by Julia Ember
“Or maybe you’re just planning to hide until The Grading is over.” Her features smoothed in a sympathetic grimace as she looked me up and down. “It’ll be okay, Ersel. You don’t have to be afraid…”
“You keep acting like I’m broken,” I snapped, wishing I could hurl the basket in her smug face. “You have no idea. Just leave me alone, okay?”
Vigdis flipped her hair. “You should bask today and spend more time in the sun. Your eggs are probably frozen inside you.”
I didn’t want to find a mate or settle into the role of mother everyone expected from me, but her assumption that I was damaged, frozen somewhere inside my very core, cut me. I wanted everyone to know I was making a choice, especially Vigdis. I ground my teeth. I wasn’t afraid. I knew my body was strong. “What time is The Grading? When does the mage arrive?”
I should have known, but I’d been trying my hardest to block it out.
“Sundown.”
If I swam quickly, I might be back in time to prove them all wrong—or right, an insidious little voice inside me argued. The king wouldn’t make me find a mate immediately. I could plan my escape. I’d been ruminating on it long enough.
Ragna would have to wait for the wood to fix her raft. It was noon already and winter, when days were short. My stomach fluttered. I had so many questions for the human girl, and I’d waited a lifetime to ask. I wanted to bring her each of my treasures in turn, and go through them one by one. But as soon as she fixed her boat, she’d sail away, and I needed to leave as well.
Pushing Vigdis aside, I sped down the hall before my tears could warm the water around her. I couldn’t let her know that she’d hurt me.
By the time I reached the ice shelf, my breath came in gasps. I even struggled to push myself from the water and onto the ice as exhaustion clawed at me. Who was I kidding? As tired as I was, there was no way my grading would go well.
Ragna waited beside the ice hole with her legs curled under her. She was scratching the tongue of one of the bolder belugas. The whale flapped his fins jubilantly, bobbed his head, and opened his jaw wider so she could reach the back of his mouth. Ragna was laughing. Her thin frame shook so hard she nearly slipped into the ocean.
She didn’t notice me at first, but when I flexed my aching tail and groaned in relief, she looked up. Catching sight of the bursting satchel, her eyes grew bright as a sea eel’s. “Is all that for me?”
“Will it be enough?” I knew nothing about how humans fed. How fast did they digest? They were in the sun all the time, continuously charging their skins. All of that sunlight had to give them energy. But then why was Ragna was so bony?
“This will keep me for a month,” she said, chuckling. “And it’s easy to keep it frozen, but I’ll have to use some of my fish oil to cook it. Did you bring the wood?”
“Cook it?” I knew the godstongue, but words or concepts related to fire, I never quite understood. We couldn’t make fire in the ocean. Did she mean to burn the fish? A bolt of dread went through me. Maybe she wasn’t going to eat it. Some of the gods liked their sacrifices eviscerated by smoke, Heimdallr included. She couldn’t mean to offer all the food I’d smuggled.
“You know, heat it up? Make it not raw? So you can eat it?”
My nose wrinkled in disgust. She wanted to eat quality food hot. Everyone knew that food rotted it when it got warm. I’d never experienced a summer, but Mama said that when she was a child and our pod sometimes ventured south to the summer waters, she had seen fish bloated with worms and dead whales whose carcasses filled with gas until they exploded. Ragna wanted to eat that! The idea was so disgusting I almost vomited into the ocean.
She chuckled, then winked at me. “I forget you live your whole life underwater. The whole cooking thing probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you. It’s good, though, trust me.”
I stuck out my tongue and made a gagging noise at the back of my throat.
Ragna took another long drink from her flask of fish oil.
The low winter light dimmed further as a cloud covered the sun. I squinted at the sky. It would be sundown in less than an hour. I needed to leave quickly if I was to prove myself at the ceremony. “I have to go. I’ll bring the wood you need tomorrow and some things I want to ask you about—some human items.”
Mischievousness sparkled in her dark eyes. “Items? I thought you weren’t supposed to keep things that belong to us?”
I chewed my lip. “We’re not… but I’ve collected a few. I just want to know how they work, what they do…”
“So you keep all those things but you were wary of my necklace? I think you just didn’t like it.” She pressed her lips together. “Are you saying my pendant is ugly?”
“No!” I snapped, irritated at how she was turning the conversation around. “I just can’t have something so obvious. I kept your necklace. I’m just not wearing it.”
Ragna giggled; her fake frown disappeared. “Are all mermaids this easy to wind up?”
I glared at her.
“We’ll trade again. My knowledge for wood.”
I sighed, then rolled my eyes. With the stress of The Grading, I couldn’t recognize a little gentle teasing. “It’s a deal.”
Gathering up the basket of food in her skinny arms, Ragna stumbled to her feet. “I’m starting to feel faint. I’m going to go cook this.”
That was my cue to leave. Nothing sounded less appealing to me than watching how she destroyed our food. Besides, I knew I had to hurry. I scooted to the edge of the glacier. Ragna gave me a one-handed salute, then shuffled into her makeshift shelter. I’d see her tomorrow, after she’d desecrated the fish.
Tomorrow, I thought, watching her pull the curtain of fur closed behind her, when The Grading was over and everything could be different.
Four
Mama’s fingers twisted through my hair, threading oyster pearls and tiny shells into my long blue locks. The pearls had been my idea—a little extra decoration to illuminate the topaz lights in my thick hair. Vigdis thought I never saw the sun because I never drew attention to the subtle lights in my hair or the freckles across my nose. I wanted to show her up in more ways than one. Mama took a green net of the finest weave I’d ever seen and fashioned it into a short veil over my eyes.
Her fingers quivered as she braided the net into place. “You don’t have to do this, you know.” Her voice shook as badly as her hands. “I’ve always imagined, well, that you might do something else. You always talked about it when you were a child. Maybe you could ask Aegir’s mage to take you back to the sea god’s court. It’s happened before.”
“No one acts like there’s a choice,” I said with an agitated sigh. “And if I go with the mage, I’d just be another kind of prisoner.”
Mama stroked my head. “I know there’s a lot of pressure. We could try to delay it. We might buy you some time—”
One of the pearls slipped down into my lap. Looking up, I saw that Mama was crying. “Do you ever wish you just started weaving right away? That you hadn’t hatched me?”
“Oh, gods, no.” She spun me around to face her. Wrinkles of concern lined her forehead and creased her eyes. “But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t sometimes glad your father died young. There was never any love between us. I let him choose me because I thought I had to accept whoever asked for me. If he hadn’t passed, maybe I’d still be brooding eggs. I imagine that sometimes and it gives me nightmares. It’s not easy. Don’t make a decision just to prove something to your friends.”
My hand found hers and covered it. “Mama, I’m just going so they’ll stop talking. For all we know, I might be infertile. And if someone asks me, I don’t have to say yes.”
Her arms wrapped around me, and she pulled me close. The water around her was warm with emotion. “You might get swept up. It’s easy to do. A young merman approaches you, and before you know it, you’ve agree
d, even if you didn’t mean to, even if you didn’t want him…”
We broke apart. I shook my head until all the pearls fell out. They floated around us, suspended in the water like stars. If I was going just to prove myself, then there was no need for me to dress up. The mage from the god’s court only cared about what was inside my womb, not what jewelry I wore. Mama snatched the pearls from the sea and stuffed them back inside the little clamshell pouch she wore at her hip.
“I’m not like that, Mama. None of them interest me.”
“Not even Havamal?” She winked at me, but her eyes were tired. “He’s gotten awfully good-looking.”
“No, especially not him. And don’t remind me. Everyone’s always fawning over him.” A lump rose in my throat. Havamal was mated to a world—a system—where I didn’t belong. He couldn’t have both that world and me.
“Someday, I hope you two work it out.” She pressed a kiss against my cheek. “Not that I want you rushing into a mating bond, but you used to be such close friends.”
I choked back a sob and closed my eyes to hide the tears brewing under my lids. “I’ll leave now. If I get there early, maybe I can speak to the mage alone.”
“Whatever she tells you, remember you make your own decisions. And your egg count is not what makes you.”
“Tell that to Vigdis,” I muttered. After giving her a final hug, I swam out of Mama’s crevice and into my own. My eyes swept the chamber, looking for something I could carry. I wanted something small to remind me of the things I valued, something I could hold on to if I were tempted to betray myself.
Pushing aside the kelp curtain, I fished around in my carved bin for Ragna’s necklace. She’d survived capture, imprisonment, and a shipwreck on her own. This ornament had dangled from her neck through all of it. I bit my lip, then fastened the chain around my neck. The delicate metal was numbingly cold against my scales, but the sheer defiance of wearing the necklace inside the glacier thrilled me. If he saw it, King Calder would be beyond furious, but I was already bending to pressure by attending the ceremony. My hair was long and thick. If I had to, I could hide the necklace with my hair.
With my chin held high, I swam to the great hall and passed through the arches. I was early, so the hall was nearly empty, but the king sat on his dais, flanked by a troop of guards. On his right, the sea god’s court mage sat on a low stool helping herself to cuts of fish from a tray in Havamal’s hands. The king whispered into her ear. He ignored Havamal’s presence completely. The mage cackled into her spindly hands. I wondered how Havamal felt, being treated like an invisible part of the landscape, a beautiful serving plate, when he had signed on as a warrior.
The mage had the legged body of a human. Most of her was doughy and pink, but her skin was pocked with barnacles that had attached directly to her flesh. Algae-covered gills gaped at her neck, and she wheezed when she tried to suck in water. I’d always considered myself lucky to have a mermaid’s gills: dozens of tiny flaps concealed under our scales. Looking at the woundlike structures on her neck made me more intensely grateful. Long, twisted strands of seaweed seemed to grow from her head where hair should have been; the locks sprouted in mismatched shades of green, deep coral, and topaz.
She was the strangest looking creature I’d ever seen.
Havamal rested the tray on the nearest table and backed up to the wall. His eyes widened when he saw me, but then narrowed when the glimmering necklace at my throat drew his attention. He missed nothing. I combed my long hair around my neck to cover it. Now that I was in the king’s presence, my nerve failed me.
“Ersel,” King Calder said in his hoarse cough of a voice. “I didn’t expect you to be the first. I was led to believe you weren’t excited about the ceremony.”
Had Havamal told him that? Or had some other insidious little fish, Vigdis perhaps, been whispering in his ear?
Hastily, I sank into a bow, dipping my chin lower than etiquette demanded to be sure the necklace was fully hidden. The intensity in the king’s eyes made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I felt subversive with his stare on me, as though I wore a dangerous secret instead of a simple chain.
“I’m ready for it to be finished,” I admitted, lightening my words with a falsely confident smile. I didn’t know where he got his information about me, but all of us knew about the king’s vicious changes in mood. He had never seemed to take any interest in me before, so now that he remembered anything about me, I was nervous. Although he seemed happy enough in this moment, I knew what happened to those who lied to him. Liars earned his most capricious responses—above the disobedient, the unruly, and the drunk.
When I was eleven, right after the king took power from his mother, his sister had lied to him about her whereabouts. After summoning the bailiff, the king ordered his guards to hold her fast while the enforcer removed one of her rear scales with a pair of tongs. I heard the girl’s screams in my nightmares for a week.
She had been the rightful heir to the throne; the king was only ruling as regent until she came of age. Girl children had the first right of inheritance. That had always been our law before King Calder seized power. The princess had been a frail child and constantly ill. Calder had bullied her into letting him reign as regent and controlled her with cruelty. When the princess died, some people had thought her lucky.
Aegir’s mage laid her gnarled hand on the king’s shoulder. “The first girl is here; you must take your leave.”
He stiffened at her touch. “I’m the king in this glacier. I should be privy to what goes on here. My mother always stayed.”
“Your mother did always oversee the proceedings. Yes, boy, I know.” The mage’s eyes crinkled, and she laughed. “But your mother was a woman. No merman has ever seen these rites, and you will not be the first. You may be a king in this ice mountain, but I am a member of the sea god’s court and I outrank you in every possible way. I remind you of this yearly. A girl is here, and we will begin.”
“My mother pushed me out of the proceedings too, and it was a mistake that cost us,” Calder growled. “She put too much faith in Inkeri.”
The mage’s lips parted, revealing rows of green-stained teeth. “Your mother wasn’t the one at fault concerning your sister.”
“It’s getting more important,” he hissed as his fingers tightened on the arms of this throne. “Our future—”
“I know what importance this has to you.” The old woman’s glare was hard as fresh ice. “But I serve Aegir, not you. And if anything happens to me, you will answer to him. The sea god does not forget, nor does he forgive. Begone.”
I held my breath as the king’s blue-scaled fingers balled into fists. Surely he wouldn’t hurt a messenger of the gods, even one who had threatened him? The captain of the King’s Guard cleared his throat and gestured toward the hall’s archway. “Your Majesty, I hear the gatherers have the feast prepared. It’s laid out in the small hall.” The merman chanced a wink at his king. “If we wait there, we can appraise each girl when she comes out. Perhaps help young Havamal choose a mate.”
A few of the other guards tittered. A handful looked ashamed and wouldn’t meet my eye. One pinched Havamal’s cheek.
I wanted to scream.
The king rested his hand on his belly and paused to look the shadow mage up and down in an obvious challenge. The old woman crossed her arms over her bony chest. Then he burst into a roar of laughter and clapped Havamal hard on the back. Speaking to the captain, he said, “You’re right, Heiden. It’s high time this one found the girl he’s been searching for. He’s certainly good-looking enough.”
Havamal stole a glance at me. The hope in his eyes burned even brighter than his cheeks. It scalded my heart. Hastily, I turned away and studied the ice table. A shallow crack ran the length of its surface, and I traced it with a finger in a vain attempt to seem as if I weren’t paying any attention to him. If he believed I’d give
up everything—my freedom—to choose him, he couldn’t know me at all. But that hope in his eyes… everything in me ached.
The king and his procession filed from the hall, most of the men joking with Havamal. I could feel his eyes on me as he swam away, but I refused to look at him. Even after his betrayal, I didn’t relish causing him pain.
As soon as the mermen had gone, Aegir’s mage stumbled toward me on her strange land-legs. She settled herself on a stool and took my hand in hers. Warmth flooded through my scales, as if she held the sun between her fingers. “You’re not here to find a mate.”
“Of course I am…” I stammered, but she pressed her finger to my lips.
“I can always tell the girls who are just here to prove something. But wanting what you want isn’t anything to be ashamed of, and what you desire is none of my business. I’m not here to pass judgment, only to give information.” She squeezed my hand comfortingly.
“But our future is determined by that information! We’re judged on it for the rest of our lives!” I exclaimed. How could the mage believe she wasn’t responsible for passing judgment? Mermaids in the glacier lived with the result of her pronouncements every day. We could take The Grading next year, should we fail, but the stigma of a low follicle count clung to us like a scale infection, lingering for a lifetime. Worse still, none of us knew what to expect from the ceremony itself.
“I give this information at the request of your king and community. Members of my order have always assisted when it comes to matters of the womb—for all the creatures who dwell in Aegir’s realm.” She sighed, cupping my chin with her free hand. “But it’s not me who decides to give your fertility so much value.”
I pulled away from her as hot tears threatened to spill down my cheeks. Biting my lip, I managed to hold them in check. I didn’t want anyone to come in, feel the warm water around me, and think I was a coward. I’d come here to prove myself, but now I felt even more powerless in the face of our merclan’s expectations.