by Julia Ember
My own experience told me that the misery of lost hope pleased the god above all else. Loki promised the world and delivered hell, but here I was, still striving to meet their conditions.
I rolled over and buried my face in the seaweed cushion that grew from the decaying pallet. The seaweed smelled sweet and grew thicker by the day. Algae covered the walls, and a family of sand crabs had made their home in the drawers next to the bed. It seemed that the heat emanating from my scales had brought life to the ship, reviving the titan from its deathly slumber in a kind of reincarnation.
Someone tapped on the door. I thought I must have imagined it, but the sound came again, louder and more insistent. It had to be Loki, probably ready to forge a new deal and try to bind me closer to him. He knew that despite my small successes, I still had the hardest challenge left, and my hope was fading. If I didn’t try to complete Loki’s tasks, what would be the fun for the god? Maybe they would let me die in peace if I became too boring. I turned over on my stomach and blocked my ears with my hands. They would come in anyway, no matter what I said.
“Ersel?”
Tears sprang to my eyes. The trick was too cruel. Even for Loki.
“Ersel?” The voice repeated. “Please. Please just let me in. This is the first chance I’ve had to sneak away. King Calder has had me under guard. I only managed to come because they assigned Havamal to me… and he turned a blind eye.”
Against all my judgment, I swam to the door. A storm of emotions flowed through my body, and when I reached for the knob my hand buzzed as if with lightning. I sucked down a deep gulp of water and slowly turned the handle.
And flung myself into the arms of my mother.
She felt smaller. Her arms were strong, but shaking, around my back. She’d always struggled to wrap her arms all the way around my back, but now her elbows sagged behind me with inches to spare. She pushed me back and looked into my face. I studied her. Her cheeks looked hollow, and her eyes were set deep in their sockets. I wondered what I must look like.
“Thank the gods,” she whispered. “I thought I might be too late.”
I didn’t dare to ask her what she had imagined I would do. The relief at seeing her was so great that all I could do was stare.
She picked up a heavy basket and held it out to me. “Havamal helped me get this. It’s not much, but there are some of your favorites. I know I shouldn’t defend him. I don’t think he would want me to defend him either, but he’s been helpful to me. He’s looked after me when he could.”
I pushed the lid back, and my mouth watered. The basket overflowed with seahorse jerky, sweetened kelp, and shark fin. I lifted one of the seahorses to my lips and tore off its succulent head with my teeth. Havamal remembered. The thought both pleased and hurt me. I might never forgive him, but it was nice to know our friendship had had once been real.
Mama took a seat on the edge of the table and watched me with a half-smile as I devoured the food.
“I’m here to make a deal.”
My eyes widened and the food dropped from my hands as I processed what she was saying. “No. No you can’t. You can’t be serious.”
“Are you telling your mother what to do now, Ersel?” She tried to smile, tried to wink, but all I could see in her eyes was exhaustion.
“Loki is a monster.”
She nodded. “I know that. I can see what they’ve done to you, and I was there at Vigdis’s delivery…”
I held my breath waiting for her to continue, but she didn’t. My imagination began to conjure the baby’s appearance: a monstrosity, with Vigdis’s coral fins, tusks protruding from its mouth, and hundreds of unblinking eyes covering its torso—sad, haunted eyes, all of them like Vigdis’s own eyes had looked during my trial.
“It died,” Mama said at last. I breathed a sigh of relief, and Mama pressed her lips together before saying, “So did she. It really scared a lot of merfolk… and they’re scared not just of Loki, but of King Calder as well. Of his plans for our girls. Havamal’s been speaking with some… it’s amazing how many girls feel trapped, but would never admit it.”
Self-disgust welled in me. I’d done all this for a chance at my freedom; I’d thought myself alone in my hatred for our system. My selfishness, my belief that I was somehow different and all alone, had gotten Vigdis killed. It may have been Loki who had sent the beast that killed her, but her blood was on my hands, too. How many other mermaids were like me, silently going through the motions, cursing their fate and limited options, before finally succumbing to something they believed was inevitable? Maybe if I survived this deal with Loki, I could do something to help them. I squashed the thought almost as quickly as it arose. There was nothing I could possibly do against the king.
Mama’s sharp eyes scanned the room until they fell on the last remaining vial. One of my tentacles darted out to stop her, but she slapped the end of it and picked the little bottle up, rotating it in her hand. “How many do you have left to collect?”
“Just one more,” I whispered.
“One more and you’re free?”
“I hope to be.”
Mama looked up to the ceiling. “I pray to Loki. I want to make a deal.”
Tears fell down my cheeks as fast as rain in a storm. The water around us warmed with my emotions. “Stop, Mama. Stop! You can’t; they’ll destroy you.”
Mama set her mouth in a firm line. “I’ve had two months to think about this.”
“Whatever you want, they’ll distort it. They’ll make it ugly and nothing like you expect. They just want to cause misery.” I begged her.
When at first no one came, I dared to hope that her invocation wouldn’t work. Maybe Loki simply wasn’t interested in my mother; maybe they sensed in her a moral fiber they couldn’t corrupt. Mama was the child of the Spring Rains, after all, the daughter of Ran and Frigga. Maybe they simply didn’t want to tangle with the other gods.
But then electric green sludge began seeping from the ceiling, moving against the water as if it were simply air. It poured into the room and filled it with bright green light.
Loki materialized; a frozen grin stretched across their face. They appeared as such a perfect replica of the king that I had to resist the urge to fall to the floor. The shift was perfect, down to every wrinkle around King Calder’s eyes and the exact glint of his scales, though a pale green haze lingered in the water around his outline.
Cloud-gray eyes flashing with mischief, Loki clutched a bone trident and brandished it with glee. “What a sentimental addition to my collection of curiosities. A mother-daughter pair! I should have expected something like this. Some sort of silly sacrifice. What’s it to be? I let her go? I keep you instead? That kind of usual parental nonsense?”
Before Mama could speak, I cut in desperately. I couldn’t let them twist her words. I couldn’t. “She is my last voice. Her deal is with me.”
“You can’t lie to me. I invented it.” Loki’s hands balled into fists. “She invoked me. She’ll make her bargain with me, and then you and I can see about settling our last voice.”
“To bear witness.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Our deal comes first. And if you go back on it, the other gods will put things to rights. I know the legends.”
They snickered. The green haze swirled around the god, and in a blink their form shifted into the lithe warrior I had seen at our first meeting. “Am I like the legends you know? Haven’t I surprised you enough yet? What makes you think your precious legends know anything about the way the gods work?”
Their question made me hesitate. I wanted to snatch the vial from Mama’s hands. I wanted her to swim away as fast as she could to a place where I might never see her again, a place where even Loki could never find her.
But a small, selfish part of me, at war with everything else, wanted her to save me.
Mama uncorked the bottle. Our eyes met
, and I saw the trust in her gaze as well as the plea for me to trust her. She was putting her fate in my hands, trusting that we could save each other.
Loki smiled. “And what do you want in return?”
Mama’s fingers hesitated; the vial was just inches from her lips. “You can grant anything?”
The god chuckled. “I’ve changed the outcomes of battles, brought lovers back from the dead. I’m a god. So yes, mortal, anything your mind can conceive.”
“I want my child to be happy,” she said. “Truly happy, not in a forced state or something mind-controlled. I want you to give her the things that will make her happiest in the world.”
My hand went to my mouth.
“That’s too abstract,” Loki said, shaking their horned head. “You have to ask for something real. Something I can understand. Happiness isn’t a thing I can just give. It’s not an outcome. It’s a condition of every moment.”
“Then you’ll have to grant her something in every one of them.” Mama braced her hands on her wide hips. “Perhaps it will do you good to think of another’s happiness in every second of your life.”
Loki and I stared. I’d never had so much admiration for her.
“You’re a god. You’ve been alive for millennia. I’m sure ‘abstract’ is something you can overcome. If you cannot fulfill our deal…” Mama trailed off.
Loki snarled. Moving so fast their body blurred, their hands were on my throat. I gasped and spluttered as strong fingers crushed my windpipe. “How did you get her to come here? How did you do it? You cheated somehow, I know it.” Dropping me, they rounded on my mother. “Maybe your daughter will find happiness, but you will be an outcast. You’re here against your king’s wishes, against your all your laws.”
“I know the repercussions of the choice I’m making.” Mama’s jaw stiffened. “And my voice is not the part of me I value the most. That part grew up a long time ago. She’s standing right in front of me.”
Loki glared at her before smoothing their hair back. “I won’t give you that deal.”
Above us, I heard hail fall on the surface, followed by the clap of thunder.
“You said, ‘anything,’” my mother reminded him. “You already gave your conditions.”
Loki paled, and something like confidence grew inside me. The legends were true. The fear in their face told me as much. They would have to keep their promise. Thunder struck. I imagined Thor surfing on the waves and holding his hammer outstretched as he descended to bring justice. Loki and I looked up.
When I turned back to my mother, she held the bottle out to me, filled with the pearl white liquid. Her hand pressed against her throat, and when she mouthed, ‘I love you,’ I heard nothing and everything. In my hands, I clutched the third and final voice.
Loki held out their hand.
Trembling, I took the bottle from Mama. My whole body crawled with fear. I had the thing he wanted. I could ask for whatever I wanted and I had learned to be specific.
I cradled the vial against my chest. Mama had given up her voice, but I was the one who didn’t know what to say.
Thunder cracked overhead. The gods were impatient. They wanted to see the deal fulfilled so they could turn their attention elsewhere. The vial felt warm against my scales; it was comforting in a way none of the others had been. I could almost hear Mama hum a soothing lullaby within the milky liquid.
With the attention of all of Asgard on me, I took a chance. The god of lies might kill me where I stood, but I had to take the chance. “Our deal is complete.”
“Yes, yes. Nearly. Give me the bottle.”
I hugged Mama’s voice closer to my chest; my heart beat so hard it threatened to escape up my throat. “Our deal is complete. I brought you three voices. It was never stated that I had to actually give them to you.”
I wouldn’t have dared to try something so brazen before; I feared Loki’s wrath. If it had been anyone else’s voice in my hands, I still might never have dared. But Mama had stood up to them and her stubbornness gave me the courage I needed.
Loki lunged for me. The bottle slipped from my fingers, but they focused entirely on me. Their eyes glowed red, and heat emanated from them. I shut my eyes, knowing this was the end. I waited for them to kill me.
The water in the room flashed as lightning struck the surface of the water.
“Our deal is complete,” I whispered a final time.
They glanced up to the ceiling, then jabbed a thick finger at me. “This isn’t over. You’ve made an enemy of a god.”
“You’re right, it’s not over,” Mama said, and I almost cried at the sweet sound of her voice. “Ersel is owed something in return. Her choice.”
I could ask Loki for the legs I’d wanted all along, so that I could search the lands for Ragna and a new fortune. I spoke the godstongue, and perhaps someone would have heard of her. We could find our freedom together. I would learn to build, to construct things the way humans did, and engineer a new a life for myself away from the archaic rituals of the glacier.
I had always wanted something more. With her willingness to sacrifice herself, Mama presented me with a second chance.
But as the wish tickled my tongue, I bit down on it. Loki crossed their arms over their chest. A fresh smirk twitched at the corners of their lips as if they were daring me.
But my home… Vigdis was dead, and in the wake of my departure others like me had come forward to tell Havamal their stories. Vigdis and I had never been friends, but if I took this chance and left the other mermaids to the fate I feared more than anything, my guilt might destroy me. My tentacles were strangely still; the gaping mouths were at rest.
All I had to do was ask Loki to change me back, to give me the fins I’d hated and now longed for. The words stuck in my throat. I couldn’t be selfish, not after what Mama had been willing to do.
“Tell me how to change it,” I said, meeting the god’s green-rimmed stare. “Tell me how to get rid of these laws, the king… tell me how to change things so that no one else has to feel like I did. Tell me how to stop all this suffering.”
Loki’s turquoise eyebrows shot up. “What?” they asked, shock evident in their tone. “After all of this, you’re telling me you don’t want legs? You don’t want me to do anything? You just want answers?”
I raised my chin. “If I ask for answers, then I’m the one who decides what to do with them. The outcome is outside your control.”
“What of your human love?” The god’s eyes laughed at me. “All this to reunite with her, to be on land and be together, and what, you’re just going to forget about her?”
They were right. I would never forget Ragna, and I would cling to the fruitless hope that one day she might come back. But I set my jaw and crossed my arms over my chest. Although every part of me itched to slap them, I knew it would make Loki angrier if I refused to rise to their baiting.
“You’re just like the king. You don’t understand me at all,” I said, shrugging and taking the tiniest step toward them. “If you think I did all this for her.”
For a moment, I felt the ghost of Ragna’s kiss heating my lips, but when I blinked I felt only scalding tears sliding under my lashes and making their way to my chin. Then I whispered, “It was about something more than that.”
Loki’s gaze bore into mine; the color of their irises shifted from kelp green to storm-cloud gray. Deep in their soulless depths, I saw a flicker of respect. “King Calder’s sister, the princess Inkeri… she lives.”
Behind me, Mama gasped.
I stared at him. The information was at once so simple, unexpected, and powerful. The king’s sister, our rightful queen, whom everyone thought had died, was alive? Where had she been for the last ten years? I tried to picture the princess of my childhood. Inkeri had been fragile, sickly, and always in her brother’s shadow. But she’d had gentle eyes, fins th
e color of brilliant sunshine, and a quick smile for anyone who spoke to her. Although the fortress had mourned, no one had trouble believing it when she perished.
“Where?” I demanded. I had too many questions, but with Loki I wanted to keep them as simple as I could so they couldn’t twist things. How had the king hidden her all these years? And why had he done it? Inkeri had been his puppet, doing whatever her brother asked without the smallest hint of a rebellious nature. “Is she in the fortress?”
“Oh, no,” Loki said, grinning as if they took pleasure in whatever hellish predicament King Calder had devised for his sister. “He made her a special pit. He goes there to feed her himself, through a window just large enough to slip a wee basket in. He’s been building the walls thicker by the year. By now, you’d probably need fire to blast through them.”
“Why not just kill her?” Mama asked, as she rose from my bed and swam over to us. “I know the king is a sadist, but it seems an unnecessary risk to keep her alive.”
Loki laughed, and their eyes lit with something like joy. “However distantly, the royal lines of the merfolk are linked to Aegir; they descend from the product of an indiscretion in his wilder youth. The sea god is a lazy hedonist who takes little interest in the power of his second sight. Most of the time Aegir does not concern himself with what you merfolk do to each other. He’s much more invested in the orcas and the sharks. However, when one of his own line dies, he feels the soul’s departure.”
Our legends said that the gods cursed fratricide above all else. While I doubted Loki condemned any crime, the sea god was rumored to enforce the sacred laws with severity when he bothered to take an interest. I tried to imagine what life had been like for Inkeri, alone and sealed in the deep, probably knowing that everyone believed her dead. It was a fate worse than anything I had imagined for myself. Now that I knew the truth, I had to help her. It was the only way to begin to atone for what had happened to Vigdis.
