She looked around. Admittedly, the place was beautiful. She could do without the whales and dolphins hanging from the ceiling, but other than that it was a pretty amazing place. She walked over to an information stand and picked up a map, then put it back again. She didn’t really care what she saw; she was just killing time.

Her attention was drawn by a sudden collective shriek that came from a knot of people standing before a display ahead of her. Curious, she went to see what all the fuss was about and discovered that two sea otters were putting on a show for the assembled visitors. The animals frisked about the tank, batting at one another and doing barrel rolls, swimming up to the glass and bringing their little whiskered faces close to the children standing in front. The kids reached out, squealing, and the otters retreated, chasing each other to the surface somewhere out of sight above the onlookers.

They were cute, but Caddie wasn’t in the mood for waiting around for their return. She moved on, retracing the path her father had walked not fifteen minutes before. Entering the smaller Outer Bay Wing of the aquarium, she entered a dimly lit hallway that promised to take her to the mysterious world of the jellies.

Looking through the round windows set in the walls, she watched the jellyfish float, their long tentacles hanging beneath them. At first they seemed nothing more than amorphous blobs, bits of gelatin dropped into the water and left to hang there. But the longer she watched them, the more alive they became. Within the bowl-shaped bodies she noticed specks of color. She started to notice the delicate ripples of movement, the fluttering of flowerlike central cores, the almost-imperceptible exhibitions of decisive motion, easily missed by those who, glancing at the jellies and seeing nothing, moved past them to more interesting specimens.

The jellyfish changed as she moved through the gallery, becoming larger and more fantastic. Some, reminiscent of eggs, featured yellow centers suspended in cloudy white bodies. Others, with tentacles yards long, swam in never-ending circles, their arms entwined, living knotwork with no end and no beginning.

She was reluctantly impressed. The jellies were undeniably beautiful. She liked, too, that their beauty was inextricably tied to their deadliness. What made them so awesome to behold also made them efficient killers, their spectacular colorations and variety of designs being not merely decorative but entirely functional.

Still, she grew tired of them after twenty minutes and moved on after being jostled once too often by other visitors who, disoriented by the lack of lighting that made the jellyfish appear in such startling relief, neglected to notice her presence and stepped on her feet or ran into her with baby buggies. Coming full circle, she exited the exhibit very near to where she had entered.