“Why can she not remember?” Knud asked.
“She has been reborn. She keeps the Danish language, with
what other terrestrial skills she has; but everything that is in any way linked to her former life has been cleansed from her. That must be Heaven’s mercy, lest Satan use homesickness to lure the ewe Iamb from the fold.”
The old man seemed more troubled than pleased. “Her sister and brothers will take this ill.”
“I know about them,” said Magnus. “Have the girl meet them
on the strand in front of those seven trees which grow low and
close together. Their branches will screen my men, who will have
crossbows cocked-“
“No! Never! 1 will not have it!” Knud gulped, knowing how scant an authority was his. At length he persuaded Magnus not to ambush the halflings. They were leaving soon. And what might the effect be on Margrete’s new soul, that almost the first thing she would remember was a deed of blood?”
Therefore the priests told the men-at-arms to shoot only if ordered. All waited behind the trees, in a cold, blowing dusk. Margrete’s white robe fluttered dimly before them where she stood, puzzled but obedient, hands folded over a rosary.
A sound broke through the soughing of leaves and the clashing of whitecaps. Forth from the water waded the tall man, the tall woman, and the boy. It could just be seen that they were unclad. “Lewdness,” Magnus hissed angrily.
The man said something in an unknown tongue.
“Who are you?” Margrete replied in Danish. She shrank from
them. “I can’t understand you. What do you want?”
“Yria-“ The woman held out her wet arms. “Yria.” Her own Danish was agonized. “What have they done to you?”
“I am Margrete,” the girl said. “They told me. . . I must be brave. . . . Who are you? What are you?”
The boy snarled and sprang toward her. She raised the crucifix. “In Jesu name, begone!” she yelled, aghast. He did not obey, though he stopped when his brother caught him. The tall man made a strangled noise.
Margrete whirled and fled over the dunes toward the hamlet. Her siblings stood a while, talking in tones of bafflement and dismay, before they returned to their sea.
V
THE island men call Laeso lies four leagues east of northern Jut-land. Sand and ling, windswept from Skagerrak and Kattegat both, it holds few dwellers. Yet the small churches upon it forever banned merfolk from what was once their greatest gathering place-for then it was Hlesey, Hler’s Island, with Hler a name of Aegir. Early on, therefore, Christian priests exiled thence, with bell, book, and candle, all beings of heathendom.
But just below it, like a whale calf nigh to its mother, is the islet Hornfiskron: hardly more than a reef, half a league or so from end to end, though bearing a thin growth of heather. Nobody ever lived there or thought to ban unholiness. Enough of the sea god’s older power lingered that merfolk could approach from the south and go ashore.
Thither Vanimen, their king, had brought the Liri tribe, on a day when rain was blowing in from the west. It had taken them longer than a healthy adult would have needed, for many small ones were among them. Besides, that large a band could not well live off the waters as it fared, and hunger soon weakened everyone.
Wading to land, they felt the wind run bleak across their bodies, and the first stinging drops. It hooted, skirled, piped, while steely waves with flying manes chopped and growled beneath. Sand hissed white. Westward loomed a darkness where lightning scrib-bled runes; the eastern sky was hidden by a low wrack.
Vanimen climbed onto the highest dune close by-the grittiness hurt his footwebs-and waited for his followers to settle down. A goodly sight he gave them, standing trident in hand for a sign of majesty. He was bigger than most, sculptured with muscle below the snow-fair skin; the scars thereon reminded of how many centuries he had endured, how many frightful battles he had won. Golden hair hung wet past his shoulders, around a face much like that of his son Tauno, save that his eyes were sea-green. Calm rested there, strength, wisdom.
That was a mask he put on. Without hope, they were fore-doomed. Shattered by what had happened, they looked out of their wretchedness to him alone.
Alone forsooth, he thought. The longer he lived, the lonelier he grew. Few merfolk reached his age; none else had done so in Liri; something took them, oftener soon than late, unless they had rare skill and luck. No friends of his boyhood remained, and his first sweetheart had been a dream these hundreds of years. For a short while he had dared believe that with Agnete he had found what mortals called happiness. Well had he known it could only last a blink of time, until her flesh withered and she went wherever humans did. He had imagined her children might keep a measure of joy for him. (Oh, bitterest of everything, maybe, was that he could no more tend the graves of the three who died.) Tauno, who carried his father’s bardic gift on to something higher; Eyjan’s healthy beauty; Kennin’s promise; Yria’s trustfulness, her likeness in looks to her mother-but the bearers were gone, left behind, and could they ever search the great seas enough to rejoin him?
He must not be weak, Vanimen remembered. As if with a bodily heave, he put grief aside and regarded his people.
They numbered about sevenscore, he saw. Belike it was the first time anyone had cared to count them, and even today, he the sole one who thought to do so. His long life, the ever-growing weight of experience and of reflection thereupon, had taken away the easygoing nature common to his race, given him a mind that could brood like a human’s.
More than half the gathering were children. (At that, several had died on the flight hither.) They clustered about their mothers-a babe at a breast, a toddler whom she tried to shield from the weather, a bairn whose limbs were lengthening but who still clung to a lock of her hair while staring out of wide eyes at a world gone harsh and strange. . . . Grown males and unencumbered fe-males stood apart from this huddle. Fatherhood among the merfolk was nearly always a matter of guesswork, and never of import. Offspring were raised loosely by their mothers, whatever lovers these chanced to have at the moment, female friends and their lovers, ultimately by the tribe.
Save for Agnete’s, of course. . . . How she had striven to build into them a sense of what she held to be right and decent. After she departed, Vanimen had given them what he could of their earthside heritage; after all, he had seen something of that over the centuries. Now he wondered if he had done them any service.
Well, but those haggard faces were turned his way. He must offer them more than the empty wail of the wind.
He filled his lungs till his voice could boom forth: “People of Liri that was, here we must decide our course. Wallowing blindly about, we will die. Yet every shore we ken that might nourish us is either forbidden to beings of Faerie—most of them are-or hold as many of our kind as can live there. Where then shall we seek?”
A quite young male called, with a lilt of eagerness: “Do we need a coast? I’ve kept myself for weeks in the open ocean.”
Vanimen shook his head. “You could not for years, Haiko. Where would you go for rest or refuge? Where would you raise a home, or find the very stuff you need for its making? The deeps we may enter for a short while, but we cannot stay in them; they are too cold, black, and barren; the ooze covers all that we dig from skerries and eyots and shoals. Without an abiding place, presently without tools or weapons, you would be no more than a beast, less fitted for life than the shark or orca which would hunt you down. And before you perished, the children would, the hope of our blood. No, we are like our cousins the seals, we need earth, and air as much as we need water.”
Fire, he thought, was kept for men.
Well, he had heard of the dwarfs, but the thought of living
underground was shuddersome.
A lean female with blue tresses took the word: “Are you sure we can find no place nearby? I’ve cruised the Gulf of Finland. At the far end of it are rich fishing grounds which none of our sort
inhabit.”
“Did you ever ask why, Meiiva?” Vanimen replied.
Surprised, she said, “I meant to, but always forgot.
“The careless way of Faerie,” he sighed. “I found out. It nearly
cost me my life, and nightmares rode me for years afterward.”
Their looks at him sharpened. That was at least better than the dullness of despair. “The mortals there are Rus,” he told them, “a different folk from Danes, Norse, Swedes, Finns, Letts, Lapps, any in these parts. The halfworld beings that share their land with them are.. . different also: some friendly, but some weird and some altogether terrible. A vodianoi we might cope with, but a rousalka—“ Memory bit him, colder than wind and thickening rain. “Each river seems to have a rousalka. She wears the form of a maiden, and is said to have been one until she drowned; but she lures men into the depths and takes them captive for frightful tortures. I too was lured, on a moonlit night in the tidewater, and what happened, what I saw-well, I escaped. But we cannot live along shores thus haunted.”
Silence fell, under the lash of the downpour. Color was gone, vision found naught save grays and darknesses. Lightning flared close; thunder went rolling down unseen heaven.
Finally an elder male-bom when Harald Bluetooth reigned in Denmark-spoke: “I’ve given thought to this as we traveled. If we cannot enter as a group where our kind dwell, can we not by ones and twos, into the various domains? They could take us in piecemeal, I believe. They might even be glad of the newness we’d bring.”
“For some, that may be the answer,” V animen said unwillingly; he had awaited the idea. “Not for most of us, though. Remember how few nests of merfolk are left; we were the last on a Danish strand. I do not think they could, between them, add our whole number without suffering for it. Surely they would be loth to have our little ones, who must be fed for years before they can help bring in food.”
He straightened, to stand as tall as might be in the storm. “Also,” he called to them, “we are the Liri dwellers. We have our shared blood, ways, memories, all that makes us ourselves. Would you part from your friends and lovers, would you forget old songs and never quite learn any new, would you let Liri of your forebears-your forebears since the Great Ice withdrew-die as if it had never been?
“Shall we not aid each other? Shall we let it become true what the Christians say, that Faerie folk cannot love?”
They gaped at him through the rain. Several babies cried. At length Meiiva responded: “I know you, Vanimen. You have a plan. Let us judge it.”
A plan-He lacked power to decree. Liri had chosen him king after the last leader’s bones were found on a reef, a harpoon head between the ribs. He presided over infrequent folkmoots. He judged disputes, though naught save a wish to keep the general esteem could enforce his decisions upon the losers. He dealt on behalf of his people with communities elsewhere; this was seldom necessary. He led those rare undertakings that required their united effort. He was master of their festivals.
His highest duties lay outside of tradition. He was supposed to be the vessel of wisdom, a counselor to the young and the troubled, a preserver and teacher of lore. Keeper of talismans, knower of spells, he guarded the welfare of Liri against monsters, evil magic, and the human world. He interceded with the Pow-ers. . . aye, he hadguested Ran herself. . . .
His rewards were to dwell in a hall, rather than the simple home of an ordinary merman; to have his needs provided for when he did not choose to do his own hunting; to have splendid things brought him as gifts (though he in his turn was expected to be hospitable and openhanded); to be highly respected by a tribe not otherwise prone to reverence.
The rewards were gone, save perhaps the last, and it a heavy part of the duty which remained.
He said: “This is not the whole universe. In my youth I wan-dered widely, as a few of our breed have done sometimes. West-ward I came as far as Greenland, where I heard from both merfolk and men of countries beyond. No living member of either race had ever visited there, but the knowledge was certain; dolphins confirmed it for me. Many of you will remember my bespeaking this now and then. Those appear to be wonderful shoals and shores, that Christendom hardly is aware of and has no dominion in. If we went thither, we would have them to ourselves—vastness, life, and beauty to grow into, free and at peace.”
Astonishment replied in a babble. Haiko was the first to exclaim above it: “You’ve just avowed we can’t stay in midocean. Can we--{)ur young, indeed, and most of us who are grown-<:an we outlive that long a swim? There’,s the reason why nobody like us dwells yonder!”
“True, true.” The king lifted his trident. A hush fell. “But hear me,” he said. “I too have been thinking. We could make the passage with scant losses or none, were islands along the way for rest, refuge, and refurbishing. Not so? Well, what of a floating island that came with us? Such is called a ship.
“Men owe us for the harm they have done us, who never harmed them. 1 say: let us seize a ship of theirs and steer for the western lands—the new world!”
By eventide, the stonn had gone away. Likewise had the stonn among the people; after hours of dispute, they were agreed. For the main part they sought sleep against the morrow, curled up behind dunes, though a number went out after game to keep alive on.
Vanimen paced with Meiiva, around and around the islet. They were close to each other, often lovers before and after Agnete. Less flighty, more feeling than most, she could frequently cheer him.
Eastward the sky was a violet-blue chalice for the earliest stars. Westward it fountained in red, purple, and hot gold. The waters moved luminous and lulling. The air was quiet and faintly softer than hitherto; it smelled of kelp and distances. A person could set aside hunger, weariness, woe, to enjoy an hour’s hope.
“Do you honestly feel this can be done?” Meiiva asked.
“Yes,” the king declared. “I’ve told you how I’ve been on the
prowl about that harbor, again and again, the latest time not long ago. We may have to lurk, watching for our chance. However, at this season 1 expect that will be no great while; the town does much trade. Nobody will dare pursue us at night, and by dawn we should be well away, unfindable.”
“Do you know how to handle a ship?” she pounced. “That’s something which didn’t get talked about today.”
“Well, only a little, from what I’ve seen for myself or garnered from men-1 have had friends among them once in a while, you recall,” Vanimen said. “But we can learn. There should be no big danger in it if we keep plenty of sea room. Nor should there be any haste.” His tone quickened. “For we will have our island. Able to rest on it by turns, we’ll need far less food; thus we can sustain ourselves by hunting. And, of course, we needn’t fret about fresh water as humans must. And we can find our way more readily than they can. The simple surety that we have a land to steer for, and not an edge where the seas roar down to the nether gulf-that alone should make the difference which saves us.”
He gazed from sand and scrub, to the glimmer of sunset upon the western horizon. “I know not whether to pity or envy the children of Adam,” he munnured. “I know not at all.” Meiiva took his hand. “You’re strangely drawn to them,” she said.
He nodded. “Aye, more and more as the years flow onward. I do not speak of it, for who would understand? Yet I feel. . . I know not. . . more is in Creation than this glittering, tricksy Faerie of ours. No matter that humans have immortal souls. We’ve always reckoned that too Iowa price for being landbound. But I have wondered”-his free hand clenched, his visage worked-“what do they have in this life, here and now, amidst every misery, what do they glimpse, that we are forever blind to?”
Stavanger, in the south of Norway, dreamed beneath a waning moon. That light made a broken bridge across the fjord, where holms rose darkling, silvered the thatch and shingle of roofs, softened the stone of the cathedral and came alive in its windows, turned the streets below the house galleries into even deeper guts of blackness.
It touched the figureheads and masts of vessels at the wharf. . . .
Candle-glow through thin-scraped horn shone on the aftercastle of a particular ship. She was from the Hansa city of Danzig: one-masted like a cog but longer, beamier, of the new sort that were known as hulks. Day would have shown her clinker-built hull bright red, with white and yellow trim.
Moon-ripples trailed the stealthily swimming mennen. They felt no chill, no fear; they were after quarry.
Vanimen led them to his goal. The freeboard was more than he could overleap, but he had earlier gone ashore and stolen what he would need. A flung hook caught the rail amidships. From it dangled a Jacob’s ladder up which he climbed.
Quiet though he sought to be, his noise reached the watchman. (The crew were visiting the inns and stews.) That fellow came down from the poop bearing his lanthorn and pike. Dull gleams went off the steel, and off the gray streaks in his beard; he was no young man, but portly and slow. “Who goes?” he challenged in German; and as he saw what confronted him, a howl of terror:
“Ach, Jesus, help me! Help, help---“
He could not be let rouse the harbor. V animen unslung the
trident from his shoulders and gave it him in the belly. a full thrust
that shocked back through the mennan’s own muscles while it
skewered the liver. Blood spurted forth. The guard fell to the
deck. He writhed about. “Johanna, Peter, Maria, Friedrich,” he
gasped-the names of wife and children? His look swirled to
Vanimen. He half raised a hand. “God curse you for this,” came
from him. “St. Michael, my namesake, warrior angel,
The Merman's Children Page 3
