The Skywhale in the Garden
by Jared Oliver Adams
“Skywhale!” I say. It’s not the plush whale I got when I was five, but instead the grand beast I imagined it to be when I flew it through the air with my hands. As large as a house, its electric blue underside glows from within. Dark blue scales glint armor-tough on its back.
One eye swivels to me and whale song fills the garden.
Inexplicably, I know what it means. “You are dying, Gregory.”
Baffled, I look down at myself, only to find I can see through my body down to the pebble garden path below.
“Am I a ghost?”
“Is this how your backyard looks?”
“Huh. No, it’s not.” Mom filled in the koi pond years ago, and this path has been overrun by weeds for just as long.
“This is the dimension of ideals. This is your parents’ ideal garden. I am your ideal adventure companion. And you’re not fully here yet.”
“Because I’m not dead yet, back in the real world? The not-ideal one?”
“Yes.”
I look back at an idealized version of my house, warm windows glowing in the darkness, that one broken shutter fixed, the wall pristine in that spot near the ground where the paint is usually peeling. “What’s happening to me in there?”
“You are having a stroke.”
“Sixteen-year-olds aren’t supposed to have strokes.”
“It is rare, yes.”
“So what now?”
“You come with me,” says Skywhale. “Up there. A great adventure.”
“To heaven?”
“Yes.”
“Is it like this? Ideal?”
“It is an ideal far deeper than I can explain.”
I picture myself riding on Skywhale’s back. It’s not hard. I used to fantasize about it all the time as a kid. I was terrified of storms, and I spent countless nights clutching Skywhale as peals of thunder shook the house. I’d imagine us whipping through dark clouds that gaped with demon mouths, where we’d joust spiders of lightning, or tornado serpents, or birds that spat hail. The ideal adventure companion.
Now I would ride straight up through the clear night sky, past space and time, and into paradise. “But my parents,” I say. “Won’t they be sad?”
“For the rest of their lives,” Skywhale admits.
I imagine their horror when they come into my room in the morning to find only a corpse. I can almost hear their cries, see their shaking fingers as they dial 9-1-1, feel their desperate lips on mine as they try to remember a long-ago CPR class.
“That’s terrible,” I say.
“Suffering is the way of that dimension. Come.”
But I can’t look away from my house. “I… what if I don’t want to go? You said I’m not fully here yet.”
Skywhale’s song turns low and mournful. “If you go back now, you will need constant care for the rest of your days. You will be unable to walk, eat solid foods, or go to the bathroom by yourself. You will suffer. Your parents as well.”
But a memory comes uninvited into my mind, a moment two nights ago when my dad told me he loved me and I grunted in response, too busy with the book I was reading to say more, but aware nonetheless of the long pause that followed and the slow closing of my bedroom door. “What about talking?” I ask Skywhale. “Will I be able to talk?”
“Eventually, and after a fashion, you will be able to form words. But believe me when I say, if you stay, you will regret that choice many, many times in your life.”
“But not all the time?”
“No. Not all the time.”
“Then I want to stay. For the times I don’t regret it. And for the words. And for my parents.”
Skywhale floats over to nuzzle me with its enormous nose. “You were always very brave.” Pride threads its music now.
“Will I see you again?” I ask.
“Time has no talons here,” says Skywhale. “I can wait.”
“And the… adventure? Can it wait too?”
“Of course.”
Gregory’s parents will forever remember that night as a stormy one, but the truth is this: it was as clear a night there as it was in the dimension of ideals, utterly cloudless.
Nonetheless, from that clear sky, a single crack of thunder rattled the house. When it did, the plush whale gathering dust on a high shelf wiggled off and fell onto the head of Gregory’s father.
“The storms that Gregory feared as a child ultimately saved him,” his father would recount time after time. And always there was reverence in his voice.
Whenever Gregory heard this, one side of his face would smile twitchingly and he’d clutch the stuffed whale that had once again become his constant companion, wedged beside his broken body in his powered chair.
The fabric of the whale’s body is matted and stained. Like everything else in the dimension of suffering, there is nothing ideal about it.
But Gregory remembers the real skywhale in his mind, dappled with moonlight, and he remembers its promise to wait, and he decides he can wait too. Another day, or another year, or another decade.
For a place where time has no talons.
Jared Oliver Adams lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he writes, explores, and dabbles in things better left alone. He holds two degrees in music performance, a third degree in elementary education, and is utterly incapable of passing a doorway without checking to see if it leads to Narnia. Find him online at www.jaredoliveradams.com.
Author’s note: “This story began as an image, and quickly combined with two theological concepts that my mind often revolves around: the problem of suffering, and what heaven looks like. It’s by no means the first story (and likely not the last) I’ve written as I work through these questions, the most recent being ‘Recipes for a Voyage to the Far Shore,’ over at Dreamforge.”
Author’s note: “This story began as an image, and quickly combined with two theological concepts that my mind often revolves around: the problem of suffering, and what heaven looks like. It’s by no means the first story (and likely not the last) I’ve written as I work through these questions, the most recent being ‘Recipes for a Voyage to the Far Shore,’ over at Dreamforge.”
“The Skywhale in the Garden” by Jared Oliver Adams. Copyright © 2026 by Jared Oliver Adams.
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