Changelings
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Скарборо Элизабет
- Серия: The Twins of Petaybee #1
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Changelings». Краткое содержание книги:
CHANGELINGS
They are Ronan Born for Water Shongili and Murel Monster Slayer Shongili. Twin brother and sister. Children of Yana and Sean. Children of Petaybee. As such, theirs is a destiny deeply intertwined with the sentient planet that is their home. For Ronan and Murel are more than human. Like their father, each can transform into a seal and converse telepathically with the planet’s creatures–such as the friendly otter whose life they save one day from a pack of ravenous wolves.
But the twins’ bravery has unforeseen results when a visiting scientist witnesses their startling metamorphosis and becomes obsessed with their capture. To protect their children, Sean and Yana send them to stay with a powerful family friend on an orbiting space station. But no one realizes that Ronan and Murel hunger to discover the origins of their shape-shifting talent–and that their search for knowledge will place them squarely in the path of peril.
Meanwhile, Petaybee is changing–and much faster than an ordinary planet’s natural evolution. It appears that portions of the sea are heating up and a landmass is suddenly rising from the depths. To investigate the startling occurrence, Sean heads out to the open water in his seal form. But the newly unstable region holds untold mysteries–and the potential for disaster.
Marmie laughed, and it sounded like bells jingling on sled dogs' harnesses. "Yes, yes, we must have cake and presents and a party too. But the Petaybee part, that will be our own little celebration, after the others have left. I know! Everyone must come as a creature from their planet that either swims or flies."
"Wouldn't we be a little too realistic as seals?" Murel asked, wincing. She hated to keep shooting down Marmie's ideas, but felt their friend got carried away with enthusiasm before thinking about how wrong things could go. Lately, it seemed to the twins that they'd had a lot of experience with how wrong things could go.
"Ah, but you will not be seals!" Marmie said.
"We will be if we go swimming," Ronan said grimly.
"Only if you swim in the water. I am thinking you will not be swimming in the water, you will be swimming in the air."
"Yes, but we can't do that," Murel said.
"You can in zero g," Marmie told her. While they were thinking that over, she asked, "So, what will you be? Eagles? Fishes? Whales?"
"Otters," they said at the same time. "We'll be otters."
Even after the humans rescued his family, Otter stayed in the small den in the riverbank, waiting for his friends the river seals to return. But winter ended and the ice melted and still they were gone and did not come home. Finally, Otter went to the dwelling he had seen them enter and sent his thoughts on the matter to the Father River Seal.
Father River Seal, where are your children? Shouldn't they be hack by now? Otters have many more games to flay with them and things to show them. Marvelous things they will enjoy very much. Otters know lots of good secrets. Where are your river seal children?
What the…? Father River Seal's thought was fragmented and startled.
It's me, Otter, Father River Seal. Do not be afraid, Otter told him.
Laughter came into the Father River Seal's thoughts. I was not afraid, Otter. Merely thinking of something else.
Not thinking of your children? Although they are not here?
Always thinking of my children, Otter. Their mother and I both miss them very much, but we sent them somewhere they would be safe from the kind of people who took the other otters.
Those people are gone. The good people took them away. Why have your children not returned? No danger now!
A smile came into Father River Seal's thoughts. No danger for otters. But for my children, yes, there is still danger and their mother and I have been working hard to see to it that the danger such offworld scientific groups present will never threaten our children again.
That is good, the otter said, for he could think of nothing else to say. His friends the river seal children were safe, but they were not in the river and so could not play with otters. I will return to my family now but later I will come back here.
I'll tell Ronan and Murel you were asking for them, Otter, Father River Seal said, and went back to thinking his deep, unsealy thoughts and doing the unsealy things he did when in human form.
Otter was surprised, when he returned home again where the ice maze was in the winter, that none of his family were at play on the banks or in the river. Where have all the otters who are not me gone? he asked. He was asking himself but unexpectedly received an answer from the otters who were not there when he found a scent message.
Scent messages between river otters were quite complex, and in a way that would have astounded humans or river seals. River otters could write entire tomes with one spritz from the proper area or a rub from another. And there were dialects of scents understood only by otters of the same colony, as well as nuances of meaning, idiomatic expressions or slang of particular families, that only otters in the same colony could fully grasp, or smell.
It was fortunate that otters had excellent memories for scent too, because great otter romantic literature had been composed in scent messages, as well as geography texts and adventure stories.
The message that Otter found that day was somewhat simpler. It said, "Kinsman Otter who Plays with River Seals, we do not care for this place any longer. Too many wolves and too many men with otter cages. We are moving closer to the sea to seek solidarity with our cousins the sea otters. See you by the sea!" Otters could pun in scent messages too. The language of otters was full of puns. Not the same ones humans used, but otter puns, which were very funny because otters enjoyed laughing. Like humans, however, otters had similar sounds for the big water sea and what otters did with their eyes see.
It was a long swim to the sea, especially all alone. The message was three days old, which meant the family was probably already at the shore. But it meant swimming with the current, and the weather was pleasant, as most weather was for otters, and so in a single day Otter caught up with part of his family, which had stopped at a particularly tempting mud slide. It was very long, slick, and muddy, and gave them a little "Whoop!" before they went splashing into the river, cleaned off the mud, and climbed back up the hill to slide again.
They had been playing for some time and were ready to join the rest of the family, so Otter had time for only a few slides-certainly not hundreds-before he resumed swimming again.
At last, after much swimming, with a few games along the way, they were reunited with the rest of the family on the banks of the river at the mouth where it spilled into the sea.
Where are our cousins the sea otters? Otter asked his mother.
You see that island over there? she replied, indicating a large landmass squatting amid the waves rolling onto the shore beyond their river camp. They live there. It is full of sea otter dens, and you can see them lying on the rocks eating clams. Some have been coming over to show us where the best places to build dens might be here. We do not swim in that salty stuff they call water, but they say that in the winter, when the ice is in, we could walk to their island, though of course we would not do so unless asked. Like us, sea otters protect their homes with great ferocity.
She bared her teeth in a suitably ferocious way, and Otter back-paddled away from her a little.
He knew his mother's teeth and claws very well from times when she had been greatly ferocious about how her offspring should behave.
The river otters moved into their comfortable new dens in the wide river mouth. There were low hills nearby that made passable mud slides, once the otters removed the rocks at the bottom, which they did with great efficiency. These were useful in breaking open the delicious shellfish they found on the shore, which was technically their cousins' territory, though the cousins did not use it much, preferring their island.
Otter loved the new delicacy and hunted on the shore as often as he could, keeping a careful eye on the island, lest ferocious cousins come and attack him for his boldness. Then one day he noticed that there were no longer any sea otters to be seen on the island. Not one. Not anywhere.
"Hah!" he said. Where have they gone? He alerted his family, and they all came to the beach to see for themselves. They could see he was right. No sea otters on the island's narrow beach, no sea otters in the water, no sea otters on the shore, no sea otters higher up on the island. No sea otters anywhere.
Later in the day, all of the sea otters returned. To Otter's surprise, three of the cousins swam straight to the shore. Otter was afraid at first, thinking that he'd been caught stealing their shellfish.