusty wind. I cut up the mushrooms and root vegetables I’d found, used some herbs to flavour the soup. The result was simple, bland, served in baked brown bowls made of the mud my father scraped from the deepest crevices of the Behemoth’s inner seams. But for all the meal’s simplicity, Yan always ate eagerly and Nan Frieda never said a word against it. We ate without speaking, only Yan’s slurping breaking the silence.
When we were done, I shared the dumot pods. The fleshy bulbs grew from the succulent plants on the mountain side and their juice was as refreshing as it was sweet. Eyes wide, Yan took one from me, pierced the flesh with a finger, and sucked the pod dry.
“I finished mine, can I have yours?”
“Don’t be greedy, Yanny,” Nan Frieda said gently. “What do you say?”
“Thank you,” he replied, still eyeing the pod in our grandmother’s old hands. She must have sensed his desire and sighed, handing the pod to him to drink.
viii.
“I heard the strangest thing today,” I announced as I cleaned up after lunch.
“What’s that, my dear?”
I told the story of Vin running, the mention of the sea. At first Nan Frieda was shocked to hear it, but this gave way to scandalised annoyance. “Nonsense. Utter nonsense.”
“The sea?” Yan asked, somewhere between awe and horror.
“Who did you say stood watch? Isa?” Nan Frieda shook her head, disapproving. “Always trouble, that one. She must be losing her sight.” Then to herself, “Or her mind.”
“But it’s true. Vin came running down and he looked so worried.”
“That boy will never make a good Whisperer. He lacks inner stillness.”
“Even mother looked scared. Nan, could it be true?”
“No,” she replied emphatically. “Now stop with this talk. You’re scaring your brother.”
“On goes the sway,” Yan said, loyal to his grandmother.
“Sure as four landfalls,” she replied. “And it will never end.”
ix.
But news spread. Rumours grew like mushrooms in caves. Within three days, the other children in my class were talking about it. The Whisperers remained silent at first, only repeating their usual mantras: trust in the Behemoth. Hold together.
Despite the heat, I kept climbing the mountain top. It was my favourite place to sit and stare out at the horizon. At the very peak, clouds sometimes formed and got caught on the crags of the mountain, thick enough for a little precipitation to drop enough rain to keep our cisterns from running dry. In the warm dark caverns near the peak, mushrooms sprouted each night. I didn’t go to harvest, but to gaze out as far as I could see.
Vin came to find me there. He knew it was my favourite place to imagine what we might lay beyond the limits of reckoning. He’d come and sit with me in silence. Sometimes he’d take my hand.
x.
At home, fighting between my parents and Nan Frieda began and over the days intensified. They were always angry with each other, but no-one could say for sure what should be done. Nan Frieda insisted we should trust the Behemoth. Mother wanted to flee. Father tried to mediate between them, but also erred toward fleeing.
Whenever this fighting continued past third landfall, Yan and I would retreat to my hammock. He would curl into a ball against me and I would gently hum the old songs my grandmother would sing when she wove baskets and ropes. Or if that didn’t help him sleep, I would whisper comforting words. “On goes the sway, sure as the four landfalls.” Over and over again. Why my face was wet with tears I could not say.
xi.
Several days later, I was walking toward the path up to the ridge back. To get there, I had to pass near the hind legs. In some immemorial past, people had carved small steps into the legs, circling all the way down to the still earth. A crowd was gathered there, which drew my curiosity. Ron, the stall-keeper, was at the head of a small group of families, packed and preparing to descend.
Whisperers were gathered there as I’d never seen them. Over their simple robes they wore weather-beaten plate and helmets, and the blades of polearms stood high above their heads. This equipment was likely ancient, from a forgotten history, and I’d never seen them wear such things. By some secret decree, they had been posted to guard the hind legs to keep families from fleeing.
“Get out of the way,” Ron demanded. “We only want our freedom.”
“We’re not to let anyone pass,” the taller of the three Whisperers said.
“So we’re to wait here like dullards until we sink into the ocean? With my young son and my wife?”’ Ron was angry, and so was the crowd around him.
“Move or we’ll force you out of our way,” one of the crowd jeered.
The Whisperers looked anxious, but would not stand aside. The whole scene had an inevitability about it, like all the pieces were set and we could only watch the game play out. Urged on by the crowd, Ron moved forward and the tall Whisperer intercepted. They grappled and fought. The polearm was knocked free of the Whisperer’s hand and it fell far below. They threw blows, and the crowd shouted. Ron’s wife called for him to stop, and his son cried. To walk the rope roads was risky, but for two grown men to fight on them was terrifying.
The inevitable happened in a slow, gut-wrenching moment. Ron and the Whisperer slipped from the rope roads and fell. I saw Ron’s face as he reached up toward his wife. It was contorted with fear, with surprise. I remember it vividly now, though we never saw him again.
xii.
The day finally came. It was no longer possible to pretend the sea was nothing but a story, for its briny smell filled the air. Its roar terrified us. We could see it with our own eyes. It had arrived: the edge of the still earth.
The Whisperers gathered us all in the Great Chamber, the largest cavern inside the body of the Behemoth. Speaker Ura was there, but she was subdued and standing to one side. It was Whisperer Isa—the one who first spotted the ocean—who addressed us.
“Friends,” she called, and the crowd hushed. “Before this day is done, the Behemoth will sink to the depths of the ocean. Our time here is over. We must leave our homes and take what little we have left with us.”
She kept talking, but I didn’t hear. Nothing made sense to me. Hadn’t we been trusting in the Behemoth all this time? Why now, at the last moment, lose faith? “We can’t leave,” I protested to my parents. “What about Nan Frieda? What about the Behemoth?”
“We’re not leaving her behind,” my father assured me.
“Someone has to tell the Behemoth to stop. We have to make it understand.”
My parents shared a look. “It’s more complicated than that,” my mother explained. “We trusted in the Behemoth for a very long time. But now it’s time to trust in ourselves.”
xiii.
Returning home, we found Nan Frieda strangely subdued. We finished packing, and all at once we left my home for the last time. For Yan’s sake, I didn’t complain, but all the while my mother and father were loading up packs on our backs, I continued to picture the Behemoth in its last moments feeling betrayed as we allowed it to march into the sea. Would it understand what had happened? Would it be angry?
Emerging from the house, we were all shocked by the smell of the ocean, the roar of the waves. The ocean was just below us, and terrifying. Second landfall had already passed, so the third leg would already be rising. The hind-left was always the final leg to rise. By fourth landfall, the Behemoth would be far out in the sea. The sky was heavy with clouds—thick, dark and strangely still. But the ocean roiled, a living, angry thing. It stretched on, endless, toward the horizon. We were all afraid, but Nan Frieda wailed at the sound. At the coast, where the waves met the desert sand, there clashed two forevers.
xiv.
Traversing the rope roads was slow, and several of the items we’d brought slipped from their bundles and fell. But we made it to the hind leg, among the last to arrive. Speaker Ura was there, waiting for the last of us, and so were several of the armed Whisperers.
“You’re the last,” Ura said, looking miserable.
“Ura, you damned fool,” Nan Frieda wailed. “How have you led us here?”
“I didn’t,” she protested. “The Behemoth knows its own path. It does not listen to us.”
My parents ushered us onto the steps and we made our way down. Mother first, followed by Nan Frieda, father, Yan, and me, each of us holding the hand of the one in front. Behind me were several other stragglers, and the last of the Whisperers.
The Behemoth knows its own path, I kept repeating to myself. And, on goes the sway. Yet these truths had led us here, to the end. Was this the Behemoth’s intent all along? Or had everyone just trusted it too well, and not dared ask it to stop?
“You never could speak to it, could you?” I said to Nan Frieda, though I don’t think she heard me. Yan looked at me, and my chest ached to think what might become of my little brother on the still earth. I could not bear it. I let go of his hand, kissed his head, and without another word I turned and ran back up the steps.
xv.
Getting past the Whisperers was easy enough. They were not expecting someone to come up, especially not a lanky girl like me. I slipped past their reaching arms and made it back to the rope roads. Behind, I could hear shouting—my father, my mother, Speaker Ura. But I couldn’t let this distract me, for I had only one goal.
On the mountain back, I ran under the unyielding sun, much as Vin had done that first day. Sweat built on the small of my back, on my forehead, on the planes of my cheeks. At any moment, the Behemoth could fall into the depths of the ocean and all hope of saving our community would be lost.
I arrived, at last, at the neck. Sacred passage. Below raged the tides. The wind whipped around me as I stood there, nervous, knowing that I had failed the trial of balance once already.
Without further hesitation, I held my breath and dropped down onto the narrow path of the neck. Stone and gravel loosened and I slipped, falling ungracefully forward. My body slammed hard against the craggy flesh and I grazed my face. All the world moved, and I thought I’d fallen off.
It was my legs that saved me; long, gangly, but strong. I slid them out instinctively, and used them to cling to the neck. The world continued spinning, and the motion on the neck was a sudden shift from the normal movement of the Behemoth. As the body tilted one way, the neck and head seemed to move the opposite. It was like space and time itself was altered.
I clung to the path, dizzied and confused. I might not have had Vin’s grace, but I could scramble across. Below me the ocean roared, its dark grey patterned only with the white foamy surf. The wind pulled at me. Above, the clouds flashed with strange lights I’d never seen before. They spoke in rumbling, angry voices. All of this I could not think about, focusing only on my slow progress.
I was halfway across. So close to the holy head.
And then, something terrible.
Third landfall.
xvi.
On the neck, landfall was a violent shudder, and had thrown more than one Whisperer off as they tried passing. If I had been standing, I would have fallen. I don’t think I was conscious of it, but I’d been expecting third landfall and hugged myself to the neck as best I could.
Third landfall meant that even now the fourth leg was lifting off the ground and the Behemoth was taking its final step away from still earth and out to sea. It would be impossible for me to return now. I only hoped my family had made it safely down, and could not acknowledge that I’d never see them again.
Pulling myself up, I scrambled onto the great Behemoth’s head, onto the holiest of lands, and up the steep incline until I was straddling the crown. What I saw took away my power to speak and breathe.
The view was terrifying and marvellous. Dark clouds hunched menacingly, stealing the bright openness I’d spent so much time staring off at as my mind wandered at the possibilities of the limitless horizon. Never in my dreaming had I imagined this sort of place, where the sky was crowded with clouds, where darkness reigned. I’d never seen movement like I saw in the ocean below me. Waves curled and broke and curled again long before they reached the shore. Where these two worlds met, land was washed away or jutted out viciously, breaking the waves in a furious battle.
Dust and dryness. Solidity, certitude. All gone. Now was only the storming unknown.
Yet to sit above it all looking down was exhilarating, incomparable to anything I’d experienced before. It was beyond divine. In a way, I’d accomplished my childhood wish. I’d crossed the neck onto the holy land to look at the world as the Behemoth did—to be like a Whisperer.
But I had not come for the joy of it. Like the Speaker, now, I had to make the Behemoth listen.
I stood up, wobbly but determined. “Behemoth!” I shouted as loud as I could. The wind pulled at me and stole my words. “Be still!”
With all the strength I had, I brought both hands down in a single fist and pounded the head of the Behemoth. If it would not listen to the reason of the Whisperers, let it listen to rage and love. “Be still!” Again and again, I hit the Behemoth. The pain of it shocked me, but I continued on until I was reduced to tears and bloodied hands.
Nothing happened. I sat there atop the Behemoth’s head, crying, slowly realising my foolishness.
Then, from the Behemoth’s great maw came a long and shuddering sigh more frightening than the thunder. More frightening than the ocean itself. A noise I’d never heard the Behemoth make.
This was no spoken word. This was something else. The release of something final.
I remained there in shock, finally understanding why the Behemoth had not erred from its path toward the sea. Only the wind and slow rhythms of waves marked the passing of time. It might have been moments or hours before my mind became aware of what my body already knew.
The great Behemoth was still.
xvii.
Down on the shore, my community stood on the black dusty sand and watched as their world came to a tumbling halt. The Behemoth slowly tipped forward, pitched down until it crashed into the ocean and sank, though not so deep as many had predicted. The head was submerged, as were the legs and the underbelly, but the great ridge back stood tall and the waves crashed at its shores. From the dark clouds, rain tumbled.
Days passed, and the community used driftwood and supplies to build feeble shelters against the rain. All the while, my father and mother tried convincing people to build a raft and venturing out to the island to see if they could find me. Vin agreed volunteered, but others wouldn’t until supplies of clean water dwindled. Eventually they lashed pieces of driftwood together and ventured out into the surf. The tides dragged them out into the sea. Their legs over the side, five people kicked with strength earned over a lifetime of walking the rope roads.
They arrived on a changed ridge back. The moss appeared greener, thicker. Many more mushrooms grew in the crags. They were drenched and exhausted as the rain fell on them in thick, warm drops, but still their hope was kindled. They split up, calling my name.
It was Vin who found me. He knew where I’d be. I was on the mountain top, staring out at the horizon, the wind throwing up my hair and the raindrops wetting my face.
xviii.
When we returned, my mother and Nan Frieda kept touching my face, crying, thanking the kindness of the old gods and the Behemoth for seeing me safe. Yan squealed my name when he saw me, and hugged me fiercely. My father kissed my head. Everyone was happy that I was alive and that there was some small hope of making a life on the Behemoth’s back.
But I felt numb to it all.
“Leah!” cried Yan, “You’re a true Whisperer. You stopped the Behemoth!”
“And the ground there is greener, the cisterns overflowing,” my father told everyone close enough to hear. “We might grow food there.”
But Yan only had ears for me. “How did you do it? Did you speak to the Behemoth? We heard it talking back to you from the shore! What did it say?”
xix.
Standing atop the head of the Behemoth, I had for a moment believed it listened to me. I’d told it to be still, and it was still. It cried out, and halted before pitching forward and falling into the ocean.
But something seemed not right. I had a sense its frightening cry was its final sigh. It hadn’t listened to me at all. Worse, it had never listened to any one of us. For all the words whispered and all the proclamations given by the venerated Speaker, the Behemoth was a creature of the earth. It had never been in commune with us. It was walking a long, slow march to its end. It sought the ocean, for it was a creature of the land and, like all who dwell in life, it sought a place to pass on.
The full weight of this realisation came to me there on the Behemoth’s head. The Whisperers were full of falsehoods. My own Nan Frieda taught me that the Behemoth would protect us, and would never do us harm if only we listened well enough and held together. Now our homes were submerged, and the Behemoth dead. Home was the Behemoth, the thing that bound us together. I’d lost it. I’d lost that binding. I’d lost that connection to the people who surrounded me. But would I undo the bindings for them also?
“Leah?” Yan prompted me, his dark eyes wide. “Did it talk back?” In those eyes there was such hope, and in the crowd there was silent tension.
I let out a breath I did not know I’d been holding. “Yes, Yan,” I lied, swallowing against a dry throat. “The Behemoth laid down its life for us to make a new home.”
xx.
In time, the Whisperers morphed into something new. They no longer claimed to speak to the Behemoth, but focused on making it a new home for us. My mother joined them. Nan Frieda continued to teach lessons to us about the mythic past. We built shelters, dug new homes in the ridge back, learned to catch fish from the ocean, learned to sail vessels like our ancestors. As the community re-settled, we found new ways to live.
And whenever no-one could find me, Vin would come to the mountain top. He’d see me staring out at the storm clouds and the sea, watching it roil and hurl, constant as the march of the Behemoth was constant. What might lay beyond this new horizon, I wonder? And without the Behemoth, who would carry us there but ourselves?
Christopher Marcatili is an author of queer and weird fiction and non-fiction, published in print and online. He is currently completing a PhD in Anthropology at the Australian National University, focusing on the anthropology of creativity and creative writing in Iceland. Find out more at www.christophermarcatili.com.
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