Margrethe pounded on the abbess’s door as the others gathered around her.
The abbess opened the door, startled—then panicked to see the young princess before her, wet and shivering, in a dangerous state of cold.
“Mira!” she cried. “What has happened to you?”
“There is a man, at the beach, by the water. He needs help!”
“Come in here,” the abbess said, pulling Margrethe inside, making her sit by the fire. She called out to the others, “Get blankets and furs! Get the nurse!”
“Please,” Margrethe said. “We have to go to the beach, to help him. I told him I would go back!” She knew she could not let the man die. The mermaid had brought him to her, to save him.
One of the nuns ran in, breathless. “Mother, there is a man on the shore.”
“Go to him.” the abbess said. “Get him inside before he dies. A group of you, go!”
As the cloisters erupted into chaos behind her, the abbess leaned down and looked into Margrethe’s face. “You cannot risk yourself like this, no matter what. You are not like the rest of us. Don’t forget that. I promised your father you’d be safe here. Think of what would happen to us, if any harm were to come to you.”
Margrethe nodded, woozy. The abbess was an imposing woman, with snow-white hair and pale eyes, and there was a stricken quality about her face, as if she’d just witnessed something awful. “He is down there dying,” Margrethe tried to say, but her words came out in tiny gasps. “I saw …”
“Shhh. Drink.”
Liquid burned down her throat. Vaguely, she sensed others coming in, wrapping her in blankets, leading her back to her cell. The abbess helping her as she lay on the pallet. Outside, the wind howled and howled. Suddenly, she was exhausted. Maybe there was something in the drink, to calm her and make her sleep.
WHEN SHE WOKE, the room was bathed in darkness. Outside all she could hear was wind, the crashing of rain. Bells were ringing for prayer. It took her a moment to orient herself, remember where she was. Was it Vespers? Had she missed the whole workday? She rose, pulled on a clean tunic. Her fingers shook as she secured the scapular, then attached her wimple and veil.
She’d been dreaming of her mother, she realized. She was a child again, curled up in her mother’s arms, taking in her lavender scent, the warmth of her voice, the softness of her palm as she smoothed down Margrethe’s hair. A terrible sense of loss moved through her. And there was something else …
A mermaid, yes. And a man.
Margrethe shuffled down the corridor, still groggy from her long sleep. Her body felt like it had been wrought from flames. Slowly, she made her way to the chapel—stopping, for a moment, to peek outside, into the convent garden. She pressed open the door, and the wind rushed around her. It felt good, the cold. Rain lashed at her face, and she could hear the crashing of the sea.
It was dark. The stars were visible past the veil of white that covered them. The sea shone black in the distance, all its secrets hidden away.
She shook her head. What dreams she had had! The mermaid on the rocks, bent over the dying man. Her mother, singing her to sleep. She must have fallen into a fever, the way the abbess had only the week before, taken ill from the cold. Margrethe laughed, but not without a tinge of longing. She had been raised in a court where troubadours seduced them with magical tales, where she spent afternoons with her tutor, Gregor, reading long, ancient stories of heroes and conquerors, the dead come back to life. Now here she was, living against the most desolate sea, with women who spent hours each day speaking to heaven while she herself made up fantastical creatures.
She closed the door and hurried to the chapel, already late, taking her seat in the choir stall next to Edele, her old friend and most favored lady-in-waiting, who caught her eye and gave her a look of barely contained panic.
“Are you well?” Edele whispered, ignoring the sharp looks from the others.
Margrethe nodded and put her hand on Edele’s to reassure her. She felt more than ever that she was at the end of the earth, where dream and reality mixed.
She mouthed the words along with the others. She closed her eyes, felt the sweat collecting at her brow. She had dreamed the wonders she’d seen earlier, she thought, but things were still lovely in this part of the world—these women, this place, the feeling that every moment contained something of the miraculous. And Edele, sitting beside her, one lock of her wild hair peeking out from the wimple that covered it.
After the service, Edele pulled Margrethe aside. “You shouldn’t have risked yourself like that,” she whispered, “running about in the cold. Remember who you are.”
Margrethe’s head shot up in surprise. Her heart began to beat frantically. “He is real?”
“The man on the shore? Of course. He is safe, because of you. But you should have called to the others, not gone yourself.”
“I thought I had dreamt him.”
Edele looked closely at Margrethe, her round eyes full of concern. She shook her head. “Are you sure you are well?”
A few of the others were gathering round. “He is a foreigner,” one of the nuns said.
“There are no signs of his ship,” another said. “It’s a miracle that he washed up on our shore and that you found him there.”
“A miracle,” Margrethe repeated.
And then she felt his wet skin, under her palm, saw the mermaid’s blue eyes, her white-blond hair, her silvery green tail glinting above the rocks.
“Maybe you should go back and rest,” Edele said. “I will bring you tea and bread.”
“I’m fine,” Margrethe said, her eyes shining. “Where is he?”
“The man?”
“Yes, I want to see him.”
Margrethe could see the women giving each other looks, but she didn’t care. The man was her responsibility.
“The infirmary,” a young nun said. “The last room.”
“Excuse me,” Margrethe said, squeezing Edele’s hand. “I will see you at supper.” And she slipped away.
She crept down the corridor that led to the infirmary. The hallways were dark, the torches flickering from the walls. Outside, the wind continued to battle the trees and cliffs. There seemed to be ghosts on all sides of her, hidden in the shadows.
She arrived at the door. She put her hand against it and then paused, trying to calm herself. Her heart was pounding. The rain must have started up again. She could hear it pummeling the rooftop.
She straightened her back, took a deep breath, and walked in.
The room was dark, lit by a faint lantern next to the bed and a fire in the corner. The man was lying in the bed, sleeping, his body wrapped in bandages, furs strewn all around. Even in the faint light, she could see he still had the sheen of the mermaid on him. His chest bare and glimmering.
She stared at him in wonder. The mermaid had come to him in the water, carried him to shore, placed him on the rocks. That shimmer—if anything, it seemed more pronounced, sparkling as the firelight hit it, on his cheeks, his eyelids, his chest. As she moved forward, to the edge of the bed, his face came out of shadow. Up close she saw his lips, the outline of them: the top lip perfectly shaped, coming down in a V, the shimmer extending across his bottom lip, which was more full.
He was as beautiful as the mermaid, she thought, studying him.
His chest rose and fell with his breath. She moved closer. Slowly she reached her arm forward and lightly, with just the tip of her index finger, traced the curve of his shoulder. Who are you? she wondered.
She looked back to his face and realized, with horror, that his eyes were open, that he was watching her now. Gasping, she yanked her hand back, moved away.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t leave.”
Again she was startled. His face was surprisingly soft and his eyes, a green-brown-yellow, the color of a dying weed.
The lights from the fire cast his shadow on the wall, jagged and strange. He looked at her as if he could see her thoughts, and she turne
d away, embarrassed. No one had ever looked at her this way.
“What is your name?” he asked.
She almost told him her given name, then remembered herself. “Mira.”
“Mira,” he repeated. He seemed to taste each syllable. “Mira, my savior. I am Christopher.”
“It was a terrible storm,” she said. “You are lucky to be alive.”
“That was no storm,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever seen a dragon?” he asked.
“A dragon?”
“A monster who breathes fire,” he said, lowering his voice. “As big as a glacier, maybe two. They live in the sea. We were sailing along, and everything was fine. Me, my men. There was music, dancing. We’d done hard battle, nothing to talk about to a lady. And then suddenly, there was a rocking. Water dropped from the sky. And the boat swayed and kicked, like a horse trying to throw us off. When I looked up, I saw it. The most terrifying monster in the world. Eyes of fire, skin like plague.”
She stared at him, breathless, waiting. His eyes grew large as he remembered the terror of the beast.
“I slayed him, Sister, but not before he took every last one of my men. I never saw anything like it.”
He finished his story, smiling. For a moment she just looked at him before smiling back. “You, my lord,” she said, “are a spinner of tales.”
“Oh, my lady,” he said, putting his hand to his heart. “I am only telling you what I saw.”
“And then a mermaid saved you, I suppose,” she said playfully, watching for his reaction. Did he remember? “And left a trail of diamonds across your skin.”
He laughed, delighted. The way he was looking at her—it was like she was a goddess, as if she had emerged from the sea like Aphrodite in the stories Gregor had told her. “Is that what you are? Is that why you wear that habit, to hide your true nature?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“I will never tell.”
“Where do you come from?” she asked.
“Far from here,” he said, waving his hand. “My men and I have gone to many distant lands. We have seen wonders you would not believe. Men with eyes in their foreheads, women with snakes for hair.”
She shook her head with amusement. “Hmmm, I think I’ve heard of you,” she said. “Did you enter an enemy city inside a horse as well?”
“Yes!” he said, nodding vigorously, “back when we fought a most terrible war. After, an enchantress put me under a spell and kept me on her island for seven years. I lived on nothing but the fruit I shook down from trees. Can you imagine, Sister? And once, in the middle of the ocean, we saw a woman stepping out of a clamshell, right there on the surface of the water.”
“That must have been very awful for you.”
“Yes, more than the most ferocious battle. Seeing a woman, in the middle of a long journey … It almost killed us all from shock.”
She smiled, and then suddenly the whole room seemed to shift. “You … Wait.” A terrible feeling rose in her, a suspicion, and her amusement faded away. She had been too blinded by that mermaid sheen, that beautiful glimmer marking his skin, to notice how sun-drenched he was underneath. His warrior’s body. “Do you … come from the South?”
“I do. From a much warmer land than this.”
“The Southern kingdom?”
“Yes.” He was smiling at her, and then his face changed. “Are you well, Sister? What is it? I am not an enemy to you here, in a house of God.”
Suddenly the door, the hallway, the other nuns—all of it seemed miles away.
“I have to go,” she said.
“Sister? Forgive me. I do not mean to offend.”
“I … have to return to my chores,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm, prevent her hands from shaking, her legs from running, as she went to the door and pushed through.
“Sister!”
She rushed down the hall, to the main part of the convent and back to her cell, where she leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath, stop the racing of her heart.
She had never met one of her kingdom’s enemies before. The men from the South who had wended their way up to her own land when she was a child, leaving heaps of bodies in their wake.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Mermaid
LENIA’S EYES PEERED BACK AT HER, IN THE GLASS, HER hair swarming around her face and lifting into the water above. She could still feel him in her arms. That warmth, that beating heart. The sensation of wet hair, wet skin, under her palms. As soft as a mussel.
Then behind her, another face appeared. Vela, the next youngest sister to Lenia, her pale face pressing through the water, like a memory, or a ghost.
“You scared me,” Lenia said, turning. “I thought you were in the garden.”
Vela wrapped her long, silvery arms around Lenia’s shoulders. “Did you have a good birthday, Sister?” she asked. “I was worried when you wouldn’t come talk to us. I was afraid you’d been disappointed.”
“By the upper world?”
“The storm. We could feel it down here long after you left.”
Lenia smiled. Vela was the sweetest of her sisters. Anyone who didn’t know them—though of course everyone knew them, they were daughters of the sea queen—would have thought that Vela, with her round cheeks and little bow mouth, her bright hair and peach-colored tail, was the youngest instead of Lenia. Vela loved the sea’s creatures more than any of them and could spend whole days discovering hidden life in the ocean’s crevices. Leaf-crowned sea dragons with long, glowing needles for teeth, tiny red octopi that spun like stars, glassy see-through creatures shaped like flowers. Even now she had a giant shell on her shoulder with a pulsing, gooey creature inside, suctioned to her skin.
“No,” Lenia said, gently removing Vela’s arms. “I wasn’t disappointed. I liked the storm. I would have liked to stay longer.”
“You would have?”
“I would have liked to stay forever.”
Vela made a face. “Very funny. Come outside, come tell us all about it. We’ve found something, too, that you will like.”
Lenia turned her head and kissed Vela on the cheek. “What?”
“Men, everywhere, from the storm. I found them this morning, by the cave. One body, then another and another, and the ship they were on, too.” She smiled, raising her glittering brows. “And a chest of treasures.”
“Oh!” Lenia said, wondering if she could find something of his, and then immediately felt horrible, remembering what she’d seen.
“What’s wrong?” Vela asked. “You love human treasures.”
“This is different,” Lenia said. “I saw it happen. The shipwreck. It was terrible.”
Vela’s eyes widened. “You saw it?”
“Yes, the storm, the ship, I saw it break apart. I saw men die.”
“Oh,” Vela breathed. “Let’s go to the others, you must tell us everything!”
She grabbed Lenia’s hand, and the two swam together, through the long hallway where sea plants streamed around them, filled with small, phosphorescent creatures that lit up the dark. In front of the palace, in the main family garden, the rest of the sisters waited: Bolette, Nadine, Regitta, who was holding her son, and the oldest sister, Thilla, who was carrying a platter of baby soft-shell crabs left over from the birthday feast.
Lenia swam over and popped one in her mouth, liking the feel of the shell as it cracked between her teeth. She reached for another, suddenly starving.
“Didn’t you find anything to eat up there?” Thilla asked, laughing.
“Look, Sister,” Nadine said. She shifted, letting the electric eel in her arms cast light on a wooden chest, perched on a rock beside her. The chest was open. The insides of it splendid, as if it contained all the night stars spread across the sky.
“So when are you going to tell us about your adventure?” Bolette asked. Bolette and her twin sister, Regitta, were the next oldest, after Thilla. B
olette was the fastest swimmer of all of them, with the longest, thinnest body, which could slice through the water like a sharp blade. “Was it wonderful, like you thought it’d be?”
Nadine flicked her tail against Bolette’s side. “I am attempting to give our sister a gift, if you don’t mind,” she said. She dipped into the chest and held out a gold necklace with a huge red stone hanging from the center. It was stunning.
The red stone flashed in the water, catching the faint light. A few small fish darted up to it, and Nadine caught them in her palm, stuffed them into her mouth.
“It’s beautiful,” Lenia said. She took the necklace, placed it around her neck. Nadine swam behind her and fastened it, kissing her on the shoulder.
“It looked like you,” Nadine said. She swam back around to the other sisters, admiring her work. “That is how your voice sounds to us.”
Lenia laughed, tracing the stone underneath her fingertips. She looked at her sisters’ five expectant faces. They were all so lovely. Behind them, a thousand fluorescent fish swam upward in one motion.
“Well?” Vela asked, unable to contain herself any longer. “What was it like? Seeing them die?”
“Seeing what die?” Thilla asked. She looked from Vela to Lenia. “You saw … not humans?”
“Humans, yes,” Lenia said. “A whole ship full of men. I saw it break apart in the storm. They were clinging, screaming. Their voices! My ears are still ringing from it. I swam right up to them. I looked into their faces. One of them was struggling in the water. I watched him die, and then his body went limp.”
“How strange,” Vela said, wonderingly. “To be alive one minute, and then—”
“Yes,” Lenia said. “And they were fighting and trying so hard to live. It was beautiful. I mean it was horrifying, at the time, but then I saw that they just wanted so much to stay there, in the upper world.”
“That sounds terrifying,” Regitta said. Instinctively she rocked her tiny son, asleep in her arms, as if he could understand. “I think I would have turned around and come home rather than see that.”
Bolette leaned into her twin and reached out to stroke the baby’s shock of red hair. “I can’t believe you saw humans up close at all, let alone dying ones. Weren’t you nervous?”
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