On this early June morning, at seven am,  pastels blooming to east already leak into each other. She puts on a bathing suit the pale green of shallows.  The morning air flexes between fresh and warm as a lavender piece of dawn meets an olive-tinted one: a stormy section underscored by the tell-tale livid line on the horizon.  She anticipates with delight the cool swim in water the color of oxidized bronze: ominously smooth, the darker hues, though,  masking the deeper parts of the creek. 

Standing on the small pebble beach at the foot of the cliff, she relishes the  sensation of aloneness, rare in this part of France during summer. As the sun travels westward,  throngs of people are sure to arrive by boat,  on foot…with buoys,  floating mattresses, camping chairs, parasols, fishing rods, the relentless jingle of the sovereign cellphone.  For now silence prevails!  Not even the gull’s cry or the red squirrel’s scuttle among the trees can mar the absolute serenity. Skimming the surface of the inlet in a flash of sapphire and emerald a kingfisher greets her as it does every morning. The glassy water, impeccably sealed to the rocks like a window to its frame.   

She takes the first dive:  an  ecstasy, as if she were slipping into a silk satin garment. She swims her ten laps across the broadest part of the inlet.  The smack and slicing of her arms through the surface, the gurgle in her ears,  the small froth of her wake as she turns her face  to inhale, all give a sense of efficiency and speed.  A seagull keeping watch on a rock over the inlet,  glides above her once, then returns to his vigil, maybe comforted that the day’s routine has begun again. On one side of the creek, an umbrella pine holding on to the coast with claw-like roots, extends as far as it can over the water; perhaps, like Narcissus,  to admire itself.

Until that hour when water becomes a pellucid blue  under a triumphant sun,  the inlet is hers: fresh and vigorous, not yet exhausted by the throngs of people.  

She sits at the water’s celadon edge , facing  the open calm, taking her time after the long swim.

 To the southwest, clouds still bruise the horizon. She wants them to stay put to preserve her solitude. 

But just then, beyond the inlet, she notices two snorkelers trailing two red buoys, ineluctably coming nearer. The buoys indicate that they carry spear guns.  

At that precise moment the image of an octopus imprints itself vividly across the amnion of her mind’s idleness;  with such extraordinary spontaneity and precision that it could be felt as a personal message.  Gracefully, the image waves at her the eight arms of the quintessential cephalopod. 

Mere seconds after that communication that seems to originate from outside of her, her attention is drawn to the water.  There, at her feet, is the living replica of the film in her  mind. 

As in most sudden and astonishing circumstances, the occurrence imposes itself as obvious at first. But soon evidence is rejected by disbelief.  

The animal’s pupil, crossing the eye in a horizontal band, suggests a frown as it studies her.  Then in a flash, the pupil dilates entreatingly to a circle, giving the eye a nearly human appearance. This change suggests a desire to communicate –  a startling, even terrifying discovery; One might imagine similar terror in meeting the ghost of someone cherished – surprising enough – who then begins to engage in conversation as if he weren’t dead. 

The octopus seems ‘shy’. It moves its tentacles cautiously near her legs, not touching her.  Is it scared of her or afraid of scaring her? It seems to say :Here I am. How do you feel about it?  But there is, too,  a coy, kittenish playfulness.  They stare at each other,  as if both were equally keen to gauge the other’s thoughts.

Did the mollusk recognize a friendliness in her manner? Gently, it dares to graze her leg. With  reciprocal politeness, she overcomes  her repulsion, looks out to sea, pretending not to notice.

The snorkelers have entered the inlet and are methodically exploring the rocky enclaves for something to catch. They have come to kill.

She looks back into the octopus’ eloquent eyes. They beseech her. Has the creature seen the snorkelers, too?  She senses the animal’s anxiety. 

Her disgust of the animal has changed into resolute protectiveness. Having possibly felt this switch, the cephalopod takes refuge in the space under her legs. The  changing color of its body combines that of her skin and of the floor’s whitish orangey pebbles.

It knows.  

Some three meters away, faces in the water, the snorkelers are swimming past her. They might have glimpsed her legs, but surely not the octopus, too well camouflaged. Yet they might find the little beast later on and kill it.   

Let them go on their way,  she thinks at first.  Then it occurs to her to discourage any future return to the inlet.  She calls out.  The second call finally gets their attention. They stand up, waist deep in water, and lifting their masks,  say hello. They are both young and might be brothers.  The joviality in their faces contains some kind of stubbornness that might easily turn into brutality. One of them has already two mullets and an octopus impaled on a steel ring at his belt.   Beneath her efforts to appear friendly, her detestation grows. 

“You’ve done well, I see,” she points to the limp catch, wondering if they are dead or not.

 “Not really,’ deplores the older one. There isn’t much. Do you know a good place to fish?”

“No, I don’t.” All the while thinking: All the more reason to shove off and  take up knitting or ice-skating.  Inner exasperation may have transpired in her facial expression so she adds in a more conciliatory tone:

“You’re quite right, there’s nothing around here.”  

The octopus crouching under her legs, looks like a stone. 

“I’m even surprised you found what you have,” she points at the ring, and then can’t help herself:

 “Just about all marine life along this part of the coast was speared to extinction by your predecessors.”

The older boy stares back at her quizzically.  Then with a glance to his companion, he smirks. The meaning is clear: she’s a nature lover. Waving  goodbye, they sink back into the water and swim on. 

It is only when they have reached the other side of the inlet that the cephalopod, apparently fully aware of the boys’ whereabouts, slides out from its hiding spot. Just below the surface, the round eyes look up into hers.  

Then with the deftness of a jeweler’s hand,  one tentacle searches about, chooses an immaculately white pebble,  picks it up in its curled tentacle, rushes to the surface of  the water and  deposits it on her midriff. Doing so, it changes color again, to the aquamarine of her bathing suit.  Then, tumbles back into the water like a deflated soufflé  where with tentacles stretched straight behind,  it metamorphoses into a comet and disappears in a rocky nook near the pebble beach, having just erased  five hundred million years of genetic split between the two of them.

 

Subscribe For The Latest Publications
We’ll send you only the best works from our selected authors.
  • Stephanie V Sears is a French and American ethnologist, essayist, journalist, and poet whose work has been published in a wide range of magazines across several countries. She has recently ventured into short story writing, with three of her stories appearing in various international literary journals.

    Recent Posts