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Back The Octopus and I
Chapters (19)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. PRAISE
  3. TITLE PAGE
  4. COPYRIGHT PAGE
  5. DEDICATION
  6. CONTENTS
  7. ONE
  8. CROSSING ISTHMUS
  9. THE OCTOPUS INCIDENT
  10. TWO
  11. A SEAL’S TAKE
  12. THE MULTI-COLOURED KNITTED KNOCKERS
  13. NO BIRD IS ONLY AN I
  14. THREE
  15. I AM SHE
  16. SPUN AIR
  17. THE OCTOPUS AND I
  18. NOTES AND REFERENCES
  19. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Soon, their chick was so hungry he needed two gullet-fulls a day, and they had to leave him on his own to scour the silken plane of the ocean for the darkened rough of bait balls breaching.

Disquiet shrouded him, disquiet as tangible as the light of the near-full moon glowing in the air about him. In his brow, he could feel the beginnings of the tug to be as flock, to leave their chick and span the world.

But not yet—

Their chick would follow his beak after them.

But not yet—he was not as flock yet.

He would slip the message down their chick’s gullet, just like his parents slipped the message down his: on a slick of regurgitated krill and fish. And their chick would follow after them.

As flock.

But not yet—

He spread his wings wide to catch a billow, and sailed it towards their burrow, spotting a turbulent triangle of wake, headed by a small boat, beneath him as he flew. Uneasiness thrummed in his belly and krill fluttered in his gullet. He beat the air with his wings and surged ahead of the drifting gust. Harder faster, he flew. Harder faster. He beat at the air. Beat at it. Beat it. Beat it. Beat it. Beat it. Beat it. Burst into his burrow at flight. Krill sloshed at the seam of his beak as he tumbled into the sandy hollow. The sandy, empty hollow.

He burst back into the orb of the sky and flew low, searching the colony for their chick who could not yet fly, who could not have gone far on his own.

Their chick could not have gone far. He could not yet span the world. But he could become as nowhere as the sun at night.

He waited beside her in their empty burrow, as their guts digested the food that was not meant for them and then shat it out into the sand. He plucked feathers from his belly. Sand and shit clung to the blood on the tips of his quills. He plucked some more and waited—

Waited to be as flock again; waited for his beak to pull him from their empty burrow and into flock and away from this.

Waited, beside her, to be no longer an us, no longer an empty us.

Waited to be no longer an I in pain. No bird is only an I.

We are bigger than that. We span the world. We span the world.

THREE

THREE

I AM SHE

I AM SHE

I jet and I twirl and I curl and unfurl and the surface dips closer and I feel I see soft starlight brush my skin. I trace my arms along the sand and watch tiny fish and lice scatter up into the water that sways and sighs about me. My arms curl and unfurl and gather and swirl the sand and the silt as I jet and I twirl and I—

An urchin!