The tattoos on my teeth glinted underwater as I swam. Swam as far away from that cursed place as I could. I knew I would never return. I was lucky to have made it to the aging ceremony, there were a few months when it was hard to stop myself from running. But that was past now. I had made it and had the freshly inked tattoos to show for it.

As I swam, I thought. If I were to make it to Bermuda, I would need allies. Someone loud enough to frighten the posse of relatives off when they came to look for me, as I knew they would. I needed someone - and fast.

*

A few weeks later, a fisherman strolling down the coast beheld an eerie sight. At the very edge of the cliff, where land met sea, there was a cow. Unusually, inscribed on the tag on its ear was, not a number, but a name. “Witches”. But what was more alarming still was that Witches was braying and mooing with all his might into the water.

As the fisherman approached, he began to see why. The water below the cow was roiling and foaming more and more by the second. Here and there, large horns were sticking out of the water, presumably belonging to some kind of sea creatures.

He looked on in astonishment as six or seven of the protruding horns proceeded to round up the smallest one and almost immediately make their way back out to sea. It was then he realised that the mysterious creatures were narwhals.

What he didn’t see, however, was that the tusking of larger creatures had formed a determined ring around the youngest in the group, and were unsympathetically transporting him back to its home, which seemed to make the cow left on the cliff grow bewitched with fear and anger. The loud ‘moo’s continued well after the strange procession of horns had disappeared, and poor Witches capered up and down the beach for weeks afterwards, half crazed with indignation.