Stacey Malacari

Rhymes with Orange

Myrtle Green was scavenging on the beach when she saw the bones. The biggest bone was the tail: easily twice the length of Myrtle. The creature’s spinal column was stretched out crookedly along the sand and its jaws gaped open. Myrtle had heard of whales, but she had never seen one before. Nobody in her settlement had, not since the End Days, when the last of the whales were hauled in, their blubber used to light their lamps, their meat to stave off hunger until the crops could be resown. She ran her hand along the vertebrae and tried to imagine how such a large animal ever managed to float.