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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

She reached a deep horseshoe bay and she chased a school of trevally into a grove of weed. The weed swayed up from an overhang; beneath it, she spotted the suckered coil of an octopus limb. Floating upside-down, she sculled at the water with her flippers, sweeping the weed out of the way so she could better see it. But she could see nothing. The octopus had squirted a miasma of ink into her face, telling her to leave. Imploring, demanding that the little seal leave her to her eggs.

The ink cleared away in stringy, black wisps, and there the octopus was: folded into a maze of limbs that didn’t start or finish, that simply curled and flowed in a mess of pulsing suckers. The octopus was staring back at the seal, her eyes never leaving the seal’s as she stubbornly jetted water at the thousands of eggs she had strung about the cave. They clung, like strings of bright white, baubly seaweed, to the rocks and each time she fanned water at them, they rippled.

Strangely, the octopus smelled a bit of human. The little seal wondered what the octopus might have done to collect that scent in its slime.

This is where the seal is, now. She is hovering, watching the octopus. Every now and then, she surfaces for air. She has eaten two wrasse and one morwong. She has been floating there so long, and so calmly, they all but swam into her mouth. Twice, she nearly ate the octopus. She still might. But for now, she is happy enough watching—biding her time while her pup writhes inside her.

It’s so beautiful. The octopus is so attentive to them: her eggs, her tapestry of swaying pearls. She won’t abandon them. The little seal would love to have shown him—to have shown her friend how the octopus cares for her young. And then they could have played tug-of-war on the octopus’s stretchy body.

But of course, he’s not there. She doesn’t know where he is. So, for now, the little seal thinks, it’s just her and me: the octopus and I.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Scott’s account of the octopuses crossing the isthmus at Eaglehawk Neck on page 60 is inspired by an anecdote recounted in Richard Bennett, Jill Mure and George Mure’s The Photographer, the Cook and the Fisherman: Real Stories of Tasmanian Fishing, Richard Bennett, Jill and George Mure, Hobart, 2002, p. 177.

Scott’s story on page 62 about being spooked by an octopus while abalone diving is heavily inspired by an encounter described in Milfred Knight’s Abalone Diving in Tasmanian Waters: The Men, the Boats and the Island Coastline, Milfred Knight, Hobart, 1985, pp. 45–46.

The information about octopuses that Lucy reads to Jem and his family on pages 62–63 is from Richard Schweid’s Octopus, Reaktion Books, London, 2014, pp. 21–24.