Deluge

Not without me, Kushtaka told her daughter.

Look, that’s great. But we have to go now, Murel told them. Our friends may be drowning.

The fishing jet was crowded. Two seals, a sky otter, and several deep sea otters and squid-forms traveled inside it. Mraka and Puk gave it as much power as they dared without causing further tidal catastrophes. The new volcanic vent provided sufficient power to propel them almost to the squid trough, across which the twins and Sky swam with great alacrity, leaving their alien allies to deal with any of their tentacled kinfolk who might rise far enough from their deep sea home to endanger the swimmers.

The waves were not as great as they had been, but the agitation from the waterspout and its sinking had caused a secondary oceanic agitation that was compounding the damage from the first. The twins were swimming under their own power, halfway across the squid trough, when a giant wave picked them up and carried them up over the prison wall and into the moat pool the waves had made of the prison yard.

Sky washed in beside them. Behind him were Tikka, Kushtaka, and three of their people. Like Kushtaka, these three had assumed their squidlike form, but Tikka maintained the giant deep sea otter guise the twins were more accustomed to seeing.

The main entrance to the prison had been blown open by the force of earlier waves and they were able to swim inside. The floors were covered with water that would have been waist high on a human, but no humans were in sight until the rescue party reached the cells. The electronic controls on the barred doors blocking the corridors had been shorted out by the flood, but the bare overhead bulbs flickered fitfully, casting long shadows on the water.

Women’s voices issued from the cells ahead of them, calling to each other, asking what was going on, some mocking, some bitter, some solicitous, and many in languages the twins did not understand. Some of the words were familiar, though, and pronounced in the melodious accents of the Kanakas.

Catching sight of them, one of the women said, “Seals! And an otter? They’re turning this place into an aquarium!”

“And me without my mermaid tail! Any of you girls got a comb and a mirror?”

“No, but I can sing. Mermaids do that.” This was a familiar voice too, but from a distance the emaciated, dirty, ragged, and very wet woman speaking was all but unrecognizable as Marmie’s housekeeper, Mrs. Fogarty.

“Ah, yes, dearie, let’s have a rousing chorus of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat,’” another woman suggested. “Or any selections you may have that include swimming instructions.”

“I used to like wet and wild, but this was never what I had in mind,” yet another woman said.

“What’s the water level like up there?” someone called from the end of the row. “Is it rising?”

“Doesn’t seem to be,” someone called back from behind the twins, and then let out a shrill scream.

This was followed by others. The twins flipped over to see what was causing the screams. The women behind them were pointing at Kushtaka and her companions.

“Monsters! They feed the bodies of the dead to those things and now they’ve turned them loose on us!”

Stay back, Kushtaka, Tikka. They’re frightened of you.

So we can hear by the noises they make, Kushtaka replied.

By now the twins were near the cell of four Kanaka women. At first these women also seemed frightened of the aliens pointed out by the others, but now one asked, Seal sistah, seal brutha? Friends of Ke-ola?

Ronan barked and Murel flapped her flippers together and walked backward on her tail as comically as possible to allay the fears of the prisoners. Once the Kanaka women recognized the twins, however, so did Mrs. Fogarty and other incarcerated crew members among the female prisoners. Then Kushtaka and her people were able to come forward and gain acceptance by association.

“It’s very good of you children to try to free us,” Mrs. Fogarty told them. “But unless you happen to have a spacecraft handy, I’m not sure it will do us much good to be out of our cells.”

“At least we won’t drown in here if we go with them,” someone else told her sensibly.

“I can’t swim,” another woman said in a worried tone.

“Ronan and-I mean, the seals, won’t let you drown,” Mrs. Fogarty told her firmly. “Nor will I.”

First we have to unlock the cells, Murel said, eyeing the locks.

Otters know all about locks, Sky said, surfacing between her front flippers. The cat showed me. He carried a ring of keys in one paw.

Otters will have to unlock the doors, then, Ronan said. I wish when our grandfather designed us to be seals he had designed seals with fingers and opposable thumbs.

The prisoners grew quite excited seeing the little otter with the paw full of freedom and exclaimed about how cute and clever he was. Sky, who understood human speech pretty well by now, preened.

“Here, little fellow, give those to me,” Mrs. Fogarty coaxed.

It’s okay, Sky. She’s a friend, Murel told him.

Sky otters have many friends, Sky replied smugly. But there should be a game. I will drop the keys, then you dive?

No time for that, Sky, Ronan told him, struggling to keep his patience with their friend. But there is a huge game of hide and seek to be played here. Why don’t you swim around the prison, keeping out of sight, and see how many friends you can recognize from the ship and Ke-ola’s planet? Find the keys to all the cells, if you can, especially on this floor.