Changelings Read Free Page B

spite of its lack of the individuality that characterized Petaybean dwellings.
    Both twins were wide awake and smelly. The little girl held up a fist full of white fur. “Coaxtl got too close to you, I see, my little Monster Slayer,” Yana said, pulling off the dirty diaper and cleaning the child with the moistened moss compresses Clodagh recommended for the job. “You need to choose your monsters more wisely, though, my love. Coaxtl is a friend.”
    “Hee,” the little girl said.
    “Hee,” echoed her brother, spraying his father with urine the minute the diaper was removed and air touched his skin.
    “Here now,” Sean said. “I think your mummy said your role model was called Born
for
Water, not Born
to
Water!”
    “Hee,” the baby said again, so of course his sister had to say it again too, so as not to be outdone.
    Sean held the boy and walked him around the cabin, talking to him while Yana fed her daughter. Then they switched babies. Finally the little ones were fed, changed, rediapered, and swaddled in clean furs.
    Yana had finished washing up and pulled on a pair of old uniform trousers and a fleece top when someone knocked on the door.
    She opened it to admit Bunny Rourke, Sean’s niece and her closest friend since she had first arrived on Petaybee. Beside Bunny was Aoifa, Bunny’s sister. Coaxtl considered Aoifa her two-legged cub.
    “Clodagh said we should come to help with the babes while you and Sean get ready.”
    “Clodagh’s reputation as a wise woman is richly deserved,” Yana said thankfully. “You missed the messy bits for the time being, but they can use distraction for a moment.”
    With the help of the girls, the entire family unit was ready to mobilize within an hour. Yana and Sean carried the twins, while the girls followed with their changes of diapers, their packets of moss wipes, and extra furs in case the twins messed the ones they were wrapped in. “We look more like an expeditionary force than a family,” Yana remarked.
    Sean smiled. “You’ve not been around all that many families up till now, love. Families with new babies can make expeditionary forces seem underpacked.”
    “Good thing we brought the snocle,” Bunny said. “And a curly coat to carry the gear.”
    “Have packhorse will go next door,” Yana quipped when the girls loaded the supplies on the shaggy little Petaybean horse with its thick curly coat. Sometime during the night it had begun to snow. A blanket three or four inches deep covered the well-tramped path to the river road. Snow still sifted down from a light pewter sky. Soon the sun, which had just risen, would be setting again.
    Aoifa led the horse, while Sean and Yana—who were clad in parkas, snow pants, hats, mittens, and mukluks—squeezed themselves and their fur-wrapped offspring into the snocle beside Bunny.
     
    S MOKE POURED FROM the smoke hole of the latchkay lodge, a great plume among the pinion feathers emitted by the chimneys of Kilcoole’s other houses. In front of the lodge, men stirred soups and stews in sterilized fuel drums over open fires. The smells didn’t travel far in the air, which was so frigid it froze the hairs inside people’s nostrils.
    The drums drowned out all other noises now, calling the people together. Their beat was so strong the snow seemed to fall in time to it.
    The babies wiggled in their parents’ arms, wanting to see what all the noise and fuss was about. The thing in which they had been squeezed, the thing that roared and slid, stopped, and suddenly they felt cold air rush in through their furs. It felt wonderful!
    Strange and familiar voices mingled all around them. Their parents walked forward until the cold went away and the babies were enveloped in great warmth and felt themselves being passed from their parents to other people. When they were handed back, their furs were removed and their mother had changed from the furry beast she’d transformed into outside back to the