Changelings (22 page)

Epilogue

“I
’M NOT SURE
which one will take longer,” Da told the twins and Ke-ola, “Petaybee, building its landmass, or the Federation red tape we have to cut through to invite Ke-ola’s people to join us.”

Three months had passed since the latchkay. Summer was at an end and freeze-up would begin soon. Neither Ke-ola nor the twins had returned to school.

Mum, back from her helicopter trip with Dr. Fiske and Dr. Metaxos to check on the volcano, said, “My money is on Petaybee finishing first. As for inviting Ke-ola’s people, a lot of that paperwork is just nonsense they use to keep the punters at bay and the pencil pushers employed, love. Have you never heard that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to ask permission?”

“It’s my ancestral family motto, actually,” Ke-ola said.

“Which makes it ours too,” Ronan put in.

“See there?” Da told her. “We’re setting a bad example for the children. Pay us no mind, kids. We’re just frustrated by the communication glitches. With the equipment banjaxed every other week or so, having to send messages by passing ships is ponderous. Really, you do have to wait for permission for some things. To make it official. To keep from bringing the wrath of the heavens down upon our humbled heads. We’ve yet to hear back from the Federation or Intergal about our proposal. Neither is there any response from Ke-ola’s people.”

“Da, why don’t we just go get them?” Murel asked. “I don’t see why we need permission to issue an invitation or why they would need permission to come and see if they like it here or not.”

“They’ll like it,” Ke-ola said. “But they’re probably not even getting the messages. The Company Corps monitors traffic in the area, and besides, we have communications problems of our own. Lots of meteor showers. Very hard to keep a com relay up when the sky keeps falling.”

“See what you started?” Da asked Mum playfully.

“Me?” she asked, hand to breast in make-believe innocence.

“No, seriously,” Murel said. “I don’t see why not.”

“We have no spacecraft of our own,” Da pointed out.

“Marmie has lots.”

“Those things cost a great deal to operate, dear,” Mum said. “Marmie has been a wonderful friend to us and to Petaybee, but we mustn’t ask her to beggar herself.”

“We could pay her back. Probably,” Ronan said.

“Besides,” Da said, “there’s no hurry. Winter is coming and Ke-ola’s folk don’t care for the cold, from what he says. The volcanic area is still way too unstable for them to try to occupy it.”

“But it won’t be for very long, right, Mum?”

“We have no way of knowing that, kids. We can’t be inviting Ke-ola’s people to come and cohabit with active volcanoes.”

“Pardon me, ma’am,” Ke-ola said, “but that’s how my people used to live. That’s what they remember from way back. They liked it. It’s how we learned the chants I showed you. How we could help Petaybee and everybody else who lives here. If some volcanoes are left all alone, or with people who don’t understand them, they get wild, explode all over the place, shake the whole world and make huge waves higher than the treetops, kill everybody.”

“But Ke-ola, your people haven’t lived near volcanoes for many generations,” Mum said.

“Don’t matter. Honus remember. Some people remember stories and songs. They can help the others.”

“Well, you’re certainly optimistic, I’ll say that,” Mum said, sounding the opposite of optimistic.

“What’s it like out there now, Mum?” Murel asked. The twins hadn’t been allowed to swim in the area since they returned, and Da didn’t seem inclined to do it either. Sky had returned to his hundreds of relatives on the coast, and the twins hadn’t heard from him, or Ke-ola from the Honu, for almost a month. The twins had spent the time teaching Ke-ola to ride a curly coat and showing him around the woods and villages surrounding Kilcoole. When the days were chilly, they swam at the hot springs. But this time they had not ventured beyond the area where their parents said they could wander. Almost losing their father had been an eye-opener. If they got into trouble, he’d come looking for them again, and he or other people in a rescue party could get hurt even if they themselves and Ke-ola were fine. So the twins obeyed the restrictions, though they chafed under them.

Mum said, “The smoke kept us from seeing a great deal, but the central crater is now elevated to approximately a hundred feet above sea level.”

Da gave a low whistle.

“It is not the only vent, however. What we haven’t seen in the past is that another crater has surfaced about fifteen klicks south of the primary one, and there is some activity from a third another forty miles south of that. The landmass surrounding the primary crater covers something like five square miles at the moment, but of course there’s still pyroclastic flow from the crater, pumping steadily from it as if it were blood from the heart. I didn’t think volcanoes worked that way.”

Da, who had been sitting at his desk while the kids stood around him, reached up, meaning to pat Ke-ola on the shoulder, but only reached his elbow, so he patted that instead. “Petaybean ones apparently do—especially one that has had a good coach.” With an apologetic glance at the twins, he added, “Or coaches.”

“Has the planet given Clodagh any idea how long this might take?” Ronan asked.

“I don’t think Petaybee wears a watch, Ro,” Murel said.

Ronan colored and said, “I
meant
that Petaybee seemed to be pretty clear about wanting Ke-ola and his people to live there. I don’t think the planet would have been that specific if it didn’t have some notion that the land would be ready in Ke-ola’s lifetime.”

“The Honu might know,” Ke-ola said.

“How?” Murel asked.

Ke-ola shrugged. “Honus know many things people don’t. Especially about weather and disasters and natural events.”

“It can’t hurt to ask,” Murel said. “And I miss Sky. If the volcano is behaving itself, Mum, don’t you think it would be okay if we swim out there to see them?”

“In a couple of days I could take you in the copter,” Mum re-plied.

“But we want to swim!” Ro protested. “Ke-ola can swim with us—he’s not a selkie or an otter but he’s a really good swimmer. Please?”

Mum was looking at Da, but he shook his head. “I’ll never get all this paperwork sorted if I take off now. I see no harm in them going, though. After all, they’ve already been through quite a bit out there and got through it all right. In fact, the rest of us, especially me, might not have made it without them.”

Mum tilted her head and looked at him questioningly. He smiled and shook his head. “No, love, I still don’t remember what happened or how I survived. I suppose that will always be a mystery.”

Da,
Ronan asked.
You don’t suppose maybe some special kind of animal who lives under the sea found you and took you into its city—its shelter—and took care of you, do you?

Now, why would I suppose something like that, son? You have quite an imagination on you, boyo. No, what I suppose, between you and me, is that Petaybee somehow knew it was me in trouble—and me its first selkie and father of the selkie twins—and somehow led me into a safe place with enough air to keep me going until the fireworks were done or you found me.

Yeah, I guess that makes more sense at that,
Ronan said.

Murel shot him a look. They had promised the deep sea otters that if they gave Da back, no one would learn of the strange city or its mysterious inhabitants. But Ronan hated keeping a secret from Da, especially one that concerned him and Petaybee. So he’d sort of given his father a chance to remember what really happened. Which he hadn’t. Also, it seemed that Da wouldn’t have believed them if Ronan and Murel had sworn to what they had seen, so it was okay not to push it. Ronan’s conscience was clear.

“So we can go?” Murel asked hurriedly.

“Yes, but take your dry suits. And Ke-ola, you’ll want to wear a wet suit. The water is far too cold this time of year for you to swim unprotected. I’ll fly out in the copter and pick you up Wednesday afternoon, so be right there at the otter colony. Got it?”

“Got it,” the twins said, and bounded off, Ke-ola in their wake.

I’
M DYING TO
know if the deep sea otters and that strange city of theirs survived the eruption,
Ronan told his sister.

Me too, but we promised not to go back there.

Yes, but Sky didn’t promise. The Honu didn’t promise.

The Honu doesn’t know about them.

Are you sure? Ke-ola says the Honus know about many things. And Sky might have told the Honu about them. Nobody said anything about not telling animals about them—just no humans.

The three of them had been swimming hard all day, with one break to portage themselves in human form to the foot of the falls. Fun to slide down when frozen, the cascade was much too dangerous to tackle even for seals and certainly for Ke-ola.

The twins pointed out the site of the former otter dens to their friend before everyone plunged back into the water. Ke-ola dived in first, to give Murel privacy to change from her suit into her sealskin. He was also a little slower than they, so he would find the head start useful.

Poor Ke-ola wasn’t much good at eating raw fish either, so he didn’t have the benefit of frequent energy-boosting snacks that they did.

Finally they could smell the salt in the freshwater and saw the river broadening as its mouth opened to feed the sea. It came much sooner than they expected and was much broader than they remembered.

I guess the shoreline has risen permanently here, because of the water displaced by the volcano,
Murel said.

We’re lucky we were out swimming when the waves hit,
Ronan agreed.
There used to be a lot more trees here—a lot more lots of things. And look at the sea otter island. It only barely sticks up out of the water now. A lot of it was flooded.
They hadn’t noticed any of these things when returning from their harrowing encounter with the volcano, but now, in calmer times, the changes in the landscape were downright unsettling. Perhaps all of the changes hadn’t taken place immediately after the first major eruption. The steady pumping of lava Mum described could have accounted in part for the higher water level. What if the otters had lost their dens, become afraid to live here, and moved somewhere else?

The twins began sending mental calls to Sky. It was a good idea to announce their presence and identify themselves anyway, so as not to alarm the hundreds of relatives, lest the three of them be attacked as invaders by angry otters.
Sky, it’s us, Murel and Ronan! Can you hear us yet?

Hah! River seals! The river seals have come!
Sky’s thought sang out, and before the twins quite knew where they were, they were surrounded by eager, not angry, otters, who immediately wanted to show them a new mud slide they had made.

Ke-ola was also surrounded, but at first the otters weren’t too sure about him. “Hey, what is this with the small, cute, and menacing?” he asked aloud. The twins started to translate for Sky but their otter friend had already assessed the situation.

Mother, sisters, brothers, cousins, aunties, and uncles, do you not recall my story about the Honu? What did I say about this Honu?

Hah! Not food!
A sister three litters behind him answered.

Yes! Did I not also tell of the Honu’s brave human protector? One who does not eat otters and is friend to the river seals? What did I say about him?

Hah! Not food?
asked his uncle five litters before his mother.

Not food and not to be harmed. Friend. Like river seals.

Friend?
asked another much younger brother.

Family member who is not an otter,
Sky said quickly. He had evidently given the concept considerable thought since being introduced to it.

At that, the otters around Ke-ola relaxed. One brushed gently against him in apology. The little sister dived down and resurfaced holding a rock in her paws, which she dropped into the water near Ke-ola’s hand. He caught it. “Thank you,” he said, but she didn’t hear. She watched him catch it, then dived back under the surface again.

Sky!
Murel exclaimed mentally, and dived under him and resurfaced to show her pleasure.
We were afraid you’d moved your dens again, that maybe the bigger waves and higher tides had washed them out.

Hah! Old dens are all underwater. Sea otter dens too. But riverbank is full of holes. Otters dig holes larger, have new homes. Have to get more rocks, though,
he said.
And the sea took back hundreds of clamshells.

I’m sorry,
Murel said.
Maybe we can help you gather more.
The twins pulled and flopped themselves onto the riverbank and shook off the water, then put on their dry suits.

Did the sea otters make new dens too?
Ronan asked.
I see their island is mostly underwater now.

“Hah!” Sky said
. Sea otters don’t have dens. They need only the sea. Their back feet are flippers and they blow bubbles in their fur to make it warm and waterproof. When they are on land it is just for hunting food in pools on the beach. They sleep in the sea, wrapped in kelp. They mate in the sea. They have strange ways, but they are our cousins.

And—the deep sea otters, Sky?
Murel asked.
What of them? Have the sea otters seen them since the volcano?

“Hah!” Sky chittered a moment, plainly disturbed.
No deep sea otters. No deep sea otter strange bubble den. All land now. Underwater land, under volcano land. But no deep sea otters. No.

Oh, Ro!
Murel said.

Looks like we got Da out just in time,
Ronan said.

But we didn’t save the deep sea otters, or whatever they were. They helped Da, saved his life, and now they’re extinct and we didn’t even try to help them.

We sort of had our hands full. And they didn’t want help. They wanted secrecy, remember?

She couldn’t help it. She started crying. Everything had turned out fine for everyone except the heroic creatures who had saved their father, and it wasn’t fair, it just wasn’t.