XIX
Drenched in cold well water the monster stood. He looked to his side, and to Alice who wielded the shovel like a sword.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Again and again the shovel smacked into the wet tentacle on the ground.
"No, no! You let go right now Silvan! That is Madam's new helper, not food! She is not here to steal," Alice angrily yelled between swings of the shovel.
The creature hesitates for a breath. It was as if weighing something ancient and instinctive. Then the tentacle around my torso loosens, sliding off my legs with a reluctant, wet whisper. I scrambled backward across the damp tiles, heart pounding, but the monster's attention had already shifted.
Silvan rises to his full, towering height. He turns his form towards Alice, a tentacle flipping away the shovel in her hands with a deft swipe. It clatters away to the ground landing far from them.
He steps toward Alice, translucent skin ripples with shifting blues and sickly greens, veins glowing faintly beneath the surface like trapped moonlight. Water drips from his limbs, pooling around his feet as he reaches out with his more human arms. The tentacles behind him unfurl like a grotesque halo. One of them, the longer, thinner, more dexterous than the one that had wrapped me, extends toward Alice.
The tentacle's tip narrows to a delicate point, almost gentle in its precision. It reaches her braid… touches it… then winds around it slowly, reverently, as though testing the texture of light caught in hair. The blonde braid lifts slightly, tugged upward.
Alice freezes. Her breath catches. She doesn't turn, but her voice comes out in a trembling coo as if placating a tired child.
"…Madam said you shouldn't come out if there's no emergency Silvan. You're to keep to the well and only eat thieves and monsters that come to steal. You don't eat random people. It's important!"
Silvan's towering form leans closer, water pattering softly from his limbs. His tall form overshadowed the petite Alice easily. The tentacle he extended tightens around her braid with a slow, possessive curl, as if claiming something he has been waiting for. He let out a spoiled whine. His two pitch black eyes focused on her gently, his pupils were the most human part of his body, communicating his feelings in silence.
The greenhouse goes utterly quiet. Only the drip of water from the well breaks the stillness. He tilts his head; dark eyes once again focused on me.
Alice sighs, "We're really sorry. He probably thought you were here to steal. Everyone who finds this place either works for the madam or is here to steal the vegetables. It's not easy to get enough energy to keep existing."
There are few ways to exist here. Either you eat other people, or you eat things that absorb enough energy, or both. Alice explained that the fog condenses at the bottom of deep places like caves and wells and the energy it's made of dissolves into the water. Along with the sparse energy in the sunlight, the well water sustains the plants. Silvan had crawled into the well to escape death from fading but had already mutated to something into inhuman from the fog or eating other beings. He had been living in the well for years before the madam had discovered that she could maintain spectral form by eating plants.
"He can't talk, and he's forgotten his name, and who he was. Silvan was about halfway to fading away, fortifying himself with well water, when madam moved here years ago," Alice said. He tapped Silvan's tentacle, coaxing him to unwind it from her braid. "Silvan makes very good security for the garden."
"He is very good to work with. Though can be a bit impetuous. Only eats thieves and the like. We can't get him to go fully vegetarian. It takes allot of energy to fuel this big form of his."
Alice explained as she picked up her shovel. "He makes do with meat from the market. He also consumes thieves and monsters that make their way into the garden from outside. There are always desperate people in this world with terrible ideas."
Silvan lowered himself to a less imposing height. The tentacles at his center pulled themself in, the gaping maw pulling back into abdomen. The two long tentacles at his back wrapped themselves over his shoulders and around his chest. He could look more convincingly human if he'd had a trenchcoat on. Unfortunately, he could do nothing about his skin and the transparent facade that revealed faintly glowing internal structures.
I spent three days working in the garden with Alice and Silvan. He seemed to be either Alice's pet monster, assistant lifting heavy things, or her boyfriend. She pampered him during breaks, occasionally telling him about her day, styling his seaweed-like hair, or playing games like checkers or chess. His world revolved around her. It seemed like a well-balanced relationship except for the part where he's mostly tentacles and that he eats people, but who was I to judge other people's love lives. I didn't have a boyfriend, with or without tentacles.