Changelings (18 page)

“Well, I guess so,” Ronan said. “I’ll go with Otter and Murel can stay with you.”

“I wanted to go with Otter!” his sister protested at once.

“He had dibs,” their mother said, settling it. “Now let’s go collect the otter and get out to the helipad.”

CHAPTER 20

S
INCE
R
ONAN WAS
to be the one swimming with Otter, Murel insisted on holding the little creature on the way to the ocean. Otter had other ideas.

Otters do not need to be held. Otters can stand on their own paws,
Otter told her as they settled into the helicopter. He ran to the window and put his front paws on the glass.

Then the blades started rotating,
chuck-a, chuck-a, chuck-a,
and in a moment the aircraft lifted up, tipping slightly and spilling Otter onto the floor. He leapt back into Murel’s lap and buried his nose in her armpit for a good deal of the rest of the trip.

When they reached the broad river delta, all ice for most of the year but now with braided channels of free flowing water, the copter set down, Mum grabbed Ronan for a quick hug, and he opened the copter door.

You can come out now, Otter. We’re going to swim.

Otter disentangled himself from Murel, who combed her fingers through his soft thick fur as he left.
Hah! Yes, swimming is good, though sky otters can also fly.

Ronan ran to the water, shucked off his outer clothes and, with the suit that Marmie had given him so long ago strapped in place on his back, dived into the water and emerged in seal form. Otter splashed him happily and swam off downstream.

Murel felt aggrieved.
No fair. I haven’t even got to swim since we arrived,
she said.

Ronan barked a laugh.
This mission is much too dangerous for a female river seal. Only males and sky otters can do this bit.

She sent him an image of her sticking out her tongue at him. She supposed she was being silly. This was a serious mission, after all, and the point was to find Da and bring him back safely. It didn’t matter which one of them talked to the otters. The other one could hear and ask questions too. She just preferred to be there than up here above everything.

It was even more frustrating that they couldn’t even fly out to the volcano where Da had said he was going until Ronan finished interviewing the appropriate otters. It took quite a long time too. Otter etiquette, which seemed to involve a lot of rocks changing paws, had to be observed. Ronan held back during this part of the negotiation, as the river otters all gathered around and declared themselves pleased to see him, though he could tell by their thoughts that some of them hadn’t a clue as to who he was. Otters were live-for-the-moment creatures. Their otter friend was exceptional in that respect.

Murel caught all of this from Ronan and Otter’s internal conversations and passed it along to her mother, to make the time go faster, if nothing else, since it was hardly the sort of information they’d come for. She liked to think she could have moved things along more quickly had she been in Ronan’s place.

The thought escaped somehow, and Otter answered her directly.
Hah! Murel could not make sea otters come. Sea otters come when they wish to come.

Where are they, do you think, Otter?
she asked.

They live on the island—there.
She received a slightly distorted otter-generated image of an offshore island and also Ronan’s image of the same place.
But sometimes they are gone. They go back to where they lost Father River Seal, back to where they gather the big big clams.

Big big clams?

Yes, and very large white crabs as well. They are easy to catch if you are a sea otter. They cannot see and they are easy to find against the black rock sea bottom.

I never heard of white crabs and giant clams before,
she told him.

The sea otter’s song says the crabs and clams live in the folds of the black rock sea floor beneath the tall black rocks that puff hot bubbles.

It took a lot of river otter chatter and a few turns on the mud slide—which made Murel, who thought she’d outgrown such foolishness, feel sharply envious of her brother—but at length Ronan and Otter spotted the sea otters swimming from the offshore island. One of them carried a giant white clamshell. It was almost as big as the sea otter carrying it, Ronan told her.

It made everything easier that the twins were famous among the otters.
Where is the other river seal?
the sea otters wanted to know.
This river otter—

Hah! Sky otter,
Otter corrected.
Now there is a sky otter. Me.

Sky otter?

Ronan explained.
My sister, the other river seal, is in a sky machine with our mother, who is not a river seal but a human all the time. The sky otter bravely rode with us to the sea so we could meet you and ask you about our father.

What sky machine?
the sea otters asked, swiveling their heads from side to side, to the back, up, and back down to face Ronan again.

I will call it so you can see,
Ronan told them.

Murel told Mum what he’d said, and she spoke to the pilot, who lurched the copter skyward and flew to the shore to hover a little ways away from the otter colony.

Can your sister come and play with us too? We want to hear her song as well.

Hah!
Murel said.
I can.
To her mother, she said, “Excuse me, Mum, but if you’ll have the pilot fly a little lower so I can dive in, I have to make an appearance as a river seal for the benefit of my otter public. They know about two river seals, the song is about two river seals, and two river seals are more believable than one.”

“Fine. Meet the otters, but then tell them you have to be a sky seal when Ronan goes to find your father.” Mum let a small smile play at the corners of her lips, though her eyes were still sad and anxious.

Murel didn’t like seeing her mother sad, but then again, she didn’t mind leaving her in the copter either. After all, Mum had sent them away for three long years without even asking what they wanted, so now her mother could get left when she herself wanted to go. The girl shucked her clothes and dived out the copter door into the sea. No need for her suit since she would be returning to the copter.

The water was cold cold cold after the warm and regulated pool at Marmie’s, but it felt wonderful, especially when her skin covered itself with its seal coat. It smelled fresh and exciting and full of life and adventure and—fish! She gobbled three small ones as she swam toward the otters. Delicious! Nothing like Petaybean fish.

Feeling like some sort of a seal celebrity—the kind that never appeared on the vids available on Marmie’s station—she joined Ronan and the otters.

Yes, that is right,
Otter said, being the official spokes-otter either for them or for his relatives.
Now there are both river seals and that is the right number. Ronan is not enough river seals.

Gee thanks,
she said. Then she and Ronan listened as Otter sang the song he’d made about them again. It was no good for them to sing their own song because it was in the human language and lost a lot in the translation. Otter’s version was far more appropriate to the audience at hand, or paw or flipper.

The sea otters then favored them with a song of their own, about finding the great clams and leading the father river seal to the beds. Ending the song, the sea otters sang,
But he swam away. He did not want clams and had no paws to hold them. He swam toward the great smoke and the thing beneath it. He swam to the great mystery and the otters who guard it.

Otters guard it?
Murel asked.

Yes,
the sea otter said, sounding a bit nervous.

But is it not a big fiery underwater mountain? Why would it need otters to guard it?

That is a mystery.

Surely not to the otters who guard it. Do you know them? Are they a related clan of sea otters?

We have seen them, we have spoken with them, we have shared food with them, but we do not know them. They are not sea otters like us. They are deep sea otters and live beneath the waves.

Beneath the waves? But otters are—otters need air like seals, don’t they? Otters cannot always live beneath the water.

The deep sea otters do,
the sea otter told them.
They can stay above the water too but have to go down into it to breathe the same way we have to come up above the water to breathe. It is very strange.

Are you sure they’re otters?

Oh yes. They look just like us only they live beneath the sea.

Weird,
Ronan said.
But if they live near the big volcano and that’s where you think Da was swimming, then they may have seen him. Will you take us to them?

We will take you as near as the clam beds and call to them. If the smoky mountain is very busy, they might not hear.

That would be good,
Ronan said.
My sister and mother will follow us in the sky machine, okay? That way they can help us if there is trouble.

Your mother who is not a seal nor any of your human people can know about the deep sea otters,
the sea otter said.
They are very shy. They do not want to be taken by scientists for study as the river otters say they were.

I suppose if they stay below the waves, Mum wouldn’t see them. But she and Murel do need to follow. It’s entirely possible nobody but Mur and me will be able to tell one sea otter from another. Do they look much like you?

They look almost exactly like us. Maybe larger.

Then nobody will know. Besides, there’s no one here now to give any of you sea otters or your larger friends the kind of trouble Dr. Mabo gave the river otters.

“Hah!” Otter said.
Sea otters do not know about that trouble the way river otters do. But river otters cannot swim in the sea, so if sea otters and river seals are in trouble, this otter and his hundreds of relatives cannot help them out of it.

Murel heard the disappointment in Otter’s thought.
A river otter may not swim in the sea but a sky otter could fly over it if he wanted to,
she said.
Then if the kind of help a river or sky otter could give was necessary, that otter would be there.

“Hah!” Otter said, and at once she knew that although he had no real wish to go up in the copter again, he was now a sky otter, and having said so of himself, his relatives would expect him to want to go into the sky.
That is true. Sky otters could go.

Of course, they might have better things to do,
Murel said, to give him an out.

But Otter said staunchly,
River seals help river otters, and river otters who are also sky otters help river seals.

The little guy was trembling as Murel carried him back into the copter. At her signal, it had landed once more on the shore. The hundreds of relatives—there were actually probably less than twenty—chittered and chattered anxiously as she and Otter climbed aboard the noisy, smelly, wind-blowing machine and rose into the sky over the ocean. Otter himself kept saying “Hah!” a lot.

Mother smiled at her and nodded to Otter as if he were a respected acquaintance.

Ready when you are,
Murel told Ronan.

Okay then, sea otters, shall we swim?

You realize that we are very tired, having just come from there,
the one they’d been speaking to said.
However, some of us did not get clams, and these otters will return to the lava beds with you, river seal, because of your song.

Without further fanfare, the sea otters knifed into the waves and Ronan followed.

Murel put her earphones on and heard Mum say to the pilot, “Just keep them in sight. We don’t want to frighten the otters. They might be able to lead us to Sean.”

Murel thought her mother was awfully brave. Da had been missing for more than a week now. Where would he go in the middle of the ocean that he might be safe? He was all alone unless those deep sea otters knew where he was. Murel didn’t want to think about it where anyone could read her, but she didn’t see how Da could still be safe. There was no way, really. And yet, if he were gone for good she was sure she would know, sure that Mum would know, and Ronan too.
Da?
she called experimentally, and imagined her thought sending out ripples in the waves, ripples in the air like a very special kind of father-seeking sonar.

It rippled away into nothingness though, if she didn’t count Ronan’s irritated,
You think I haven’t been trying that?

I think you’re doing what you show me you’re doing,
she told him.

We’re still not to the place where the sea otters lost him, so you may as well save your energy.

Within another four hours, however, there was a different kind of energy crisis. The pilot’s voice boomed and crackled inside Murel’s earphones. “We’re going to have to go back to refuel pretty soon, ma’am.”

“Frag,” Mum said, pounding her knee with her fist in frustration. “How close are we now, Murel?”

It had been a long time since Ronan had sent her pictures of anything but waves rolling around his ears, or diving under ice, or otter hind ends. The sea could be very boring if you weren’t actually in it. And it wasn’t as if they could see much of anything in the copter. You couldn’t even make out the otters swimming right below. The farther they flew, the worse the fog became.

In fact, Murel realized she’d been dozing when the pilot’s voice awakened her.

So, Ro, how are we doing down there?
she asked her brother.

Good! The water is a lot warmer here and it smells like rotten eggs, which seems about right for a place with volcanic vents, from what we studied in science class. The otters have been getting more and more excited, and making me hungry talking about those delicious red clams.

River otters like those too,
Otter said suddenly. He’d been very quiet, and Murel thought he might have been napping.

Ooops, there goes an otter bottoms up, and another. We must be there. I’m diving too.

“Well?” Mum asked impatiently. Murel had almost forgotten about her.