With the heat guns in their pockets, they left the camp and walked down the narrow vale to the pebbly beach, the only place for several days’ walk in either direction, said Snark, where the cliffs did not close off access to the sea. They stopped in what Snark called a storm hole, a hollow eaten out by storm waves above the usual high-water line. From this cover they stared at the shaggies from a new angle. The shaggies took no notice.
After some little time Mitigan strode down onto the beach and strutted back and forth to see if the shaggies would react. When they did not, Leelson joined him in his stroll, then Snark and Lutha. Still no attention from the fishers. They walked the length of the beach, not a great distance, noting that the long wave-washed piles of shaggy body parts had much diminished. The remainder was liquescing, trickling into the gravel in inklike runnels.
“You’d think this would smell, or taste, or something,” said Snark.
To Lutha, it looked disgusting, but it did not smell or taste, and the shorebirds took no notice of the remains. Neither did the shaggies, who merely hung like lumpy balloons above the sea, their amorphous, knotty tentacles reeling up and down, the fringed tips stirring the water. Whenever a fish was encountered, the lines twitched and drew upward by a process of gradual thickening, becoming a bulbous extrusion from which the catch was drawn into the main sac. Each shaggy had at least a hundred appendages of various lengths, some coming down, others going up, some quiescent, just hanging. Lutha thought them clumsy looking, as though they had been botched or left unfinished. They seemed uncommitted to their present shapes, as though wearing an expedient disguise.
She started to mention this to Leelson, when Snark looked up and said, “Whoa … ”
Lutha smothered a shriek. While they’d been staring westward one of the shaggies south of them had floated to a spot between them and their cover. It was far larger than Lutha had estimated. Very wide. With many tentacles.
“Split up,” said Mitigan. “Spread out. Start inland.”
Lutha’s instinct was to stay close to someone else, but Mitigan gestured her away, so she moved obediently apart from the others, a full shaggy diameter away southward, swiveling her head to look in all directions above. The shaggy was hanging roughly between Mitigan and Leelson, tracking them, its underside bulging with incipient filaments and with others already partway extruded. The two men were to Lutha’s left, and though they moved rapidly, the shaggy had no trouble staying above them.
Snark was nearest Lutha, on her right.
“More of them, moving in from the sea,” she said, breaking into a trot.
Lutha ran beside her, realizing that she had no idea where the nearest bolt-hole was.
Snark saw her confusion. “The rocks just ahead,” she said. “Aim for the shadow to your left.”
There were several shadows. As they came nearer, Lutha saw the one Snark meant. A hole with space behind it. She hurried, hearing Snark’s feet racing away toward another hole, one farther south. Out of the corner of her eye, Lutha saw tentacles at her side, left and right. She leapt toward the shadow, making it under cover just in time.
A slithering sound came from behind her. She turned to see a tentacle slide down the rock behind her, its end plopping onto the ground she had just left.
“Safe,” shouted Snark.
“Safe,” shouted Mitigan.
Then Leelson’s voice shouted the same word. Lutha breathed easier.
“Lutha!” shouted Leelson. “Jiacare!”
Oh. “Safe,” she cried breathlessly. “I think.” She heard no responsive shout from the ex-king, but then she had other things to worry about.
The plopping tentacle had fallen on a rootlet that led inward. Now it had wrapped itself around the rootlet and was pulling itself slowly into the shallow shelter where Lutha crouched. The tip explored, feeling its way, reaching out for the next thing it could get hold of. Each time it stretched thin, a bulbous thickening somewhere behind it moved up, allowing the slenderer tip to move forward again. The tip was fringed all around with cilia that moved independently, giving it an odd sort of expressiveness. As though it might be thinking.