spasmodic seizure with the most daring escapades from a romance novel, topped off by a very optimistic use of tools. (Owning up to your crimes is, as they say, very important for redemption.
Dear Miss Floxence has yet to achieve that state of grace and, undiscovered letters and notes notwithstanding, may never achieve it.)
BLITHERING ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE
Early eyewitness accounts range from the choicest pulpatoons to the worst trillibubs of information. Such inaccuracies should be put aside along with our alphabet blocks, mother’s too-frequent goodnight kisses, and therapy sessions.
A single example should suffice to catalog a mountain of mariner anecdotes, this selection ripped from a book actually paid for by the Society of Morrowean Scientists Abroad, entitled
A wondrous Fish or Beast or Other Creature that was lately Killed or Speared or Shot washed up by its own Accord, Being Dead, on a nearby Sandbank on the 20th Day of our Expedition. We bade the curiously mirthful Natives Heave To! And when they did not, Asked Again, that we might Examine the Specimen. It had two Heads and ten Horns and on eight of the Horns, it had 800 Fleshy Bumpies; and in each of Them, a set of Teeth, the said Body bigger than three Cows of the Largest Size and with the Abnormous Horns being of almost 40 hoofs in length. The Greater Head carried only the Horns and two very large Eyes, much pecked by the birds that the natives call Birds. And the Little Head thereof carried, in addition to an Unwholesome Stench and an Odd Putrefaction, a Wondrous Strange Mouth and two Tongues within it, which had the Unnatural Power to draw itself out or into the Body as Necessity required. Other remarkable things observed in the Monster must be said to include its reddish Colored Wrapper sticking fast to the back thereof, and loose laps on both sides, white and red throughout. As well as Blubberous Skin that the Natives will not touch. It hath the most Monstrous Nose ever seen within or without the World.
From the fractured description of a “fish or beast or other creature” to the “bumpies,” the “horns,” the
“little head” (clearly a funnel), the “tongues,” and the “wrapper,” not to mention the comically mis- diagnosed “laps,” it becomes simultaneously clear that the “fish or beast or other creature” in question is a King Squid and that the Society of Morrowean Scientists Abroad was unwise to choose as observers the Fatally Unobservant.5
At least in such accounts, however, we come closer to the beast itself, the life’s blood of Ambergris, the bounty of plenty, the squidologist’s beakish wet dream, the freshwater monster known simply as “King Squid.”
NOTES
1. As my father used to say, “Layperson fogginess is the leading cause of hatred directed toward scientists.” (See: Madnok, James,
2. The King Squid eats all of these species, with great relish, on a weekly basis.
3. I first encountered Miss Floxence’s text in the family library. My father and I had gone there to escape mother’s wrath over some trivial offense and he pulled out the tome both because it was mother’s favorite and because he thought I might enjoy a good laugh. He read me bits aloud to my cackling response. So I cannot pretend to be objective about Miss Floxence’s books.
4. A fact lovingly recorded by D. S. Nalanger in his paper “The Fish Preferences of the Giant Freshwater Squid as Recorded During a Controlled Experiment Involving a Hook, Bait, a Boat, and a Strong Line of Inquiry,” publication pending.
5. Indeed, although the Society never published the monogram from the second expedition, such a (slim) pamphlet could have been titled “Enoch and Bernard’s Cut-Short Journey Wherein the Canoe Overturned and the Crocodiles Danced a Merry Jig Upon Our—”
II
WHAT THE KINGSQUIDIS
APPROACHING THE TRUE KING SQUID
That it can be all things to all people may be explained by the fact that squidologists have identified over 600 species of squid. Large, small, medium-sized, oblong, squat, lithe, and long — all kinds exist in oceans, in rivers, in lakes. Beaks like parrots. Skin that flames and gutters with its own potency; depending on the time of day and temperature/ment, sometimes mute gray or festooned with self-made light like the Festival route at night. Some tough, some soft, some muscular, some gelatinous. Some can fling their bodies out of their watery domain and seem to fly! Others live in the deepest depths of the River Moth. Some commune together like swimming judges without scales to do them justice. Some, solitary, cannot stand even their own company. Yet others must, by their very nature, endure the company of an inferior species until they can metamorphose to a more exalted state.
UNCOMMON CHARACTERISTICS
While I shall attempt to recite shared characteristics in an orderly6fashion, as rote as any children’s song, I must admit that the closer we approach to the squid itself, the more excited I become: my mantle turns cerulean with pleasure, my funnel juts more prominently, my suckers tremble. So to speak.
As every young squidologist — released to happily squat over tidal pools (if in the Southern Isles) or lurk around the dock pilings (if in Ambergris) — knows, almost every squid has eight arms and two tentacles, grappling hooks, etc. As I may have mentioned. (The bookish squidologist will find case files on the now extinct Morrowean Mud Squid, whose tentacles reabsorb into the body upon attaining adulthood, leaving only flaccid nubs. This embarrassing condition is not shared by the King Squid.) Some defective species — the malodorous Stunted Beak Squid, the aptly-diagnosed Stockton Disabled Squid, and the repugnant Saphant Arse Squid — have arms of differing lengths. However, the King Squid is by contrast a paradigm of good health, its eight arms the exact same thickness and length, its two tentacles longer by only a few feet.
The tentacles, a marvel of biological engineering, serve a number of graceful functions, but primarily bring prey to the doom that is its mouth. Not a particularly swift doom, however. The King Squid does not swallow its food whole as does the Swollen Mantle Squid peculiar to the Alfar Lake Region. Nor does it batter its food against underwater rocks to tenderize it as does the Purple Bullheaded Squid popular along the coast ofScatha. Instead, the King Squid must chop up and grind down its food using its beak, teeth, and pistolaro (a tongue-like organ).
