Changelings

by Anne McCaffrey

  That’s it then, that’s how many otters are here, all with big sharp teeth to defend themselves against the bad otter-eating seals. A hundred otters in my family.

  That’s a very large family, Murel told him. Caribou have families that large, but I didn’t know otters did.

  My parents were very much in love, he told her. Besides, we need large families with very big sharp teeth to fend off the bad otter-eating seals.

  I thought you lived in this river and we were the only seals you’d ever seen in a river? she asked.

  He swam a couple of strokes and pulled himself up through a hole in the ice, onto more ice.

  Look, she said. We really really don’t eat otters, even if they weren’t poisonous and if there weren’t a hundred with big sharp teeth. If we’re going to play together, that makes us friends. Friends don’t eat friends.

  Ninety-nine, a hundred! Ready or not, here I come! Ronan called.

  “Hah!” the otter said from somewhere she couldn’t see. The other seal knows how many are in my family. He said it.

  No, that’s just part of how we play the game. The hole in the ice wasn’t quite large enough for a full-grown seal but Murel could just pull herself up through it with only a tiny clawed modification around the edges. She found herself in a low tunnel—good height for an otter and not bad for a seal if she slid on her stomach and just used her flippers to propel her slide forward.

  The otter slipped and slid ahead of her, weaving in and out of tunnels as she followed behind. He didn’t seem to be hiding exactly, though, so she did. One of the otter’s tunnels led to a den dug deep into the thick river ice lining the bank. None of the hundred otters with the big sharp teeth seemed to be using the den, so she hid there waiting for Ronan.

  If he found the otter first and the otter got to be it and came looking for them, maybe it would set the little guy’s mind at ease about their intentions.

  Instead, Ronan came sliding right up to her. “You’re it!” he cried aloud.

  How?

  “Read your mind, silly. Didn’t see our friend anywhere.”

  Otter otter in free! The otter’s sending was from way up the river.

  You have kind of an unfair advantage in this game, Murel said. You know where you are and we don’t.

  Okay. Let’s go sliding then. I’ve gathered my family. They have agreed not to use their big sharp teeth on you unless you try something funny.

  Are you sure? Murel asked, joking. We know you now, but are your relatives maybe those seal-eating otters?

  Of course not. Come on! It’ll be fun! We can play over the waterfall!

  Sounds kinda dangerous.

  Not now. It’s a seasonal game.

  It took Murel and Ronan a long time to find their way back out of the maze of otter tunnels to the hole under the ice.

  Then they had to swim back upstream to where the ice was thinner and open another hole so they could surface again without tearing up the otter’s home.

  They popped their heads out of the water. As long as the rest of their bodies stayed submerged and their heads were wet, they could stay seals.

  If we get out now to go play with the otters, we won’t be seals anymore, Ronan said.

  Oh, bother. Then he’ll think we’re otter-eating people and we’ll have to go all through it again or else those hundred relatives he’s trying to scare us with will sink their big sharp teeth into us.

  Yeah. As if. But I really want to play with them and I don’t want to scare them.

  I think we ought to go home now anyway. Let’s just send a good-bye to our little buddy and say we were called away by our own family.

  Yeah, but, Murel, we needed a swimming buddy and he could be it. If he went swimming with us, we could go all the time maybe.

  True. I guess if he agreed to do that he’d find out about us being people part of the time anyway. Let’s see what he says. Oh, Otter!

  Come, Murel! Come slide with us. You can slide waaaaay down! It’s long and steep but when you get to the bottom you just keep going and going until you slide halfway out to the coast where my cousins live.

  We want to come and play, Otter, but we need to talk to you by yourself first. Please. It’s a secret.

  CHAPTER 6

  A SECRET? OTTERS LOVE secrets! Hey, everybody, I’ll be right back. My new friends the seals I was telling you about want to tell me a secret! Maybe they know a secret place where the fish are especially nice.

  They had to wait a long time because he had already taken his first slide and had to climb back up the hill again. When he finally reached them, he dove into the hole they had made.

  What is it? What’s the secret?

  First we want to tell you why you should know about this, Murel said.

  Our parents want us to have a friend to swim with, Ronan continued. Someone who knows the waters and won’t get lost and could go for help if something went wrong.

  I can do that. Nobody knows the water like an otter. Your parents don’t eat otters either, do they?

  No. In fact, our mother isn’t like us at all. Our father is like us, but you’d only know it if you saw him in the water. See, Otter, it’s kind of hard to explain but our mother is human and our father is, like us, a seal only when he’s in the water. On the land he’s a human and, uh, so are we.

  “Hah!” the otter said. That’s interesting. Show me.

  You won’t be scared? Murel asked. We don’t want to scare you. We really want to be your friends.

  Otters don’t scare that easy, he said, chittering a bit nervously. Some of my coastal cousins can turn into people too if they want to. They can even get human beings who aren’t like them to turn into otters if they want. Oh, I shouldn’t have told you about that. It’s a secret too. No, not a secret. It was a lie. I was lying so you wouldn’t think otters don’t know about turning into humans and—

  It’s okay, Murel said. Just so you’re not scared. Come on, Ronan.

  They both jumped out of the water, slid to the bank, and shook themselves off.

  “Hah!” the otter said and “Hah!” again. He pushed himself out of the water and slid over to inspect them and said “Hah!” several more times as he circled their legs, which were getting goose bumps. I don’t know why you want to be human. You are all pale and too thin to be warm. You should jump back in and be seals again before you freeze. Being seals isn’t as good as being otters, but it’s much more practical on the river than being human.

  Good idea, Ronan said, running for the water hole.

  Murel turned to show the otter the pack with her shiny suit in it. If we were going to stay human, we’d put on these suits that are stored on our backs but we—

  “Hah! Hah!” other otters called loudly from down toward the waterfall slide.

  “Hah!” their new friend answered. Wolves! he told the children. Wolves have come. Otter-eating wolves. And our den is up here, uphill from where my family is.

  But your family has their big sharp teeth, right? Ronan asked.

  Not as big and sharp as wolves’, he said, chittering, chirping, and growling aloud in answer to the distress calls from below. The wolves will eat them all!

  Is there a hole in the ice near the falls? Ronan asked as he teetered on the edge of the ice hole.

  Yes, near our slide.

  Let’s go then! he said, diving in. Murel followed him, and the otter right after her.

  Wolves probably eat seals too.

  Yes, but we can scare them away when we turn into people, Murel said. But she didn’t think that through. She just knew that wolves never bothered her father or her aunt Sinead while they were in the woods. Most sled dogs were part wolf anyway, and she wasn’t afraid of them.

  It didn’t occur to her that nothing had threatened Ronan and her because since they were babies they had been escorted everywhere by a snow leopard and a very large track cat.

  A long long dive into the ice cave running beneath the otter tunnels and then, at last, open
water. First Ronan surfaced, then the otter, then Murel.

  There. There’s the slide. Right there. Slide down. Be quick.

  Below, the wolves were howling while the otters chittered, chirruped, and hahed as they tried to scramble away. Then one screamed.

  Without shaking himself dry, Ronan slid down the long frozen cataract in seal form, Murel and the otter close behind him.

  At the bottom he saw a wolf with an otter in its mouth. The little beast was still alive and snapping its teeth for all it was worth.

  The wolves lined the riverbank and blocked the ice downstream. The cataract prevented the otters from climbing back up.

  Before she shook herself off, Murel dug a hole in the ice with her claws and told the otter, Get the others into the water, quickly.

  But that’s my mother!

  We’ll try to save her.

  Ronan shook himself dry and instantly was a naked boy. No time to put on the silver suit. Get your teeth out of that otter right this minute, he snapped at the wolf, trying to look as menacing as he could, which wasn’t very.

  Mine, the wolf snarled back.

  Look at that, he’s already defurred! another pack member, this one about a year-old pup, said. Can I have him, sire? Can I?

  I don’t know, son, the alpha male growled uncertainly. There’s something fishy about those two big ones. They were seals just a minute ago. Now they look like men. Men have firesticks, and besides, you never know what they’ve been into. They might be bad for you.

  Just let the otter go and be on your way and nobody gets hurt, Ronan told the wolves. Besides, wolves don’t normally eat otters. And we have it on good authority that these ones are poisonous.

  She doesn’t smell poisonous, the wolf holding the otter argued, slitting her eyes suspiciously.

  Neither does he, the young wolf said, slinking closer to Ronan with hindquarters tensed to spring. He smells delicious.

  By then the last of the otters had popped into Murel’s hole and she had changed. While the wolves circled, she put on her silver suit and looked around for a weapon. Ronan’s skin was covered with goose bumps. With her entire body protected by the suit, she was better able to defend herself than he.

  The female wolf shook the furious snapping otter mother trying to break her neck. Without thinking, Murel took a long slide forward, bowling into the wolf, and smacked her hard on the muzzle with the side of her mitten, making her drop the otter.

  Run! she told the smaller creature, but there was no need. The otter hit the water before Murel had formed the thought.

  Now there was a new problem. A circle of hungry wolves tightened around Murel and Ronan, so close the twins could smell their breath, which was doggy and rotten at the same time. The wolf who’d had the otter leapt to her feet and with both front feet stiff brought them down sharply in front of Murel, snarling, Thief!

  Ronan had used the distraction to seal himself into his own silver suit.

  Now what is he, sire? The yearling who’d asked permission to hunt Ronan sounded bewildered. A fish? These creatures can’t make up their minds what they are. But they still smell like prey to me.

  And so they are, son, and so they are. Those flimsy shiny hides won’t protect them if we all jump them at once. Ready . . . The female wolf waggled her hindquarters, poised to spring. Murel lost her nerve and backed into her twin, who hugged her, and they clung together.

  Set . . . the wolf’s mate said.

  Murel squeezed her eyes tight and hoped she wouldn’t be more than one bite to them so it wouldn’t hurt so much. There were no weapons. No fire.

  Ronan buried his face in her shoulder, and she did likewise with her twin.

  Attack! This order was followed by yipping, snarling, snapping, and growling, but no biting.

  The twins were braced, ready to be knocked down by the wolves, but nothing touched them. Instead, they heard familiar voices using feline profanity never before uttered in their presence.

  Murel opened one eye in time to see Coaxtl pounce on yet another wolf and ride it like a horse while Nanook sat on her hindquarters, swatting wolf bodies right and left.

  The wolves were already on the run when the first shot rang out.

  “Go on, you mangy critters, get outta here! Those kids are too fraggin’ spoiled rotten for you to eat anyway.” Their aunt Sinead’s voice sounded so good to them, she might have been promising presents instead of punishment by the time she braked her sled and ran past her spitting track cats to scoop up the children.

  She bundled them into the sled and told them, as if talking to one of her team, “Stay.”

  They tried to tell her about the otters, but she didn’t pay any attention to them. Her mouth was compressed in a thin line. The only sounds for several hours were the shushing of the runners and the patter of paws against the snow, the occasional dog stopping to relieve itself, and Aunt Sinead’s barked commands. Not even Nanook or Coaxtl spoke. Ronan and Murel were too miserable to communicate with each other. After what seemed like a week but must have been sometime during the night, though it was hard to tell in the winter, the lead dog stopped in front of their house. Sinead stamped on the brake to set it, and ripped off her mittens to release the bindings holding the twins on the sled and under the furs. Her hands were shaking, which was funny since next to their mother, Aunt Sinead was the bravest lady they knew. Silently, she pointed to the door.

  When they left the sled, Coaxtl and Nanook stalked them all the way there.

  CHAPTER 7

  ONLY MUM WAS there, and to the twins’ relief, she did not seem upset.

  “Where’s Da?” Ronan asked innocently.

  “Still out hunting for you. I imagine he’s on his way home now, though.” Mum’s voice was smooth and calm, conversational, her face unreadable. But then, her thoughts had never been easily readable to the twins. “Suppose before he gets here you explain to me without benefit of telepathy where you’ve been and what you were doing that required you to do it so far from home for so long and without the company of Coaxtl and Nanook.”

  “Well . . . we—There were these otters, weren’t there?” Ronan began.

  “No, first off, Johnny brought us these suits from Marmie, for our birthday, see—”

  “Your birthdays are not until tomorrow,” Mum said, lifting one of her raven wing eyebrows. “I should remember. I was definitely there.”

  “Yeah, well, but we figured it was close enough and we’d be busy on the day and we wanted to try the suits out, that was all,” Murel said, feeling it was best to start at the beginning. “Co’ and ’Nook weren’t around, but we just got excited and wanted to see what the suits were like so we decided to swim for a ways and put them on. They’re brilliant, Mum. They kept us as warm and dry as a parka, snow pants, boots, mittens, and a hood with a good ruff, and they’re no heavier than long johns.”

  Their mother sat with her arms crossed under her breasts, and gave a slight nod that they should continue.

  “Well, we were just getting ready to come home when we heard this poor little otter crying for help from inside the river. Of course we had to help him. Petaybee would want us to, right?”

  Their mother’s expression did not change.

  “He had his head caught so we got him loose,” Ronan said. “Then he wanted to play. Well, you know, we were thinking, here’s the new swimming buddy we could have to show us around, like you said we could. So we thought we should get to know him better, didn’t we? So we thought just a little longer would be okay. Only the hide-and-seek took a long time in all those tunnels the otters dug, and then he wanted us to slide down the waterfall with his family.”

  “But before we started down, the wolves came and grabbed his mummy. The otter’s, I mean. It was terrible, Mum, the poor little thing chittering and hahing—both our otter friend and his mummy, I mean. We slid down there and there was this big circle of wolves all around them. Ronan was ever so brave.”

  “I was, rather. I stood there and t
ried to reason with the wolves while sis dug the otters a bolt hole with her flippers and put on her suit. Then she attacked the wolf with the otter in her mouth while I got on my suit.”

  “And that held them off until Co’ and ’Nook could wade in and scare off the rest of them,” Murel concluded. “Auntie Sinead fired a shot over their heads too, and that convinced them to look elsewhere for prey.” Mum still wasn’t saying anything, just looking at them. Murel decided to press her luck a little. “So you see, Mum, we were doing a good thing.”

  “You visited otters and then reasoned with wolves before you attacked them, is that about right?” Mum asked again in that calm voice that wasn’t just cool—it was downright cold. This must have been how she sounded when she was an officer for the Company Corps.

  They looked at each other, trying to think if they’d left anything out, decided they hadn’t, shrugged and faced her again. “Well, yeah.”

  Ronan added, “It will make a brilliant latchkay song, Mum. We could do harmony.”

  “Oh yes, I can see that,” their mother nodded reasonably. “All about how you almost got eaten one day short of your eighth birthday. Perhaps we could have some wolves howling to accompany the drums? You’d best be quick about writing it, then. Your father and I have discussed this with Clodagh and the village elders and there will be a special secret latchkay held tomorrow in the Night Chant grotto. You are the guests of honor.” Her voice was grim now, and tight, as if there were much more she wished to say but would not or could not.

  Murel put out a hand, tentatively touching her mother’s. “Mum, it’s fine. We’re fine. We’re very sorry we worried you and Da and Auntie and the cats, but we waited and waited and Da never had the time, and really, the suits are all we need to be off by ourselves—”

  “Unless there are wolves,” her mother said, grasping her hand and squeezing her fingers so tightly it hurt. “Or bears, or even people who don’t know we never hunt seals here. I told you already, you are too young to even imagine the dangers in which your actions placed yourselves, us, the village, and even Petaybee. I love you. Your father loves you. Everybody who knows you loves you, and if they don’t know you very well, they love you even better. But, my little ones, despite your lineage from your father, despite your shape-shifting and your ability to talk with all of Petaybee’s creatures, you are my children, not wild animals. And you must learn that side of your nature too. I want you to think about that and know that whatever happens, happens for your good. Now off to bed with you. Your father will look in on you when he comes in.”