24. Olly #2
The creature made a noise like a deep baritone.
No discernible words could be found, but the feelings it projected were agonizing.
I had failed this creature. I wasn’t sure if it was due to neglect in this world, or lack of action in the waking world to stop all of my trauma from sinking to the bottom of my inner ocean and invading her home, and eventually, her heart and mind.
Was Clark to be the price that must be paid to keep her content and not ravage the other creatures down here?
A voice, one I had never heard, slithered through my mind, deep and foreboding. “You cannot have him, you of the Land. Everything you have ever done weighs against you, and I have decided to choose the next part of this story.”
“What happens in the story? You have to remember, this is my story, and I decided not too long ago, that it was a love story. That man you are holding that you could crush at any moment is my love. And you...you are like my vengeance. But if you decide to kill him here, I have no doubt he will die everywhere his spirit can be found, and that would be fundamentally unfair to him and the people who love and need him. Please, I beg of you. Release him.”
“Leave, and let me keep my prize,” came the hissing response. “You have so much already. Why should I not have him?”
“Don’t you get it? What I’ve been telling you...if you kill him, I may very well die, and that includes you!” After a silence that felt like it stretched for a hundred lifetimes, Bea’s voice lit up my mind.
“Mama, it’s not working. Can I try?” I immediately wanted to say no, but she had a valid point. The creature was not responding to me. Perhaps it blamed me for getting us into this situation to begin with.
“Keep me looped in. I want to know what’s going on inside my own...ocean. Mind. Whatever this place is.”
Bea smiled and nodded, then reached her arm that I wasn’t holding on to and spoke with her mind.
“Kraken of the deep, protector and guardian of my mother and her mind, please listen to me. I’m Bea, and one day, you and I will be good friends.
But right now you are full of hurt, and that hurt has turned to anger.
I know a little bit of what that’s like, but not much because I’m not grown yet.
I’m six, sort of. The man you are holding loves me like I’m his own daughter, and one day I might take his name and call him Daddy.
Sorry for the spoilers, Mama, though it’s not certain yet.
He came here looking for a way to rescue her from the people that are hurting her, and hurting you.
I’m so sorry that I can’t stop them. But you can.
Let him go, and the pain will soon stop. You can trust me, I promise.”
The appendage that had reached for me earlier turned its focus to Bea and reached out toward her.
I could see that even though it was relatively small, it was definitely enormous enough to scoop her up from where I clung to her, and she held on to the six-flippered whale.
Oh, hell no. She wasn’t getting ensnared by this beast, too.
But before I could do anything, Bea reached out and touched it as I had, and then started scratching the underside between the suckers, and the mighty kraken of the deep made a noise which sounded suspiciously like purring.
“Friends,” Bea repeated. “We will be friends, and friends don’t lie to each other. We need that man to free my Mama from the scary people she is with. I wouldn’t lie to you. Promise.”
The tentacle retreated, much to my relief, and the army of teeny glowing fish teemed around all of us in a very wide circle, and I looked on in wonder as tentacle after tentacle gave way, and the entire creature slid off its shelf, and back down to the deepest parts of my mind, taking away the bulk of my fear, my sorrow, and my hatred.
There, slowly becoming alert, was Clark, and I let the whale know we were good to head
back up, as soon as I had him secured to this enormous flipper as well.
By the time he was fully awake, he was grasping onto the flipper, and looking, wide-eyed, at our escort of untold numbers of the tiny glowing fish.
When we reached the point where light from above made our phosphorescent escorts redundant, I found myself suddenly back standing on the beach, perfectly dry and taking in the biggest gulps of delicious sea air that I could.
Bea was still holding hands with me, and she gestured with her head to the other side of me where Clark lay still, also catching his breath.
I couldn’t help but notice that the beach had changed.
A lot of the dried rockweed was missing, leaving the beach a strip of smooth white sand.
The gulls were back, singing gaily as they flew overhead under bright, glowing sunshine.
And best of all, the bushes of wild roses were here, in bloom, and all I could smell were the potent flowers and the salt from the still waters of a gentle sea glittering like gems spread out in front of me.
“What—” Clark began to ask, but he was promptly interrupted by Thomas, who was crouched on his rock.