Samuel takes a job on a whaling ship as a young man.
The great beast fights and bellows as they haul her into the rigging high above, steaming, streaming blood splashing onto the deck. A sweep of her mighty tail takes Samuel from his feet and into the ocean.
Beneath the waters, all is whalesong, a thousand voices joined in mourning. A face appears before him, deep black eyes expressionless and staring. Then the face smiles.
Samuel breaks the surface and catches a rope lowered down by one of his crewmates.
When the ship makes port, he quits the job.
There are strange things to be seen on the Wrenhaven at night, floating lights above the water, twisting shapes in the steam that rises as the river cools.
Stranger things at sea, of course, but Samuel left that life behind long ago.
He shares stories now with Lady Emily as he sits carving little boats for her dolls to captain.
"Have you ever seen a boy with black eyes?" she asks at the end of one about faces beneath the waves. Samuel nearly nicks his thumb with the blade. "Sometimes when I dream, I see him swimming with the whales."
Whales are beginning to beach themselves in great numbers. It was never uncommon to find a beast's body rotting in the sand, but now the coasts are lined with them.
At the Hound Pits, Samuel's customers talk with him as they drink. "You used to be a sailor. Why do you think they do it?"
He shrugs, says nothing as he thinks of black eyes, eerie voices joined in pain and sorrow.
Butchers might take the meat before it spoils, but you can't get oil from a corpse. The ships are coming back empty, and the Empress institutes a ration.
Samuel is tired and sick and nearly blind when he takes his boat out for the last time. There is a storm on the horizon, and he lets himself drift too near the mouth of the Wrenhaven, far beyond where the small boat was meant to go.
He is not surprised when the whales come, rising slowly out of the water to peer at him with gleaming black eyes, and he is not surprised when one swims too near and – carefully, almost gently – tips his boat.
Whalesong and water fill his lungs.
He always knew he would die at sea.
The Void is more filled with song than even the ocean had been.
The sounds bore into his head as Samuel walks in this aimless place, the ground shattering and splintering, drifting apart beneath his feet. Seawater flows between the fragments in unnatural patterns, catching him with its salt spray, and he can see the wreck of his boat off in the distance.
Floating above it all is a boy with black eyes.
"Samuel Beechworth," the Outsider says. Whales gather behind him to watch, dripping their blood and oil, singing their mournful songs. "Let's see how long you'll wander here."