Maelstrom Page 9

  But as Sky regaled the tortoises, the cave grew welcoming and warm, as it did at the beginning of the night visits for a latchkay.

  Although none of the more spectacular expressions of the planet’s personality manifested themselves, the tortoises seemed well aware of Petaybee’s presence. They craned their wrinkled necks and widened their eyes and appeared to be listening with their invisible ears to something beyond Sky’s sales pitch. At last they seemed satisfied, lowered their heads, and with deliberate steps turned their shells toward the entrance to the cave. Then they paraded single file out from behind the waterfall and down the path. Murel followed and watched until their shells appeared no larger than a nut’s. Ke-ola and Keoki, seeing the Honus were leaving, stopped playing. Keoki awkwardly mounted Chapter and led Page, while Ke-ola struck out swimming back to the main channel, following the Honus.

  Sis? Ronan called.

  Coming, she called back. Stripping off her dry suit, she harnessed it to her back again, then dived into the pool, transforming as she shot deeper into the steaming warm water.

  By the time she reached Ronan and Ke-ola, Ke-ola was ready to climb out and join his brother. “That hot springs water wears you out,” he told the two seals watching him from the stream.

  It did indeed, so much so that when the stream rejoined the river, the twins had to catch a few fish to keep up their strength.

  As the day ended, the twins flopped themselves onto the bank. Murel chose a particularly ferny spot that provided her with privacy to finish changing and dressing. Then the twins helped the brothers to find the best wood for a fire. When it was just right, Ronan dived back in and caught enough fish for all of them, though Sky brought his own, the largest fish of all. They got little warmth from the fire, though, for the Honus were feeling the chill of the evening and ringed the blaze with their giant shells, blocking the warmth from the unshelled members of the party.

  The twins and the brothers slept in bedrolls carried on the horses. Sky joined the two-leggeds in a companionable way, snuggling between Murel and Ronan, though normally he would have slept in a den in the riverbank.

  Long before the sunrise, an event occurring minutes later each day, the Honus announced that they would be off again. Moving was warmer than not moving, and by now they thought they smelled the salt of the sea.

  At midday Sky streaked ahead of the others, returning in an hour with some of his hundreds of relatives. They greeted the twins with diving and nosings, and thoroughly explored the tortoises, running around, between, and over them. One even tried to peer inside a huge shell but the Honu discouraged the bold otter with a hiss.

  You were quick, Murel said to Sky.

  Yes, otters are quick, that is so, Sky responded. But the sea is close. Very close.

  Is it? she asked. I thought we still had miles to go.

  It moved, Sky told her. My relatives’ old dens are far beneath the sea now. They moved too. Even the sea otter cousins moved from their island. The sea is near.

  He was right. In another half hour or so, even with all of the otter foolishness, they soon reached a place where the river broadened, covering hills and land, even trees, until there was only water and no banks to be seen on the surface. The water grew suddenly salty.

  Murel dived and swam out a short distance. Beneath her, fish swam among the bare and rotting tree branches, while seaweed and crabs decorated the trunks, making of the drowned trees a forest of individual wooden reefs.

  The water smelled ever so slightly of sulfur, like the spot in the river where the stream drained from the hot spring.

  Murel returned to the shore. Ronan and otters of both riverine and sea variety swam in the shallower waters. Keoki and Ke-ola dismounted and turned to face the approaching Honus.

  Now we change, the smallest Honu announced on behalf of the others. The seals must change as well. We will need them.

  Murel and Ronan hoisted themselves onto the shore, Murel finding the upper branches of a submerged tree to conceal her while she pulled on her dry suit. Then she joined the boys.

  The small Honu needed only Ke-ola to help him transform, but when it came time for the larger ones to do so, the brothers slid into the water and supported the front ends of the heavy tortoises while the twins supported the back end from the shore. In this way, the tortoises were able to change their stumpy legs to long flippers on the front and shorter wedge-shaped ones in the back without injuring themselves, while first the lower shell and then the edge of the upper changed. At that point in the transformation, each half sea turtle/half tortoise could complete the transformation by dipping his head under the surface without drowning. This accomplished, the Honu swam gracefully out to sea.

  All four youngsters were exhausted by the time they had helped all eleven tortoises convert.

  “I can see why they don’t do it more often and Dr. Mabo thought it was so secret,” Ronan told Ke-ola.

  “They need our help usually,” Ke-ola said. “At least to go back to sea. They’re very vulnerable to attack while they change. And their flippers won’t support them for long on land, unless it’s sand. If they take the tortoise form into the water, they can’t survive either. So as far as I know, they never change without some of us around to help them.”

  “As an adaptive mechanism, then, it’s not very convenient, is it?” Murel asked.

  “I think they’re still learning,” Ke-ola told her. “I don’t think Honus have always been able to do it.”

  Ronan, who was very interested in learning about other shape shifters and shape-shifting in general, said, “That’s funny. Dad, Murel, and I have always been able to change.”

  Ke-ola shrugged. “Maybe the shells make it harder. Or maybe it’s because they’re older. I don’t know if they even know.”

  “Did you ever ask them?”

  “No. See, we’ve always had Honus, but I don’t know anybody who’s ever been able to talk to one as personally, I guess you could say, as I have been and you guys are able to do. What we usually do—used to do—was wait till we had something important to ask them, or maybe they waited till they had something important to tell us before we talked to each other.”

  “Not much for idle chitchat, then?” Murel asked.

  “Not as such, no,” Ke-ola said.

  “I’ll ask,” Ronan said, and waded back into the water where the turtles were now swimming toward the horizon.

  “Wait for me,” Murel said, a bit late.

  “I’m coming too,” Ke-ola said.

  “Me too,” Keoki said. “They’re our Honus after all.”

  They swam after the turtles until the smallest swam back toward them, up under Keoki, inviting him to hang on to the shell.

  Murel decided Honus were probably good at psychology. It was easy to see that Keoki was disgruntled by the changes, by being uprooted and separated from Halau, horrible as the place had been. She’d felt a bit that way several years before when she and Ronan had been sent off Petaybee to school on Marmie’s space station, even though it was a beautiful and luxurious facility. Ke-ola, who had already visited Petaybee, had met the planet and been accepted by it. He was much more at home here than his brother. The newly transformed sea turtles gave off an intense feeling of relief and ease at being able to stop crawling and start swimming.

  Keoki, having literally taken the turtle by the shell, was emboldened enough to ask the question. “Sacred Honu, how did you and the others happen to learn to change from sea creatures to land?”

  CHAPTER 12

  THE ELEVEN TURTLES, two humans, and two selkies—plus a number of otters who were busy chattering and splashing each other and were not paying any attention at all to the others—had been swimming out to sea. But as the small Honu answered Keoki’s question, the other turtles paused to swim in a circle around the small Honu and Keoki, Ke-ola, Murel, and Ronan.

  The Honu’s Story

  Here is how it was. Long time ago we always had the sea to swim in, the warm bright sea f
ull of delicious things to eat and soft clean beaches to lay our eggs. No Honu ever went hungry and the food in the sea was so good, few among the other sea folk preyed upon us, for our shells were hard and our bite was harder. We lived long and became wise and numerous as grains of sand on the beaches.

  Then men came and found us easy to catch and less dangerous than Manos or stingrays or other animals. They ate us and thought us tasty and thus we were doomed. They used our very shells as bowls from which to scoop our poor flesh, then made our shells into implements. Other creatures stole our eggs too, but the people harvested so many that our young did not hatch into the world.

  One day a whole family came to take the eggs, a mama, a papa, and their young, a baby. The mama laid the baby on the sand while she helped her husband collect the eggs. They were laughing and talking and didn’t notice the big bird circling overhead. He heard the baby laughing to herself and saw her waving her arms and legs around, playing with her toes. He thought she looked tasty and swooped down to get her.

  Most times if we saw a bird like that when we were on the beach with our eggs, we’d make a circle around them so the bird couldn’t get at them. We saw the bird. We made a circle. That day five of us had been watching the people take our eggs. We could do nothing about that. But we could keep that bird from taking another young thing. We circled close around that human child. The bird screamed with anger when he saw he couldn’t get her, and her parents looked up and drove him away. Then they thought we were trying to hurt their child. When we moved away and they saw that she was fine, they were glad. They thanked us and were surprised when we talked back and told them they were doing to us what we would not let the bird do to their daughter. They put back the eggs and promised that they would tell their families what had happened and what we said. After that, those people were our family.

  That was good. They sheltered and protected us from others among them who did not revere us. If not for them, we might have all perished.

  The Honus collectively gave the sigh hiss the twins had come to know as a Honu’s expression of frustration or relief.

  Soon they themselves were preyed upon by other men who took their lands and waters and harvested the living things they contained as if by right. Again our people saved some of us, though many more were lost. Then the newcomers built great nests that shat poison into our waters. Sores and growths worse than barnacles covered our skins, our shells grew soft, and we died in great numbers. Many wise elders who had escaped hunting died from this poison. But we could do nothing to save ourselves because our homes were in the sea and all the sea had become poisoned.

  Then one day a clutch of eggs hatched young who looked strange and behaved differently from all of their ancestors. Perhaps the poison changed them or perhaps the forces that created them took pity, knowing that if they did as forebears had done, they would not survive long in the world. They had strong stumpy feet that carried them easily across the land. They grew hard heavy shells that could shield them from the sun and hide their tender parts from enemies. But they could not join their parents or the other remaining Honus in the sea. They were too heavy and their stumpy feet did not let them swim as easily as flippers or webbed feet.

  In time some mated and laid their own eggs, but others, remembering what they had been, yearned toward the sea and its dangers and found their fellow tortoises unappealing. Only the turtles of the sea pleased them when they thought to mate. But it was difficult for the sea Honu to go ashore to mate, and so the land tortoises jumped back into the sea. They would have drowned, and perhaps some did, but some part of their beings recalled what they had been and changed them to it once more. In this way, more turtles were born, some starting life on the land, some in the sea. We who change are the descendants of the tortoises who returned to the sea. The children of the tortoises who mated with other tortoises on the land produced only land creatures who could not breathe the sea. Eggs that hatched into sea turtles who returned to the sea never changed into land creatures.

  This was their bad luck. Those who could not change died off and only we who can survived.

  Murel thought about the story for a moment, then said, While I don’t want to be rude or anything, it seems to me that a change that is as difficult to make as yours is not a very useful one. You need quite a lot of help to make it, after all.

  The Honu gave a frustrated hiss. That is true. But it is also true that change is usually more difficult than not changing. It is true as well that changing often takes help. Our change has served its purpose. We have survived a long time.

  Ah, so the story had a moral, Murel thought. Overall, the Honu’s tale was a bit like a Petaybean song.

  After the story, all of the other Honus had things to say. Basically you have it straight, young one, but the way I heard it, we started on the land and then went to the sea, one said.

  Yes, and I distinctly remember, said one whose mental voice was old and creaky, that some of the ones who stayed in the sea turned into something else—warthogs, was it? Octopuses? Let me think now. Maybe it was jellyfish.

  It’s been a long trip, Grandfather, said another turtle, just as big but sounding much younger. Let’s give it a rest now, shall we? The youngster got it mostly right.

  No, no, not octopuses or jellyfish, the older turtle continued, correcting himself. Could have been clams, though. Or lobsters or crabs. Shells, you know. Our sort will always have an affinity for shells.

  Sky swam up with a dozen or more sea otters. Are you going to the volcano, river seals? Otters like to go there for the giant white clams.

  Ronan said, I guess with no deep sea otters there to object, the sea otter cousins can have all the clams they want.

  Deep sea otters do not care how many clams sea otters take, one of the sea otters replied. Deep sea otters give clams to sea otters.

  How can that be? Murel asked. The deep sea otters’ den was buried by the volcano. We threw clamshell leis down to them, remember?

  The sea otter somersaulted in the water and came right side up facing her. That may be, but there are still deep sea otters living out there. Maybe all of them did not live in the strange den. Maybe some swam away.

  Maybe so, Murel replied, feeling a bit excited but also a little worried. The deep sea otters’ “den” had resembled an odd human city, or the ruins of one. A very unotter-like presence sent thoughts from within, and the city had seemed impenetrable to Ronan and her. Still, the deep sea otters, or whatever they were, had saved her da when he was injured. That made them good, didn’t it?

  Ronan caught her line of thinking. Unless they were the ones who hurt him to begin with, he said.

  Yeah, she said. There is that.

  How big is the volcano now? Ronan asked the otters.

  Big. Bigger than before, was the answer. But quiet now.

  Perhaps it’s done, Murel mused. Perhaps it made the island and settled down so Ke-ola’s people can move there soon.

  It should be safe to swim out there now.

  Yes, but we promised Mother we wouldn’t.

  I know, but if the deep sea otters are still alive, someone should warn them about the Manos. We won’t be able to swim out there safely once they’re let loose, so we’d better do it now.

  You don’t think we’ll be safe around the Manos? They did promise not to harm us.

  You trust them?

  Not really.

  Me neither. So on the whole, what do you think Mum or Da would do in our position, if they knew all the facts? Would they just leave these deep sea otters or whatever they were who saved Da to face the sharks without warning?

  Otters could warn them, Sky said.

  Only if otters remembered to warn them while they were harvesting clams, Murel replied. In some ways she didn’t trust otters either, Sky being an exception. She and Ronan liked to play, but compared to otters, they were party poopers. Sky might have been the only one among them who was a sky otter, but they were all a bit flighty.

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p; It’s not like there’s time to go back and ask permission, even if we could, Ronan rationalized. We promised to keep them secret, after all.

  Just a quick trip, then, she agreed. The volcanic flow had covered so much of the ocean floor that the closest approach to where the “den” of the deep sea otters had been was nearer than before. They had discovered this when they went to pay their respects to the presumably dead denizens with clamshell leis, as Ke-ola had showed them.

  The Honus, usually patient creatures, were chilled by the wintry waters close to the polar shore.

  We wish to go to the new home, one of them told the seals, otters, and the brothers.

  Ke-ola and Keoki, back on shore, looked unhappy. We want to go too but we can’t, they said.

  If you are too weak to swim all that way, grandsons, you may hold onto our shells and we will tow you, the Honus offered.

  We can’t, the boys said. It’s too cold. We’d freeze if we swam in that very long.

  Ronan and Murel agreed that the only way they could all go together was to find the brothers a boat. Murel and Sky turned north and swam along the coastline, while Ronan and some of the sea otters turned south. But they discovered that the entire length of the shoreline was abandoned. Where normally there might be boats and nets and small villages or camps, now the sea was bounded only by rocks, drowned trees, and sheer cliffs. The water was higher than at any time in Petaybee’s history.

  I know the volcano made high water and waves, but I can’t believe people moved so far from the sea, Murel called to her brother. They make their livelihoods from it! Surely they can’t be far. Maybe we should change and walk inland a bit and see if we can spot anybody. Of course, if we do find a boat, we’d have to carry it back to the shore. I guess Ke-ola and Keoki should help us search. If we’re not around to guide them they could get lost.