The Merman's Children (32 page)

Already several merfolk dwelt in human households. He passed them by. Nor did he consider seeking the settlement on the lakeshore which others, who were now fishers, shared with children of Adam. A few small dwellings, fragrant with fresh timber, had arisen on the edge of Skradin for the rest of the newcomers. These were chiefly females…no, women, he thought, mortal women who must in propriety no longer go adventuring.

A certain blend of cool fleshly scents brought him to a door whereon he knocked. Ears within had kept their Faerie keeness. A voice called, “Who is it? What will you?”

“It is Tauno, Vanimen's son,” he answered. “Let me in, Raxi, lover that was in Liri.”

He heard whispers, scuffle of feet, fumblings about. The time seemed endless before the latch clacked free and the barrier swung aside. Two stood beyond. They had thrown on shifts, but he knew them at once: Raxi, the merriest lass in his tribe, and lean blue-tressed Meiiva who had been his father's special friend.

He felt the unsureness of his smile as he spread his arms wide. The girl gasped, sprang back, buried face in hands. Her older companion remained calm, yet it was with an effort that she and, “Welcome, Tauno. How good to know you live, you and Eyjan—and to have you here at last——But you must cover yourself.”

Tauno glanced down. When he left his bed, he had not bothered to don clothes anew, save for knife belt; the spirit bone hung always around his neck. “Why, we're alone, Meiiva,” he replied in a puzzlement that was half fear, “and you both know this body well.”

“I am not Meiiva any more, Tauno, and she, my sister in God, is not Raxi. We are Jelena and Biserka.” The woman turned about. “Wait here. I'll fetch you garb.” The door closed.

It reopened shortly, a crack, and she reached out a coat. He belted it around his middle, sniffing with a thrill that it was his father's. When Meiiva—Jelena—let him into the humble building, whose rafters made him bow his head, she had lighted a clay lamp from the fire banked on the hearth. “That's better,” she said, and actually touched his elbow. “Be not ashamed. You've everything to learn. Sit down, dear, and let me pour you a stoup.”

Dazedly, he settled onto a chest. Biserka crouched in the opposite corner. Her look upon him was—fearful? Wistful? He could not tell, but he heard how quickly she breathed.

“Why are you here too?” he asked her roommate.

“Andrei, your father, my husband, is off to war,” Jelena explained. “For seemliness as well as shared help, I invited Biserka to come stay here meanwhile. She's unwedded, and, well——”Aforetime frankness was gone; it was hard to finish: “She had a home with a family, but the eldest son was beginning to show lust for her, and that would not be the best match she could make.”

“You
, Raxi?” Tauno blurted. “Why, I sought you tonight before all others!”

Jelena sighed, though in the dull yellow glow her cheeks smoldered. “I know. May the merciful saints aid me in remembering what you are, and not to blame you but to try to show you the way onward.” Having filled three bowls with mead, she brought him one. “Dismiss carnal thoughts, Tauno. This is not Liri, we are not what we were, and God be praised.”

“Well, there are some hussies!” flared from Biserka. She huddled back, crossed herself, and added fast, “Ask not their names.”

“Surely you'll find one of them among us who were merfolk,” Jelena said, where she stood tall above Tauno. “We're too newly born. How I pray we'll never soil the spirits in us, fresh from God's hand!” She paused, stared beyond him, and mused, “Oh, we will, I fear. To feel sure of our own righteousness, that would be a mortal sin in itself, pride. But may we always have grace to repent when we fall, to keep striving.” Her glance sharpened and speared him. “If any man would seduce us, let him bear in mind that we can yet wield edged weapons.”

“Then you do recall your past lives?” he mumbled.

She nodded. “Aye, though they seem strange, dim, like a dream that was long and vivid but is fading. We've awakened, you see. There before the altar, we awoke from the half-life of beasts to life eternal.” Suddenly she, who had been strong as Vanimen, wept. “Oh, that moment, that single first moment with God! What…remains…to abide for...but the hope of finding it again, forever, in Heaven?”

A waning moon had cleared eastern heights when Tauno entered the forest. It had not taken him long, for he ran the entire way across plowlands; stalks and ears of grain left welts in revenge for his trampling. However, the hour had been late when he could finally win free of the women, cast off his father's coat at the door, and bolt.

It was not that they cursed him. They had been affectionate in their pleading, their wish that he too take the gift of an immortal soul. It was not even that they were utterly changed, flesh once delightful now housing an alienness greater than that which sundered him from the tribe of Adam. It was that—he thought, somewhere in his staggering mind—that they were carriers of doom. In them was the future, which held no room for Faerie. When he sprinted, he did not only seek to work out some of the despair wherein his quest had ended. He fled the unseen, while stars looked down and hissed, “There he is, there he goes, that's his track to follow.”

The breath heaved raw in his throat before he found shelter. This was below an oak, for it spread darkness and upheld mistletoe. At last he moved on into the wilderness, toward the lake he could sense afar. He would bathe in yon waters, fill his lungs with their cleanliness, maybe catch a fish and devour it raw like a seal or a killer whale. Thus he would regain strength for returning to the castle and whatever was going to happen there.

Trees gloomed, underbrush entangled a heavier murk, on either side of the game trail he took. Moonlight filtered in streaks through the crowns, to glimmer off vapors which streamed or eddied low above the earth. It was a touch warmer here than out in the open, damp, smelling of growth a-drowse. Rustlings went faint, a breeze, an owl ghosting by, the scutter of tiny feet. Once a wildcat squalled, remotely, noise blurred into music by all the leaves around.

A measure of peace lifted within Tauno. Here was a remnant of his world, the wildworld, which lived wholly within itself, loved, slew, begot, suffered, died, was born, knew delirious magics but never would probe and tame the mysteries behind them nor peer into a stark eternity. Here were spoor of Faerie…the spirit bone brought names into his awareness, as if he had always known them…Leshy, Kikimora, also flitting restless, shy of him but——

But what else was it he winded? No, he caught this one sensation otherwise, in his blood, part fear and part unutterable yearning. His pulse thuttered, he quickened his footsteps.

The trail swung around a canebrake, and they met.

For a time outside of time, both halted. In their sight, where a human would have been well-nigh blind, each stood forth white against enclosing many-layered shadows, as if having risen from the fog that smoked about their feet. She was much the paler; it was as though the fugitive moonlight streamed through thinly carved alabaster, save that when she did move it was like a ripple across water. Very fair she was in her nakedness, with the slim, unscarred curves of waist, thighs, breasts which bespoke a maiden, with delicately carven face and enormous, luminous eyes. Her hair made a cloud about her, afloat on the air. She had no color except the faintest flushes of blue and rose, as upon snow beneath a false dawn.

“Oh,” she whispered. Terror snatched her. “Oh, but I mustn't!”

And for his part, recalling what he had heard that day, and earlier from his father, he shouted,
“Rousalka!”
and whipped out his knife. He dared not turn his back.

She vanished behind the underbrush. He stood tensed and snarling, until he decided she was gone and sheathed the blade. The intimations of her drifted everywhere around, maddeningly gentle, fresh, girlish, but he knew little of such beings; their traces might well linger.…

Would they?

Why, he had the talisman to ask. He need but ease himself, think in Hrvatskan about what he had seen, and let knowledge flow upward. Muscle by muscle, he summoned calm, until he could know and could call: “Vilja. Stay. Please.”

She peered around the brake; he barely glimpsed an eye, the gleam of a cheek, the delicacy of an elbow. “Are you Christian?” she fluted timidly. “I'm forbidden to come near Christians.”

So she was no menace; she was merely beautiful. “I'm not even a mortal man,” -said Tauno against a rattle of laughter.

She crept forth to stand before him at arm's length. “I thought I could feel that,” she breathed. “Would you really like to talk with me?” She kindled, she trilled. “Oh, wonderful! Thank you, thank you.”

“What is your name?” He must needs gather courage before he could lay down: “I night Tauno. Half merman, half human, but altogether of Faerie.”

“And I——” She hesitated more than he had. “I think I am, I was Nada. I call me Nada.”

He reached out to her. She tiptoed close. They linked hands. Hers were night-cool and somehow not quite solid. He thought that if he took a real hold upon them, his fingers would part their frailty and meet each other: wherefore he gripped as tenderly as he was able. The clasp shivered.

“What are you?” he asked, that he might hear it from her own lips.

“A vilja. A thing of mist and wind and half-remembered dreams—and how glad of your kindness, Tauno!”

Desire, long unslaked, was thick within him. He sought to draw her close. She flowed, she blew from his embrace, to poise trembling beyond his reach. Fear and grief worked their ways across her countenance, which was young to behold but inwardly had grown old. “No, Tauno, I beg you. For your own sake. I'm no more of the living world. You'd die, yourself, if you tried.”

Recalling how Herr Aage had risen from his grave to comfort Lady Else his beloved—simply to comfort her in her misery—and what came of that, Tauno shuddered backward from Nada.

She saw. Briefly, her aloneness ruled her; then she straightened her shoulders (there was the dearest hollow between them, right below the throat) and said, with a shaken smile, “But you needn't run away, need you, Tauno? Can we not abide a while together?”

They did until morning.

VII

A
NDREI
Subitj, captain in the Royal Navy of Magyarország and Hrvatska—he who once was Vanimen, king of Liri—turned from the window out which he had been gazing. This was in Shibenik, on an upper floor of the mayoral palace. When such an officer took special leave from the war and came south, in answer to a message from the zhupan, he could have whatever place he asked for. Day had waned while he and Eyjan held converse. Towers stood dark against deep-blue gloaming, above walls and battlements within which links bobbed along streets. Bells pealed a call to vespers. Andrei traced the Cross.

“And thus we know each what has happened to the other,” he sighed. “Yet what do we truly know?” Tall in a gold-broidered kaftan, his body moved across the carpet with more firmness than his voice.
“Why
would Tauno not bestir himself to come this short way and greet me?”

Eyjan, who was seated, stared at the hem of her gown. “I can't tell,” she replied. “Not really. He said there was no use in it, that you simply are no more the father he sought. But he says little to anyone these days, nothing that might reveal his mind.”

“Not even to you?” Andrei asked as he took the chair opposite hers.

“No.” Fists clenced in her lap. “I can but guess that he's poisoned with bitterness against Christians.”

Andrei sat straight. His tone crackled. “Has anybody done ill by you twain?”

“Never. Far from it.” The red head shook, the gray eyes lifted to meet his. “Although we admitted early on we'd been lying to him—for we couldn't well stick to our deception after our kin recognized us—Ivan did not resent it. Rather, he increased his hospitality, and that in the teeth of his chaplain, who's scandalized at having two creatures like us beneath yon roof. Ivan's actually doing his best to keep our secret from leaving the village, that we may fare back to Denmark without hindrance if we choose.”

“Of course, he hopes to convert you.”

“Of course. But he doesn't pester us about it, nor let Father Petar do so.” Eyjan smiled a bit. “I see Father Tomislav more gladly, aye, as often as may be. He's a darling. Tauno himself can't slight that man.” Her thought veered. “Something strange is there too. I know not what or why…but Tauno is very mild with Tomislav…almost the way one might be with somebody who'll soon die but doesn't know it…”

“How is his daily life? And yours, for that matter?”

Eyjan shrugged. “As an acknowledged sea-wife, I'm not fast-bound the way a Croatian woman is. I can swim or range the woods, provided no man sees me. Around mortals, however, I think it best to act the lady. There I pass most of my time learning the language, since Tauno keeps the amulet. Often the maidservants and I will sing together; Ivan's wife joins us now and then, or his son.” She grimaced. “I fear young Luka is getting much too fond of me. Unwillingly would I bring woe on their house.”

“Tauno?”

“How can I tell?” Eyjan said roughly. “He goes off into the wilderness for days and nights on end. When he returns, he grunts that he's been hunting, and is barely courteous to folk. I bespoke my idea that he hates the Faith for what it's done to his people. Though why he shuns me——”

“Hm.” Andrei cupped chin in palm and gave her a long regard. “Might he have found a sweetheart in some distant hut? I'm sure neither of you can have a lover in Skradin.”

“No,” she clipped forth. “We cannot.”

“And time in a single bed hangs heavy. Ah, I remember.…If he's not beguiled a mortal girl, well, Faerie beings do haunt these realms——” In shock, Andrei saw whither his thought was leading him. Again he crossed himself. “Jesus forbid!”