Changelings

by Anne McCaffrey

  “They’ll like it,” Ke-ola said. “But they’re probably not even getting the messages. The Company Corps monitors traffic in the area, and besides, we have communications problems of our own. Lots of meteor showers. Very hard to keep a com relay up when the sky keeps falling.”

  “See what you started?” Da asked Mum playfully.

  “Me?” she asked, hand to breast in make-believe innocence.

  “No, seriously,” Murel said. “I don’t see why not.”

  “We have no spacecraft of our own,” Da pointed out.

  “Marmie has lots.”

  “Those things cost a great deal to operate, dear,” Mum said. “Marmie has been a wonderful friend to us and to Petaybee, but we mustn’t ask her to beggar herself.”

  “We could pay her back. Probably,” Ronan said.

  “Besides,” Da said, “there’s no hurry. Winter is coming and Ke-ola’s folk don’t care for the cold, from what he says. The volcanic area is still way too unstable for them to try to occupy it.”

  “But it won’t be for very long, right, Mum?”

  “We have no way of knowing that, kids. We can’t be inviting Ke-ola’s people to come and cohabit with active volcanoes.”

  “Pardon me, ma’am,” Ke-ola said, “but that’s how my people used to live. That’s what they remember from way back. They liked it. It’s how we learned the chants I showed you. How we could help Petaybee and everybody else who lives here. If some volcanoes are left all alone, or with people who don’t understand them, they get wild, explode all over the place, shake the whole world and make huge waves higher than the treetops, kill everybody.”

  “But Ke-ola, your people haven’t lived near volcanoes for many generations,” Mum said.

  “Don’t matter. Honus remember. Some people remember stories and songs. They can help the others.”

  “Well, you’re certainly optimistic, I’ll say that,” Mum said, sounding the opposite of optimistic.

  “What’s it like out there now, Mum?” Murel asked. The twins hadn’t been allowed to swim in the area since they returned, and Da didn’t seem inclined to do it either. Sky had returned to his hundreds of relatives on the coast, and the twins hadn’t heard from him, or Ke-ola from the Honu, for almost a month. The twins had spent the time teaching Ke-ola to ride a curly coat and showing him around the woods and villages surrounding Kilcoole. When the days were chilly, they swam at the hot springs. But this time they had not ventured beyond the area where their parents said they could wander. Almost losing their father had been an eye-opener. If they got into trouble, he’d come looking for them again, and he or other people in a rescue party could get hurt even if they themselves and Ke-ola were fine. So the twins obeyed the restrictions, though they chafed under them.

  Mum said, “The smoke kept us from seeing a great deal, but the central crater is now elevated to approximately a hundred feet above sea level.”

  Da gave a low whistle.

  “It is not the only vent, however. What we haven’t seen in the past is that another crater has surfaced about fifteen klicks south of the primary one, and there is some activity from a third another forty miles south of that. The landmass surrounding the primary crater covers something like five square miles at the moment, but of course there’s still pyroclastic flow from the crater, pumping steadily from it as if it were blood from the heart. I didn’t think volcanoes worked that way.”

  Da, who had been sitting at his desk while the kids stood around him, reached up, meaning to pat Ke-ola on the shoulder, but only reached his elbow, so he patted that instead. “Petaybean ones apparently do—especially one that has had a good coach.” With an apologetic glance at the twins, he added, “Or coaches.”

  “Has the planet given Clodagh any idea how long this might take?” Ronan asked.

  “I don’t think Petaybee wears a watch, Ro,” Murel said.

  Ronan colored and said, “I meant that Petaybee seemed to be pretty clear about wanting Ke-ola and his people to live there. I don’t think the planet would have been that specific if it didn’t have some notion that the land would be ready in Ke-ola’s lifetime.”

  “The Honu might know,” Ke-ola said.

  “How?” Murel asked.

  Ke-ola shrugged. “Honus know many things people don’t. Especially about weather and disasters and natural events.”

  “It can’t hurt to ask,” Murel said. “And I miss Sky. If the volcano is behaving itself, Mum, don’t you think it would be okay if we swim out there to see them?”

  “In a couple of days I could take you in the copter,” Mum re-plied.

  “But we want to swim!” Ro protested. “Ke-ola can swim with us—he’s not a selkie or an otter but he’s a really good swimmer. Please?”

  Mum was looking at Da, but he shook his head. “I’ll never get all this paperwork sorted if I take off now. I see no harm in them going, though. After all, they’ve already been through quite a bit out there and got through it all right. In fact, the rest of us, especially me, might not have made it without them.”

  Mum tilted her head and looked at him questioningly. He smiled and shook his head. “No, love, I still don’t remember what happened or how I survived. I suppose that will always be a mystery.”

  Da, Ronan asked. You don’t suppose maybe some special kind of animal who lives under the sea found you and took you into its city—its shelter—and took care of you, do you?

  Now, why would I suppose something like that, son? You have quite an imagination on you, boyo. No, what I suppose, between you and me, is that Petaybee somehow knew it was me in trouble—and me its first selkie and father of the selkie twins—and somehow led me into a safe place with enough air to keep me going until the fireworks were done or you found me.

  Yeah, I guess that makes more sense at that, Ronan said.

  Murel shot him a look. They had promised the deep sea otters that if they gave Da back, no one would learn of the strange city or its mysterious inhabitants. But Ronan hated keeping a secret from Da, especially one that concerned him and Petaybee. So he’d sort of given his father a chance to remember what really happened. Which he hadn’t. Also, it seemed that Da wouldn’t have believed them if Ronan and Murel had sworn to what they had seen, so it was okay not to push it. Ronan’s conscience was clear.

  “So we can go?” Murel asked hurriedly.

  “Yes, but take your dry suits. And Ke-ola, you’ll want to wear a wet suit. The water is far too cold this time of year for you to swim unprotected. I’ll fly out in the copter and pick you up Wednesday afternoon, so be right there at the otter colony. Got it?”

  “Got it,” the twins said, and bounded off, Ke-ola in their wake.

  I’M DYING TO know if the deep sea otters and that strange city of theirs survived the eruption, Ronan told his sister.

  Me too, but we promised not to go back there.

  Yes, but Sky didn’t promise. The Honu didn’t promise.

  The Honu doesn’t know about them.

  Are you sure? Ke-ola says the Honus know about many things. And Sky might have told the Honu about them. Nobody said anything about not telling animals about them—just no humans.

  The three of them had been swimming hard all day, with one break to portage themselves in human form to the foot of the falls. Fun to slide down when frozen, the cascade was much too dangerous to tackle even for seals and certainly for Ke-ola.

  The twins pointed out the site of the former otter dens to their friend before everyone plunged back into the water. Ke-ola dived in first, to give Murel privacy to change from her suit into her sealskin. He was also a little slower than they, so he would find the head start useful.

  Poor Ke-ola wasn’t much good at eating raw fish either, so he didn’t have the benefit of frequent energy-boosting snacks that they did.

  Finally they could smell the salt in the freshwater and saw the river broadening as its mouth opened to feed the sea. It came much sooner than they expected and was much broader than the
y remembered.

  I guess the shoreline has risen permanently here, because of the water displaced by the volcano, Murel said.

  We’re lucky we were out swimming when the waves hit, Ronan agreed. There used to be a lot more trees here—a lot more lots of things. And look at the sea otter island. It only barely sticks up out of the water now. A lot of it was flooded. They hadn’t noticed any of these things when returning from their harrowing encounter with the volcano, but now, in calmer times, the changes in the landscape were downright unsettling. Perhaps all of the changes hadn’t taken place immediately after the first major eruption. The steady pumping of lava Mum described could have accounted in part for the higher water level. What if the otters had lost their dens, become afraid to live here, and moved somewhere else?

  The twins began sending mental calls to Sky. It was a good idea to announce their presence and identify themselves anyway, so as not to alarm the hundreds of relatives, lest the three of them be attacked as invaders by angry otters. Sky, it’s us, Murel and Ronan! Can you hear us yet?

  Hah! River seals! The river seals have come! Sky’s thought sang out, and before the twins quite knew where they were, they were surrounded by eager, not angry, otters, who immediately wanted to show them a new mud slide they had made.

  Ke-ola was also surrounded, but at first the otters weren’t too sure about him. “Hey, what is this with the small, cute, and menacing?” he asked aloud. The twins started to translate for Sky but their otter friend had already assessed the situation.

  Mother, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, and uncles, do you not recall my story about the Honu? What did I say about this Honu?

  Hah! Not food! A sister three litters behind him answered.

  Yes! Did I not also tell of the Honu’s brave human protector? One who does not eat otters and is friend to the river seals? What did I say about him?

  Hah! Not food? asked his uncle five litters before his mother.

  Not food and not to be harmed. Friend. Like river seals.

  Friend? asked another much younger brother.

  Family member who is not an otter, Sky said quickly. He had evidently given the concept considerable thought since being introduced to it.

  At that, the otters around Ke-ola relaxed. One brushed gently against him in apology. The little sister dived down and resurfaced holding a rock in her paws, which she dropped into the water near Ke-ola’s hand. He caught it. “Thank you,” he said, but she didn’t hear. She watched him catch it, then dived back under the surface again.

  Sky! Murel exclaimed mentally, and dived under him and resurfaced to show her pleasure. We were afraid you’d moved your dens again, that maybe the bigger waves and higher tides had washed them out.

  Hah! Old dens are all underwater. Sea otter dens too. But riverbank is full of holes. Otters dig holes larger, have new homes. Have to get more rocks, though, he said. And the sea took back hundreds of clamshells.

  I’m sorry, Murel said. Maybe we can help you gather more. The twins pulled and flopped themselves onto the riverbank and shook off the water, then put on their dry suits.

  Did the sea otters make new dens too? Ronan asked. I see their island is mostly underwater now.

  “Hah!” Sky said. Sea otters don’t have dens. They need only the sea. Their back feet are flippers and they blow bubbles in their fur to make it warm and waterproof. When they are on land it is just for hunting food in pools on the beach. They sleep in the sea, wrapped in kelp. They mate in the sea. They have strange ways, but they are our cousins.

  And—the deep sea otters, Sky? Murel asked. What of them? Have the sea otters seen them since the volcano?

  “Hah!” Sky chittered a moment, plainly disturbed. No deep sea otters. No deep sea otter strange bubble den. All land now. Underwater land, under volcano land. But no deep sea otters. No.

  Oh, Ro! Murel said.

  Looks like we got Da out just in time, Ronan said.

  But we didn’t save the deep sea otters, or whatever they were. They helped Da, saved his life, and now they’re extinct and we didn’t even try to help them.

  We sort of had our hands full. And they didn’t want help. They wanted secrecy, remember?

  She couldn’t help it. She started crying. Everything had turned out fine for everyone except the heroic creatures who had saved their father, and it wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t.

  Ke-ola, who had been sending his own silent calls to the Honu, turned back from the sea in alarm when he heard her sobs. He swept her up in a huge and all-enveloping hug that nonetheless only circled her lightly within his arms, to comfort her but not break her. “Little sistah, why do you cry? Did someone bite you?”

  “No, no, it’s just too sad, Ke-ola,” she said. And she told him about the deep sea otters and what they had done and what had become of them. “If they hadn’t been so afraid of us, maybe they would have saved themselves. They wanted everything secret—well, I told you now, but I guess it doesn’t matter since they’re all dead.”

  “I would never tell,” he said.

  So she blurted out some of the rest of it, and Ronan finished. While they were talking, the sun completely disappeared and the moon rose. Its shaft fell on the mouth of the river, and within it they saw the head and shell of the Honu swimming toward them. He looked awfully sacred right then, his shell sheened by moonglow and his wet head glistening with light.

  “Except for the Honu, of course,” Ke-ola amended. In a moment he sighed and said, “And that’s okay. The Honu knew all about the deep sea otters. He says we should take them flowers.”

  “We can’t go,” Murel said. “We promised Mum.”

  “I didn’t promise,” Ke-ola said. “The Honu didn’t promise.”

  Sky, who had been following the thread through the twins’ thoughts, piped up, Sky did not promise. Deep sea otters did not think Sky could tell scientists about them, since otters cannot talk to two-legs who are not river seals.

  “You should wait till morning,” Murel said aloud to Ke-ola and Ronan. “We won’t be able to find flowers to make leis until then anyway.”

  They don’t want flowers, Sky said again. Otters have no use for flowers. Why flowers?

  Because—because they’re pretty, Sky, Murel answered, feeling even as she said it that the answer didn’t make much sense. Otters weren’t great flower fanciers unless they sometimes nibbled certain varieties. And then, she doubted the beings that had helped Da and inhabited the strange city were otters of any kind. Maybe some ancient pre-terraforming denizens of Petaybee preserved by their city and resurrected with the opening of the volcanic vent. Maybe aliens. But they were good, whatever they were, because they saved Da, and if the Honu thought they deserved flowers, then they did.

  Rocks. Clams. Food. These are good gifts. Pretty gifts. Deep sea otters would like these gifts. Not flowers.

  “He’s got a point,” Ronan said aloud. To Ke-ola, he said, “Sky thinks the deep sea otters wouldn’t appreciate a flower lei as much as one made out of something otters value—like rocks or clams.”

  “But we can’t make a rock lei or a clam lei—can we?” Murel asked.

  “Clamshells,” Ke-ola said. “They used to make leis from shells sometimes. We could net them with seaweed.”

  Sky and all of the other otters, including the sea otters who had congregated by the shore to see what all of the excitement was about, agreed that clamshells were best. Dead otters ate no clams but would enjoy the pretty shells. Living otters would have to eat the clams for the dead otters. It made sense to them. The tide pools, beach, river mouth, and sea soon frothed around diving otter butts, the owners of which made short work of the whole clams and deposited the shells into huge piles. These they basketed in strands of kelp and other seaweed, enclosing each shell in three or four strands, then tying another strand at top and bottom. It took a very long time. The twins weren’t very good at it, so in the end, Ke-ola ended up with three leis, one from each twin and one from their father, which h
e, the Honu, and Sky would carry to a place as close to the deep sea otters’ “den” as Sky could guess.

  Murel didn’t think the leis were pretty at all, but she only thought it, so as not to insult Ke-ola.

  Sky disagreed. Pretty. Much pretty. Hundreds pretty. All of the other otters agreed that the leis were hundreds pretty.

  So that was all right. If the otters liked the leis, the self-proclaimed deep sea otters would have liked them.

  The day was half gone before Ke-ola, the Honu, Sky, and an otter escort set off for the volcano. Ronan and Murel swam out part of the way with them, but kept their promise and didn’t go near the volcano. Well, not very near. Actually, it was hard to judge because, what with all the building up it had done, the volcano sort of met them earlier than they expected to encounter it. At least, the underwater part that was the skirt of the island extended until it was much closer to the northern mainland than they remembered.

  It didn’t matter anyway. Once they came to the place where the lava flow had cooled on the ocean floor, building it up until the water was comparatively shallow there, nobody stood much chance of getting anywhere near the place where the deep sea otters had so recently dwelled in their peculiar city.

  That being the case, the twins watched when the Honu suddenly stopped swimming and turned back to Ke-ola, treading water, and Sky. Otters talk to other otters best, the Honu told Sky.

  The twins felt relief from Sky. The little river otter had not wanted to go back to the volcano, because it was a long swim, because he was not a sea otter and didn’t like salt water very much, and because his sort of otter had the intelligence to avoid erupting volcanoes. After a number of “Hahs,” he dropped his clamshell lei into the sea with the thought, Deep sea otters, here are your presents—nice shells, only you are not here and are probably dead. The thoughts were accompanied by vocalized chitterings and mumblings that were otter verbalizations.

  To the twins’ surprise, the Honu and Ke-ola swam back to them.