She went. A tentacle as wide as a tree rose from the sea, the bottom side circled with cups that had a life of their own, gaping and contracting. The tentacle rose over her, curved away, growing smaller as it tapered away, branch sized, then arm sized, then finally the tip, only the size of a finger, delicate as her own, came forward to touch her. It was chilly but not cold. It was wet but not slimy. It stroked her arm and then held her hand, taking the little finger and the ring finger and squeezing them together very softly. “Change,” the Sea King murmured. “Daughter, change.”
Her fingers changed. The bones went out of them. They flexed. Little circles erupted from their bottom sides. Her hand split in two. Dreamily, she remembered this feeling. She had been a tree in a very tight little pot, breaking the pot. It was the feeling she had had in the dungeon, as though her arm had split in two. Her hand split in two with little cups replacing the palm, wrist splitting in two, then the lower arm, elbow, upper arm, shoulder. At the same time her feet and the other arm were also splitting, the separations rising toward her shoulders, and she was becoming eight limbed, each limb lengthening, changing color, turning, spiraling, curving, infinitely flexible. She felt the bones come apart into pieces, tiny pieces, moving aside, encapsulating, staying there but no longer attached to one another, each capsule flexibly joined to the next. The change reached her neck, her head. There was a carapace there. Her eyes moved outward, to the sides, seeing things she had never seen before. She had no nose, but she had something that sensed a smell, things she had never smelled before.
“Come,” he said, tugging gently. “You are homocephalo-sapiens. You are many-legged brain-holding humankind. You are a color changer, shape changer, dweller beneath the sea. And yet you are still humankind, still female, and inside you, in that organ you call an ovary, you are creating more sea eggs.”
Behind her, Abasio pulled every fiber of himself into a tight bundle, wound it with cords of self-control, and made it stand still. Rigid as iron, he saw what she became and how she had become it. The helmet had recorded what Xulai had felt and seen during her imprisonment in the Vulture Tower, yes, but that had been as observed from inside herself. That had been mostly . . . feelings! That he had accepted, how she felt, how she reacted, but the helmet had not shown him what she became, how she became it. Now there was no more mystery about how Jenger had died. Now there was a new, more important mystery, about himself! How would Abasio react to this? His first reaction, rigidly controlled, had been to flee, to refuse to accept, refuse to understand or want to understand. How long did he have before she would come back? How long did he have to talk sense to himself? What form would she come back in? Psychologically wavering helplessly between love and revulsion, mentally trying to make sense of the story he had heard, bodily he stood utterly rigid, a man carved from stone.
Meantime, Xulai had been tugged into the sea, into the shimmer and the curl of the sea, the foam and ripple, the shush and pull, the buoyancy, the bounce, the tremble, the shift, the constant movement and life of the ocean. One of her arms picked up a shell, curled around it, opened it, delivered the contents to her beak. Oyster. Very nice. She had never tasted such freshness. But, but, wasn’t this akin to murder, to killing one’s. . .
“It’s all right,” said the Sea King.
He was speaking. She heard his Tingawan words through the water. The vibrations were felt through her skin. “There are things that think and feel and there are things that don’t. We try not to eat the things that do. Except for certain very evil ones. Those we go after in groups and some eat them with considerable ceremony, but it is not obligatory.”
She thought she nodded. Perhaps she nodded.
The tentacle tugged again. “Swim. See.”
He went ahead of her, huge but buoyant, tentacles trailing, she a tiny copy of him, propelling herself through the waters, a balloon with fringes trailing behind. She caught a tentacle tip around an arm of coral and spun to rest, eyes fastened upon the complexity and glory of the reef, jeweled with thousands of brightly colored fishes, ornamented with corals of myriad shapes, dotted with fringe-shelled clams, swarming with eels, starfish, urchins. A tiny octopus crept from a hole in the reef, its little tentacles like a fringed skirt. It greeted her as a child might greet her on the street. “H’lo. Who’re you?” She introduced herself. The baby giggled and withdrew into its hiding place.
“One of my offspring,” said the Sea King with a certain satisfaction. “The females of our new race come here for sperm packets and sometimes leave their egg packets close by.”
“Sperm . . . ?” Xulai felt herself flushing.
“Our males who have language do it no differently than we cephalopods have always done. Our males have always given a sperm packet to the females.” He chuckled. “Your people call this an ‘arm’s-length transaction.’ We find it sensible. Intelligent! You already know what we think of your way! All that . . .”
“Yes,” said Xulai, not wanting to get into all that. “I know.”
He continued. “Our females store the sperm, sometimes for a season or more. They use it when they have eggs ready, when they have found a safe place to attach them to the seafloor where the young will not be threatened. Of course, as Sea King, I have issued an edict concerning our young. Each creature with a mind knows they are not to touch them. The scientists have given us what they
