Free The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni Page A

spattering the floor with mud.
    For an instant, I saw that the others were relieved too. As Lucy hung up Mick’s coat, Galen shot her a look that swept from her feet to her brow, verifying that she still had all her limbs. Forest beamed, showing his teeth—something I had only seen him do once or twice before. Usually, any gleam of humor from him was just that: a gleam. A crinkle at the corner of the mouth, a bit of frivolity near the eyebrows. This wide-open grin sat oddly on his angular face. Mick collapsed onto the couch with a groaning of springs. His hair had been blown into a ragged bird’s nest by the breeze.
    Swishing in her wetsuit, Lucy marched over to Andrew and gave him a kiss. He patted her shoulder gently, though I noticed that he kept one finger planted in his book to mark his page.
    “How was it?” Forest called from the table.
    “Fine.” Lucy straightened up. “No problems. I saw the most wonderful bed of sea urchins. They were marching around in extreme slow motion. Inch by inch. The spines waving everywhere. I found an enormous clam, too. One of the biggest I’ve ever seen. I could probably fit inside it.” As she spoke, her hands flitted through the air, miming the shapes of anemones. “It was beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. You can’t blink without seeing a stingray or a rockfish.”
    “Any sharks?” Forest asked.
    Lucy considered. “Not really. The only guys who got close to me were a couple harbor seals and a huge sea lion. He nosed me a little. Wanted to bite my air hose. I had to whack him with my basket.” She pursed her lips. “Well, I did see some of the Rat Pack at a distance. They were over by Mussel Flat, circling around and acting weird. They didn’t bother me.”
    “No Sisters?” Galen asked.
    “None.”
    Then, to my surprise, Lucy turned to me.
    “Come here, mouse girl,” she said.
    She snapped her fingers impatiently, as though summoning a recalcitrant pet. Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet. Lucy pointed into her bucket, yellow and plastic, filled almost to the brim.
    I approached it cautiously. At the bottom of the pool, there was a lump of clay. I bent over, peering into it. Then the object twitched. I let out a gasp as it changed shape, like a flower opening its petals or a fist uncurling. A few brown tendrils snaked across the bucket’s floor. A gauzy sac ballooned upward—a wealth of tentacles.
    I stepped back instinctively. Lucy laughed. She reached into the water and picked the tiny octopus up. Before my eyes, it changed color, its skin roughening, suffused with deep red. Its skinny arms braided themselves around her wrist in a death grip. The pouch of its body dangled like a bizarre ornament on a charm bracelet. Yellow eyes pivoted on stalks. Droplets rained onto the floor.
    “Isn’t he beautiful ?” Lucy said.

8
    I T IS O CTOBER , and most of the white sharks are gone. Like sightseers in Venice, they avoid the colder months. Galen and Forest have been tagging them for years, attaching an electric device to each creature. Stuck below the dorsal fin, these machines have relayed back the precise coordinates of the sharks’ winter breeding and hunting grounds. The animals travel south to balmier seas; they head west to harass the surfers in Hawaii. I thought I had missed my chance at an encounter.
    Then, a week ago, Forest crashed into my room at six in the morning. Dawn was near, the eastern sky aglow.
    “Get up,” he shouted. “There’s a big kill off Sugarloaf!” He kicked the edge of the bed. “And don’t forget your camera.”
    I climbed wearily to my feet. I had not slept well. There was an octopus in the cabin now, and it was occupying my mind. Lucy had kept the tiny creature she had pulled out of the sea. Oliver the octopus—she had named him with cartoonish assonance. She had dug an old aquarium out of some closet, God knows where, and filled it with salt water, a lumpy rock, and a spray of seaweed rising from the pebbled floor like a