It’s beside her again, butting against her like a cat. She thinks about Aslan’s walk to the stone table—the sisters burying their fingers in his fur. Her mother’s voice, as she reads.

Her bottom scrapes along the sand and she stops, wallows in the shallows and watches as the octopus emerges, dragging itself past the tideline.

This is it, then.

She isn’t ready to say goodbye. She stands. A chaos of droplets sprays from her body. The still-blowing easterly curves their fall and rakes against her wet skin.

She watches the octopus’s progress with fascination as she trails along behind it. It’s a slog: its head lolls heavily, as if the press of gravity is too much. She scans the scrub for the path and is surprised to discover that the octopus is heading directly for it. How did the octopus find it? At night, she can barely find it.

And then she notices the lights. Déjà vu pools in her belly like sick. The octopus has reached the edge of the road.

Not again.

She lunges and scoops the octopus into her arms before it can drag itself out onto the bitumen. It’s surprisingly heavy—all gelatinous muscle. She struggles to pin it to her chest as it moves in all directions at once, but she only needs to hold it for a moment more.

They’re hit by light and the whoosh of dislodged air as a car speeds past and then everything is black as her eyes work to readjust to the night.

I must be mad, she thinks, smiling as she imagines what the people in the car would have thought about the naked woman half wrestling, half cradling an octopus on the side of the road. Was that … ? Did you see that?

She slackens her grip and the octopus stops fighting against her, and begins … climbing her. It’s such a strange sensation: its suckers gripping her as it struggles its way up. Its head is on her left shoulder; they’d be cheek to cheek if it had cheeks. (Does it have cheeks?) Two arms drape around the back of her neck like a scarf and rest on her other shoulder. Several arms snake down her back; two suck onto her chest, just above her heart. It all feels orchestrated—like each arm has been placed deliberately. They have. It shifts its weight and the head flops to her back, the mantle spreads and the suckers all lock on. It’s like a backpack. She puts her arms behind her back to support it and the grip loosens a touch.

It’s like she’s piggybacking it.

She is piggybacking it. It’s riding her, she realises.

So she walks across the road.