Changelings (7 page)

You might not like our part of the river,
Da said. He seemed to want to get rid of the otter.

Oh, let him come, Da. He’s our friend. We’ll take care of him,
Murel said.

He can sleep with me,
Ronan said.
I’ll make a den for him under my covers.

He’s not a pet,
Da said.
Your mother—

Mother will love him, and we know he’s not a pet. He’s our friend. We have to help him.

I’ll help him but he isn’t going all the way home with us. He can stay in the river, as he said, and return with my party to find the poachers. Then he’ll be with his own family again.

Ronan started to protest. Da was being uncommonly firm and unyielding, and there was something very grim and sad in his thoughts, but it skittered away before Ronan could read it.

That will be good, Murel and Ronan. You can come and play again and I can be your swimming guide, as you asked. And all of my family will guide you too if you bring them back. We will go see my cousins on the coast and they will show you the sea.

Oh, Da,
can
we?
the twins asked, but Da swam hard upstream and did not answer.

Otter raced the twins back up the river, and even though they were swimming against the current, they got home only a little after suppertime. Since they’d all snacked on fish throughout the day, none of them were hungry. Outside of town, Da climbed out of the water, shook himself dry, and put on the human clothes he’d hidden in a tree by the riverbank, while Ronan and Murel put on their shiny suits from Marmie. Otter dove down to inspect the riverbank.

Thin ice and many holes in the bank,
he reported when he popped his head up again.
Good holes for otter dens. Not as good as the home ones, but good enough for now.

Good night, Otter,
Murel and Ronan said. They turned and waved, and Otter looked at them with large eyes that once more seemed a bit sad. Then he leapt in the air, did a somersault, and dove underwater again.

CHAPTER 8

O
NE LAST SURPRISE
before the latchkay was that Marmie herself had arrived while they were gone. The tall, elegant woman with the curling dark hair and the impish smile greeted them with hugs.

“The suits fit you beautifully! I was just sure they’d be far too big,” she said.

“They work a treat too,” Ronan told her. “We didn’t get a bit cold after we put them on.”

“That was the general idea,” she said, laughing.

“I think maybe even wolves can’t bite through them,” Murel told her, knowing that someone as important as Marmie would like to have useful information about her gift.

“Now, how did you get a chance to learn that, I shudder to wonder?” Marmie asked.

“We were saving otters,” Murel said. “But then after we left they were otter-napped by some men. Da’s going to make the men bring the otters back, though, probably tomorrow.”

“Otter-napping? My goodness, I have
missed
Petaybee. I forgot how exciting it can be here. Well, we don’t have any otter-nappings where I live but I bet you’d find it exciting too.”

“Do you really live on a space station, Marmie?” Murel asked.

“Yes, a very nice space station. You’d like it. I just had a lovely pool installed at my home. It runs all through and around my house, and there’s a big deep part for diving. I had it all landscaped so it looks like a natural stream flowing through the woods.”

“That sounds nice,” Murel said politely. But she thought it was sort of odd to live on a space station and try to make it look like the woods. Why not just live in the real woods?

Ronan was thinking the same thing. “We can take you to the woods while you’re here, Marmie, anytime you want.”

She gave him a hug. “You are doing just that. I’m going to the latchkay with you.”

“Ronan, Murel, come get dressed,” their mother called. “I’ve things for you to carry.”

I wish we could just swim to the springs and go into the latchkay in seal form,
Murel said.
We could bring the otter. He’s probably lonely out there in the river all by himself without the hundred relatives.

He might come anyway, if he sees us going. Otters are pretty curious, I think.

They dressed in the furs and fancy bead-embroidered parkas made for them by Aisling, Auntie Sinead’s partner, who was the finest sewer in the entire village. The embroidery on both parkas had wiggly blue lines for water and fish of all colors—even purple ones and green ones—swimming around the cuffs, hem, front closure, and ruff of the hood. The matching mittens had fishes swimming in a circle around the wrists.

Mother’s parka was blue-green with little pairs of flowers embroidered for trim. She said the pairs stood for the twins. It was a pretty parka, but that didn’t mean Ronan thought he looked like a flower.

Most latchkays were held in the longhouse in the center of the village, and that was usually where the food was served, most of the speeches were made, and the dancing took place. Tonight everybody carried food and gifts with them to the hot springs cave. Usually there was a procession to the cave, but tonight everyone just came out of their houses and started walking.

I wonder why they’re doing it this way?
Murel said as they walked in the dark, slightly ahead of their parents. Their night vision was very good, and if it hadn’t been, the cats walked right in front of them. Besides, they’d been to the latchkay cave many times and knew the path so well they could walk it backward, which Ronan decided to try.

The cats caught his thought and stopped to watch. He stepped back onto Nanook’s tail. ’Nook hissed and spat, something she never did around the twins, and Ronan was so startled he slipped and fell, dropping the case he’d been carrying.

Oh boy, Mum will be mad,
Murel said, and stooped to help him pick it up. The latch had been jarred open by being dropped, and she opened the lid to put back whatever was in there.

Why did she give you this case with all your stuff to carry?
Murel asked.

Don’t know. What’s in yours?

“Hurry, children. We still have quite a ways to go.”

The drums began pounding, telling them that other people had already reached the cave.

“Mum, why is Ronan carrying his clothes and schoolbooks?” Murel asked.

Mum shook her head impatiently and pointed ahead. Murel was pretty sure that whatever the answer was, they weren’t going to like it.

The path to the cave was well trod by the time they slipped behind the steaming falls and found seats on the ledge.

The space behind the waterfall was not a cave exactly, because it didn’t go back very far. It was more of a room up above the hot springs, and it was the closest place to Kilcoole where people could go to talk to the planet.

Usually when everyone was packed in it felt cozy and snug, with the smell of the smoked salmon and soup floating around the people who had feasted at the latchkay mingling with the sulfury smell of the hot springs. The warmth of everyone’s body heated the grotto so that after a while they removed their furs.

Even in the winter when everything was iced over there was a strong sense of grasses and brambles, berries, and flowering weeds pushing up through the frigid soil, just waiting for the ice to break. Like the ghost of last summer, Murel thought, or the summers before that.

But tonight for the first time ever the twins felt restless and ill at ease in the grotto. The stalactites protruding from the ceiling seemed in danger of falling and stabbing someone, and the stone seat under their bottoms was very hard and very chilly.

Something bad is going to happen,
Ronan said.
And it’s going to happen to us.

I feel that way too but how could it with Mum and Da here—and Clodagh, Johnny, and Marmie, besides? They’ll probably give out to us for running off from everyone yesterday—well, swimming off, that’s all. I wonder if Da was always getting in trouble like this when he was our age?

Young Desi Sivatkaluk was the lead drummer tonight. Desi was the same age as Aoifa, but his father, Old Desi, had been the lead drummer at the last latchkay. Old Desi and his entire team fell through the ice and drowned while out on a hunting trip only a few weeks before, so now his son played his drum. He must have been practicing a lot because he never missed a beat.

Nanook and Coaxtl stood guard at the edge of the spring, just beyond the watery veil concealing the grotto. Someone uncovered a platter piled high with strips of salty-sweet, pink smoked salmon and started passing it around. When the plate got to Da, he got up and tossed some of the strips to the cats.

When everyone had eaten, Clodagh stood and said, “We have a troubling thing to tell our world tonight. Who will sing the first song?”

Auntie Sinead stood up. She had good songs and usually sang them Irish-style, to old tunes that went with lots of other words. She was the best dog driver, hunter, fisher, and trapper in Kilcoole, and her songs were full of action and adventure. This one she started by saying, “The tune is ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ and I call it”—she smiled at Ronan and Murel for the first time since their rescue—” ‘The Wild Shongili Twins.’ I’ve had only a day to find the words, and some of this I heard from others, but for those of you who did not know of my niece and nephew’s recent adventure, I made this song.”

She sang, her voice clear and strong:

“When I was young I ran my traps. My brother Sean he swam

As a selkie he could swim much more than human men

Now he has two children and as selkies they too swim

But now Sean’s moored to desk work. No more seal swimming
for him.

Without their Da to roam with them, these children swam away

To roam the fields of river ice with otters they did play

But wolves find otters tasty and the children almost died

Still our Murel she digs a hole, ‘Dive, otters, now!’ she cried.

My dogs and I we heard them cry, the big cats made all speed

The children now were crying, the wolves poised to do the deed

That would have broken my poor heart, Petaybee’s heart as well

And Sean and his brave wife would find a private bit of hell.

The cats they leapt, and me I swept the children to my sled

But had we not been looking, our twins would now be dead.

So I ask you, my neighbors, what will happen when again

The selkie twins go swimming with no one to shepherd them?”

“It was only the once,” Ronan said when she’d finished and everyone was making appreciative noises. “We were trying out the warm suits Marmie sent us.”

“We didn’t mean to be gone so long,” Murel said, looking into the faces of her neighbors, who were regarding them as if they were the tracks of some strange animals they had never seen before.

Sing them my song,
Otter said from somewhere nearby.

Otters make songs?
the twins asked together.

Of course otters make songs. Otters like fun, and music is fun. The waters are music to otters, and otters sing songs to its melody. But I cannot speak to the other two-leggeds and make myself understood. I will sing to you and you sing to them.

Okay, fine. Sing.

Announce us first!
the otter said.

Ronan told the other people, “Our otter friend has a song to share he wants to sing through us.”

“You wouldn’t be pullin’ our legs now, would you, young Shongili?” Kaiaitok Carnahan asked. Kaiaitok had the short stocky build and tilted eyes of his Inuit ancestors, but his sparse beard and mustache were bright red and his eyes green. His hair was red too, but nobody saw it anymore since he always wore a stocking cap in winter, a billed cap in summer. He had taken over the com shed after Uncle Adak retired. Adak said that what with all the new machines Petaybee had now, communications was getting way too complicated for his liking. Kaiaitok had gone offplanet to train when he was only a bit older than the twins were now.

If you were going to leave Petaybee, you had to do it when you were a kid. As you got older, your body was so adapted to Petaybee’s extreme temperatures and other special properties that you could die if you were offplanet very long. Kaiaitok had left plenty young enough to survive, but he had returned much changed, folk said. He thought the rest of them backward when he first came home, and himself full of learning. All of his learning still didn’t keep the machinery and electronic gizmos working when it was minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit. He had to take a snocle or a sled to give people their messages, just like Adak had done before him, only now there were more messages and people on the offworld end expected faster results. Kaiaitok got over himself pretty fast after the first couple of winters and a few latchkays. But however much he communicated with humans, he was not on social terms with four-legged, winged, or finned creatures. Ronan was hazy on whether Kaiaitok had communed with animals before he left the planet. His skepticism about Otter’s song didn’t seem to trouble the rest of the villagers.

Da relieved any doubts they might have had by saying, “Good. I’m glad the otter could compose on such short notice. I’ve not been able to do as much myself. Go on, you kids.”

Otter’s song did not rhyme like an Irish song and did not go with a drumbeat like the songs in the more traditional Inuit style. It had to be danced as well as sung. So the twins acted out their meeting with the otters, and the slide and the wolves and then the coming of the men and the taking of the otters. The words were sung very fast and the dance had to be done fluidly to go with the way the otter was singing it. There were some otter concepts that were difficult to put into human words, and these the twins tried to act out or skip over.

When they finished, Ronan said, “The otter who made this song is staying in the river near the village now, so he can guide us to the men who took his family. So nobody bother him, okay? He’s got enough on his mind right now.”

Da, Auntie Sinead, Mum, and Clodagh all exchanged looks. The twins couldn’t read them, and wondered what it was all about. But they could tell the adults were impressed.

“Anyone else got any songs?” Clodagh asked. When no one spoke, she rose and walked deeper into the cavern. The rest of the village followed her until they reached the central communion room. Behind them, Ronan and Murel slapped hands and practically skipped forward.

We really showed them. We are the first people ever to sing for otters. Or any other four-legged, I’ll bet,
Ronan said.

Murel could hardly disagree. Life was looking up. Ever since the suits arrived, it had been much more interesting around here. And tomorrow there would be another adventure with Da when he went to get back the otter’s family.

Nobody seemed to be mad at them after all, or inclined to scold, and it was past the time when they would.

The singing and talking were over. Now Petaybee would respond. Ronan and Murel always liked this part. It was a little like dreaming, except that the dream wasn’t yours exactly, it was Petaybee’s. It was also a bit like the way it felt when they became seals and seemed to be part of the water.

But when they got to the entrance of the larger cavern, they were stopped.

As if giant hands were pushing them back from the communion cave, they could not go forward. Murel put a foot out and brought it back right away.

Mum and Da sat down beside Clodagh without noticing the twins weren’t with them until Da looked up and called softly to them, “Aren’t you coming, kids?”

“Can’t,” Murel said. “Something’s wrong.”

Ronan had big tears in his eyes already. “It’s like there’s a big invisible door, Da.”

Clodagh was the one who answered. “There is a purpose in this that you will learn soon. Go to the outer cave but don’t go into the water. We will speak again when the planet has spoken.”

Bewildered, the twins retraced their steps.

It’s not fair. We did good. Is it Petaybee that’s mad at us and doesn’t want to talk to us?