Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [2]
Then Sean pushed her in and, a moment later, a seal appeared among the splashing, laughing, naked company. This activity continued till daylight and was the merriest, raunchiest festivity she had ever attended. Periodically, someone would hoist himself out of the water and run bare-assed to the baskets beyond the candles to fetch something to cram into his mouth before diving back into the pool.
At daylight, everyone went ashore, dressed, and walked limply home except Sean and Yana, who rode double on one of the curlies, following Bunny and the village girls, who strewed flower petals and seeds on the path before them.
“I’m starving,” Yana muttered up into Sean’s chin.
He nuzzled the top of her head. “Good, you’ll like this part then. The feast was prepared before we left. But don’t eat so much you’ll be too full to dance with me afterward.”
“Dance? You have to be joking! My legs feel like noodles. Umm, noodles. Do you suppose Clodagh made hers? The ones with the smoked fish and dried tomato sauce?”
“I have it on good authority that she did. Is all you think of your stomach?”
“I’m eating for two!”
“So you are. Forgive me,” he said, lifting her down from the curly-coat’s back.
During the feasting, she had an ample chance to rest and gaze into Sean’s eyes and messily feed him and be fed by him, also part of the wedding protocol. The food was arrayed in the middle of the meeting house, and Sean and Yana and the other adults sat on benches along the wall, while Bunny led the youngsters of Kilcoole in offering them food.
Meanwhile, everyone occupied themselves by singing the songs they had written for Sean and Yana. Bunny sang of her first meeting with Yana and their wild ride down the river. Sean’s sister, Sinead, told how she knew Yana would be one of them from the time she went on her first hunt. Adak sang of the hiding of Sean in the snocle shed with Yana, making frequent clandestine trips which the Powers That Be did not know anything about.
Even Steve Margolies, now residing in Kilcoole with his partner, Frank Metaxos, and Frank’s son Diego, sang of how Yana and Sean had reunited him with his family.
Yana’s neighbor across the street had a hilarious pantomime song about Yana throwing Colonel Giancarlo out of her cabin with the burned fish. That was one of the few songs rhymed and sung to an old Irish air instead of chanted to drums. Clodagh said she believed the tune went originally to a song called “The Charladies’ Ball.”
As the other young people began to clear away the empty serving plates, Diego took his newly crafted guitar and joined the drummers, Old Man Mulligan on his whistle, and Mary Yulikilik on her handmade concertina. All together, they wheezed up a quite respectable dance tune.
Sean took Yana’s hands in his, led her out on the floor, and then swung himself opposite her at the top of the cleared hall. Two by two, the others followed: Dr. Whittaker Fiske, who had returned especially to dance at the wedding, partnered Clodagh, followed by Sinead with Aisling, Moira and Seamus, Bunny and her sister ’Cita, Frank Metaxos and Steve Margolies; Liam Maloney and Bunny’s cousin Nula completed the reel line. Captain Johnny Greene, who had extended his shore leave for the occasion, had Captain Neva Marie Rhys-Hall from SpaceBase as his partner for the dance in another reel line, while his fellow copter pilot, Rick O’Shay, gallantly led old Kitty Intiak onto the floor. Orange cats tiptoed daintily to the food that had been put on the side for them, while the dogs went home to their kennels to eagerly await scraps from the feast.