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.
Here is how it was. Long time ago we always had the sea to swim in, the warm bright sea full 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.