Correction: Cephaloped. Having evolved to inhabit the land, the walking, air breathing terrestrial squid stood nine feet tall on three and sometimes four thick tentacles, its dorsal flesh covered in coarse brown fur. Those tentacles that weren’t supporting its weight were treading air in a perpetual motion that made it almost impossible for me to gain clarity on its appearance, or to strike it, I quickly realized. The creature had assumed a defensive posture aimed at protecting its head—an oblong alien face situated beneath a skull that resembled brown leather stretched over bone. As wide as a pumpkin but irregular like a boulder, the massive cranial cavity also possessed a siphon—a two-foot curled organ the creature used for breathing.

It was the siphon that had been the source of the pan flute–like sounds I had heard back in the jungle.

Below the skull was the cephaloped’s collapsible mantle, which contained the stomach, vital organs, and the animal’s three hearts—at least the anatomical equivalents of what its oceanic ancestors had, according to Lara.

My attention diverted to its eyes—two stereo-optic protrusions below a bony bridge running below its forehead. These thin twin muscular stalks, resembling foot-long elephants’ trunks, protruded from the center of its face like the handlebars of a child’s tricycle.

At the end of each of the flexible organs was an eye. The corneas were bright yellow, like a jungle cat’s, the pupils black. Housed within the trunk socket, they possessed wrinkled lids poised both above and below. The effect created an expressive state and reminded me of the sullen eyes of Albert Einstein in his later, more contemplative years.

Two more appendages protruded below the handlebar sight organs, only these offshoots were arms—shorter, four-foot-long raptor arms, each ending in a clawed thumb and forefinger. Poised below the cluster of arm sockets was either the creature’s thick neck—or maybe it was its abdomen, I don’t know. All I could see was the hint of a beaked mouth, and a cluster of sockets for those hypnotically powerful eight tentacles.

We stood and stared at one another, it clearly more fearful of me than I of it, despite the fact that any one of its tentacles could squeeze me to death like an anaconda.