Kraken (8 page)

Will smothered a partly-hysterical laugh on Cy’s collarbone.

“So, you’re a . . . a kraken?”

“What? No! Krakens are legendary monsters. They don’t exist. I’m a cephalopod.”

“That’s a relief.”

Cy’s arms gripped him more tightly, then he brought one hand up to caress Will’s chin, tilting his head back.

“I’m not wrong, am I?” said Will. “I’ve seen you before.”

“When you were eight years old you saw me change and you ran screaming into the night. And I truly thought you would never come back.” Cy leaned his head forward and kissed Will on the lips. It was soft and tender, and everything Will had never realized he wanted. “Will MacKenzie, not one day has passed that I haven’t thought of you.”

The neediness in Cy’s grasp, the wanting in his words . . . they were intoxicating. When Will broke the kiss to breathe, he mumbled into Cy’s neck, “So, you can change all the way, right?

“Yeah, of course,” said Cy. “But, you know, it’s an aquatic form. And we’re in the middle of the forest. A few tentacles seemed the way to go.”

“So what do your legs become?”

“Well, I think it would be called a mantle. They kind of fuse together, and there’s a hard cartilaginous thing inside.”

“You
think
it would be called a mantle?”

Cy shrugged, bending forward and kissing Will’s neck. “There are no books, Will. I don’t know as much as I should. My parents died when I was still young. I’ve never met another of me.”

Cy nipped at the soft skin at Will’s hairline, and Will shivered. He had to
see
Cy to believe it, to understand. Oh, how he hoped he would not just wake up in the morning to find this was all a delusion. And how he craved more of Cyrus’s words. “I want to see,” he said. “I want to see everything.”

Cy wouldn’t let go of Will’s hand, pulling him back to the house. Will felt eager for his touch, eager to know everything. Cy held out a dining chair for Will.

“Food first,” said Cy.

“But I want to see you in the water. If we eat won’t that mean we can’t go swimming for forty minutes?”

“Old husbands’ tale. We’ve got all the time in the world. Now sit.”

Cy stuck a pan on the tiny stove for the sausages and stuck bacon on a tray under the broiler.

“But, you know, I still can’t stay here, right?”

Cyrus’s face fell. “What? No! I just got you back! You were coming here to live with Parker, right? This wasn’t just going to be a weekend break. You knew you had to come because the island wanted you back.”

“That’s sounding very . . . disturbing.”

“No, you’re staying here. I need you!”

“You do not need me.” No-one needed him, Will knew that better than anyone. “I’ll stay for the weekend, all right? And I’ll come back again. But I have to go home tomorrow.”

“So, how long were you with Parker?”

“A year.”

“Why didn’t you want to move in with him?”

“It wasn’t . . . it just wasn’t right.
He
wasn’t right.”

“And why’d you come after him?”

“Because—”

“What about your job? Do you love it?”

Will couldn’t bring himself to lie.

“Tell me about your friends, Will. Tell me about who will miss you on the mainland.”

Will felt hot tears spring to his eyes. Cy’s hand brushed the hair away from his forehead.

“I’m just . . . I’ve never been that kind of person, that’s all. I’m not . . . gregarious.”

“It’s not you, Will. You’ve had a temporary life. You weren’t supposed to leave here. It was a mistake you left, but we can fix that now.” He kissed Will again, and Will struggled a little, pushing back against Cy’s chest with his fists.

“A week. Stay a week,” Cy said, against Will’s lips.

Will nodded, and Cy smiled into their kiss. The pop and hiss of bacon took Cy back to the stove, deftly pulling out the oven tray with a dishcloth and flipping the rashers with tongs.

“But you have to talk,” said Will. “I need to know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What you
are
would be a good start.”

“I’m a cephalopod. Like squid and octopus. Also ammonites and belemnites, which are extinct.”

Cy served Will his hot breakfast, cutting a mouthful of bacon and holding it to Will’s lips. Will took it off the fork neatly and chewed thoughtfully, as he cut into his sausages. “Wait, why do I have a tomato and you don’t?”

“Because humans need more than meat to survive and. I don’t. Eat it.” Cy lowered a crispy rasher of bacon into his mouth, chewing as he spoke. “I have a theory, actually. I don’t think ammonites became extinct. I think they shed their shells and evolved the ability to shift appearance much earlier than octopuses did.”

“Isn’t it octopi?”

Cy put his hand out and halted Will’s fork as he raised it with its cargo of tomato and bacon. “Focus. And don’t interrupt.”

Will put his knife and fork down. “Can I see it again? Can I see
you
again?”

Cy transferred his fork over to his left hand, and held his right hand out, palm facing down. Will grasped it and turned it over.

Cy didn’t need to close his eyes, or seem to concentrate, he just . . . shifted, and the hand in Will’s became slimmer, longer, darker, extruding itself like an organic telescope from below Cy’s elbow. The skin was the same warm temperature as Cy’s skin – as Cy’s
human
skin – and had a raised plush texture. Will brought it up to his face to peer closely at it: a million tiny raised nubs gave it almost the appearance of thick fur.

Will pressed in gently with his fingers, feeling the squish and give, then resistance as Cy firmed its texture. Will stroked his fingertips lightly over the surface. Cy put his fork down and gave an involuntary shiver. Will turned the arm over to look at the myriad of paler rounded suckers underneath. The edges were raised, and each sucker dipped in the centre to a tiny hole. Towards the tip of the arm the suckers became much smaller and darker.

“Watch,” said Cy.

The arm flexed in Will’s grasp, and in the segment directly over Will’s hand tiny points protruded from the center pinholes, extending further and further until it bristled with sharp hook-shaped claws. Will breathed out, stunned, and the suckers rippled and dilated at his exhale. He reached out his other hand to delicately touch the tip of one hook, and it slid straight into his flesh like Will was ripe fruit. With a gasp he pulled his hand back, bringing it up to his mouth to suck at the pinprick of blood. The hook was milky and semi-translucent, more opaque towards the base, like a cat’s claw. Will squeezed one sideways between his fingers, and it yielded slightly, like a fingernail.

“So, what, these are tentacles?”

“Well,
technically
these are arms. I only have two tentacles. Wait.”

A new limb emerged from Cy’s chest, this one carrying the wide, fat, leafy shape he’d seen earlier. The suckers were smaller and crowded together closely.

“There’s also this,” said Cy. He closed his eyes for a second, and Will felt wetness on his hands. A milky goo was oozing out of the tips of Cy’s arms and dripping down over Will’s skin, onto the floor.

“Ew, no, why would I— ew!” Will dropped Cy’s arm and convulsively rubbed his hands on his thighs, kneading the fabric.

Cy laughed. “Humans. You’re all so squeamish. But it’s pretty useful. All cephalopods secrete neurotoxins. But you wanted to see all of me. Come down to the beach, and I’ll show you.”

Will padded after Cy down the cliff, still wiping his hands. At the water’s edge Cy shucked his clothes and dove in, butterflying his arms, his powerful shoulder muscles working under the bronzed skin.

Will found a handy rock to perch on.

“Aren’t you coming in?” called Cy, about a hundred yards out. He had rolled onto his back and was treading water; looking like a large russet seal.

Will waved to him with one arm, hugging the other against his body. “I’m good here,” he said. “Thanks.”

Cy made a stroke or two in towards shore. “I thought you wanted to see all of me.”

“Well, yeah. But I can see from here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Come on in.”

“Cy, I can’t— ” Will pressed his fingers against his eyes. He didn’t want to get into this.

Cy walked into the shallows, naked, glistening, confident. “It’s best you learn now to do as I say. Don’t make me fetch you in here.”

“No, fuck, you can’t— “ he started, and then it was too late to move, Cy’s tentacles were around him, wrapping him in their softness, tightening around his belly and chest, and lifting him, dizzyingly, into the air, and then down, into Cy’s arms, into the waters of the bay.

Will’s breath caught in his throat, and his limbs flailed uselessly. His chin dipped into the cool water, and he struggled, trying to find something to push against. He tried to exhale, then coughed, sucking in a mouthful of water, then another. His head rose again, then he felt himself go under. Under. Where there was only ocean, and things that lived in the ocean, and that was not where he belonged. It was the size, the limitlessness of it. His wet clothes weighed him down, and he could barely raise his arms. The water stretched out around him and it never stopped, it just kept going and going forever, eternally, and Will would be subsumed into it and fall and fall and—

“Will!” Cy’s voice brought him back to reality. He was cradled in Cy’s arms. All of Cy’s arms. “You won’t drown, Will. You’ll never do that. I’ve got you. Feel me holding you up, yeah? Now look down. You can see the bottom, Will. Look.”

And it was true. A sandy expanse spread out below him, a carnival of tiny shells. He could see his own feet waving like large white flatfish, clearly visible through the still water. Will reminded himself nothing could get him. There were no such things as sea monsters. Cy was here. Will was held, supported. His torso was wrapped in Cy’s embrace, and he couldn’t sink. Yet still, Will felt the water all around him, going on and on, and his breath raced. Cy’s hands plucked at his zipper, pulled down his trousers, until suddenly his legs were free.

“Will, close your eyes. Close them. It’s just me, okay. Just me and you. I’m going to take your shirt off now.”

Will’s eyes closed, and he felt Cy’s arms wrapped around his feet, his knees, the top of his legs, touching his groin. Tiny suckers kissed his skin, played with the hair at the back of his neck, caressed his chest in the gap between the thick strong arms that held him securely. Will relaxed slightly, and Cy pulled the wet fabric over his head. He tensed as it covered his eyes, imagining for a moment what would happen if it wrapped around his head and never let go, then he was free.

Cy whispered calming nothings into his ear as they bobbed gently in the current. Will worked at stilling himself, thinking about his heart slowing, trying to pause between breaths. The sea touched him everywhere and Cy had him close. It was all right.

“Right, I’m changing. You ready?”

Will nodded.

Cy simply slid under the surface, and a second later he was beneath Will. His body was a streamlined arrow, seven feet long, delicate fins spiraling around his body. Cy’s arms added another ten feet, easy, and the ends of the two long tentacles were lost in the blue depths. Cy rolled onto his side, and looked at Will with his huge golden eye, as Cy lifted his great head towards the surface of the water. Will wasn’t prepared for how beautiful he was, his body ink and cobalt as if someone had upended a bottle of dye into the water. Cy pulsed, and pale fractals flashed up his full length, trickling out along his long suckered arms to ebb at their tips.

Will reached down into the water, stroking Cy’s yielding mantle. The warm skin gave slightly to his touch.

“So you’re warm-blooded?” asked Will. “How do you know you’re a squid-thing that can turn into a human, and not a human that can turn into a squid-thing?” Cy entwined his arms around Will’s shoulders and lifted his upper body out of the water. Will realized that Cy couldn’t talk the way he was now.