Changelings by Anne McCaffrey Read Free Book Online Page B

sometimes! I can scarcely believe we have the same birthday. You make any pup in Bunny’s new litter look downright mature by comparison. You just don’t
think,
laddie.”
    But Ronan had pulled his mittens on and was bouncing the finger pad off the thumb one. “See? This is your mouth! You just don’t
shut up,
do you, lassie?”
    He caught up with her and tried to race past her but she ran even faster when she saw what he was trying to do.
    Kits!
Nanook said.
    The track cat had meant to bring up the snowsuit issue with Sean and Yana, but her humans were always so busy these days, it took actual claws to get their attention. The company and the offplanet people simply would not leave them in peace. They were always trying to settle some new group on Petaybee or bring in some kind of improvements for the good of everyone, as they said, and they kept Sean and Yana hopping night and day just to field all of their chatter. Some of the offplanet people who were settlers were nice enough. Some even settled into Petaybean ways. But most of them came to Petaybee for peace, healing, a clean and simple life, and then wanted to clutter it up with all manner of things they were used to from their noisy, unpeaceful, unhealthy, dirty, and complicated lives somewhere else. That was what Nanook had heard the villagers say anyway. As long as the newcomers didn’t bring with them anything that preyed on track cats, she did not concern herself with them.
    “What those younglings need is something that can keep up with them swimming,” Coaxtl said finally. “They swim farther and farther up the river every time and I’m afraid sometime they’ll get in trouble and we won’t know because we won’t be close enough to catch their cries for help.”
     
    A T THE SAME time, Murel and Ronan, having captured their mother in one of her rare moments of leisure, were expounding on the situation to her. “If Da could come with us, it would be fine. We are really too old for babysitters now, but if we have to have one, it should be another selkie, or at least someone who can swim with us,” Ronan said.
    Murel nodded her head, the red tints in her black hair flashing with the firelight from the window in the woodstove. “Coaxtl can swim and doesn’t mind it in the summer but she’s really a big wuss-puss about swimming under the ice. All she does is hide Ronan’s snowsuit.”
    “Does she?” Yana asked. “Why doesn’t Ronan hide his own snowsuit? I believe both your father and I have tried to impress upon you—”
    “The thing is, Mum, it just isn’t practical to have to hide them,” Ronan said. “Sometimes we’d like to go explore someplace out of the water but we can’t because we don’t have a kit to put on when we get out of the water. We need a way to take them with us.”
    “I suppose we could rig up some sort of harness and a waterproof pack,” Yana said, thinking of diving equipment she had used while still in the Company Corps. “It would slow you down a bit but that’s hardly a bad thing. I’m not so sure I want you exploring outside the water so far from where you got in.”
    “Nothing would happen to us, Mum!” Murel said. “Petaybee wouldn’t let it. You know that.”
    “I know nothing of the sort. Petaybee has a good many other functions than providing divine intervention for you when you do something foolish and get yourselves into trouble. And once you’re away from the village and our summer campsites on the river, there are all manner of things that could indeed hurt you.”
    “Not any worse than freezing to death while a snow leopard squats on your protective gear and lectures you,” Ronan said with some residual bitterness at the unfairness of those who didn’t let him do as he liked, unchecked.
    Murel rolled her eyes at her mother and said, “Yes, Mummy, please make Coaxtl stop teasing Ronan. He is just so endlessly tiresome about it, and I’m the one who has to hear it all the time.”
    “Okay,