The Merman's Children Read online

  Above Tauno sun smote waves, making a roof of bright ripples that traced its pattern across the white sand beneath him. Around, the water reached in hues of emerald and amethyst until distance brought dusk. He felt it slide by, answering the play of his muscles with caresses like a lover’s. Kelp streamed upward from barnacled rocks, golden-brown, swaying to every current. A crab clanked over the seabed; a tunny glided farther off, blue and white and splendid. The water was never the same: here cold, there mild, here roiled, there calm, and a thousand different tastes and odors beyond the tang men smell on a strand; and it was full of sounds for those who could hear, cluckings, chucklings, croakings, chit-terings, splashings, the hush-hush-hush where it lapped against land; and beneath each swirl and gurgle Tauno felt the huge slow striding of the tides.

  Now Liri rose clear in his sight: houses that were hardly more than arbors of seaplants or frames of ivJry and whale ribs, delicate and fantastically scrimshawed in this world of low weight, wide-spaced among gardens of weed and anemone; in the middle, the hall of his father the king, big, ancient, stone and coral in subtle hues, bedight with carven figures of fish and those beasts and fowl which belong to the sea. The posts of the main door were in the shapes of Lord Aegir and Lady Ran, the lintel was an albatross with wings spread for soaring. Above the walls lifted a dome of crystal, vented to the surface, which the king had built for Agnete, so that when she wished she might be dry, breathe air, sit by a fire among roses and what else his love could fetch her from the land.

  The merfolk flitted about-gardeners, craftsmen, a hunter training a brace of young seals, an oyster gatherer buying a trident at a booth, a boy leading a girl by the hand toward some softly lighted cavern. Bronze bells, taken long ago from a wrecked ship, were being chimed; they pealed more clearly through water than ever through the air. .

  “Harroo!” Tauno shouted. He plunged forward in a burst of speed. Rinna and Raxi fell in alongside him. The three broke into the “Song of Retumings” he had made for them:

  Here may I hail you, my homeland, my heartstrand.

  Well for the wanderer’s weal is the way’s end.

  Call up the clamor on conchs and on kettles!

  Stories I’ll strew from the silver-paved swanroad. Gold the dawn glittered and glad wheeled the gulls when----

  Suddenly his companions screamed. They clapped hands to ears, their eyes were shut, they milled about blindly and wildly kicking till the water seethed.

  Tauno watched the same craziness take all of Liri. “What is this?” he cried in horror. “What’s wrong?”

  Rinna wailed her anguish. She could not see nor hear him. He caught her. She fought to break loose. His strength gripped her from behind with legs and one hand. His other hand closed on the silken tresses to hold tight her jerking head. He laid mouth to an ear and stammered, “Rinna, Rinna, it’s me, Tauno. I’m your friend. I want to help you.”

  “Then let me go!” Her shriek was ragged with pain and fright. “The ringing fills the sea, it shakes me like a shark, my bones are coming apart-the light, the cruel blaze, blinding, burning, bum-ing-the words-Let me go or I die!”

  Tauno did, altogether bewildered. Rising several yards, he made out the shivering shadow of a fisher boat, and heard a bell. . . was a fire aboard too, and was a voice chanting in some tongue he knew not? No more than that. . . .

  The houses of Liri rocked as in a quake. The crystal dome on the hall shattered and rained down in bright shards. The stones trembled and began to slide from each other. That crumbling, of what had stood here since the Great Ice melted, sent its shuddering through Tauno’s flesh.

  Dimly he saw his father come forth, astride the orca which had its airspace in the hall and which no one else dared mount. Oth-erwise the king had naught but a trident; and he was clad in naught but his own majesty. Yet somehow his call was heard: “To me, my people, to me! Quickly, before we die! Seek not to save any treasure beyond your children-and weapons-come, come, come if you would livc!”

  Tauno shook Rinna and Raxi back to a measure of sense, and led them to join the throng. His father, riding about rallying the terrified merfold, had time to say to him grimly: “You, half mortal, feel it no more than does this steed of mine. But to us, these waters are now banned. For us, the-light will blaze and the bell will toll and the words will curse until the Weird of the World. We must flee while we still have strength, to seek a home far and away.”

  “Where are my siblings?” Tauno asked.

  “They were on an outing,” said the king. The tone that had

  trumpeted went flat and dead. “We cannot wait for them.”

  “I can.”

  The king gripped his son by both shoulders. “That heartens

  me. Yria and, aye, young Kennin need more than Eyjan to ward them. I know not where we are going. Maybe you can find us later-maybe-“ He shook his sun-bright mane. His visage drew into a mask of torture. “Away!” he screamed.

  Stunned, beaten, naked, most of them unarmed and without tools, the merfolk followed their lord. Tauno hung, fists clenched on harpoon, until they were out of sight. The last stones of the royal hall toppled, and Liri was a ruin.

  III

  IN the eight years that she dwelt beneath the waters, fair Agnete bore seven children. This was less than a seawife would have done, and maybe the unspoken scorn of those females helped drive her back to land, even as the bells of the little church and the sight of little thatch-roofed timber houses had drawn her.

  For though the merfolk, like others of Faerie, knew no aging (as if He Whose name they did not speak thus repaid them for lack of immortal souls), their way of life had its harsh side. Shark, orca, sperm whale, ray, sea serpent, a dozen kinds of killer fish hunted them; the creatures that they in turn hunted were often dangerous; tricks of wind and wave could be deadly; poison fangs and spines, cold, sickness, hunger carried many off. This was most true of their young; they must reckon with losing all but a few. The king had been lucky with those he got with his human mate. Behind his home were only three graves whereon the sea anemones had never been let die.

  The four children who remained met in the wreckage of Liri. Round about were the heaped chaos of the hall, the farther-off bits and pieces of lesser homes, gardens already withering, fishflocks already scattered, broken scrimshaw, crabs and lobsters swarming through foodstocks like ravens over a corpse on shore. The meeting spot was where the main door had been. The albatross lay wingless; kindly Lord Aegir had fallen on his face; Lady Ran who takes men in her nets stood above, grinning. The water was chill and waves raised by a storm overhead could be heard mourning for Liri.

  The merman’s children were unclad, as was usual undersea save at festival times. However, they had gotten knives, harpoons, tridents, and axes of stone and bone, to ward off those menaces which circled closer and closer beyond the rim of their sight. None of them looked wholly like merfolk. But the elder three shared the high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and male beardlessness of their father; and while they had learned the Danish tongue and some of the Danish ways, now it was as merfolk that they talked.

  Eldest among them, Tauno took the word. “We must decide where to go. Hard it was to keep death at bay when everyone stayed here. We cannot do it long alone.”

  He was likewise the biggest, tall, wide in the shoulders, might-ily muscled from a lifetime’s swimming. His hair, caught by a beaded headband, fell to his collarbones, yellow with the least tinge of green; his eyes were amber, set well apart from the blunt nose, above the heavy mouth and jaw; because he had spent much time on the surface or ashore, his skin was brown.

  “Why, shall we not follow our father and tribe?” asked Eyjan.

  She had nineteen winters. She too was tall, for a woman, and

  strong with a strength that lay hidden beneath the full curves of breasts, hips, thighs, until she hugged a lover tight or drove a lance into a wallowing walrus. Hers was the whitest skin, for her hair was bronzy red, floating shoulder-length past a chal
lenging gray gaze and cleanly molded face.

  “We know not where they have gone,” Tauno reminded her. “It will have to be far, since these were the last good hunting grounds left to our kind around Denmark. And while such merfolk as dwell in the Baltic or along the Norway coast may help them on their way, there’s no room for as many more as Liri’s people are. The seas are very wide to search, my sister.”

  “Oh, surely we can ask,” Kennin said impatiently. “They’ll leave traces. The dolphins are bound to know which way they headed.” A sparkle jumped in his eyes, making them more than ever summer-blue. “Haa, what a chance to gad about!”

  He was of sixteen winters, had yet to fare far, and knew only youth’s eagerness to be off beyond the horizon. He had not gotten his full growth and would never be tailor broad. On the other hand, he was well-nigh as agile a swimmer as a full-blooded mennan. His hair was greenish brown, his countenance round and freckled, his body painted in the loudest-colored patterns the dwellers had known. The rest bore no ornament; Tauno was in too stark a mood, Eyjan had always scoffed at the trouble it cost, and Yria was shy.

  The last one whispered: “How can you joke when. . . when. . . everything is gone?”

  Her siblings moved closer in around her. To them she was still the babe, left in her crib by a mother whom she was coming more and more to look like. She was small, thin, her breasts just bud-ding; her hair was golden, her eyes huge in the tip-tilted, lip-parted face. She had stayed away from revelries as much as a king’s daughter might, had never gone off alone with a boy, had spent hours a day learning the womanly arts at which Eyjan jeered-more hours in the dome that had been Agnete’s, fondling the treasures that had been Agnete’s. Often she lay on the waves, staring at the greenhills and the houses ashore, listening to the chimes which called Christian folk to prayer. Of late she had been going there with one or another of her kin when these would allow, flitting along a twilit strand or behind a wind-gnarled tree or down into the ling like a timid shadow.

  Eyjan gave her a quick, rough embrace. “You got too great a share of our mortal side,” declared the older sister.

  Tauno scowled. “And that is a terrible truth,” said he. “Yria is not strong. She cannot swim fast, or far without rest and food. What if we’re set on by beasts? What if winter catches us away from the warm shallows, or what if the Liri outcasts move to the! Arctic? I do not see how we can take her on any journey.”

  “Can’t we leave her with some foster?” asked Kennin.

  Yria shrank into Eyjan’s arms. “Oh, no, no,” she begged. They

  could scarcely hear her.

  Kennin reddened at his own foolishness. Tauno and Eyjan looked at each other across the hunched back of their little sister. Few were the merfolk who would take in a weakling, when the strong had trouble enough fending for themselves. Now and again one might; but he would do so out of desire. They had no true hope of finding a sea-man who would want this child as their father had wanted a certain grown maiden; nor would that be any kindness to the child.

  Tauno must gather his will to speak it aloud: “I think, before we leave, we’d best take Yria to our mother’s people.

  IV

  THE old priest Knud was wakened by a knocking. He climbed from his shut-bed and fumbled a robe on in the dark, for the banked hearthfire gave no real glow; and he felt his way to the door. His bones ached, his teeth clapped with chill. He wondered who might be near death. He had outlived every playmate. . . . “I come, in Jesu name, I come.”

  A full moon had lately risen. It threw a quicksilver bridge on the Kattegat and made glint the dew on cottage roofs; but the two crossed streets of Als lay thick with shadow, and the land beyond had become a stalking ground for wolves and trolls. Strangely quiet were the dogs, as if they feared to bark; the whole night was cracklingly still; no, a sound somewhere, hollow, a hoof? The Hell Horse grazing among the graves?

  Four stood in a cloud of their own breath, unseasonably cold as this night was. Father Knurl gasped and signed himself. He had never seen merfolk, besides the one who had come into his church-unless a glimpse in childhood had been more than a marvelous dream. What else could these be, though? He had heard enough accounts from those of his parishioners who met them now and again. The features of the man and woman were cast in that alien mold, the boy’s less clearly so, the girl-child’s hardly at all. But water dripped and shimmered from her too; she too wore a fishskin tunic and clutched a bone-headed spear.

  “You, you, you were to have. . . been gone,” the priest said, hearing his voice thin in the frosty quiet.

  “We are Agnete’s children,” said the tall man. He spoke Danish with a lilting accent that was indeed, Knud thought wildly, out-landish. “Because of her heritage, the spell did not touch us.”

  “No spell-a holy exorcism-“ Knud called on God in his mind and squared his narrow shoulders. “I pray you, be not wroth with my villagers. The thing was none of their doing or wish.” “I know. We have asked. . . a friend. . . about what happened.

  Soon we shall go away. First we would give Yria into your care.”

  The priest was somewhat eased by this, and likewise by seeing that his visitors’ bare feet were of human shape. He bade the four come in. They did, wrinkling their noses at the grime and smells in the single room which the parish house boasted. He stoked the fire, kindled a rushlight, set forth bread, salt, and beer, and, since the newcomers filled the bench, sat down on a stool to talk with them.

  Long was that talk. It ended well after he had promised to do his best for the girl. Her three siblings would linger a while to make sure; he must let her go to the strand every dusk and meet them. Father Knud pleaded with them to stay ashore too, but this they would not. They kissed their sister and took their leave. She wept, noiselessly but hopelessly, until she fell asleep. The priest tucked her in and got what rest he could on the bench.

  Next day, and more and more in the days of waxing summer which followed, Yria was in better spirits. At last she was quite cheerful. Agnete’s kin held aloof, afraid to admit she carried their blood, but Father Knud dealt with her as kindly as his meager means allowed. It helped that the other halflings brought gifts of food fresh-caught from the sea at their regular meetings: which quickly became brief ones. To her, the land was as new and wonderful as she was to the youngsters of the hamlet. Erelong she was daily the middle of a rollicking swarm. As for work, she knew nothing about human tasks but was willing to learn. Kirsten Pedersdatter tried her on the loom and said she could become uncommonly skillful.

  Meanwhile the priest had sent a youth to Viborg, asking what should be done about the girl. Could a halfling be christened? He prayed this be so, for otherwise he knew not what would become of the poor darling. The messenger was gone for a pair of weeks; they must be ransacking their books at the bishopric. Finally he retumed, on horse this time, accompanied by guards, a clerical amanuensis, and the provost.

  Knud had been giving Christian instruction to Yria, who lis-tened wide-eyed and mostly silent. Now Archdeacon Magnus saw her in the parish house. “Do you truly believe in one God,” he barked, “the Father, the Son Who is Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost which proceeds from them?” She quailed before his sternness. “I do,” she whispered. “I do not understand it very well, but I do believe, good sir.”

  After further questioning, Magnus told Knud privately: “There can be no harm in baptizing her. She is not an unreasoning brute, albeit badly in need of more careful teaching before she can be confirmed. If she be devils’ bait, the holy water should drive her hence; if she be merely soulless, God will hit upon some way to let us know.”

  The christening was set for Sunday after Mass. The archdeacon gave Yria a white robe to wear and chose a saint’s name for her, Margrete. She grew less afraid of him and agreed to spend the Saturday night in prayer. Friday after sunset, full of eagerness, she wanted her siblings to come to the service-surely the priests would allow it, hoping to win them to(}-and
she cried when they refused.

  And so, on a morning of wind, scudding white clouds, dancing glittery waves, before the Alsfolk in the wooden church, beneath the ship model hung in the nave and Christ hung above the altar, she knelt, and Father Knud led her and the godparents through the rites, and signed her and said with joy, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  She shrieked. Her slight form crumpled. A hissing of breath, some screams and hoarse calls, sounded from the pews. The priest stooped, forgetting his stiffness in his haste, and gathered her to him. “Yria!” he cried. “What’s wrong?”

  She looked about her, panting and with the eyes of one stunned. “I. . . am . . . Margrete,” she said. “Who are you?” Provost Magnus loomed over them. “Who are you?”

  Knud cast his tear-streaming gaze up toward the archdeacon.

  “Is it that, that, that she is in truth soulless?”

  Magnus pointed to the altar. “Margrete,” he said, with such iron in his tone that the whole rough congregation fell silent, “look yonder. Who is that?”

  Her glance followed the knobbly finger. She raised herself to her knees and drew the Cross. “That is Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” she said almost steadily.

  Magnus lifted his arms. He likewise wept, but for glory. “Lo, a miracle!” he shouted. “I thank You, Almighty God, that You have let me, most miserable of sinners, witness this token of Your overflowing grace.” He swung on the folk. “Kneel! Praise Him! Praise Him!”

  Later, alone with Knud, he explained more calmly: “The bishop and 1 thought something like this might happen. Your message did relate that the sacred pictures had not turned from her. More-over, in the archives we found a few legends from the days of those apostles to the Danes, Ansgar and Poppo-apocryphal, yet now seen to have embodied some truth. Thus 1 can interpret what we have seen.

  “Like their Faerie parents, halflings have indeed no souls, though doubtless their bodies also are ageless. Yet God is willing to receive even these, aye, even full-fledged beings of that kind. Upon Margrete’s baptism, He gave her a soul as He gives a soul to a quickening babe. She has become entirely human, mortal in the flesh, immortal in the spirit. We must see well to it that she loses not her salvation.”