The Merman's Children Read online

She waded out. With no wind behind it, the surf had grown slight, and she was soon in water that merely clucked around her. Neither chill nor the numberlessly lumpy shingle hurt. Instead, they were like promises of a salt streaming that waited farther on. When the seatop kissed her nipples, she went below.

  She could not breathe the depths as a mermaid did, and that was a loss, but she did not need to, either, She swam, she flowed, she gave back to the water the infinite endearments it sent gliding everywhere across her. She needed no more luminance than was down here to see how long brown vines with fluttering leaves sought upward from rocks whereto they were anchored, how fish darted like argent meteors, how shoals gave way to deeps and endless mystery. She could hear tides as they rolled around the world in the lunar wake, she could hear dolphins pass news onward from a coast of coral, across immensities she could hear the music of great whales. Beyond, she traced gleams, melodies, magics out of the realms that remained Faerie.

  She remembered being Ingeborg and she remembered being Nada, but now she was both and she was neither. What swam was a creature of the halfworld, who could love and laugh and strive and sorrow, could do much that is forever denied to the children of Adam, but could no more know God than can an albatross or the wind whereon it soars. Made free, made whole, she felt ever more keenly how joyful she was. Let her doom take her when the Noms chose. This hour was hers.

  Soon, ere folk awakened, she would go back and rouse Tauno.

  XI

  FOR his guest Herr Carolus Brede, Niels Jonsen bought a yacht, small enough to single-hand but well enough built for the high seas. Her lading became tools, weapons, rope, cloth, and much else in the way of gear and stores. Rumor went that he planned to open clandestine trade with the Wends, under the nose of Hansa. But when he was ready, he simply dispatched three men and an extra pair of horses to Hornbaek. He and Carolus took the boat north, not south, up the Sound and west along the Zealand coast; and Fro Dagmar came too, though she was with child.

  They passed the settlement. Off an unpeopled stretch marked by a tall fir, they dropped anchor and waited. Fishing craft were in view, from which night would veil them.

  It came late, for this was the Eve of St. Hans, when the sun is not long nor far below Danish horizons. The sky was violet, so bright that few stars glimmered and they small and secret. Water sheened like burnished silver, changeably etched by cool air that carried fragrances of growth from the land. One could count the trees yonder, or read the palm of one’s beloved. On distant hilltops, baleflres glowed red; youths and maidens were dancing around them.

  Clink, clink, said ripples against strakes. Bird calls sounded afar. Surf made a murmur. Little else broke the hush.

  Then a swimmer surfaced and hailed softly in a foreign lan-guage. Tauno replied likewise. She drew nigh; he leaned over and helped her aboard. Drops gleamed downward off her nakedness.

  They say there that the body of Ingeborg had become more

  fully rounded than erstwhile, for its muscles gave it the motion

  of a cat. Sunlight had laved it everywhere. Weather had turned

  brown braids to deep amber. These things hardly mattered beside

  the strangeness which radiated from her. The very countenance

  of Ingeborg had subtly changed, become somehow fluid, both shy

  and bold, heedless and wise, looking forth upon the world as a

  lioness might, yet with something of otter, seal, and wide-ranging

  tern in that gaze,

  Tauno and she hugged each other for minutes, mouth to mouth,

  “How have your days goneT’ he finally asked,

  “Well indeed,” She chuckled. “Besides practicing what you taught me before you left, I’ve invented a trick or two of my own.

  But I’ve missed you hard, 1 hope the cabin holds a stoutly timbered

  bunk,”

  “What?” he teased. “You seduced no handsome young men?”

  Shadow-swift gravity fell upon her, “I want none but you,

  Tauno,” she said like a virgin in love.

  They had been speaking Danish. Their words distressed Fru Dagmar, as their behavior had. She trod forward, “I’ve laid out clothes for you,” she announced, “Let me show you where they are.”

  Brows lifted above sparkling eyes, “Why, what need? They’d be shucked before daybreak.” Mirth departed as fast as it had come. Arms enfolded the woman. “Oh, blood of my dearest, how good to see you,” Stepping back: “And you’re to be a mother! That’s making you glow from within, did you know?”

  “Would that 1 might rejoice for you,” Dagmar answered sadly,

  “I can but pray,”

  Tauno plucked the sleeve of Niels. “She ought to have stayed behind, your lady,” he said for the man alone to hear. “She’s too saintly for this.”

  “But no less brave than aforetime,” her husband replied. “She cherishes a tiny hope we can keep you here, and thus maybe at last win your salvation, I’d like that myself,” His smile was rueful, “Also for the sake of your company, my shipmates. After you, I’m apt to find my fellows of earth lacking in salt.”

  His glance fell on his friend’s vivid partner, lingered, sought hastily for his wife. ‘

  Tauno sighed. “Spare yourselves, and us,” he urged. “We’ll

  miss you likewise. But go we must, and unlikely it is you’ll ever

  greet us again,”

  Their companions heard that, “Yes, quick farewells are best,” said she who had risen from the depths, “Go straightway home and be glad in your lives.”

  “Have you decided whither you’re bound?” Niels asked.

  “No. How could we, when it’s into the unknown?” Tauno responded. “Westward, maybe to Vinland or beyond. Whole vast realms of nature, Faerie, and man must be there, untouched by Christendom, open for our adventuring.” He grinned. “Why, we might become gods.” Seeing Dagmar wince and sign herself: “Not that we’d seek to, but we might. Anything might happen, which is why we are going.”

  “To know as much wonder as we can reach in whatever our spans may be,” his leman said eagerly.

  “But they’ll come to a close!” Dagmar cried.

  Tauno nodded. “Aye, Faerie is fey, and the work of such as

  Niels and you is what will bring it to the end.” He squeezed the shoulder of the first, kissed the cheek of the second. “Regardless, we love you.”

  “And we love you,” Dagmar said through tears. “Must we mourn you in eternity?”

  “No. No more than you’ll mourn this whole world”-the fe-male swept a hand around sea, land, sky, all the light night-“fair though you will remember that it was. We would not be other than we are: our part of the whole Creation.”

  “lngeborg-Nada-“ Bewilderment lowered the grief in Dagmar. “Who are you?”

  “Both and neither. A child of sorrow whose mother died in the birthing. May yours be the child of abiding joy. . . . I need a name for myself. May I call me Eyjan?”

  This time it was the mortal woman that embraced the woman of Faerie.

  The yacht had towed a skiff, which brought Niels and his wife ashore. He was rowing when a yardarm rattled aloft. Tauno made sail fast and took the rudder. His mate called up a strong breeze. Their craft surged forward, north-northwest over the Kattegat, to round the Skaw and find the ocean. Above her mast, catching on their wings the light of a sun still hidden, went a flight of wild swans.

  Epilogue

  IN May of the year of Our Lord 1312 died Pavle Subitj the king-maker. His son Mladen followed him as Ban, tried to complete the reconquest of Zadar, but failed and must lift the siege. He likewise failed to curb feuding among the Hrvatskan clans. Again the Kachitji roved as pirates along the Dalmatian seaboard, again the Nelipitji and their allies strove to wrest power from the Subitji and Frankapani. In 1322, civil war broke out. Making league with Nelipitji, Venice took Shibenik and Trogir at once, Split and Nin soon after. Dark were those decades.

  Yet Father Tom
islav, beard gone white and hands gnarled into uselessness, could stand before a congregation that included wid-owed, defeated, graying Captain Andrei, and could preach in a sermon:

  “’For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ The Saviour’s’words, when Nicodemus the Phar-isee questioned him. Would He have troubled to argue if He hadn’t cared? Easier just to say, ‘You know what miracles I’ve done already. Stop pestering Me, fall down and worship, before I throw a lightning bolt.’ But He did His best to explain the mystery because He wanted folk to come to Him of their free wills, not afraid of Him but seeking home to their Father.

  “God loves us. Never forget that. I think He sends us fewer trials than we bring on our own foolish selves. Be that as it may, hang fast to the knowledge’ of His care for you. No matter what happens, we are not forsaken. Nobody is. Jesus could consort with publicans, sinners, and pagans. These days we have schis-matics, heretics, Jews, Turks, heathen, Venetians—and He loves them the same as He loves you. We stumbling mortals often see no way out of having to fight; but must we hate?” A sunbeam through one of the narrow, unglazed windows made the old priest wipe his eyes as he went on:

  “’For God so loved the world. . . . ‘ I take that to mean every-thing He ever made; and there’s nothing He did not make. If you need comfort, think of that. Think how the very dust under your feet is loved. We’ve seen Him give souls to merfolk; He. . . He forgave a poor little shadow and raised her to Heaven; let us take courage from this.

  “I’ve a notion He creates nothing in vain. That Satan himself, after Armageddon and what follows have shown him the error of his ways, may repent and be shriven. That on the Last Day, not only will our dead be resurrected, but all that ever was, ever lived, to the glory of God.”

  Father Tomislav was quiet for a space before he said, “Now don’t you suppose that’s necessarily the truth. I’m sure of divine love, but the rest of what I spoke was only my mind rambling. It’s not in the canon. It could be heresy.”