Lily and the Octopus(36)

“Oh, yeah,” Lily says. She settles back down in my lap.

“It’s a fun idea, though, Mouse. Splashing in the waves.”

After a pause Lily looks up at me. “Sometimes I think of you as Dad.”

My heart rises in my throat.

That’s the only term of endearment I need.





Ink





1.


It’s late, past the time I usually go searching for Lily to bring her to bed, except tonight I don’t have to search for her because she’s creating such a ruckus in the hallway, barking and growling and carrying on. When I catch up to her, she’s staring into the corner between the bedroom and bathroom doors, in her offensive low crouch, hackles raised, clearly startled and upset.

“Goose? Goose! Mongoose! What is it?”

She doesn’t miss a beat or move to back down or acknowledge my presence in any way. She just barks at the damned corner like it’s an advancing battalion. I’m already leaning down to grab her when she stops me cold in my tracks.

THIS! LLAMA! BEACHBALL! SEVEN! PARLIAMENT! CASSEROLE! ANTARCTICA! PAJAMAS!

What the . . .

We both stare at each other, frozen. It’s like being in a horror film when someone starts speaking in tongues and the whole room falls silent. I’m almost waiting for Lily’s head to rotate like an owl’s and for her to start vomiting pea soup. But I know for a fact she’s not possessed by demons—just one demon, a squishy, eight-tentacled prick. I scoop her up and squeeze her tight to soothe her, but she wriggles left, then right, then nearly out of my grip altogether. It takes a moment pressed against my chest for her to snap out of whatever trance she’s in, and when she does she begins to shake uncontrollably in my arms.

“Guppy, what was that?”

Lily turns from me to the light, then from the light to the dining room, then from the dining room to the bedroom.

“I can’t see,” she says.

This startles me. “Can’t see what?” I turn on the light, hoping it will help.

There’s a long silence. “Anything.”

I look at the octopus. “What have you done?”

The octopus looks annoyed. “Have you noticed there’s an emerging pattern in this household? I’m always the first to be blamed.”

“What have you done!”

“To her?”

I’ve resisted doing this previously, but since Lily is in a state anyway, I swat the octopus. Hard. I immediately regret it, but Lily remains oblivious.

“Ow!” One of his arms reaches up to soothe the spot where I hit him. “I released my ink sac. Satisfied?”

“She can’t see!”

“That’s really the whole point of releasing an ink sac.” The octopus’s ability to stay calm in the face of my rage is one of the things I hate most about him.

“And you wonder why you get blamed.”

“Oh, hey, look at that. Yeah, I guess this one is on me.” I loathe his epiphanies.

I wish there was a way to punch him, really deck him square in the jaw, but there isn’t. Not without also risking further harm to Lily. So instead I kiss her on the neck, on the far side, away from the octopus.

“Get a room,” the octopus says.

I imagine grabbing that arm of his and wrapping it around his neck and choking the life right out of him, much as Princess Leia did to Jabba the Hutt, until his obnoxious tongue hangs limply in death. But I don’t. I set Lily down on the ground and continue to stroke her back in a way that calms both of us. After a moment or two she gathers some initiative and takes three steps forward straight into the wall.

“Whoa. Take it easy, Monkey.”

Lily backs up, adjusts her course, and takes another few steps, again into the wall, but this time a little closer to the kitchen door.

“Where’s my water?” Lily asks.

I grab her around the middle and gently guide her through the doorway into the kitchen toward the water. Before I can stop her, she walks into the side of her bowl and water sloshes over the edge and onto her feet.

“Found it,” she says, lifting her paws away from the puddle, then thirstily lapping at the remaining water in her bowl.

“Aren’t you supposed to leave now, octopus?”

“I don’t think so,” he says as Lily continues to drink. “Why?”

“Releasing your ink sac is what you do so that you can make your escape. It’s what you do to cloud the water to evade a predator.”

The octopus shakes his head, which throws Lily slightly off balance, but she recovers easily enough. “Oh, so suddenly between the two of us you’re the octopus expert?”

“Don’t kid yourself into thinking that the instant you fall asleep I’m not reading everything I can about your kind so I can find a way to kill you.” I probably shouldn’t have said that, played that hand in so obvious a fashion, but since Lily’s usually in my lap when I’m doing my research, I figure on some level he already knows.

Lily finishes drinking and takes a few steps toward her bed and I almost yell at the octopus don’t you walk away when I’m talking to you before remembering he’s only a passenger, and I want Lily to move around to help her orient herself. She knows where her bed is in relation to the water bowl, and she makes it there without incident.