The Merman's Children (2 page)

Timber gloomed above its gleam. The sun had sunk and left only a smear of sulfur on western blue. Eastward was purple, swiftly darkening; a star trembled forth. Mist lay in streamers. Bats flitted on high. It was turning cold. Silence filled everything that was.

Like a patch of fog, the crowned animal shivered and was gone.

Mihajlo choked on an oath. Luka crossed himself over and over, as did the servants. Both peasants sprang from their stirrups, down onto their knees, whipped off their hats, and prayed aloud.

“We have been lured,” mumbled Sisko, the senior of them. “By who and for what?”

“Let us begone, in God's name,” begged his friend Drazha.

“No, hold.” Mihajlo rallied his courage. “Our steeds must rest. We could kill them if we push right on. You know that.”

“Would you, you spend the night here?” stammered Luka.

“An hour or two, till the moon rises and we can find our way,” Mihajlo said.

An attendant of his stared across the quicksilver above the depths, at a ragged murk of foliage beyond, and protested, “Sir, this is no place for Christians. Old heathen things are abroad. That was no buck we hunted, it was the very wind, and now it has vanished to wherever the wind goes. Why?”

“What, and you a city man?” Mihajlo gibed. “Our senses failed us, that's all. Not surprising, weary as we are.” He peered through the dusk at their faces. “There is no place on earth which is not for Christians, if they have faith,” he said. “Come, let us call on our saints. How then can devils harm us?”

Weakly heartened, they dismounted if they had not already done so, prayed together, unsaddled their beasts, began to rub these down with the cloths. More stars appeared in deepening twilight.

Mihajlo's laughter rattled through the stillness. “Do you see? We had no need of fear.”

“No, never,” sang a girl's voice. “Is it really you, my dearest?”

He turned and beheld her. Though he and his companions had become blurs among shadows, she stood forth almost clearly, where she came out of the reeds onto land. Her nakedness and the unbound hair were that pale, her eyes that huge and bright. She neared him, arms held wide.

“Jesus and Mary, save us,” moaned Drazha at his back. “It is the vilja.”

“Mihajlo,” she cried low, “Mihajlo, forgive me, I am trying to remember, I truly am.”

Somehow he stood his ground, there on the wet lakeside in the gloaming. “Who are you?” he uttered through the earthquake in his breast. “What do you want of me?”

“The vilja,” Sisko quavered. “Demon, ghost. Pray it away, men, before it draws us down to its watery hell.”

Mihajlo traced the Cross, stiffened his knees, confronted the being and commanded, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit——”

Before he could say, “—begone!” she was so close to him that he could make out the sweetly carven features. “Mihajlo,” she was pleading, “is that you? I'm sorry if I hurt you, Mihajlo——”

“
Nada!
” he screamed.

She stopped. “Was I Nada?” she asked him, with puzzlement upon her brow. After a while: “Yes, I think I was. And surely you were Mihajlo…” She smiled. “Why, yes, you are. I brought you here to me, didn't I, Mihajlo, darling?”

He shrieked, whirled, and ran. His men fled likewise, every which way into the dark. That made the horses stampede.

When the noise had died, Nada the vilja stood alone. More stars had awakened. The last sunset glow was gone, but the west was yet pale. These different lights sheened off the lake, which cast them onto her until she was a slender curve and ripple of white, a glistening of tears. “Mihajlo,” she said. “Please.”

Then she forgot, laughed, and flitted into the forest.

——The hunters won home separately but safe. What Sisko and Drazha had to tell made people warier than ever of the wildwood. Mihajlo related no more than he must. Others soon marked that he was no longer the glad youth he had been. Much time did he spend with the chaplain at the castle, and later with his confessor in Shibenik. Next year he entered a monastery. His father the zhupan was less than happy about that.

Book One

KRAKEN

I

T
HE
bishop of Viborg got Magnus Gregersen for his new archdeacon. This man was more learned than most, having studied in Paris, and he was upright and pious; but folk called him too strict, and said they liked no better to see him coming, with his long lean frame and his long sour face, than they liked to see any other black crow in their fields. The bishop felt one like that was needed, for laxity had set in during the years of strife that harried Denmark after King Valdemar the Victorious died.

Riding along the eastern Jutish coast as episcopal provost, Magnus came to Als, not the island but a hamlet of the same name. It was poor and lonely, deep woods behind it and Kongerslev Marsh to the north. Only two roads served it, one on the strand and one twisting southwesterly toward Hadsund. Each September and October its fishermen would join the hundreds that made catches in the Sound during the great herring run; otherwise their kind saw little of the outside world. They dragged their nets through the water and farmed their thin-soiled acres until time and toil broke them and they laid their bones to rest behind the small wooden church. Many old ways were still followed in steads like this. Magnus thought such doings pagan and bewailed to himself that there was no ready way to stop them.

Thus a baffled zeal grew double strong in him when he heard certain rumors about Als. None there would own to knowledge of what might have been happening since that day fourteen years ago when Agnete came back out of the sea. Magnus got the priest alone and sternly demanded the truth. Father Knud was a gentle man, born in one of those tiny houses, who had long turned a blind eye on what he thought were minor sins that gave his flock some cheer in their bleak lives. But he was aged now, and feeble, and Magnus soon wrung from him the full tale.

The provost returned to Viborg with a holy flame in his gaze. He went to the bishop and said: “My lord, in making my rounds through your diocese I found woefully many signs of the Devil's work. But I had not looked to come upon himself—no, say rather a whole nest of his foulest, most dangerous fiends. Yet this I did in the strand-hamlet Als.”

“What mean you?” asked the bishop sharply; for he also dreaded a return of the old witchy gods.

“I mean that offshore is a town of merfolk!”

The bishop eased. “How interesting,” he said. “I knew not that any were left in Danish waters. They are not devils, my good Magnus. They lack souls, yes, like other beasts. But they do not imperil salvation as might the dwellers in an elfhill. Indeed, they seldom have aught to do with the tribe of Adam.”

“These are otherwise, my lord,” answered the archdeacon. “Listen to what I have learned. Two and twenty years ago lived near Als a maiden hight Agnete Einarsdatter. Her father was a yeoman, well-to-do by his neighbors' reckoning, and she was very fair, so she ought to have made a good marriage. But one eventide when she walked alone on the beach, a merman came forth and wooed her. He lured her away with him, and she passed eight years in sin and godlessness beneath the sea.

“At last she happened to bring her newest babe up onto a skerry that it might drink sunlight. This was in earshot of the church bells, and while she sat rocking the cradle, they began to chime. Homesickness, if not repentance, awoke in her. She went to the merman and begged leave to go hear again the word of God. He gave unwilling consent and took her ashore. Beforehand he made her vow not to do three things—let down her long hair, as if she were unwedded; seek out her mother in the family pew; and bow down when the priest named the All Highest. But each of these she did: the first for pride, the second for love, the third for awe. Then divine grace drew the scales from her eyes and she stayed on land.

“Afterward the merman came in search of her. It was another holy day and he found her at Mass. When he walked into the church, the pictures and images turned their faces to the wall. None of the congregation dared lift hand against him, he was so huge and strong. He pleaded with her to return, and well might he have prevailed as aforetime. For this is not a hideous race with fish tails, my lord. Save that they have broad, webbed feet and big, slanting eyes, and the men among them are beardless, and some have green or blue hair—on the whole, they look like beautiful humans. His own locks were golden as hers. And he did not threaten, he spoke in tones of love and sorrow.

“Yet God strengthened Agnete. She refused him and he went back beneath the waters.

“Her father had the prudence, and the dowry, to get her wed inland. They say she was never cheerful, and before long she died.”

“If it was a Christian death,” the bishop said, “I cannot see that lasting harm was done.”

“But the merfolk are still there, my lord!” cried the provost. “Fishermen see them often, romping and laughing in the waves. Does that not make a poor toiler, who dwells in a wretched hut with an ugly wife, ill content, yes, even questioning of God's justice? And when will another merman seduce another maiden, this time forever? That is the more likely now when those children of Agnete and her lover are grown. They come ashore almost as a habit, they have struck up friendships with some of the boys and young men—more than friendship, I heard tell, for the female among them.

“My lord, this is Satan's work! If we let souls be lost that were in our charge, how shall we answer on the Last Day?”

The bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. “You have right. What shall we do, though? If the Alsmen already do what is forbidden, a further ban will hardly check them; I know those stiff-necked fisherfolk. And if we send to the King for knights and troopers, how shall they go beneath the sea?”

Magnus raised a finger. It blazed from him: “My lord, I have studied matters of this kind and know the cure. Those merfolk may not be demons, but the soulless must ever flee when God's word is properly laid on them. Have I your leave to conduct an exorcism?”

“You do,” said the bishop shakenly, “and with it my blessing.”

So it came about that Magnus returned to Als. More men-at-arms than usual clattered behind him, lest the villagers make trouble. These watched, some eager for any newness, some surly, a few weeping, as the archdeacon had himself rowed out to a spot above the underwater town. And there, with bell, book, and candle, he solemnly cursed the sea people and bade them in God's name forever be gone.

II

T
AUNO
, oldest child of fair Agnete and the Liri king, had counted his twenty-first winter. There was great merrymaking in his honor, feast, song, dances that wove their flitting patterns north, east, west, south, up, down, and around, between the shells and mirrors and golden plates which flung back the seafire lighting the royal hall; there were gifts, cunningly wrought, not alone of gold and amber and narwhal ivory, but also of pearl and lacy rosy coral, brought from afar by travelers throughout the centuries; there were contests in swimming, wrestling, harpooning, music, and rune-craft; there was lovemaking in dim rooms which had no roof because none was needed, and in the rippling gardens of red, green, purple, and brown weed where jellyfish drifted like white and blue blossoms and true fish darted like meteors.

Afterward Tauno went on a long hunt. Though the merfolk lived off the waters, he fared this time in sport, mostly to visit anew the grandeur of the Norway fjords. With him came the girls Rinna and Raxi, for his pleasure and their own. They had a joyful trip, which meant much to Tauno; he was often a sober one among his lighthearted kindred, and sometimes fell into dark broodings.

They were homebound, Liri was in sight, when the wrath struck them.

“Yonder it is!” Rinna called eagerly. She darted ahead. The green tresses streamed down her slim white back. Raxi stayed near Tauno. She swam laughing around and around him; as she passed below, she would stroke fingers over his face or loins. He grabbed for her with the same playfulness, but always she was out of reach. “Niaah!” she taunted while blowing him bubbly kisses. He grinned and swam steadily on. Having inherited their mother's shape of foot, the halfling children were less swift and deft in the water than their father's race. Nevertheless, a landman would have gasped at their movement. And they got about more readily on shore than their cousins; and they had been born able to live undersea, without need for the spells that had kept their mother from death by drowning, salt, or chill; and the cool-fleshed merfolk liked to embrace their warmer bodies.

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, chitterings, 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 ivory 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.