The Merman's Children (28 page)

He shook his head. “I fear not.”

Hers drooped. “Your merman heart—” She looked up again. “But what about me has kept you? That I seem more like a woman of your race than any Inuk does? Well, Europe is full of white women.”

“Few so fair, Bengta.”

“I think I know the reason,” she began, “though maybe you don't yourself——” and broke off.

“What?”

She bit her lip. “Nothing. I misspoke me.” She started downhill. “Come, let's go back, let's seek the ledge.”

The snow cried out under their scarring feet. “What did you mean?” he said roughly.

“Nothing, nothing!”

He took her elbow. Through fur and leather she felt that grip, and winced. “Tell me.” She saw his mouth stretched wide, till teeth gleamed under the stars.

“I thought,” she blurted, “I thought I'm the nearest thing you have to Eyjan…and it will be a long journey with none save her——Forgive me, Tauno, beloved. Of course I was wrong.”

His countenance grew blank, his tone flat. “Why, there's naught to forgive. What affront in your fancy, to a being that has no soul?”

Abruptly he halted again, drew her around before him smiled, and kissed her with immense tenderness.

——On the furs of their ledge, in the darkness of the hut, she whispered, “Let the seed in my womb be yours. It could be; I've counted. Minik is a dear man and I want his children too, but may his gods give me that much remembrance of my Tauno.”

Day had become a fugitive, scarcely into sight before darkness hounded it away. Night was no blindfold to Faerie eyes, but the siblings departed under the sun because then the Inuit could more easily bid them farewell.

The whole band was there, as far out on the ice as appeared safe. Land was white at their backs, save where a cliff or crag upheaved itself. Ahead reached the sea, grizzly, choppy, and noisy. Clouds blew low on a wind that stung.

Panigpak trod forth from the gathering, to where brother and sister waited. In his hand was a bone disc, slightly inward-curving, hung on a loop of sealskin that went through a hole near the edge. It spanned perhaps an inch-and-a-half.

“Vastly have you aided us,” he told them. “Tauno destroyed the tupilak that this person's folly brought forth. Thus he won the awe of our enemies, and we have peace. Eyjan,”—he shook his gray head, chuckled, blinked hard—“Eyjan, when I am too old to be of any use, and go forth to sit on the ice alone, your memory is what will warm me.”

“Oh, you've returned whatever we did in heaped-up measure,” Tauno said, while his sister brushed lips across the angakok's brow. She had told her brother that he was not strong to be with, but he was sweet.

“One does not count between friends,” Panigpak reminded. Had he never dealt with the Norse, he would not have know what to say. “Somebody would fain make a parting gift.”

He handed over the disc, which Tauno laid in his palm and considered. Graven in the hollow and blackened to stand forth against its yellowish white were signs: a bird with dark head and crooked beak winging before a crescent moon. Eeriness thrilled through him as he felt an enchantment cool inside.

“You will be seeking strange lands,” Panigpak said. “Their dwellers may speak tongues unknown to you. Whoever wears this amulet will understand whatever is heard, and can reply in the same tongue.”

Eyjan touched fingertips to it. “With such things, care is ever needful,” she murmured. “Your spells are not like ours. What should we know about it?”

“It is a deep magic,” the angakok told them as softly. “To make it taxed somebody's poor powers to the uttermost. I must begin by opening my father's cairn to take a piece of his skull—oh, he is not angry; he feels dim pleasure among the shades because he could help…

“The amulet links spirit to spirit. Beware of gazing long upon the sigil—yes, best wear it under clothing, or with the blank side outward—for a soul can be drawn in if it feels any wish to leave the world, and that is death.” He paused. “Should this happen, the trapped ghost can come out again, into whoever wears the amulet, if that person desires. But who might want to become half a stranger?”

Tauno hastily closed his hand on the thing.

Eyjan's fingers plucked his open. She hung it around her neck in the way Panigpak had advised. “Thank you,” she said, a bit unsteadily.

“It is nothing,” he answered. “It is only what an old fool can offer.”

When a few more words had passed, and the last embraces, the merman's children took up their kayaks and walked outward. The ice broke under them, making a floe from which they lowered the boats. They got in, laced their coats fast, untied the paddles. With a wave and shout, they swung southward. The Inuit and Bengta watched until they were gone out of seeing.

II

O
NCE
while homebound, Tauno encountered a pod of Greenland whale on their way around the brow of the world, and heard their route song. Few merfolk had ever done that, for the lords of the great waters rarely came nigh land—and who would seek them out, what would he say to them in their majesty?

Tauno was hunting. Eyjan was elsewhere, towing his sealed kayak behind hers. They did this by turns, lest the craft, untended, drift unfindably far off course. When they eased cramped limbs with a frolic in the waves, they took care to stay close by; when they slept afloat, they tethered hulls and themselves together. It was troublesome, and certainly they could have hunted better as a team, but on the whole they were traveling faster and easier than if they had swum.

He had gone under, in hopes of a large fish. Lesser ones were hardly worth the killing to be the fuel bodies needed for warmth and work. Thus sound reached him far more readily than through air, and toned in thews, blood, bone as well as in ears. Through chill, sliding gray-green came a throb. Faint at first, it made him veer in its direction. He continued after he knew what stroked and clove so resistlessly, for the passage would alarm many creatures and he could well seize prey among them. Then the whales began to sing.

Almost helpless, Tauno went on, mile after mile farther than he had intended, until at last he saw them—their backs that rose like skerries, their bellies and enormous, feeding mouths down below, each fin more big than a man, flukes raising swells and currents as they drove, steadily onward, forms which outbulked most ships. The slow thunder of that hundredfold movement rolled as a part of the music, which boomed and trilled, dived and soared, through ranges no human could have heard. The song took him from within, made a vessel of him for itself, for its might and mystery.

He knew little of the language, and Eyjan had the sigil. None of his father's breed were much wiser, because it was not a speech remotely akin to any humankind or Faerie. The sounds were not words but structures or events, each as full of meanings—none altogether utterable—as a library of books, or as a life looked back upon when death draws near. Tauno bore in his mind a double heritage, and he was a poet. Afterward he recreated a fragment of what he had heard. But he knew, with longing, that what he then had was the merest shard, chance-splintered off a whole to whose shape and purpose it gave never a clue.

Lead bull:
—All that is life did come out of the tides

That follow the moon, as in hollowness yonder

It circles this world, and the wake of its coursing

Lays hold on the seas, draws them upward in surges

More strong than the sun can arouse from remoteness——

The sun and the moon and this globe in a ring-dance

Through measureless deeps and a spindrift of stars.

Old cows:
Yes, they circle, they circle,

Like the memory held

Of a calf that has died

When its mother cannot

Bring herself to the weaning

And release it to swim

From her side into strangeness.

Young bulls:
Heavy under heaven

Heaves the main in winter;

Warm are yet the wishes

Wakened by that rushing.

Summer also sees us

Seeking for each other.

Lustily may love go.

Laugh in your aliveness!”

Young cows:
Be you the quickening light,

Be you the wind and the rain

Begetting billows,

We are the ocean and moon,

We are the tides that for aye

Renew your mother.

Calves:
Brightness of salt scud,

Wings overhead, scales beneath,

Milk-white foam—new, new!

Old bulls:
The seasons come and the seasons go,

From the depths above to the depths below,

And time will crumble our pride and grief

As the waves wear even the hardest reef.

We cruise where grazing is found far-flung

And the orcas lurk to rip loose a tongue.

Though we are they whom the waters bless,

Our bones will sink into sunlessness.

The race is old, but the world more so,

And a day must come when the whales must go.

The world forever cannot abide,

But a day must come of the final tide.

Old cows:
Yet we have lived.

Young bulls:
Yet we do live.

Calves:
Yet we will live.

Young cows:
Yet we make live.

Old bulls:
It is enough.

Lead bull:
Fare onward.

Through Pentland Firth go monstrous currents, and there are places where violence grows worse; one must pass by the Merry Men of Mey, and between the Swalchie and the Wells of Swona, and around the Bores of Duncansbay. Before daring these, the merman's children found a lee on the Caithness coast, where they could mend their sea-weary kayaks and rest their sea-weary selves.

Cliffs stood ruddy on either side of an inlet which was hardly more than cleft in them. At its end was a strip of sand with a border of turf behind, boggy but soft. Thence a V-shaped slope led upward. A footpath wound through its boulders and sparse worts, but clear was to see that this site got few visitors, surely none in winter.

It was less cold here than might have been looked for, and to the travelers felt almost balmy after what they had known in the past weeks. Sunlight did not enter, so that the wavelets lapped dim silver in shadow; but reflections of it off the strait which churned beyond gave some warmth to the cliffs, that glowed downward in turn. Winds were only a whistling past their heights. Tauno and Eyjan brought the kayaks above high-water mark. Over the turf they spread skins of seals newly taken. Blubber helped flint and steel start a fire in twigs gathered above, which kindled driftwood from below. Besides the flesh, they had an auk to roast and fish to eat raw.

“Ah,” said Tauno. “That smells good.”

“Yes, it does.” Eyjan stared at the spit she was handling, where she squatted. He clasped knees under chin and stared out at the firth.

“Enjoy this weather while it lasts,” he said after silence had extended itself between them. “It won't for long.”

“No, it won't.”

“Well, we needn't linger over our repairs.”

“No. True.”

“After all, we are—what?—two-thirds of the way?”

“Maybe a bit more.”

Neither had anything else to say for a span. Eventide waned.

Eyjan poked the fowl with a bone skewer. As she hunched forward, the unbound hair that she had dropped over her bosom swung away from white skin and rosy nipples. “This will soon be done,” she said. “You might begin cleaning the fish.”

“Yes.” Tauno jerked his glance to them and became busy. Each movement sent a flow of muscles across him.

“We needn't hasten our overhaul unduly,” she said, minutes later. “A breathing spell here will do us good.”

“Yes, we've talked about that. Still, we should have ample time on Bornholm, till Niels hears from us and can come.”

“We talked about that too.”

“Remember, let me deal with humans. Inuit garb in Europe is not too outlandish on a man, but a woman——”

“Yes, yes, yes!” she snapped. Redness went over her cheeks, down her throat, across her breasts.

“I crave pardon,” he said in an unclear voice, and raised his golden eyes to her gray.

“Oh, no matter,” she hurried to reply. “I'm on edge. My gut is a-growl.”

He made a grin. “Mine likewise. That isn't the sea you hear.”

The exchange eased them somewhat. Nonetheless they were nearly dumb while they finished preparing their meat, and held no converse white they ate it except a few words about how savory it was and how pleasant the fire.

When they were through, Tauno fetched more wood and stoked the blaze. Early night was falling, the strip of sky gone dusk-blue, a deeper violet in the niche. Their vision found ample light. They sat down on opposite sides for enjoyment of red, yellow, blue flicker with coal-glow at the core, homely crackle, pungency of smoke.

“We ought to retire, I suppose,” Tauno said, “but I'm not sleepy yet. You go if you like.”

“I'm not sleepy yet either,” Eyjan answered.

Both gazed into the flames.

“I wonder how Yria fares,” she said at last, quite low.

“We'll learn.”

“Unless Niels and Ingeborg failed.”

“In that case, we can hit on something else.”

“How I hope they've not suffered evil,” Eyjan whispered. “Well-nigh could I wish to believe a god would help them if I prayed.”

“Oh, they're tough,” said Tauno. “I dare look forward to seeing them again.”

“I also. Niels is…I like him better than any other human I've known.”

“And she——Whoof!” snorted Tauno, squinching his eyes and fanning his nose. “Suddenly the smoke's become mine alone.”

Eyjan lifted her face to him. A half moon made frosty his greenish-fair locks and threw soft highlights on the wide shoulders where firelight did not reach. “Come over here,” she invited.