Read Online Changelings by Anne McCaffrey - Free Book Online Page A

minute,
Murel said before he darted off.
There’s only one it. You and I can go hide and Ronan can be it.
    Why don’t I go hide with the otter and you be it?
Ronan argued.
    Don’t be such a baby,
she told him.
It’s just till you find one of us. Then we’ll switch. Now close your eyes and count to ten.
    The otter had been about to zip away again, but now, once more, curiosity held him.
What’s count?
he wanted to know.
    It’s how to measure things,
she told him.
Like how many of them there are.
    Oh, like how many otters there are in my den? There are many, you know. What count is many?
    I don’t know. Ten? Forty-seven? A hundred?
    What’s the most many?
    A hundred?
    That’s it then, that’s how many otters are here, all with big sharp teeth to defend themselves against the
bad
otter-eating seals. A hundred otters in my family.
    That’s a very large family,
Murel told him.
Caribou have families that large, but I didn’t know otters did.
    My parents were very much in love,
he told her.
Besides, we need large families with very big sharp teeth to fend off the bad otter-eating seals.
    I thought you lived in this river and we were the only seals you’d ever seen in a river?
she asked.
    He swam a couple of strokes and pulled himself up through a hole in the ice, onto more ice.
    Look,
she said.
We really really don’t eat otters, even if they weren’t poisonous and if there weren’t a hundred with big sharp teeth. If we’re going to play together, that makes us friends. Friends don’t eat friends.
    Ninety-nine, a hundred! Ready or not, here I come!
Ronan called.
    “Hah!” the otter said from somewhere she couldn’t see.
The other seal knows how many are in my family. He said it.
    No, that’s just part of how we play the game.
The hole in the ice wasn’t quite large enough for a full-grown seal but Murel could just pull herself up through it with only a tiny clawed modification around the edges. She found herself in a low tunnel—good height for an otter and not bad for a seal if she slid on her stomach and just used her flippers to propel her slide forward.
    The otter slipped and slid ahead of her, weaving in and out of tunnels as she followed behind. He didn’t seem to be hiding exactly, though, so she did. One of the otter’s tunnels led to a den dug deep into the thick river ice lining the bank. None of the hundred otters with the big sharp teeth seemed to be using the den, so she hid there waiting for Ronan.
    If he found the otter first and the otter got to be it and came looking for them, maybe it would set the little guy’s mind at ease about their intentions.
    Instead, Ronan came sliding right up to her. “You’re it!” he cried aloud.
    How?
    “Read your mind, silly. Didn’t see our friend anywhere.”
    Otter otter in free!
The otter’s sending was from way up the river.
    You have kind of an unfair advantage in this game,
Murel said.
You know where you are and we don’t.
    Okay. Let’s go sliding then. I’ve gathered my family. They have agreed not to use their big sharp teeth on you unless you try something funny.
    Are you sure?
Murel asked, joking.
We know you now, but are your relatives maybe those seal-eating otters?
    Of course not. Come on! It’ll be fun! We can play over the waterfall!
    Sounds kinda dangerous.
    Not now. It’s a seasonal game.
    It took Murel and Ronan a long time to find their way back out of the maze of otter tunnels to the hole under the ice.
    Then they had to swim back upstream to where the ice was thinner and open another hole so they could surface again without tearing up the otter’s home.
    They popped their heads out of the water. As long as the rest of their bodies stayed submerged and their heads were wet, they could stay seals.
    If we get out now to go play with the otters, we won’t be seals anymore,
Ronan said.
    Oh, bother. Then he’ll think we’re otter-eating people and we’ll have to go all through it again or else those hundred relatives he’s