Future Lovecraft

A WELCOME SESTINA FROM CRUISE DIRECTOR ISABEAU MOLYNEUX By Mae Empson

This private cruise to Svalbard was financed by adventurous foodies, by gastronautic dreams

Of incomparable and illicit sights, aromas, and that first brave promised taste and swallow.

With the Arctic melting, icebreakers have widened the ship lanes further, and the roving eye

Of food frontier fashion has turned north, watching, hungrily, as the monster squid,

(As the tweeters named them) began to be found frozen beneath the melting lid

Of Arctic ice, where they’d apparently once, long ago, gathered to spawn and die,

The ice between them riddled by acres of unanchored egg cases. Spawn, freeze and die.

But are the eggs dead? You’re here because you’ve heard our claim, dream of dreams,

That Norwegian scientist-opportunists asserting their national rights over the icy lid,

Beneath which the frozen treasures waited, have experimented and, hard to swallow,

Hard to believe, but true as toast, the eggs can be hatched, live paralarvae god squid,

Infant monster squid, big as a man’s fist, miniatures of the adults, with each eye

No bigger than a man’s thumb. You know the largest of the adults found so far has an eye

Big as the TV screen in our standard cabin. These hatchlings are revived in order to die.

To die by the most delicious means possible. Sure, you’ve had calamari before, mundane squid,

But the god squid paralarvae preparation is in the Ortolan Bunting style; every Frenchman dreams

Of that taste, of the songbird first caught and fattened, force-fed, required to swallow

Twice its size in food, drowned in brandy, and tossed whole beneath the roasting pan’s lid,

To be eaten whole, bones and all. The diner covers his head and face with a towel, before the lid

Of the serving plate is lifted, so the rich aroma is trapped, and the diner’s face is hid from the eye

Of God—at least that’s tradition, mon Dieu, our tradition. The same God who counts the swallow

Before it falls. The sparrow. The songbird. But will he mourn the hatchling, the next to die?

I think another eye is watching. The dead, frozen, monstrous mother. I see her in my dreams.

Of course I dream of squid. It’s our livelihood now. Nothing to it. Just you wait to see the squid,

The Mother of All Squid, waiting in the ice hotel in Svalbard. They took the largest squid,

Carved the ice around her to a thin layer, an extraordinary ice sculpture. The base forms the lid

Of the dining room table. You literally eat on the ice that houses her carcass. In my dreams,

Her huge eye, that would look out upon the table, were it not closed, that hideous shut eye,

Turns to face me wherever I sit, no matter how I hide behind my towel. Better to die

Than know what happens when that eye opens. Better that the seas rise up and swallow

Our ship. Better that you jump overboard and freeze than wear the towel and swallow

The hatchling, the paralarva, the spawn of the mother, and let the tentacles of that tiny squid….

That tiny squid…What? Forgive me. I’ve lost my train of thought. A momentary lapse. Die,

Indeed. Folly. Better to eat. Better to taste. Better to know the forbidden. Open the lid

And swallow the forbidden food whole. Fear is part of the savour of the illicit. Let the eye

Of law be blind. Let risk be our reward. We are adventurers. We will live our wildest dreams.

If by live, I mean die. Or, rather, live squid-ridden, like me. The hatchling will swallow

Your brain. Your will. Your dreams. Her will. My Lady. My Mother. The Mother of All Squid

Is hungrier than you. Watch! The lid opens. It’s all been worth it. Her glorious, dinner-plate eye!