SPRING 2025, SHORT STORY, 1600 WORDS
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The whalesong hits when she’s on the highway.
Up until that point, Hailey had just been driving, foot tensed on the pedal, hoping velocity would turn into an answer for a question that she didn’t know. There had been arguments, words at volume, a heat inside her that had incinerated most of what he had said apart from a few fragments: too sensitive, always make such a big deal out of everything. And the biggest one: what do you actually want?
Instead she has a car, a heart full of ash, and a feeling that approaches mourning every time she slows down
So she speeds up. The Australian countryside slides past the windows, purple lantana clutching metal fences, chessboards of grapevines, patient hills—
—which is when the whalesong keens into her head.
It almost makes her crash when the song bursts upon her all at once—she doesn’t know how she knows it’s a whalesong but she does—as it keens and lists, sorrowful and sick, like a misshapen clarinet turned up in the speakers, the notes outstretched hands, flailing out to find something.
What do I do? Is this a stroke? Am I going crazy? She brakes hard, pulls into the slow lane, almost causes an accident. There’s the scream of car horns as cars veer around her but she barely hears it over the whalesong.
Did I accidentally play some music? She glances at her phone in the dock but there’s nothing playing, just a notification about the six missed calls.
She doesn’t know what else to do so she dials him back.
“H—? Where are you?” His voice comes through the speakers but she can barely hear it over the whalesong.
“I just…can you hear that?” Hailey asks. Her voice seems faraway.
“What are you being s— about now?”
“You can’t hear it?”
“Stop m— things up. Just come b— and we c— …”
That’s when she sees the sign, white letters on green: Historic Whaling Station—Next Turnoff. The whalesong ascends an octave and then doubles back on itself.
She has a choice. She could turn around. She could go back.
Instead she ends the call and takes the turnoff. The road enters a national park and winds down into a valley. She slows into the turns. Eucalyptus trees pile high into the sky, the decadent tumble of the greenery—it would be beautiful if she wasn’t doubting her own head. Her fingers tighten on the peeling steering wheel. The song takes on a different texture; the whalesong arcs up then moans back down, a distorted trombone sliding down the register.
As she pulls into the parking lot, she finds a tear running down her face and something pulling at her gut like reverse hunger. She rubs the tear away with a sleeve, slams the door of her car.
She is suddenly aware of how adrift she is, only a whalesong to guide her. She doesn’t even know what she’s looking for, what she would do if she found whatever it was.
To distract herself, she surveys the whaling station. Just a few wood buildings, splitting the difference between historic and run-down. Beyond those, the enticing waterline in turquoise bleeding into the blue, and a gravel path that leads down to a long stone slipway that edges onto the shore, a platform the size of a parking lot, and Hailey knows, or maybe the song tells her: this is where they did the killing.
The song pulls her down the steps, past the sign that advertises “Tours at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.!,” past another sign that tells her this is the Flensing Deck, where a solid woman in a Parks uniform waves to her from the edge of the platform.
“H—!” the ranger says, but it’s impossible to hear much over the whalesong. Hailey does her best to focus on the ranger’s lips. “Are you h— for the t—?
Hailey is trying to frame a response when the corpse behind the ranger comes into focus. There are chains bisecting half of the deck and a Restricted Area sign, and beyond that there is the body of a whale, the mass of it filling the edge of the flensing deck. Blood gouts from the wound on its belly, dark red, almost black and almost beautiful. One of its eyes rotates to peer at Hailey and it keens, and keens so that Hailey finds herself covering her ears and shrinking from the sound.
“You o—? Hon?” asks the ranger.
“I’m…” Not okay, Hailey thinks. “I’m fine. A little dizzy,” is what she manages to say. It’s an effort not to shout the words.
It’s not real, of course. If a giant whale carcass was actually on the platform, then the ranger wouldn’t be standing here exchanging platitudes. If a giant whale carcass was there, she’d be able to smell it. But it’s difficult to argue with the song, the pleading voice that is spilling through her head.
“Just d—, huh?” says the ranger with something in her eyes like suspicion. To be fair, Hailey knows she must look a little unhinged, but she is struggling to care.
She forces herself to stand, bring her arms down by her sides. And she forces herself to look, to really look at the whale corpse, and she sees the way it shimmers at the edges like a tarmac under heat. A ghost? She isn’t sure if that’s better or worse.
Hailey walks around closer to the chains when the ranger’s voice stops her. “S—hon, gotta k— b-hind the chains.”
“Can I just—” Hailey begins.
The ranger gives her a strange look. “I’m s—, ma’am, we don’t want any d—mage, historical site and all.”
Boundaries. But I’m great at boundaries, Hailey says to herself. The thought almost sends her into another giggle fit.
The whale’s eye wanders around to meet Hailey’s. I’m coming, she thinks. And maybe the song gets lower, or maybe she’s getting used to the chaos in her head.
“Uh, the tour,” Hailey says. “When’s the tour?”
The ranger checks her wristwatch. “2 p.m. Oh, I better get r—. Meet me b— at the car p— in five.”
Hailey nods, waits until the ranger is out of sight, then ducks under the chains.
It’s so big up close. She could curl up inside the whale’s stomach, she thinks, and it would barely notice.
She reaches a hand slowly towards its skin and her hand passes through it. It’s translucent. A hallucination then. But at least it was a beautiful one, even in dying, the slow, soft curves of it, the way its muscles ripple under thick skin.
“Now what do I do with you?” Hailey asks, half to herself. The whale watches her, waiting for her to understand, and Hailey feels tears falling from her.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “that someone did this to you.”
Her gut pulls at her again and there’s a blue thread running down from the whale’s body to her own. A ghostly umbilical cord. This she can touch. And as she pulls it experimentally, the whale’s body moves too. The song increases, with a counterpoint of joy.
“But where?” Hailey asks.
And the whale’s eye turns around, to the only answer that was possible—the blue welcome of the water.
Hailey begins to pull. The strangest thing is that it’s heavy. Not as heavy as its physical body, of course, but Hailey sweats as she pulls the whale’s body down the ramp, towards the water. One step, then another, easing the whale down to the waves.
And then she hears voices.
The tour.
“And here,” the ranger’s voice, “is the flensing deck, where they did the damage.” The ranger leads two adults and two kids with permanent eyerolls onto the top half of the deck.
Hailey freezes for a moment. She’s not even sure what she could say. “I was just cleaning up this ghost whale for you”? But her eyes meet the ranger’s. Then the ranger’s eyes slide down to the thread in Hailey’s hands and across to the body of the whale. An understanding passes between them: a common vocabulary of pain. The ranger nods.
“And down there is one of our volunteers, helping us to clean up,” says the ranger. But the family’s eyes pass over her, already bored.
Hailey takes another step back, shoes into the water, salt splashing on skin. As she pulls, she can feel the ache of it in her heart, in her stomach. Then the angle of the thread moves upwards, the whale rising above the ground, its tail beginning to kick.
The song changes, lessens in her head but then grows, not in volume but in voice, and as she looks up, she understands: the song has called and a chorus of whalesongs answer back. Up above her, thirty or forty whales swim through the air, all a-song, circling like a halo.
The ghost of the whale (she is so tempted to call it hers) is above the waves now and its liquid eyes fix on Hailey’s.
“It’s okay,” Hailey says. “It’s okay! You don’t have to stay.”
Hailey lets go and the thread detaches. The whale turns once more, its tail flipping in a salute, and it swims upwards through the sky to join the throng. A lightness shakes through every part of Hailey’s body: the sensation of becoming free.
Guan Un is an Australian-Chinese writer based in Sydney, who is often writing about tricksters when he’s not writing about dead whales. His work has been featured in Year’s Best Fantasy Vol. 2, LeVar Burton Reads, Strange Horizons, and more. He lives with his family, too many keyboards, and a dog named after a tiger. Find him on Bluesky (@thisisguan.bsky.social) or guanun.com.