Changelings

by Anne McCaffrey

  Murel saw Mum thrown against the yacht’s hull and swam over to break her fall. Ke-ola grabbed Johnny, who, being unhurt, shook him off. Da started to sink with the lifeboat, but Ronan fetched him up again.

  Otter clung to the Honu’s tail.

  The lines were tossed over the side once more. Mum, Johnny, and Ke-ola caught them. Then Ke-ola boosted Murel up on a rising wave so that she practically washed onto the yacht. He did the same thing with Da and Ronan. Mum, who was shaken but didn’t seem injured, tried to help, but Ke-ola nodded to her own rope. Seeing that he had matters in hand, she climbed aboard and was helped on deck by Johnny, who had by that time helped Marmie pull Da and Ronan onto the deck. Sky scampered up across Mum’s back and hair to safety. Johnny turned to pull Ke-ola aboard but the Kanaka boy rode another wave up and clung to the deck.

  Darkness descended on them almost as quickly as the waves. Marmie bundled them all in blankets, which were soaked but not so thoroughly that the seals couldn’t change back into Shongilis.

  Wanting to stay human for a while, and unsure that they would do so if the waves kept washing over them, the twins tugged on their waterproof suits, pulling up the hoods.

  Johnny tried to stuff Da into a waterproof suit too. Da struggled to sit up, saw Mum’s face and said, in a voice much the same as the one they’d heard him use when he’d drunk a bit of the blurry at latchkays, “Jayz, darlin’, what are you doing out here? The weather’s terrible.”

  Mum made a funny half-sobbing noise Murel could barely hear as Da finally managed to sit up and pull on his own suit.

  Because of the darkness and the fact that only their family and closest friends were helping, the selkies’ secret was preserved as much as possible. They couldn’t be sure, of course, but none of the crew members said, “Hey look, those seals they hauled up just turned into a couple of kids and their old man!” so it seemed their secret was intact.

  But that kind of exposure was the least of their worries. Marmie and Pet Chan helped everyone but Sky and the Honu lash themselves with ropes—lines—to the sturdier and more permanent features of the yacht. Although Murel wondered how sturdy the boat could actually be since apparently it had come off the spaceship in pieces with some assembly required. “All secured, Captain,” Pet told Johnny.

  Johnny in turn shouted to the crew, “Okay, give her full throttle and get us out of here.”

  “Uh, Captain?” the nearest crew member said.

  “Yes? Wait a tick. We are supposed to be idling. I know it’s noisy here but we’re not idling. Why are we not idling?”

  “Not actually sure, sir, but the engineer said something about ash clogging the fuel pumps.”

  “That’s just—” Another huge wave washed over the deck. Murel felt paws wind tightly into her hair. When the water subsided with the yacht miraculously still right side up, she saw Ke-ola leaning over the railing, apparently communing with the Honu, who was in the water. “—brilliant,” Johnny finished.

  Sky, you’re pulling, Murel told the otter.

  Grooming, the otter mumbled through a mouthful of hair.

  Da and Mum were hanging on to each other literally for dear life. Murel felt rather than saw her father staring at her and Ronan as if he could hardly believe they were there. How long have you been home? he asked.

  Dunno, Ronan replied. Feels like not very long and nearly forever at the same time.

  What happened to you, Da? Murel asked. Everyone thought you were a goner.

  Far as I knew, I could have been. The last thing I recall was something falling on me, and then I woke up floating in the water beside you two.

  So you don’t remember anything about otters, for instance?

  Oh, the sea otters were having a grand time bringing up clams from the lava beds when I left them but I finally swam onward. Not all that clever of me, really. It would have been a better job for people with two legs and equipment. It’s dangerous around here, in case you haven’t noticed.

  We noticed.

  Who’s the big lad being chummy with the turtle? And for that matter, how did the turtle get onto Petaybee? No turtles were authorized that I recall.

  That’s Ke-ola, one of our classmates from the station. The sacred Honu is the turtle. I believe they’re considering immigrating. Ke-ola just saved the lot of us, pulling us out of the water and sticking us in the lifeboat, so I think you might want to give their request special consideration.

  Should Petaybee allow us to live through this, I promise to do that very thing, Da said.

  The sun, having disappeared for half an hour or so, once more swung around on the horizon until it was over the ocean. Of course, nobody on the boat could actually see it, but they knew that it had because the rays shined through the shroud hanging over the ocean and dyed it brilliant scarlet, fuchsia, and tangerine.

  Almost as if the sun’s rising soothed the volcano’s temper, the rumbling quieted and the seas became comparatively calm. With the yacht’s motor out, the loudest noises were the tinkering and swearing that could be heard clearly from the engine room. The twins and their parents loosened their lines enough that the twins could turn around and give their father huge hugs.

  “You took that business of being hero twins seriously, didn’t you, kids?” he asked aloud. “Your mum says it was you who came to fetch me from what I can only presume was almost a watery grave.”

  “Much as we’d like to take credit for that, Da, it was actually Sky—”

  “Sky?”

  “Otter. Now that he’s ridden to your rescue in a helicopter, he is a sky otter instead of merely a river otter, so we’ve given him an appropriate name and he likes it.”

  “It is more original than Otto or something of the sort,” Da agreed. “And it was good of him to come along. River otters do not go to sea, as a rule.”

  “So he’s told us. But in your case he made an exception. And it’s a good thing he did,” Murel said. “He’s the one who, uh—found where you were for sure.”

  “But you two got me out? How did I survive?”

  “There seemed to be air pockets or something—maybe the volcano created a kind of grotto with an air tube to the surface?”

  “Which, providentially for me, did not turn into a lava tube? Petaybee was being extremely thoughtful there.”

  “Pity that mood didn’t continue,” Mum said.

  Lookit Ke-ola, Ronan told Murel while their parents were discussing Petaybee’s moods.

  Ke-ola stood on deck staring straight out at the tip of the cone, becoming slightly visible above the water at times, when the steam wafted up and away from the rim. His expression was thoughtful. A dome bulged in the cone like an egg about to hatch. Although the volcano was quiet for the moment, once more they could feel the pressure building.

  “Whatcha think, Ke-ola?” Murel asked.

  “I was just thinking about my twenty nieces and twenty-five nephews,” he said.

  “Are you worried you will never see them again?” she asked sympathetically. At least she and Ronan were back home with their parents and their friends, even if it only meant they wouldn’t die alone. Not a happy thought. Murel choked up in spite of herself. She didn’t want to die, but the dome inside the crater was bright red and pulsing.

  Sky was puzzled. Is there not enough water here for you?

  We were thinking of our families, Sky. Ke-ola was remembering his relatives who are not here.

  He has many?

  Hundreds, like you.

  Many Ke-olas. Good. Honu likes Ke-ola. Sky otters like Honu. Sky looked over the side, where Honu was swimming back and forth beside the yacht.

  Johnny Green returned from belowdecks and reported to Marmie.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Too long, I’m afraid,” he replied, shaking his head. “They’re clogged as bad as if they’d been poured full of concrete. The lads are working as fast as they can but they’ll be no match for Herself,” and he nodded to the volcano. He turned to Mar
mie. “There’s one lifeboat left. You and Pet, Yana and the kids—”

  “Not us,” Murel said. “We’re better off as seals now that we’re rested, right, Da?”

  “Yes, but I’ll be alongside the boat where your mother is.”

  “Mother isn’t going in any lifeboat,” Mum said. “There’s room enough for Marmie, Ke-ola and the crew. Too many people depend on Marmie for her to be lost this way. She’s been Petaybee’s number one outside ally. You’ll need her help.”

  “We’ll need her help, luv.”

  “He’s right, Yana. I’m the captain, not you. I’ll go down with the bloody ship if anyone does,” Johnny said.

  “No, Johnny. Marmie needs you too . . . and I outrank you.”

  “Not anymore, you ridiculous baggage. Get in that boat, and that’s an order.”

  “You can’t talk to my wife that way, Johnny. I’ll do it,” Sean said. “Get into that boat, Yana, and stop being such ridiculous baggage. You’re the mother of our children and they need you.”

  Meanwhile other sailors, more practical and less noble, had lowered the remaining lifeboat over the side and were climbing in. Pet Chan practically forced Marmie in along with the crewmen. Once Pet was seated, there was room for two more passengers.

  “Not the way they need you,” Mum argued with their father. “You understand them. You can all speak without words. I—”

  “No time for this nonsense, Yana,” Da said, and tried to lift and manhandle Mum over to the lifeboat. When he proved too weak to do it, Johnny scooped her up but she fought them both off.

  “Hey, Mama,” Ke-ola said, padding barefoot over to the three of them and separating the men from the twins’ furious mother. “You don’t gotta do it, lady. I’ll go now. I know what has to be done. It’s in the oldest chants. Your keikis need you, your man, your world.”

  “Petaybee does not seem highly attached to any of us just at the moment,” Mum snapped, and turned on Ke-ola, her dark eyes flashing. “And where is it you think you’re going, young man?”

  “Ke-ola knows all this old stuff from when his people lived near volcanoes, Mum,” Ronan told her.

  “Yeah, I bet they had some really neat way of dealing with eruptions and stuff, didn’t they, Ke-ola?” Murel asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. Those old ones knew that if you were gonna have life, there had to be death so somebody had to give themselves to Pele—our volcano goddess. I’m not afraid. There’s too many people where I come from anyway. I’ll do it, then the volcano will quiet and you all can go home.” He turned and walked to the rail, and in another fraction of a nanosecond would have slipped into the waves. Ronan and Murel exchanged looks and ran up beside him, stripping off their dry suits. He gave each of them a chagrined look. “Little bruthah, little sistah, you should understand!”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Mum demanded. “Johnny, Sean, someone brain this child before he does something monumentally stupid.”

  “I don’t care what your chants said, Ke-ola, if they told you to jump into a volcano, they were wrong,” Murel told him. “I thought that was a good place you came from to begin with. Why would your volcano want anyone to jump into it?”

  “Yeah, it’s not hungry, for pity’s sake,” Ronan added. “It’s trying to pump stuff out, not take stuff in. You’d just be polluting it. We’d have Ke-ola bits all over the nice new island Petaybee’s trying to make. Honestly, I know it looks bad, Ke-ola, but nobody has to die here. If anyone does, it will be an accident, and Petaybee, well, I think Petaybee will be really sorry. You were the one who said the planet wasn’t angry, it was just giving birth and a little out of control.”

  Murel had a flash of insight. I think that’s what Mum understands, maybe without knowing she does. She sort of knows what Petaybee’s going through. It was hard enough for her to have twins. Think what it must be like to try to have an island. Ugh. I don’t ever want to have any kids.

  “I honestly think you misunderstood those chants, guy,” Ronan said earnestly.

  “That’s what you think, do you, little bruthah?” Ke-ola asked with maybe a little of his old twinkle returning.

  “It is. You’re our friend, you know, partly because you were the one kid at school who kind of understood about Petaybee. I think you’re supposed to live here, not die here.”

  Murel realized that she thought the same thing, but she didn’t see how that was going to happen. The lifeboat had not yet completely detached from the yacht, Mother and Father and Johnny were still arguing, the yacht was still dead in the water, and the waves began slapping ominously against the side of the hull again. Slap-slap, slap-slap.

  She hoped it was her imagination that made the dome look bigger—and as if it were throbbing steadily.

  “Shite on a shingle,” Mum said. “Here comes another contraction.”

  Steam jetted up suddenly from vents around the dome, and the sea started shaking again, rumbling as if it were full of bones. Which it could be pretty soon if they weren’t careful.

  “A contraction.” Ke-ola smiled and turned to them, asking casually, “Maybe I got to thinking of the wrong chant at that. You remember that one song I sang at your party—the one I didn’t translate?”

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the stomps. Like this.” He stomped, bringing the opposite leg up sharply, then stomped again so the rhythm was stomp-stomp, stomp-stomp, like the slap-slap of the ocean against the boat. The stomps shook the whole boat.

  “Oh, yeah, that one! I like that,” Ronan said. “It’s fun. Only—maybe not now.”

  “Now is a real good time, I think,” Ke-ola replied. “You do it too. You too, Mama and Papa and Captain,” he called back, continuing the stomp.

  “Like a heartbeat!” Murel said.

  “That’s it, sistah. Because it’s a birthing chant. Like I told you, all we got to do on that asteroid where we live now is make babies, and because of the gravity, it ain’t easy. So everybody has to help the mamas. The men’s part, with the stomping, goes something like, ‘Swim swim,’ to the baby, with the stomps being like canoe paddles. To the mama we say ‘Breathe breathe,’ until it’s time to ‘Push push,’ and the verse that just repeats is something like, ‘Have no fear your men are here. We will protect you,’ to put it in your language, which is, sorry, really not good for poetry. There’s a women’s part that goes something like, ‘Take it slow, sistah, take it easy, be calm, breathe easy, the birth is a beautiful dance, bring your child into the sunshine so he can dance with his relatives.’ Or something like that. But I think if you just clap, soft, like this,” he showed her, “in the same time, that will get it across.”

  “Okay,” Murel said. “So, you think we should do this now?”

  He shrugged tidally once more. “Can’t hurt. If your world is as willing to listen to you as you say, maybe we can make her hear, before she’s making too much noise again.” He kept stomping and shouted again at the twins’ parents and Johnny, “Mama, Papa, Captain, do what we do. You folks in the lifeboat, drum on the side. Paddlers, strike the sea with your oars.”

  More fumeroles gushed steam, Petaybee exhaling through her teeth. The sea rocked the yacht, but Murel liked to think that the stomping feet and clapping hands steadied it somehow.

  Ke-ola called out the first words of the chant, addressing the laboring volcano not as a goddess, but as he probably already had sung many times to his mother, aunt, or sister. He waved his hand to Murel and Ronan and sang the words to them. They repeated them after him as loud as they could, matching his beat. Then he called out some more. This time he added a little lilt and melody to the words.

  The dome swelled and throbbed, the fumeroles spewed and steamed, and the column of steam and ash rose into the coral sky, deepening its hue to bloodiness.

  The rumbling got louder, but not as loud as before.

  Ke-ola stamped and chanted. Murel and Ronan, and soon their father and mother, stamped and chanted after him, their words
finding an unbidden harmony with his, so accustomed were their voices to songs in a mode more familiar to their world. Marmie and most of the people in the lifeboat drummed on its side or with paddles against the sea. Johnny didn’t join in, nor did the chief engineer. They chose the more pragmatic path of going below and trying to fix the engine with the time they hoped the chant might be borrowing for them.

  Ke-ola looked straight out at the volcano the whole time, his head held high and his body erect as an arrow, shooting his words into the horizon. His bare feet alone shook the entire yacht. Amplified by the stamping of the other feet, the sound gave a heartbeat to the rising waves, measured the rising smoke with its cadence.

  The twins stamped and sang until not only their feet, but their knees hurt. The throbbing dome could burst at any moment and send a fountain of lava into the sea and onto the yacht, but it didn’t.

  But their throats began to burn with the singing and with the little particles of ash that should have made them cough but didn’t.

  Ke-ola did not cough or falter in his singing either.

  They stamped until their hips ached and their soles began to bleed. Their throats longed for water but they could not stop singing.

  From the corner of her eye Murel saw Sky dive into the sea. Following him, she watched him swim after the Honu, both of them toward the cone being joined slowly in the middle of the ocean by other cooling lava being spewed by the lesser volcanoes around it.

  Honu and Sky swam back and forth, back and forth, and before long it seemed other creatures were swimming as well. Among them were some sea otters and great shoals of fish, dolphins, orcas, and larger whales that came right up under the boat without touching it. Instead of swimming back to the boat, however, these creatures swam to either side of the cone and onward. Only Sky and Honu went back and forth. Soon Murel realized their journeys were in prolonged counterpoint to the stamping.

  The dome could have blown, should have blown, all at once, but didn’t. It seemed to recede a little, the throbbing developing into a regular pulse. When it opened, the top of the dome didn’t blow. Instead its sides opened and pumped rather than spewed the lava into the sea, to be cooled almost at once by the water.