Moby Dick begins with “Call me Ishmael.” Everybody knows that. Except it isn’t true.

Ahead of those words is Chapter 1’s title, “Loomings.” Melville warns that distortion and magic lie ahead.

A looming is a nautical mirage, a meteorological act of fiction created by bending light. Once I watched Boon Island Light and the rocks below it levitate to a point that seemed 20 feet above the horizon.

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.