Me too, but I think the best thing, since Mabo is looking for us here, is for us to go back to the prison, Ronan said.
But what about the squid? And if that boat sees us again, the crew might get more curious.
I think the boat took care of the squid by at least diminishing their appetites. Besides, you said yourself that they have to stay down deep. We’ll just keep near the surface and we should be fine. I saw some other offshore rocks closer in. If we can reach those, we can decide what to do next.
Murel was so weary and sore, she wasn’t sure she could make it all the way back to the prison. But following her brother, she slid beneath the waves.
I wish there were some other way, she complained.
What do you suggest? Ro’s voice carried a sarcastic edge to it. We don’t have arms and legs until we can dry out on land. We can hardly overpower that sentry as seals. Unless you think we could flop him down and flipper-slap him into submission?
No need to be mean. Who saved your blubber butt when you were stupid enough to get grabbed by the squid?
Saving blubber butts from squids went two ways, to the best of my recollection.
There has to be a way, she insisted. She felt even less cooperative than she had before Ronan made his smart remark. Then, as if inspired by her annoyance, she thought of something. We can’t attack him on the land, but we could in the water. Hands and legs are only an asset on land.
Unless the hands are holding a harpoon? Ronan suggested mulishly.
That’s where being smarter than the average seal comes in—er—handy, she replied. If he has one, once we get him in the water we can take it away from him. We can fight sharks, whales, and squids. One measly person shouldn’t be that hard. Here’s what we do—we’ll split up and one of us will attract his attention from the water. If he’s really after us, we should be able to lure him in. If not, the one attracting his attention will have to hold it and make a lot of splashing to cover for the other one climbing out onto the lower rocks, drying off, and getting the better of him.
Rrright. Then what?
Well, we find out what he’s doing on our rocks, for one, and keep him busy while we rest up enough to go somewhere else. For starters.
Ronan grunted. Brilliant.
Ro, I absolutely cannot make that swim again.
But you’ve enough fight left in you to take on a possibly armed human?
If I must.
Very well then, he caved unexpectedly. I’ll do the fancy swimming and you flop ashore once I’ve got his attention and either push or bump him into the water if he’s not gone for it already. Then I’ll take care of him.
See that you do, she said, her tartness hiding the gratitude she felt that he’d found a way to do the energetic bits. I don’t want to have to rescue you again.
No worries on that account, he said. In case anyone is watching from shore, you go ’round to the back so you can change without being seen. Let me know once you’re in position and I’ll start the show.
It wasn’t a bad plan. It almost worked. But the moment the person on the rocks spotted Ro, he raised a whistle to his lips and let out a long blast.
That doesn’t sound good, Ro said. Show cancelled. I think you’re going to have to go for that swim after all.
He dived again, but before Murel could beach herself, the watcher from the rocks dived too. Murel backflipped in the water and headed back to the portside to help Ronan. But long before she rounded the rocks she heard a motor roaring toward them and heard Ro cry, They’ve set nets! Swim out to sea, sis.
And leave you?
I’m caught! Get away. You can’t get caught too. You’re going to have to save my blubber butt again.
ZUZU WAS AN excellent swimmer, as cats went, but cats were not made for life in the sea. Sky capered around her, splashing, diving, and laughing with otter chittering and chattering, but the amusement value of his antics quickly dwindled.
She liked water, but this was far too much of a good thing.
This water is very warm, Sky told the cat. And there are many fish, but so far none with shells.
Merci for the information, but I have enjoyed enough of this water. I believe I will return now to the land.
But we only started swimming! Sky protested.
For otters this may be the beginning of swimming, but for cats, even a cat of aquatic inclinations such as moi, it is time for the swimming to end. Je suis fatigué, otter.”
Tired of swimming? Sky could scarcely see how that was possible. Maybe if you just sleep for a while.
Do not be ridiculous! I cannot sleep and swim at the same time!
You do not have to swim. Just wrap yourself in kelp to anchor yourself and float until you are rested.
Cats who float are deceased, otter.
You did not blow enough bubbles into your fur when you groomed, he chided.
I do not blow bubbles into my fur on any occasion whatsoever, she replied indignantly. Cats do not blow the bubbles, you comprehend.
I did not know that. No wonder more cats don’t live in the water. Okay then. Return to land. I must find the river seal children.
Zuzu turned her sodden and skinny corkscrew tail to him and began paddling in the opposite direction. But nowhere did she see the land the otter claimed they had only just left.
She kept paddling, but land still hid itself from her. Her paws felt like anchors and her body sagged in the middle. Although the waves were neither high nor rough, water kept splashing into her face and she had to snort to clear her nose. Her tongue tasted of salt and her mouth was very dry. Her eyes also felt hot and dry. She grew so tired she could not think and could scarcely feel. And then a large series of waves began pounding against her and she could no longer keep her head above the water.
Adieu, otter! she thought, and felt herself sinking, drowning, and had visions of her lovely bed on the Piaf, of her food dish in the galley, of Adrienne waving her peacock feather for her to hunt, of cuddling in Adrienne’s arms and being stroked, of sleeping peacefully beside her friend. Of her battles with the prison rats with their sharp claws and teeth.
She had always won those battles, but suddenly she felt the teeth dig into her neck and carry her off—merde! The rat of death had come to claim her!
THE SLED CARRYING Yana arrived in Kilcoole just in time for Sean to meet it. As soon as he’d gotten his feet under him, he’d ducked into the cabin and took his and Yana’s beaded latchkay parkas and mukluks from the storage chest, and her best snow pants and an extra sweater and a change of thermal underwear. Belatedly he grabbed the fancy patterned mittens and hats Clodagh had knitted for the two of them with portraits of seals and track cats in black, white, gray, and beige curly-coat wool.
Soaked and frozen, Yana would be needing her layers. He could only hope her adaptation and acclimatization to Petaybee had reached the point where it would protect her from the worst effects of her dunking. He thought it would. Maybe the ice had thinned because of that new warm channel opened by the quake and that was why she fell in, but he suspected the channel had been opened to protect her from the worst effects of her polar plunge. The planet was certainly sentient enough to know that she was a valuable ally. As for himself, the dry suit kept him perfectly warm, but he didn’t want some inquisitive uniformed lad or lass to start wondering why he was dressed so differently from the others.
He handed Yana’s spare clothing to Aisling, who was hovering around the sled, unfastened the blankets bundling his wife into the basket, and lifted her out, then turned to Clodagh’s cabin. As he entered, the soldiers were being herded by the rifle-toting villagers into the longhouse.
Clodagh, being Clodagh, had somehow known she was needed and had a fire going in her stove and a kettle boiling on top. The kettle was dented, and he saw that many of the bunches of herbs she had hung from the rafters to dry were strewn around on the floor and crushed. The kitchen table was still overturned, and one of the villagers dashed past him to set it right,
propping up a broken table leg with a spare log.
Deirdre, Clodagh’s apprentice, dragged her bed close to the fire, and Sean laid Yana down on it. She promptly sat upright, brushing off with wet mittens all offers of assistance but his and Clodagh’s. The ice melted from her hair and lashes and made her look as if she’d been caught out in the rain.
He peeled off her mittens, and Clodagh cut off the heavy military boots that for some reason she was wearing instead of her mukluks, which were lighter and worked much better during Petaybean winter than the Corps-issued ones. He meanwhile shrugged off his own outer gear and peeled the dry suit off to halfway down his chest, then took her bare hands in his and placed them between the suit and his skin. Her hands were as cold as the ice itself, but he felt the warmth coming back into them in answer to his own body’s heat.
Clodagh examined Yana’s feet, then took Yana’s hands off Sean’s chest one at a time and examined them. The blue-white of frostbite had already begun fading. She put Yana’s hands back against his chest. “You’ll mend,” she said with her usual economy of speech. Then she beamed at Sean. She had a beautiful smile and a beautiful voice, and her huge roundness had always seemed to Sean to be Petaybee personified. Healing, comforting, protective, even maternal. Without saying anything, she was clearly telling him it was a good thing they had a selkie in the village.
Yana caught the look and shook her head, disgusted at herself. “Once more the little human in the family needed rescuing. Thanks, love. Some hijacker I turned out to be.”
“I don’t see a ship on the pad, and the crew are under guard in the longhouse. I’d say you did a pretty good job, acushla.”
“I could kill Aidan,” Yana muttered.
“What did I do?” her threatened homicide victim asked in a wounded tone.
“Why did you need to cut a fishing hole in the ice so early in the season?” she asked.
He turned a stricken face to Sinead, who entered with much stamping of boots and slapping together of mittens to rid them of snow before hanging them on hooks beside the fire. No doubt she had tended to the dogs before coming in from the cold herself. Aisling helped her with her parka and brushed the snow from her short dark hair, saying, “Yana’s mad at Aidan about the ice hole.”
“My fault, Yana. He’s not to blame.”
“See, you can keep murder in your own family,” Aidan said, holding up his hands as if in surrender, “I was just following orders.”
“I had our people set a few little surprises for our guests,” Sinead said. “I’d have mentioned it, but things were moving a bit fast by then and there was no chance to warn you.”
“Petaybee knew,” Sean said. “I felt a quake, and a warm channel opened up from one of the springs, right past where Yana was. I had been thinking it was the warm current that thinned the ice and caused her to go bathing so early in the season, and with her clothes on too.”
“Very funny,” Yana said. She stuck her tongue out at Sean, but since she was within two inches of his face already, he took advantage of the gesture to give her a lengthy demonstration of how glad he was that she was safe.
“Well, then,” Sinead said, “I think it’s high time for the rest of us to interrogate our prisoners. Come along, you lot.”
Clodagh pulled on her parka too.
“We’ll be good, Clodagh,” Sean said.
“Shush,” the big woman replied, following the others. “I’m needed elsewhere.”
SKY FLIPPED ONTO his back with great difficulty, his jaws aching with their burden. Land was far away. Hundreds of waves. Hundreds and more hundreds. Otters swam well, but wet cats were very heavy.
He knew she was alive because he could hear her crying inside. Also, she did not smell dead. There was a very sharp difference between alive smell and dead smell, and she still smelled alive, mostly.
The waves washed over them fast and slapping. Then Sky, who had been focused on his passenger, heard the engine, and then he did not.
Someone with a human voice called, “Shut ’er down, Lloyd, and come and have a look at this. I swear, this planet must be in retrograde today or some such foolishness, because as long as I’ve lived here I’ve never seen anything but stiffs and squid. Now all of a sudden there’s seals and this! Look to the stern.”
“What is it, sir? I can’t make it out,” the other voice said.
“I couldn’t swear to it, but I think it’s a river otter carrying a drowned rat or something.”
River otter? This man obviously did not know a river otter from a sky otter!
“Isn’t that something. Looks like they’re headed for shore. I’ll steer around them, shall I?”
“No—no, Lloyd, I know you’re not going to believe it, but that’s no rat, it’s a pussycat, and look at how that otter is struggling to keep her head above the water. Either that otter is trying to save that cat or this tub is a luxury cruise liner.”
“No kidding?”
Sky swam toward their voices, which were friendly and also coming from the right direction. Then he stopped. The boat smelled like old death.
“It’s okay, little feller, bring the kitty here. Ol’ Cap’n Terry won’t hurt you or your little buddy. I like cats. Never liked otters all that much, but one that would try to rescue a drowning cat is an otter I’d like to meet.” His voice had a pleasing rumbly singsong to it, the same sort of tone as Father River Seal and his sister and other humans who did not eat otters. The boat smelled bad, but Sky’s sense of smell was very good at picking odors apart from each other. He could read all of the secret meanings of a scent poem or even an otter scent epic. These were usually travel tales of places visited but also told who the otter leaving the epic was, as well as his parentage, ancestry, mate, offspring, and how many fish each had caught lately.
Cap’n Terry’s scent was good, like Father River Seal’s, and Lloyd’s scent was also good. Sky swam to the death boat.
“Dip net!” the captain commanded. A round hoop with a net in it came into the water. At first Sky tried to turn and just put Zuzu into the net, but her head went under, so he swam backward himself, into the net.
It raised him into the air. He told himself that that was fine. Sky otters were used to the air. He wasn’t sure about cats, but he thought that at this moment Zuzu was probably glad to be anywhere but in the water.
They were hauled over the side of the boat and lowered to the deck. One of the men reached for Zuzu, and Sky unclenched his jaws, which were aching from holding on to her with the right amount of pressure to keep her skin between his teeth while not biting through it.
With Zuzu on her tummy, the man pushed on her back and water poured out of her nose and mouth, but still she didn’t move. Putting her on her back, the man tilted her small wet head to one side. Water did not actually make cats look good. Zuzu’s fur did not look sleek like an otter’s—it glued itself to her body and made her look thinner than she was, so that every cat bone showed. Her whiskers drooped and her curly tail looked tiny and sad without its fluff. It was good they had been swimming in warm water. On Petaybee she would have frozen. With one finger the width of a large eel, the man gently pushed the cat’s jaws apart and pulled out a bit of seaweed. More water followed. Then he put that finger on her chest and began moving it up and down. After the first hundred finger pushes, he bent very low.
“Hah!” Sky exclaimed, and scrambled to his paws. It looked as if the man was trying to eat Zuzu. He covered her mouth and nose with his own mouth, but he did not bite. He puffed with his own chest, then removed his mouth and pushed her chest some more.
The third time he did this, Zuzu’s paws flailed the air and she thought, Stop! Do not eat me alive.
He is not eating, cat. He is giving you breath. Instead of blowing bubbles into your fur, as an otter would do, he is blowing them into you so you will have some to keep the water out.
Otter? I have now achieved a sufficiency of the bubbles. Tell him to stop.
Sky could not transmit
his thoughts to humans who were not river seals—no thoughts except those expressed in scent notes, at least. The note he and Zuzu left for Adrienne’s tormentor had been very clear, but this one had too many parts to it, so he would have to show the human what to do instead. He leaped onto his back, put his front paws into the curly hair under the back of the head covering the man wore, and pulled back.
“What the frag?” The man sat up and dumped Sky to the deck. Sky could have hung on to the man’s hair, but he didn’t wish to use his mighty otter strength to harm the helpful human. He only wished to get his attention.
Freed of the man’s finger and other attempts to revive her, Zuzu weakly rolled onto her paws and began to busy her tongue with trying to lick her fur back into shape. Sky rushed forward to get a few salty licks in.
Zuzu’s fur was not amenable to having bubbles blown into it, but with the hot sun pouring onto the deck, her fur quickly started drying.
It itches! she complained, scratching herself with first her left hind foot, then her right. Sky resumed licking the salt from her body.
Just as his mouth was tasting very dry from all of the salt, a small can of water appeared nearby. It was fresh, and both he and Zuzu drank. Seawater was good to swim in, but sky otters preferred fresh water to drink. So did Zuzu.
Something smacked the deck, and the delicious aroma of fish filled the otter’s senses. Zuzu had recovered herself enough to be hungry and attacked the middle of the fish with relish. Sky waited politely for her to step aside and let him have some too, but it had been a long time since her last meal, and a half-starved rat in no way compared with a fresh tasty fish.
So Sky told her, Other fish are in the sea, cat. You cannot swim far enough to find the river seal children. These men like cats and they have this boat for you to ride on. I must find the river seal children. I wish you luck.
But, otter, we are a team!
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