Free An Impenetrable Screen of Purest Sky by Dan Beachy-Quick

they sprouted, and then the land was green; the whale dreamed of this tree when it slept on the word apple pressed into the sand. There were no animals and no people in the dream. When the whale awoke the voice in the flame said “breathe” and the whale swam up to breathe, and there it saw the sun and the green land. The whale took a breath and the voice in the flame said “dive down” and the whale dove down, dove faster when the voice said “faster.” Thewhite whale dove at great speed and when the voice in the flame said “die” the whale struck the seabed with its head, struck the seabed with such force its head cracked open and the sperm escaped into the ocean, each drop becoming an animal as it rose, every animal as it all rose, fish and turtles swimming in the water, birds springing into the air, deer and antelope, lions and elephants, stepping onto shore, and humans, crawling from the water and standing up walking toward the fruit hanging from the apple tree. The whale when it died opened a chasm at the bottom of the ocean, the bottom of the world. The whale’s broken body fell into the chasm .
    There were two of every living thing. The man and the woman lived in the green world, eating from the tree, and another person lived inside the woman. She knew another person lived inside her, but could not tell the man; there were no words to speak, and nothing could be known. So the woman left the man and he watched her leave; she walked to the shore and walked into the sea and sunk down to the seabed where she read the words printed in the sand .
    When the woman read the word “breathe” she tried to take a breath but could not; the air was far above her. She tried to swim up to the air but she could not, and when she could swim no more, she fell into the chasm where the white whale had fallen .
    She fell into the whale’s open mouth; and the baby was inside her .
    There is more, Daniel—but enough—this is the story you should know—
    Love ,
    Father’s letters grew less frequent but more wild. He wrote to me as if he were telling himself secrets—
    Dear Daniel ,
    You are another me and that makes everything harder and easier. The men here won’t talk to me. They go about their work, and it’s through their work they know the world. They each own a “sea eye.” They read the ocean’s surface and they read the clouds on the horizon. I eat at night with the captain, who smiles cordially as he pours me some wine but he eyes me suspiciously. I have no sea eye. A deckhand found me last night on the prow in a gale wind chanting into the storm, chanting the myth. He turned me around but I was as if in a trance and I didn’t see him but kept on in my song and so he left me there in the danger hoping I’d blow away. I know of it only because I hear the whispers. There are no secrets on a ship—everything will out .
    There are words for the wind that can calm it, and there are words to force it to such violence it breaks a bird in flight in half—not words, one word said differently in the song .
    It’s dangerous to speak .
    Underneath the words on the scroll are a series of lines I’ve never understood. They don’t modify the words above them, nor is the line consistent—thicker in places, thinner in others, as is a calligraphic line. It is written in a different ink, I think by a different hand—as if, as if the old Jesuit’s helper had brought the scroll to someone, shaman or wise man or healer or singer, and that man added in these lines to correct or finish the scribe’s work. But last night in the gale I understood. Singing into the wind the gale spoke underneath my words, a drone againstwhich the myth’s song could be heard. The song is double-voiced, can only be sung truly by two people. One must sing the unvarying drone, the ground against which the song itself with its words creates what it