LENNOX

He watched the two women from inside the van. Ava had both hands on her back as she walked down the hill to find a toilet. Heather was pacing back and forth on the phone, brow wrinkled, her hand running through her hair.

<What’s that?>

He jumped at the voice in his head, turned to see Sandy standing at the small side window, shimmers of light up and down their body. He felt a shiver at their voice, like an ASMR video, the sound too close, sitting inside his brain.

He walked to the window. A castle was perched on a low cliff looking over a huge expanse of water heading north as far as you could see.

‘Loch Ness?’

The pattern accelerated across Sandy’s body, spots appearing and disappearing. Lennox could watch that all day.

What the fuck? Lennox made a conscious effort to think, not speak. <Is that from Wikipedia?>

Sandy’s head turned so their eyes were looking right into Lennox’s. <Human tribe-story. Earth story-network.>

‘Have you got broadband in your head?’

Silence for a moment. <Yes. Do you not?>

‘Fuck me.’

<No, sorry.>

Lennox had spent plenty of time since Ratagan on his phone checking out Enceladus. He’d never heard of it before. Sixth largest moon of Saturn, covered in ice but with oceans under the surface, thanks to underwater volcanoes and something called tidal heating, to do with Saturn’s gravitational pull. It even had geysers around the south pole that shot material into space, stuff that made up one of Saturn’s rings. Crazy. A spacecraft called Cassini had flown through those plumes trying to work out what was in them. Lennox stared at Sandy and realised all the scientists in the world would lose their shit if they could see what he saw now, hear what was in his head.

Lennox laughed. <You want to go swimming?>

<Very much.> Sandy climbed down from the window and scuttled across the floor, reached for the door handle.

‘Wait.’ Lennox held the door closed. <You can’t just go out there, folk will see you.>

Lennox shook his head, realising he had no idea whether Sandy knew what that meant. <Not right now.>

Sandy looked around the camper, tentacles waving like they were smelling the air.

<Put me in the sack.> They glided to a seat and pulled out a backpack.

Lennox stared at it. <You won’t fit in there.>

Sandy began to climb in, squeezing their body, shrinking down to a fraction of their normal size, whipping tentacles in after them and hunkering down. Lennox thought of some YouTube footage he’d watched of an octopus squeezing through a tiny hole to escape from the deck of a fishing boat. Sandy zipped the backpack half closed with two tentacles, eyes still visible in the opening.

Lennox smiled. <OK.>

There was a large ticket office at the castle entrance so Lennox walked the other way until he was in the shadow of some pines. He made sure the backpack was secure then jumped the wire fence. He landed on a carpet of pine needles then walked towards the water. He’d seen on the map in the car park that there was a jetty to the left, best avoided, tourists all over it. He went past a low Private sign then turned, further away from the castle ruins. There was no path so he scrambled through thick woods, branches whipping him in the arms and face.

‘What?’

He was so distracted by Sandy’s voice that he nearly went over a sudden cliff. He stumbled and grabbed a branch, steadied himself and stared down at the brooding water. He looked both ways along the cliff. They were round a small headland from the castle, couldn’t be seen. In the other direction was just water and cliffs into the distance.

He felt the weight on his back reduce as Sandy opened the backpack and climbed out sinuously, expanding to stand next to him.

<Home.>

Lennox shook his head. <But how do we get down?>

Sandy turned to him and he sank into their eyes, big black orbs, eyes that had seen oceans on a moon millions of miles away.

Lennox remembered last time he was asked, now he had this thing in his ear.

Lennox thought about Sandy’s powers. <I give permission.>

Sandy wrapped their tentacles around him, then stretched and ballooned to twice their normal size. Lennox felt their skin envelope him, it was warm and cool at the same time, as extra pieces of tentacle or flesh emerged from Sandy’s body and hugged as tight as cellophane. They held his head and surrounded it then he felt pressure against his face like sinking into a cool pillow. His mouth was covered and he wondered if he could breathe but his breath came, sweet and salty at the same time. He couldn’t make out where Sandy stopped and where he started, his eyes still worked but all he could see was opaque blue-green light, as if looking out from inside them.

<OK?>

He was soothed by their voice. <OK.>

He felt himself being moved to the edge of the cliff then over, dropping to the water, the large dark mass approaching, then a splash and they were under, moving faster than he thought possible, thrusts of power from Sandy’s tentacles pushing water behind them, propelling them into the loch.

His vision cleared, the coloured sheen vanished and it was like he was just swimming through the water himself. He sensed Sandy’s joy as they swept left then right, down then up, rolled over and over in a forward spiral, making him feel dizzy. They stopped and swam straight as if sensing his discomfort, then dropped deeper into the gloom.

Lennox glimpsed fish in the dark and wondered what Sandy ate, if they would snaffle some up and he would taste the raw flesh through Sandy somehow. He thought about Nessie, imagined seeing a prehistoric colossus emerging from the gloom, long neck, giant body shifting through the currents.

But all he could see was water. They rose up and reached the surface faster than he thought possible, then they breached, his head above water. He instinctively tried to breathe then realised he’d been breathing all along. He saw the castle ruins two hundred metres away, tourists scuttling across the land like mites. He wondered if any were looking out right now with binoculars, hoping to catch a glimpse of Nessie. If he and Sandy would be spotted. They dived back under the surface with hardly a splash.

Lennox grinned. <This is fucking crazy.>

They slowed a little.

Lennox closed his eyes then opened them, wondering if this was a dream. <No. Not bad at all.>