But Bunny knew she couldn’t help Diego or the others by slowing down. She trudged back up the path she had made and then began laboriously cutting through the snow once more. It was heavy work and she was soon so weary that she felt like crying, but her tears would only freeze, making her more miserable. Wouldn’t it be weird to have been freed from the pirates and finally return home, only to freeze to death before she could be found? With the new-falling snow masking the fading horizon, help could be quite close and they’d never know until they found her frozen corpse. And the others. It had happened more than once.
“Helllooo, anybody!” she called into the gathering darkness. “Sláinte! It’s me, Bunny! Is anybody there? Hellooo! Come and get me now!”
Then something that wasn’t supposed to be possible happened. She was right out there in the open air, not in a cave or a valley, and an echo picked up her voice, the way it had a few weeks earlier when Phon Tho visited, the way it had at Yana and Sean’s wedding.
“HELLOO, IT’S ME, ME, ME, ME . . .” the echo said.
And then it blended with a somewhat smaller voice, “MEOW MEOW meow!” a cat’s mew complaining over and over again.
Bunny called back, glad to hear the cat. Did that mean that Clodagh was behind? But no, the cat was alone, appearing off to the right like a little pinpoint of orange flame at first, crying impatiently for her to hurry forward. When Bunny backtracked to get the others, the cat sat at the end of the trail she had made, waiting for them.
“We’re saved!” she told Yana. “A cat came for us!”
“Good,” Megenda said. “How do you cook ’em?”
“You don’t,” Diego said. “You follow them.”
“I’ve heard of a wild-goose chase, but this is ridiculous,” Dinah said. Bunny turned her back on them and returned to the end of her trail. As soon as it saw her the cat sashayed forward, tail held low to protect the tenderest parts and brushing the snow. Single file, they slogged forward after it.
The distant lights of Tanana Bay appeared just about the time some of the party were thinking that perhaps they’d do better for a bit of a rest, despite the fact that night had already fallen and the air was growing colder by the minute, knifing through their skin until at last they were too numb to feel the pain. Only the luminous eyes of the cat guided them when it turned in its tracks to regard them with impatience. Didn’t they realize it had supper waiting and a nap to take?
The feeling in Bunny’s legs had drained away some time earlier, though she continued to piston them in and out of the snow while the others followed. Once they spotted the cabins, the cat cast her a glance, then scampered away to disappear into the town.
The welcome sight of cabins revived the flagging energies of everyone in the party. It helped that the snow closer to the settlement was already trampled into trails, and they followed one of these easily to the outermost cabin.
It was empty, though smoke still poured from the chimney. They all gratefully crowded inside to warm themselves by the fire. When Megenda would have crawled into the fireplace, Bunny hauled him back so he wouldn’t scorch himself; she grabbed a fur cover from the nearest bunk and draped it around his shoulders. He could not seem to stop the shivering. There was soup in the kettle on the hob, so Bunny ladled him out a cup, which he could barely hold in his hands without spilling.
“Don’t know how much of someone’s supper we can take without them going short,” Bunny said by way of explanation when she saw the hopeful expression on Dinah O’Neill’s face as she, too, crowded in to the fireplace. Bunny was right proud that neither Diego nor Yana seemed to need the fire. Just being in out of the cold was sufficient. “No one would object to Megenda having a cup of soup to stop those shivers. You all get warm while I go see where people are.” She took a parka off the peg on the back of the door. Outside, the temperature would be dropping like a stone from a height.
Tanana Bay didn’t boast half as many cabins as Kilcoole did, but Bunny had been in several empty homes before she came to the Murphys’, where the cat was sitting beside the fire and cleaning the snow from between its paw pads. The cat glanced up at her, then returned to its cleaning. She saw the raised trapdoor and the open hole in the floor. Leaning over the opening, she could hear voices, excited voices, lots of them.
“Hallooo down there?”
There was no immediate response, probably because everyone was talking so loud. After waiting a moment, Bunny descended. She’d never seen a communion place entry so bright, something that would certainly have provoked a lot of discussion on any occasion.
What she didn’t expect to see was men and women armed with all kinds of homely weapons: axes, staves, nets, and pitchforks, as well as the usual bows, lances, and knives.
“What’s happening?” she cried, touching the first man by the arm.
“Glad you could make it,” he said, giving her a scant look. “We got big trouble coming to Tanana Bay and we’ll need every body we can get to turn ’em back.”
“Turn who back?” And Bunny felt a gelid spurt of fear. What had happened while they were off-planet? Had Intergal gone back on its word?
“That pirate! Louchard!” someone else explained, leaning around the first man to put in his quarter credit.
“Hey, you don’t come from around here.”
“No, I’m from Kilcoole but—”
“Buneka!” said the Voice.
“Buneka?” And that shout came from Sean’s throat. Bunny was so astonished to hear the Voice come out with her own name that she didn’t react until Sean had her in his arms and was whirling her about, laughing and crying.
“You’re free. You’re all right!” And he was feeling her over to be sure she was, his eyes both glad and anxious. Then he looked around her. “Yana?”
“She’s all right, too, Sean, really, she’s fine.”
Sinead pushed through the crowd then and embraced Bunny as warmly as Sean had done, also asking where Yana was.
“Hold it down,” Sean said in a loud voice. Everyone in the communion place was trying to understand who the newcomer was that the Voice had recognized so unexpectedly.
So it took minutes before Bunny could explain, and then minutes more before she made it clear that the pirate was not on Petaybee, only his first mate and Dinah O’Neill were. Then she had to calm Muktuk and Chumia down because they were so astonished, and gratified, that their kinswoman was right there in Tanana Bay. Immediately they were in a quandary about welcoming her if she wasn’t bringing good news about Louchard and his kidnap victims.
“A moment’s hush, please,” Sean said in a loud authoritative voice. He was instantly obeyed as he bowed his head to consider what to do next. Everyone tried not to fidget.
“So”—now Sean was ready to recap—“you’ve all been released and everyone is safe?”
“Thanks to the cat upstairs,” Bunny said. “I don’t know how it managed to find us—out hunting and heard me call, I suppose.”
Sean and the others exchanged sheepish glances. “We all had a map,” he admitted with a thumb jerked back to the still-glowing wall of the cave. “But the cat acted on it while the rest of us were gathering a force to protect ourselves from the pirates.”
“The only two that are here are warming themselves nearby. There’s a couple of others on ice, you might say, about where the map says.” She indicated the slowly fading spiral and line, dribbling away as the microscopic animals forming the phosphorescence deserted the map to go on to more important matters. Chumia busily sketched the whole map on the back of her hand. The portion of the map that crossed waves remained as bright and deliberate as it had been when Bunny first arrived.
“Yana talked Dinah into getting Louchard to release Marmie and Namid, too, since they’re afraid to return Marmie to Gal Three and can’t get any ransom for her.”
“Wait, wait! Who’s this Namid?” Sinead asked.
“An astronomer Louchard’s also got imprisoned.” Bunny didn’t explain abou
t Namid being divorced from Dinah, because it wasn’t really an important detail. “We came in the Jenny’s shuttle, only the damned fool landed right on the edge of the ice, so they’re about to take a dive off the ice in the inlet.” At Sean’s gasp of horror, she added quickly, “Oh, Yana, Diego, and me, as well as Dinah O’Neill and the first mate, got ashore okay, but there are crewmen still inside and they can’t go nowhere right now.”
“And they’d have nowhere to go here either, so crowded we are,” Sinead said sourly.
So everyone started talking at once again until Sean, in midflight up the stairs on his way to Yana, stopped and held up his hands.
“Okay now, folks, let’s just calm down. If the ship’s disabled, we can relax. There’s just two people to be considered, and I think we can handle this, Muktuk, Chumia, Sinead, and me. Go on back to your homes and your dinners. And thank you very much for being so ready to stand on the line. Sure do appreciate your support.”
Then, followed by Bunny, Sinead, and the two Murphys, Sean swarmed up the steps two at a time.
“Where did you say you stashed them, Bunny?” Sean asked when they got outside.
“First cabin I came to.” Bunny pointed. “Megenda was shaking so bad he needed to get warm!”
“Oh, that’d be the Sirgituks,” Chumia said, smiling. “They won’t mind. They’re still down below. Shall I ask them to stay here, in our place, until we’ve got things all settled?”
“Would you please, Chumia?” Sean asked with an appreciative smile, but he kept right on striding toward the place where Yana was.
He was at least ten strides in front of Bunny and Muktuk when he reached the door and went in. Bunny trotted to catch up and heard a very surprised Yana call out Sean’s name. When Bunny entered the Sirgituks’ cabin, Sean and Yana were locked in each other’s arms, cheek to cheek, eyes closed, rocking back and forth and not saying a word. Yana’s face was wet with tears.
Dinah O’Neill was looking Sean up and down as if she was hunting for something she wasn’t seeing, and there was a bit of a smirk to her grin. Megenda was still shivering, though not quite as violently now he had the warmth of the soup in him. Yana and Diego had removed both the pirates’ clothing and their own in Bunny’s absence, and were wrapped in the Sirgituks’ extra clothing and blankets. A kettle boiled on the stove.
“Dinah O’Neill, this is Muktuk Murphy O’Neill and Chumia O’Neill O’Neill, your kinfolk. And the man by the fire is First Mate Megenda of the Jenny,” Bunny said.
“Greetings, kinswoman,” Muktuk said, “though I think we gotta do some straight talking before anyone’s going to want to welcome you proper like. Now, let’s get this fella seen to. Whatcha think, Sinead? Give him a tot of the juice?”
Sinead had followed Muktuk in and was eyeing Dinah O’Neill with a less than charitable expression on her face. She had relaxed on seeing that Yana was well enough to cling to Sean, and now she gave the shuddering Megenda her attention.
“D’you have some of Clodagh’s juice?”
Muktuk nodded. “Always keep some handy since the time it brought my brother back to life, when he fell into the fish hole that winter.”
He rummaged in one of the overhead cupboards in the kitchen corner of the house and dragged out a medium-sized brown bottle. Holding it up to the light, he twirled it, checking the level of the liquid. Satisfied, he got down a glass, poured in an exact two fingers of liquid, then handed the glass to Megenda.
“This’ll stop those shivers before you come loose at the joints.”
Megenda was evidently willing, at this point, to take anything that might reduce the chill he had taken. Grasping both edges of the fur rug in one big hand, he tossed off the contents of the glass in one gulp.
Muktuk regarded him and Megenda looked right back, sort of superciliously, until the juice made itself known down his gullet. Then his eyes bugged out, fit to pop from his head, and he gasped, exhaling, and even Bunny, on the far side of the room, recoiled as his exhalation reached her.
Dinah O’Neill looked angry. “What did you give him?”
“Just what Clodagh would have were she here,” Bunny said smugly. “You watch. It’ll clear off those shivers as if he’d swallowed a hot poker.”
Megenda, mouth still wide open, dragged in a breath as deep as the one he had just expelled, settled it in his lungs, shook his head, and stood straight and tremorless in front of the fire.
“What was in that?” he asked in a raspy voice, letting the fur drop from his shoulders. His observers could now see the beads of sweat standing out on his forehead. Close as he’d stood to the fire, it hadn’t been able to warm him to sweating.
Sean grinned. “Clodagh Senungatuk makes it up for dogsled drivers to use in case of a ducking. Used it a time or two myself to good effect.”
“When you come out of the water after a good swim?” Dinah O’Neill asked with an odd smile on her lips as she regarded Sean, her head tilted to one side.
He gave her a long stare. Then he smiled back at her. “I don’t need it on those occasions, Dama. I’m in my element then.” He gestured to the table, pulled out one of the chairs, and settled Yana in it. He hadn’t let go of her hand all this while and he continued to hold it during the next discussions.
“That stuff keep its whammy long?” Dinah asked, looking respectfully at the bottle as she took a seat. When Sean nodded, she asked, “That the sort of thing Petaybee does like no other culture?”
“We have developed certain medications that are effective in this sort of climate, yes. That’s one. I doubt it would have much usage on say, a tropical world, so the general demand would be small.”
“But something that when it’s needed, there isn’t anything as efficacious?” Dinah went on.
Sean inclined his head. “Like the cough syrup that cured my wife’s”—he gave Yana such a fond look that Dinah O’Neill blinked wistfully—“cough. How is it now, dear?”
“I haven’t so much as sputtered once I got back into Petaybean air, Sean,” Yana replied, squeezing his fingers.
“No, you haven’t.” Dinah O’Neill blinked again and then frowned before she gave her head a little shake. “No, you didn’t manufacture those coughing fits.”
“No, I did not,” Yana said firmly. “I definitely did not. But I’m not going to go off-planet ever again.” And this time her free hand went to the pouch at her neck. “Not for any reason, no matter how damned important.”
“Not that Sean’d let you,” Bunny said.
“Now, Dama, what do we do?” Sean said directly to Dinah O’Neill. “Have you indeed come to seek sanctuary here from your pirate captain?”
“Actually”—now the famous O’Neill smile broke across Dinah’s pert face—“I’m here as spokesperson for Captain Louchard to discover what, ah, shall I say, local wealth, can be used to defray his costs.”
“His costs?” Diego said, angrily.
“Well, yes, of course, he has to make some profit from what has turned out to be an ill-advised undertaking.”
“Won’t restoration of the half-sunk shuttle suffice?” Sean asked, a twitch of a smile on his lips.
“Oh, dear heavens, no. The shuttle can either sink on its own, or the Jenny’s tractor beam will lift it,” Dinah O’Neill said airily. “No, the captain expended a considerable amount of time and energy, plus rations and accommodations . . .”
“Rations and accommodations!” Diego burst out.
“Why, you were fed from the captain’s table—”
“I doubt that,” Yana muttered.
“Well, my table, then,” Dinah corrected herself. “And fresh fruit and good meat . . .”
“Only when we threatened hunger striking,” Diego said irately.
“Whatever,” Dinah said, dismissing his complaint. “Time and effort, as well as supplies, mean some compensation must be forthcoming, or I fear the captain will retaliate against the planet.”
“What’dya think he’ll do?” Diego asked. “
Sue it?”
“Captain Louchard don’t make mistakes,” Megenda said menacingly.
“Oh, dear,” Dinah O’Neill said, pretending dismay, and she leaned conspiratorially across the table to Sean and Yana. “The first mate isn’t going to be very easy to deal with, what with all he’s gone through.”
“Then he’d better be grateful we bothered to save his skin,” Bunny said fiercely. “Because I’ll never do it again.”
“You will find, Dama, that none of your captives are ransomable.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Dinah said sweetly. “You’ve already proved conclusively that this planet has products that are lifesaving.”
“The juice is useful, that’s true, but let’s face it, how many hypothermic victims have you encountered in your line of work?” Sean asked. “And while it doesn’t cost much to produce, there’s not what you’d call a good profit margin in juice either.”
“Ah, but there may be other items with which to pay your ransom . . . like your swimming, ah, say I call, technique?”
Sean threw back his head and laughed heartily. “That’s hereditary, Dama, and not many would put up with the inconveniences.”
“Like running around starkers in minus-forty Celsius?”
“Exactly.”
“I think I need to speak to the powers that be on this place. You are, if you’ll pardon me, really not the final authority. Or so I’ve been led to believe.” Dinah had cocked her head again at Sean. Then she turned abruptly to Bunny. “You promised to guide me to one of the communion places of this planet. Do so now.” She rose. So did Megenda.
“I will guide my kinswoman,” Muktuk said, putting a hand on Sean’s shoulder to keep him seated by Yana.
Dinah gave Bunny and Diego a stern look and pointed her index finger at them. Megenda took the half step necessary to loom above them. Bunny shrugged and Diego glowered, but both rose from the bench. So did Sinead, who eyed Megenda as she idly caressed the handle of her skinning knife.
“Remember to listen carefully, Dama,” Sean said, and then paid no more attention to the group setting out to the communion place.
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