Page 28 of Lover from the Waves

Kathryn shook against his back; he felt her vibrations through the tentacles around her waist. Finally, giggles escaped her.

She flattened her palms against his back and leaned forward, peering around Ector’s body to look up at him. “We can relax. I don’t think that ravenous beast will be coming back anytime soon.”

Ector released a heavy breath and chuckled, shaking his head. “For our sake, I hope it does not.”

He reluctantly loosened his tentacles and withdrew them from her waist. Kathryn waded around to his side, and he turned his head, meeting her gaze briefly before she looked in the direction in which the creature had fled. She paused, eyes narrowing.

“What’s that?” she asked, walking toward the edge of the pool. Water sloshed around her legs, growing noisier as more of her body rose above the surface.

Ector furrowed his brow and followed her. “What is what?”

She raised an arm and pointed to a place well beyond the pool, where the trees and foliage were thicker. “That right there. Do you see it?”

He leaned toward her and followed her gesture with his gaze, scanning the jungle. Everything was a mess of green, purple, and brown, thick with life but even more chaotic than the sea. He narrowed his eyes. What was he missing?

“The dark shape within the trees,” Kathryn said. “I…I think it’s a building.”

Ector frowned and forced himself to adjust his focus. It was only when he stopped looking at the jungle as a collection of leaves, vines, and tree trunks and saw it as a whole that the shape she’d indicated became apparent. It was tucked beneath the shadows of the jungle canopy, made indistinct in the darkness, but he couldn’t deny its presence. It was at least as tall as a full-grown human and as wide as two adult kraken stretched end-to-end.

“It could be a large rock,” he said, but the suggestion, however reasonable, didn’t sound right.

Kathryn looked back at him and smiled. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

She waded past Ector, crossing to the opposite side of the pool, and stepped onto land. After wringing excess water from her shirt, she bent down beside her belongings. The material of her pants pulled taut, granting Ector a delectable view of her backside; he bit back a groan. She pulled on her boots one by one, swiftly tying them before she straightened, fastened her belt around her waist, and grabbed her rifle.

Kathryn walked to the narrow spot where the pool emptied into the stream and crossed the shallow water. “Ready?”

Ector extended his front tentacles and dragged himself out of the pool. He shook excess moisture from his skin, reminded himself to ignore the tastes of the ground and plants beneath his suction cups—a mental feat at which he’d become quite adept—and nodded. He had no idea what they would find in the jungle, even just twenty or thirty meters ahead, but he couldn’t deny his curiosity.

Kathryn took the lead, picking a path through the vegetation. As much as Ector wanted to focus on their destination—or even better on Kathryn’s shapely backside—he forced himself to monitor their surroundings. There were animal calls in the air, mingling with the sounds of rustling leaves and creaking branches. Though he’d heard some of those calls before, they all belonged to creatures for which he had no name and had never seen with his own eyes.

It was the unfamiliar tastes and scents that concerned him more. His understanding was that most all land creatures required fresh water to survive, and this stream likely served as a primary source for many of the animals in the area. Traces of their passages lingered on the ground and grass, communicated to him in fleeting, tiny hints through his suction cups, some much fresher than others.

Their path grew meandering as Kathryn navigated various obstacles—trees both standing and fallen; thick tangles of vegetation; gnarled tree roots rising from the dirt. Some of the latter resembled unmoving tentacles and seemed to grab at Kathryn’s feet, making her stumble and mutter, on the few occasions when she didn’t notice them soon enough to avoid them.

Ector’s hearts leapt when her foot finally snagged fully enough to make her trip. She pitched forward, but he lunged quickly enough to catch her by the arm before she could hit the ground. She gasped as his hold brought her to an abrupt halt. The rifle slipped off her opposite arm and fell. Ector wrapped a tentacle around her waist and righted Kathryn, only releasing her when she was steady on her feet.

“There I go being clumsy again.” Kathryn smiled shyly up at Ector, tucking dangling hair behind her ear. “Thank you. I guess I’m feeling a little waterlogged.”

“Waterlogged?” He stretched a tentacle, curled it around her rifle, and lifted the weapon, holding it out to her.

She accepted the rifle, taking it in both hands. “Feeling heavy with water.”

“Ah. I often feel that way when I leave the water, too, though I suspect the reason is different.”

“And what do you think the difference is?”

He pressed his lips together for a second or two, seeking the right words to convey his meaning. “Movement in the water is…unrestricted. I can go in any direction—up or down, left or right, backward and forward. I can swim toward the sun high above or to the darkest depths. I can twist and flip and spin. I do not mean to say there are no limits, but…”

“The water makes you feel free?”

Ector nodded, smiling widely. “Exactly.”

Kathryn returned the smile. “And you don’t have these clumsy moments we humans experience, stuck on the ground as we are.” She faced forward and continued walking, tilting her head down every few steps as though studying the ground in front of her. “The way you describe it makes me think of flying. People used to be able to do that.”

“Humans could fly?”

“Well, not like kraken can swim. We had machines that could soar through the air back when we first came to this world hundreds of years ago. Machines that could fly between the stars. That’s what the history we’re taught in The Watch says, anyway. It’s what brought us here. Sometimes when I was a girl, I’d look up at the clouds and wonder what it would feel like to soar through them. To reach out and touch them.” She chuckled. “I wondered if you could squeeze them and force out the rain. It seems silly now…”

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