Devilfish Annotated Read-Along Ā· Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Declan and Nance were in the library when Elliot returned to the house in the wee hours, their heads bent together over a stack of books and papers, murmuring quietly to each other in front of the fire. He allowed Declan to catch sight of him as he passed the libraryās open door but shook his head when Declan half-rose to meet him and couldnāt look at Nance at all. He went upstairs to bed but didnāt bother trying to sleep. He lay down on top of the coverlet without undressing and stared sightlessly at the ceiling until dawn. He left the house again before breakfast, walking alone along the rocky shoreline away from the big house.
He tried not to think about finally fucking Declan.End Notes · 1Elliot's method for handling anything difficult is to build a wall around it and then describe the wall in enormous detail, which is exactly what heās doing hereāmaking a list of all the things he is refusing to think about, thought at great length. He does this in earlier chapters with Celeste and in Chapter 15 with the possibility of simply staying on the ship. The man has never once successfully not thought about something. Itās a talent, for sure.All end notes → Because once he let himself think about the first moment when he pushed into Declanās tight heat, heād have to think about everything that came after. Heād have to think about what happened to his body, that heād shifted into the same creature heād seen Celeste shift into in his dreams. Heād have to figure out why the shift happened at that moment, when every other time heād been with Declan, heād managed to stay himself. Why heād thought that fucking Declan would keep him human. And how Declan had reacted to his change as if it were something he didnāt mind. Maybe even enjoyed. But that was impossible.
Dried green and brown kelp that had washed up on the shore crackled under his boots as he walked. The rocky beach ended at a small pile of boulders forming the base of a short cliff. Elliot gazed miserably at the seawater swirling around rocks and boulders scattered in the water. Red and orange starfish clung to the rocks just above the sea, reminding Elliot of the red welts heād left on Declanās legs.End Notes · 2These are ochre sea stars, and in 1888 that rock face would have been absolutely crawling with themāthey're the classic Pacific Northwest intertidal animal, orange or purple or brick red, packed shoulder to shoulder in the splash zone. Sadly, thatās not what the splash zone looks like today. Sea star wasting disease swept the Pacific coast starting in 2013 and killed billions of them; ochre stars have recovered somewhat in places but the sunflower star is functionally gone from most of its range. So this is a moment in the book where the historical setting let me put something back that we've since lost. It's also obviously doing double duty: Elliot canāt look at anything right now without seeing what his body did to Declan.All end notes → Declan had brushed them off as a temporary inconvenience, but he couldnāt possibly be as nonchalant about Elliotās change as heād seemed last night. A spray of salt water splashed Elliotās face, and he licked his lips. The thrumming in his blood in time with the surf had been persistent when heād left the house and was nearly unbearable now.
On the other side of the cliff was a narrow, rocky chasm. Wisps of steam rose above the rocks and Elliot could smell sulfur underneath the briny sea spray. This must be the hot spring Betsy had mentioned when she drew his bath the first night here.End Notes · 3Nance's compound is on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and I built this hot spring out of a real one: Hot Springs Cove, in what's now Maquinna Marine Provincial Park, about forty kilometers north of Tofino. The geology there is almost exactly what I describeāwater that percolates several kilometers down into the earth, gets superheated, and comes back up through fractured rock at around 50Ā°C. It pours out as a waterfall and then runs down a rocky chasm through a chain of pools that get progressively cooler the closer they are to the ocean, until the lowest ones are getting slapped by cold Pacific waves. You totally can sit in one spot that's scalding on one side and freezing on the other. I didnāt invent a single bit of that. I just gave it to Nance.All end notes → The cliff sloped inland until it disappeared into the forest.
He looked back the way heād come. Heād walked maybe a mile or so from the house, and the beach behind him was deserted. At least if he let the shift happen here, no one would see him. He folded his clothes into a small pile on a flat rock above the tide line. Naked and shivering a bit in the cool spray, he clambered carefully up and over a misshapen boulder that had a series of small step-like indentations carved into the face of the rock.End Notes · 4Elliot walks right past this without thinking about it and I wrote that deliberately. Those steps didn't carve themselves, and Nance's compound is not the first thing to exist on this island. Hot Springs Cove sits in Hesquiaht territory, and the springs there have been used and cared for by the Hesquiaht people for a very long timeālong, long before any white trader built a big house with a green-wallpapered room in it. I didn't want to write an island that was empty until my characters showed up but I also didn't want to appropriate a specific living tradition for a story about a tentacle monster, so I settled for putting the evidence in the rock and letting Elliot, who is preoccupied and not especially observant at the best of times, fail to notice it.All end notes → Today was even warmer than yesterdayāheād never known it to be this warm at the end of Marchābut the ocean was still icy as it splashed over his toes.End Notes · 5Two things are happening in this sentence. One, the Pacific Northwest in late March is not warm, and Elliot has lived on this coast his entire life, so him remarking on it means something is off. Two, the ocean does not care what the air is doing. Water temperatures out here hover in the high forties Fahrenheit year-round and a warm afternoon changes that not at all. Elliot is about to spend a considerable amount of time in it anyway.All end notes →
A small waterfall cascaded down the chasmās rock face, tumbled along the rocks, and flowed down to the oceanās edge through a series of small pools. Tendrils of steam wafted from the falls and the surfaces of the higher pools. Elliot picked his way down the rocks and dipped a toe in one of the lower pools. The water was warm where the hot spring trickled in, but as he lowered his body into the pool, a wave of icy ocean water swirled in and splashed him to mid-chest.
With the seawater swirling around him, Elliot gave in to the pressure building under his skin, let go and shifted. His legs split into two limbs each, his cock lengthened and thickened, and he had to shift position to make room for the sixth limb to grow out from the base of his spine.End Notes · 6I spent a long time trying to get eight tentacles out of a human lower body and I couldnāt make it look like anything but a bad drawing. Counting his arms solved it, and I like what it does thematically: Elliot doesn't lose the human parts of himself, he just gains. And while I still needed Elliot to have a cock forā¦obvious Reasons in a romance novel, it turns out the most ludicrous thing I did has real precedent. In octopuses, one arm is the reproductive organāthe hectocotylus, usually the third arm on the right, modified with a groove and a specialized tip for delivering sperm packets to a female. In argonauts the hectocotylus is enormous and detaches entirely during mating and swims off on its own, which is why Georges Cuvier, finding these things loose inside female argonauts in the early 1800s, classified them as a parasitic worm and named them Hectocotylus octopodis. It took Jeanne Villepreux-Powerāthe self-taught lady naturalist mentioned in Chapter 3, who also invented the aquariumāto suggest they might be male octopus anatomy instead.
Not to mention, Disney did the same thing with Ursula the Sea Witchāgave her six tentacles instead of eight for practical reasons.All end notes → The skin on each new limb changed color and texture, tingling as lines of suckers emerged on the undersides and opened to the water.End Notes · 7Octopus suckers don't just grip. Cephalopod suckers have chemotactile receptors, which respond to molecules that don't dissolve well in water. Which is to say: an octopus tastes things by touching them. It doesn't have to bring food to its mouth to know what it is. Every sucker on all eight arms is independently sampling the chemistry of whatever it's on. So when I write Elliot as overwhelmed by sensation in this scene, and later in this book when he touches Declan with these limbs, I'm not exaggerating for effect. Heās just grown several thousand tongues. š
All end notes → The oddest sensation was the bones in his pelvis dissolving as his hips spread and expanded, making room for his additional limbs.End Notes · 8This is my favorite piece of octopus anatomy and I'd been waiting the whole book to use it. Octopuses have no skeleton whatsoeverāthe only hard part of an octopus is its beak, which is roughly the size and shape of a parrot's. Everything else is muscle and skin. This is why an octopus can pour itself through an opening barely bigger than its own eyeball, and it's why aquarium keepers have such trouble containing them. So when Elliot's pelvis lets go, that's not me being weird for the sake of weirdness. (Or itās not only me being weird for the sake of weirdness.) Itās the single most important structural fact about the creature he's becoming, and it's the one that makes everything that happens later in this cove physically possible.All end notes →
Elliot stretched all six limbs to their full length under water. He couldnāt quite bring himself to look at them yet but he felt the water flow around each tentacle and under the webbing that connected them, gasping a little as first warm, then cool, currents slid past the sensitive undersides of each tentacle and swirled around where everything met at his asshole.End Notes · 9Thereās gotta be a hole, right? In a real octopus, the beak is at the center of the web, and while thatās an octopusās mouth, the only logical counterpart for Elliot is his asshole.All end notes →
Elliot leaned back, rested the back of his head on a rock ledge, and closed his eyes. He feltā¦good, actually. Letting go of the effort of staying human was like putting down a heavy burden heād been carrying so long. He flexed and curled his new limbs in the water. They crept and slipped along the rocks lining the pool, taking in all the new sensations through skin that had never felt so sensitive.
āYou look so peaceful, Elliot.ā
Declanās voice shattered Elliotās reverie and he bolted upright, forgot he didnāt have two solid legs to stand on, and floundered in the pool, scraping his tender new skin on the rocks before spreading his tentacles to reach a sort of equilibrium. He curled in on himself and scrunched down as far under the water as he could.
āGo away, Declan,ā he growled, bracing a hand on the edge of the pool to keep from floating to the surface.
āNo,ā Declan replied in a soft voice. āWe need to talk, Elliot.ā
Elliot couldnāt look at him. āI donāt want to talk. I want to be left alone. How did you even find me, anyway?ā
There was a small splash behind him as Declan slipped into the water and then a soft sigh, like the ones Declan made when Elliot kissed him. āI love this place. I come here every time I visit Nance.ā Warm water trickled over the boulder that partially divided the pool Declan was in from the one Elliot was in. āPlus, Betsy told me sheād seen you heading this way.ā
Elliot sighed. He should have known Declan would track him down. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and tried to shift his legs back to how they were supposed to be. Nothing happened. He pushed down a small lick of panic and tried again, mashing all his limbs together as hard as he could. He wasnāt sure how else to even try it. Still nothing. Declan was saying something, but Elliot ignored him, thinking back to how heād shifted back last night and trying to figure out what heād done then. He hadnāt been underwater last night, just soaked wet from that rogue wave. What if he needed to be out of the water before he could change back? Heād have to wait until Declan left, and who knows how long that would take. What if this time he couldnāt change back?
āElliot.ā Declan said sharply. Goddamn it, why couldnāt he leave Elliot alone?
āWhat?ā Elliot snapped, finally looking up at Declan.
āI know what youāre trying to do, Elliot, and it wonāt work that way,ā Declan said. He was naked, arms stretched across the boulder he was leaning against and looked calm, like they were talking about knot-tying on the Black Dove. Elliot wanted to punch him for acting like this was an everyday occurrence.
āWhat the hell do you know about it?ā he snarled.
Declan leveled a look at him and raised an eyebrow. āMore than you, evidently. At least Iām not afraid to learn about it.ā
Elliot stared back at him for a minute. Declan sighed, then stood and waded through the waist-deep water toward Elliot, picking his way around and over the boulders that created the natural pools. Elliot retreated to the deeper pools at the oceanās edge. The water was colder here, farther away from the hot springās source. The tide was nearly at its lowest, so the water was still only about chest-deep on Elliot, even with all his limbs stretched to their full length. It was rougher with the oceanās waves crashing over and around the rocks.
Declan kept coming toward Elliot, his breath catching and body shivering as each cold wave splashed over him. āElliot,ā he called. āCome on, man. Iām not leaving until you talk to me, so you might as well be reasonable.ā He opened his mouth to say something else, then misjudged a step and slipped under the next wave. Elliot took the opportunity to turn toward the ocean and really swim out into it. He pulled all six limbs in toward his center and then thrust them straight behind him. He shot forward through the water like an arrow loosed from a bow.End Notes · 10An octopus in a hurry swims arms-first-behind-it, streamlined into a point, and moves by jetting water out through the siphonāa muscular funnel under the mantle. It's startlingly fast and they can't keep it up for long, because an octopus's circulatory system isn't built for sustained exertion. (They have three hearts, and the main one stops beating when they swim, which is one reason they'd generally rather crawl.) Elliot is doing a slightly more human version of this, using the limbs themselves for the initial thrust, but the shape of the movement is straight out of the footage I watched approximately nine hundred times.All end notes → When the momentum from his thrust slowed, he angled his way up to the surface, several yards away from the shore.
Elliot lay back and let the water cradle him, treading water effortlessly with six limbs. Declan couldnāt swim, so heād have to stay in the shallows until he gave up trying to talk to Elliot.End Notes · 11Yes, really. A startling number of nineteenth-century professional sailors could not swim, and this held true up through the age of sail and well into steam. Some of it was practicalāyou rarely learn a skill you have no place to practiceāand some of it was a genuinely held belief that being able to swim only prolonged your dying, since a man overboard in open ocean wasn't getting picked up anyway. Better to go quick. Cheerful people, sailors. I gave Declan the same gap because it's true to who he'd be, and because I needed it. Notice that Elliot registers this fact and immediately uses it as a weapon. Three paragraphs later it goes off in his hand.All end notes → He felt a pinprick of remorse for playing such a dirty trick on Declan, but the sooner he took the hint and went back to the house, the sooner Elliot could enjoy the hot spring pools in peace.
He couldnāt see Declan, though, and after a minute or so, Elliot swam closer to the shore. There was the pile of Declanās clothes, folded neatly on a rock above one of the higher pools. He swam into the pool closest to the oceanās edge, but there was still no sign of Declan. Elliot took a deep breath and plunged under water against the hot springās current. He slipped around and between rocks lining the chasm. There was Declan, in the next deep pool, one foot wedged between a pair of rocks, struggling to pull it free.
Elliot surfed in on a wave that battered Declan against the boulder behind him. He was twisting frantically now, hair swirling around his submerged face, eyes bulging, mouth clenched tight to keep from swallowing seawater. He must have been trying to free himself the entire time Elliot was swimming out in the ocean.
Christ, how could he have been so thoughtless and selfish? His heart pounding in his chest, Elliot raced for the rocks trapping Declanās foot. He slipped two tentacles into the gap on either side of Declanās foot, braced himself with his other limbs, and flexed the tentacles against the rocks, pushing them apart with all his might.End Notes · 12Elliot has spent twenty-two chapters convinced that what's happening to his body is a horror to be hidden, suppressed, and outrun. In this pool he finds out that a man with two arms and two legs could not have pulled Declan free, and the thing he's been trying to strangle out of himself is the only reason Declan is still breathing. I wanted the reveal to be entirely physicalāno speech, no epiphany, just leverage. A giant Pacific octopus can exert an extraordinary amount of force with its arms and each sucker adheres independently, which means Elliot has more purchase on those rocks than any human body could manage. He's also, notably, still using his hands at the same time. He is both things at once, in the water, and it works. Still takes him a while to notice that.All end notes → He slid his hands down Declanās calf to his ankle and tugged Declanās foot free. Then he swam up Declanās body, wrapped his arms around Declanās waist, and thrust with his tentacles until their heads breached the surface.
Declan sucked a deep breath in and coughed a stream of water down Elliotās back. He sagged against Elliotās chest, coughing and gasping, and Elliot held him close, murmuring, āOh God, Declan, Iām so sorry. So sorry,ā over and over.
Declan got his breath back, mostly, and patted Elliotās shoulder weakly. āIām fine, Elliot. Iām okay,ā he said, still coughing every few breaths. āIāll be fine, just give me a minute.ā He rested his forehead on Elliotās shoulder, his breathing still a harsh pant next to Elliotās ear. Elliot stopped his litany of apologies out loud but kept them going in his head.
Declan had almost drowned and it was all his fault, because Elliot was too selfish and childish to just talk to him. How many times would Declan have to run after Elliot because Elliot wouldnāt stop running away from him?
Declanās breathing finally eased and he tipped his head sideways to kiss Elliotās neck. āLooks like those tentacles of yours are pretty strong, eh? Thatās a good thing, donāt you think?āEnd Notes · 13Declan just nearly drowned, and his first complete sentence thatās not reassuring Elliot that heās fine is an attempt to get Elliot to think one kind thing about himself. This is the whole man in one line. He's been doing this since Chapter 1ātaking the thing Elliot is most ashamed of, turning it a few degrees, and handing it back as though it were a obviously a good thing. It almost never works on the first try. He does it anyway, every single time.All end notes →
Elliot closed his eyes and squeezed Declan tighter against his chest. āOh God, Declan,ā he repeated.
āStop,ā Declan rasped, interrupting him. āIt was an accident, Elliot. I slipped and you got me out. Quit apologizing for it.ā He shivered. āIām cold, though. Could we maybe move to a warmer spot?ā
Elliot let Declan go, but watched every step he took until they settled in a pool closer to the waterfall. Declan leaned back and sighed deeply. āMuch better,ā he said, closing his eyes and lifting his face to the sun. Elliot looked him over carefully. His face was a little flushed from coughing, but he was breathing easier now. His eyelashes were wet spikes resting on his cheeks, and the sun glinted in droplets caught in the strands of his darkened wet hair. Elliot cupped his cheek and ran his thumb lightly over the faint freckles sprinkled there.
Declan smiled without opening his eyes and spread his arms out along the rocks he was leaning against. āKiss me, Elliot,ā he said softly.
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