Changelings by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page A

tiring.”
    “I mean the one about the seal people who shed their coats when they became human, not the other way around. If any other human found the sealskin and kept it, then the selkie had to stay on land with that person.”
    “One recalls something of the sort, yes.”
    “I fancy Sean and Yana must sometimes wish it were true of the twins so they would have to stay in the nest until they could be safely supervised,” Nanook mused. “Of course, humans are a bit silly about that. Their young are sooo fragile and they have only one or two at a time.”
    “There is no room for those two in any enclosed space,” Coaxtl said, and turned her head to lick her shoulder.
    At that moment water geysered out of the hole and drenched the snow leopard, who somersaulted backward in surprise.
    She twisted and sat up facing the hole. A gray seal slapped front flippers on the edge and pulled its sleek body after it. The eyes were big and blue and the mouth was grinning.
    As soon as the seal was out of the water, it flipped water all over both Nanook and Coaxtl. A childish human laugh pealed from the midst of the spray and a small bare boy stood before the cats. “Gotcha!” he laughed.
    Coaxtl gave the boy a withering look and walked two paces forward until she sat on top of the buried snowsuit.
Cold, youngling?
she asked, purring.
    “You took my snowsuit! You big fur ball!”
    Nanook walked forward and touched a cold nose to the child’s bare rump, nudging him back to the ice hole.
If I were you, I’d be a seal again. At least you’re dressed for the weather when you’re in seal form.
    Ronan resisted smacking at, though not on, the black-and-white track cat’s icy nose. “Don’t get cat snot on me, Nanook. I’m cold enough. I don’t want to swim anymore.”
    Then I suggest you show submission to Coaxtl and beg her to return the property with which you so carelessly littered the landscape. Honestly, child, you never find
us
leaving our pelts lying around.
    “Oh yes we do. During breakup you shed your fuzzy body all over everything.”
    We remain attractively clad in fur at all times,
Coaxtl said. She allowed a sleeve of the snowsuit to poke out from beneath her belly.
You, on the other hand, cover yourself in small bumps, which do nothing that we can see to warm you.
    “I’m going to freeze to death and it will be on your head!” he proclaimed with something of his father’s Irish lilt. It was good for dramatic pronouncements.
    From the ice beside the hole came a sharp smack and a swoosh, and Murel rose, flashed pink skin, and then ran to the bank and pulled her buried snowsuit and blanket from under a log. She wrapped the blanket around her as she tugged on the suit, then tossed the blanket to her brother.
    “Don’t tease him, ’Nook,” she said. “Can you not see he’s about to perish of the cold?”
    Perish? It’s only minus twenty!
Nanook said, but shot a look at Coaxtl, who decamped from atop the clothing while the blanket-clad boy scrambled for it.
Downright sultry weather, I’d call it. It’s a wonder the ice is holding. Younglings Petaybean born and bred should be able to withstand this without getting all hissy and breaking out in bumps.
    Murel bullied her twin often enough when he wasn’t bullying her instead, but she didn’t want anyone else to do it. “Come on, Ronan, don’t give the cats the satisfaction next time. I told you to hide your snowsuit. What if one of the offplanet people was to find it? They’d think you’d drowned and would have set up a huge hue and cry and everyone would have to pretend to find you without letting the off-p’s see you as a selkie.”
    “Oh, would they? If you’re that worried about it, you could have hid mine too. Where would you be during all of this hueing and crying and searching?”
    Murel gave a deep and put-upon sigh and strode as purposefully toward the village as her seven-year-old legs would carry her. “Really, Ronan, you are such an infant