LENNOX

They drove slow along Shore Street, Loch Broom on their left, white cottages gleaming on the right. The sun scudded off the water and blinded Lennox. They reached the small harbour, the jetty and ferry terminal jutting into the blue like an artificial limb, a tiny man-made encroachment on the water. On the other side now were pubs and restaurants, a chippy and a butcher’s. But Lennox couldn’t take his eyes off the sea.

He felt movement in the backpack, sensed Sandy getting agitated like a dog excited for a walk.

<Ahead.>

Heather slowed the truck at a junction as the road narrowed.

Lennox nodded. ‘Keep going.’

Heather nudged the truck forward and they drove another hundred yards, then the road and houses stopped. They were at the tip of a headland, which swept round and away to their right. They were surrounded on three sides by water, only the land behind had any sign of human existence.

Lennox felt a tentacle attach to his wrist as Sandy unzipped the backpack and pulled their body out, expanding to fill the space of the dashboard, gazing outside. Their light display was crazy, yellows and reds and greens sweeping in and out of each other, ebbing and flowing, sparkling in shimmering shapes and designs, spots and stripes, swirls and zooming fractal patterns.

Lennox felt that like a gut punch. ‘What?’

The women in the truck turned to him.

‘What’s up?’ Heather said.

Ava’s eyes were wide with a look of shock that Lennox didn’t understand.

He touched Sandy’s head, felt a pulse under his fingers. <What do you mean?>

<Sandy-Lennox no longer partial. Sandy-Lennox-Sandy complete.>

Ava touched Lennox’s arm and he jumped.

‘I can hear you,’ she said.

Lennox turned. ‘What?’

<I can hear you. Both.> This was Ava’s voice in his head. She sounded part joyful, part terrified.

Lennox stared at her beaming smile. Heather looked bemused at the two of them.

<How?> he thought.

Silence for a moment, then Ava looked at Sandy. <They spoke to me before at the house. Talked to my baby, said everything was OK.>

Lennox placed fingers on his forehead as if he could touch Ava’s voice in his brain.

Ava smiled. <This is insane, what is Sandy doing to us?>

Lennox wanted to say that Sandy wasn’t doing anything to them, it was already done. And it hadn’t been forced, they’d welcomed it. OK, the strokes weren’t consensual, but that was an accident and Sandy fixed it. Lennox changed at that moment, something in his chemistry, synapses, metabolism, biology or consciousness or whatever made him who he was. He’d developed and grown, fucking evolved.

‘What’s going on?’ Heather said.

Ava threw Lennox a guilty look then turned. ‘I can hear them.’

Lennox felt a tug on his hand as Sandy opened the truck door.

<Sandy-Sandy must complete. Sandy-Lennox-Sandy must complete.>

He spoke to the two women. ‘They have to get in the water.’

Sandy was already out and scuttling along the grass. There was a large bank of white rocks placed as a storm break and they glided over it with ease, Lennox clambering behind. How could a creature who lived in the water be so comfortable on land too? He felt like a stupid ape, an undeveloped organism with no clue of the possibilities out there in the cosmos. But he was starting to get an inkling.

Sandy slid across the stony beach and paused at the water’s edge. They lowered to the ground and throbbed a multitude of colours up and down their body and tentacles. Lennox looked around for any hikers or anglers but there was no one. Ava and Heather got out the truck but didn’t follow.

Sandy spread their tentacles into the water and looked back at Lennox.

He stripped to his shorts, leaving a pile of clothes as he clambered over the stones to join them.

‘Careful,’ Heather shouted from the truck.

He waved in reply and stepped into the water, shivers up his legs. He felt as if the brooding brown hills across the water were staring at him, judging him. Sandy was ahead, dipping in and out of the ripples, splashing playfully. He breathed deep then went to dive but before he hit the water, Sandy leaped and hugged him, sucked him into an embrace. Their body expanded to wrap around him and they both went into the water where they zipped just under the surface then dived deep. The light faded as they went further down, until they were only lit by Sandy’s light show, a beacon in the gloom.

They swam like this for a few moments, twisting through the darkness like a spiralling torch. Lennox glimpsed fish and other creatures in the murky edges of his vision, smeared by the filter of Sandy’s body around him. He breathed what felt like thick air. He felt calm, and wondered if Sandy was doing something to his brain chemistry to stop him freaking out.

Then he saw something below, a glow that grew brighter as they approached. More like a giant jellyfish than an octopus, a huge, hooded mass of lights and sparks, colours that made him feel he was seeing something unreal. There were tendrils hanging down from the main body, shimmering curtains of luminescence, interweaving with each other. As they got closer he realised the colossal size of it, as big as a ferry. Then he spotted other beings amongst the fronds underneath, darting and pushing through the forest of tendrils, the whole thing an ecosystem.

He sensed Sandy was overwhelmed with excitement and joy, as other octopus creatures came to meet them. They danced around each other and Sandy went into overdrive with their light display, stuff Lennox had never seen. Now they were among the tendrils of the giant creature, he could see there were hundreds of smaller octopus-creatures here. He saw some of them enter the huge jellyfish’s body, others emerging. They seemed to appear or disappear in a shower of fizzing lights.

He forgot that he had a body, felt like he was Sandy, dancing with long-lost friends or relatives in a carnival of lights, patterns and motion that seemed both utterly alien and completely natural.

Sandy swam the two of them towards the body of the main creature, which loomed over them like a brilliant, flowing canopy. As they got closer, Lennox felt something in Sandy change, joy replaced by something deeper, more profound.

<We are home,> Sandy thought, and Lennox felt the power of it.

There was a moment of quiet and he felt something, like the giant creature was considering him.

<Welcome Sandy-Lennox partial.> This was a new voice, deep, calm, resonant, like an adult talking to a child. <Sandy-Lennox-Sandy complete. Thank you.>