The Mythology of Beasts

It was the third sunny night in a row. The Spring Equinox had come and the entire arctic circle was to stay bathed in weak sunlight until early October. They called this area of the world 'Land of the Midnight Sun', a title way too glamorous in the eyes of Sophia, who thought of it more as an expansive, white shithole.

She was holed up on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, a landmass that sat more or less equidistant from Norway, Greenland and Iceland, with the North Pole hovering above it. Her work had led her here a year ago and she’d been living in an underground compound attached to Svalbard's infamous Global Seed Vault –or as locals called it, the Doomsday Vault –ever since.

She had to go where sightings of beasts were reported and until they were caught, that place was her home. Such was the life of a Cryptozoologist.

Mythical beasts had always existed, it’s just most people didn’t pay attention; the Sasquatch of northern Canada, the Himalayan Yeti, the Loch Ness monster, the winged Griffins of Western Asia, the flying Pegasus of the Dinaric Alps, the list was expansive, and Sophia herself had encountered enough of them in her 40 years to realise there’s more to Mother Nature than the simple birds in the sky and the small fish in the sea.

She was summoned here, secretly, of course, to chase down a “Meg”, a giant Megalodon mackerel shark that had been causing havoc for fishing boats off the coasts of Iceland, Greenland and Norway for 18 long months. It was, by eye witness accounts and looking at the damage to the ships left in its wake, a massive animal, over 80 foot long, weighing in at approximately 150,000lb.

Sophia, as always, had been trying to tell authorities the meg wasn’t dangerous. Most lesser-spotted beasts ever are. The reason why we don’t see them is they don’t want to be seen – it’s the reason they turn into myths in the first place. But something always happens to these huge and antisocial animals to rattle them out of their routine and that something is always us. Humans.

“Monster-woman!” a voice cried out from across the canteen. It was Bennett, an eccentric middle-aged ex-Professor with a wiry ginger beard and a pipe-smoking addiction. He too had been pulled to the North Pole by the meg, to study the myth of the beast and give information to desperate authorities who hadn't found any solid conclusions as to what was ravaging their ships.

“Don’t call me that name,” Sophia said.

“It’s OK, you can call me names too,” Bennett replied, pulling up a chair.

“I’d say don't take a seat, but you already have.”

“I’m not coming to chit-chat, there's been another sighting. Haven't you heard? Someone saw a giant shark a mere 12 miles from where we sit.”

“Oh, so you’re a believer now.”

“Of giant dinosaur sharks? No. Impossible. But these men who see it, the fishermen in their cable knit jumpers with their ruddy cheeks, they're simple folk brought up on legends, sea serpents and so on; simple folk with fascinating stories. You can't blame them for mistaking what they see."

"I've seen beasts, mythical creatures, with my own eyes. I know what's out there. You've been stuck in universities your whole career."

"This is a cultural matter, Sophia. The Norse Gods for example put our Judo-Christian mythology to shame. But that’s why I’m here. The rational mind. Mythology is real science, a science of culture and the birth of values and social institutions. You, you’re just a kook who chases metaphors. Cryptozoology isn't even a real thing."

He leaned in and continued in a hushed tone.

"Come now, Sophia, we all know you’re on to a good thing here. Handsomely paid to look for a giant fish. I’d play along too.”

Sophia stood up. She’d had this her entire career, it didn’t phase her, no one gets into her line of work with thin skin, but to take abuse from a dusty pipe smoker with appalling personal hygiene was quite another matter.

“You’re the fucking dinosaur,” she said, walking out the canteen.

“Better than a monster-woman!” Bennett shouted after her.

—

Two days passed before another report came in. The Icelandic container ship Skogafoss had lost significant cargo after it was attacked by a "giant shark-like whale" 40 miles off the Reykjavík coast, nearly capsizing what should be an almost unsinkable ship.

Sophia was reading over the reports as she smelled pipe smoke drift through the filtered, underground air.

“There’s no such thing as an unsinkable ship,” Bennett announced, standing behind her. She could hear the pipe’s mouthpiece rattling against his yellowing teeth.

“Ah, my daily visit from the Professor with no university, Dr Nothing. If this thing doesn’t exist, what’s happening, how do you explain it.”

“Human error, mass hysteria I suspect, caused by a hungry pod of whales working as one, mistaken for a myth. Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity, Sophia.”

“Occam’s razor? Very good. But there are no obvious answers here. A pod of whales couldn’t capsize a container ship this big.”

“They didn’t capsize it though, did they?”

“A creature this size would have to live someone isolated. They always do.”

“The monster?”

“Actually, we call them cryptids, not the m-word. I'm sure you know that. You're just belittling my profession, again.”

Bennett sat down beside her. The smell of pipe tobacco tinging Sophia's nostrils. “Even the authorities don’t believe there’s a giant shark out there. It’s just you, Sophia. Perhaps all this chasing monsters is really running from yourself. You’re middle-aged and single, living in an underground facility looking for shadows. Something has to be up.”

“You’re here too, perhaps you’re running from your virginity.”

“I’ve touched a nerve I see. I'll leave it there." Bennett got back up from his seat.

"I didn't come to belittle you, I let results speak for themselves. I came to tell you I'm sailing on the Uppgötvun tomorrow for a week. It's mapping the oceanography of Icelandic waters to explain where this aggressive pod of whales could be hiding."

"They're taking you? A professor of mythology? What are you going to do, talk to them about Zeus? I should be on that boat."

"A lot of eye-witnesses will be on that boat too, Sophia. We've collected them up, they're taking us to the coordinates of the last places the pod was spotted. Meanwhile, as we sail, I'm interviewing them, trying to unpick the myths from the facts. Something you should try to do sometime."

--

Five days passed when news came in of the Uppgötvun sinking. Sophia heard about it when she was having breakfast in the canteen. Her supervisor, a kind woman called Dr Faus broke the news. She felt numb. She wandered the corridors of the eco-compound and then sat in her room, staring blankly at the wall.

She knew people on that boat, but no one was as close to her as Bennett. This was a man she loathed, yet hearing the news he had gone had winded her, she couldn't settle, he kept appearing in her mind's eye, circular thoughts went around of him, the boat, their last conversation, over and over until she ran to the toilet and was sick.

Initial reports blamed the disaster on technical problems with the boat, not the meg, a whale pod or any other animal interaction. But to Sophia, that didn't make any sense. There were no storms, the waters were calm and they were mere miles from the northern coast of Iceland when it happened. There were survivors, but a handful, and in no fit state to talk right now. No one could get access to them, even when she put a request in to Dr Faus.

The next two days passed in a fog of detachment as Sophia completed her daily routines almost robotically. She sat with her supervisor in a small observatory that stuck out of the ground, where the seed fault loomed into view, a futuristic-looking grey oblong jutting into the white of the windswept lands surrounding it.

"I have some news, of the Uppgötvun. If you'd like to hear it," asked Dr Faus.

"I would."

"Several of the crew sent mayday messages, separately, on phones, mostly. But of course, there's no reception in the middle of that sea. We got the distress calls from the boat itself, that's via satellite, but the phone calls, the texts, the messages, they've come through. Well, some of them, they're coming through. There's probably more on their way, I suspect. They sort of get stuck in a pipeline until the network pushes them through."

"Any clues to what happened?"

"We're piecing that together. It looks like an attack. By whales. A pod of whales, working as one. Or, of course, the meg."

Sophia froze, staring at her supervisor for more information.

"We got a message from Bennett. An email, believe it or not. It was for you."

"Go on," is all Sophia could manage.

Dr Faus picked up her tablet and swiped around a few screens before passing it to Sophia. She took it and began to read.

"Sophia, no time to write proper. You were right. Meg is real. Meg is real. Sorry for doubt. Magnificent sight. More to follow."

"In those moments, the person he thought about most was you. That's something Sophia, that's special."

"He was special. A special type of freak," Sophia replied, laughing, then sobbing. Then nothing. An emptiness.

They sat in silence for a minute or two, both watching dust and snow move across the land, pushed by an endless wind.

"We have work to do, Sophia. You need to help us save this thing before they kill it. It's not a myth, not anymore."

"I'm ready" replied Sophia, not taking her eyes off the large, grey entrance to the weather-beaten seed vault that cut across the expansive white vista.