Changelings

"We use drums too," he said. "Come here, Rory, man. Bring your empty head so I can show you all some drumming."

But Marmie's butler, who'd been watching everything onscreen inside the house, came out bringing a drum that usually acted as a side table in Marmie's main living room. Ke-ola looked at it critically, then started in on a beat that sounded a lot like a heartbeat and went perfectly with the chant he sang in quite a different tone from the last one. Periodically he danced along with his drumming, stomping for emphasis between drumbeats. Pretty soon everybody was doing it, even Rory.

"What's that one about?'

"Oh, it's just a song we do a lot on birthdays at home," he said vaguely. "It's the men's part. You do one now."

So first they sang the otter song, then Murel sang one about mosquitoes.

Ke-ola laughed. "You want to see what dance my people do about mosquitoes?" he asked, and when they said they did, he did a rhythmic chant that involved slapping himself silly on his thighs and chest, belly and forearms, the back of his neck and his face, even the soles of his feet.

"Wow, you must have bigger mosquitoes than we do even," Ronan said.

The kids started trying to make up their own dances then for a while, but they got pretty silly.

Ke-ola jumped into the fake river and floated there like a contented island.

And Dewey was in a much better mood. He helped serve the refreshments, and now sat beside the fake river, his pant legs rolled up and his bare feet kicking back and forth in the water. The lights from below lit up his toes so they looked all white and corpsey. Or at least, what Murel thought corpse toes would probably look like.

"Do you guys swim here?"

"Uh, no," Murel said. "We, uh, we're afraid of the water."

"How deep is it?" he asked.

"Oh, it's different in different places," Murel said casually. Actually, it was a good five feet deep in some places, and more in others.

"How about right here?"

"I dunno. I could get a line to measure it, though, if you really want to know."

"I got a better idea," he said, and slid off the edge, and sank. Bubbles blew up from his mouth, but his face looked really white and corpsey now. Murel didn't even think about the secret.

She just dove in after him, clothes and all. Ronan, help! No, don't you come in too. Just stand there and wait, she said. Try not to let anybody else see me. Fortunately, Dewey hadn't realized he was in trouble until it was too late to scream, so maybe nobody else noticed.

She caught the neck of Dewey's ship suit in her mouth, since she now had flippers poking out of her sleeves, and hauled him up to the surface where Ronan began pulling him up onto the "bank" of ponies-grown turf.

Ronan was not quite alone, though. Ke-ola and Rory helped, Ke-ola pulling Dewey the rest of the way to his feet. Murel flipped the water off her head and hands and turned her back on everyone.

"I thought you were afraid of the water?" Dewey said between chattering teeth.

"I was more afraid you'd drown," she replied, as soon as her muzzle turned back into a separate mouth and nose again, which fortunately didn't take but a second. "I mean, I can swim, I just don't like to."

Lan Huy said, "Wow, you had a whole nother holo, Murel. Cool one! You looked just like a seal carrying Dewey in her mouth!"

"Yeah," Murel said. "So now this seal is flapping back inside to change into something dry."

That sort of broke up the party. Marmie directed a flitter to return the other kids to their quarters.

By the time Murel came out, Ronan was staring at the packages Johnny carried and thinking that if these were from home, it meant that he and Murel weren't going to get to go back to Petaybee now.

"I'm sorry," Murel said, apologizing before she reached the place where their chairs were clustered around a realistic holo of a blazing fireplace. Enough heat came from it to dry her hair into the long wild red-brown Irish curls that distinguished her from Ronan now. His hair was Inuit or maybe Navajo, straight and black. You couldn't tell them apart in the water very easily, though. "The water's ten feet deep there, and the silly git doesn't know how to swim. Someone should teach him."

"I'll speak to his parents," Marmie said. "That was very brave of you, cherie. No harm done.

The others thought you had a good second holo."

Murel smiled, but it faded as she saw the presents.

"You don't even know what's in them," Johnny exclaimed. "Why the long face?"

"We thought maybe you had come to take us home," Ronan said. "I know Marmie said not now, but we thought maybe Mum and Da had changed their minds."

"No, my pets, I'm afraid you're stuck with me for the time being," Marmie said.

But she didn't say what the time being might be.

That year, their gifts were new journals from Mum. She had kept them all yearlong to let the twins know what was happening between the rare times when they could talk via the com units. Da sent them carvings he had made of otters, each carving wrapped with a clamshell.

Clodagh sent them a big plastic tub of her rose hip preserves and loaves of zucchini bread.