by Julia Ember
My skepticism must have showed on my face because she splashed another handful of water at me. “Don’t ask questions if you won’t like the answers.”
“How do I know I won’t like the answers until I ask the questions?”
The sun peered from behind a thick cloud, and Ragna’s grin spread all the way to her ears. Sighing as the warm sun hit my scales, I rested my weight on the edge of the boat. Out here, out in the open water joking with her, I felt totally free. I didn’t want to think about when this day would end and I’d have to swim home.
Ragna watched me as I sunned myself; her eyes were acutely focused on my face. I tried to not flush at the feral light in her eyes.
“You should give me a kiss,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “When the bards tell mermaid stories, it’s always supposed to lucky for sailors to kiss them.”
“Oh, really?” I asked, trying to sound calm, though my voice came out like a squeak. My vision made a tunnel, and the only thing I could focus on was the brilliant red of her lips. Did she mean a proper kiss? Or a peck on the forehead like Mama gave me? Havamal and I had kissed a couple of times, concealed inside one of our sunken wrecks. And once, just once, I’d shared a moment with a mermaid named Fryen before Vigdis turned her against me, too. Mermaids were encouraged to kiss and make love to each other—the king condoned anything that made us more receptive to touch.
Somehow I didn’t think kissing a human would be anything like that. The thought made my breathing shallow. “And why is that?”
“Mermaids are said to be the most beautiful creatures in Midgard.” She shrugged. “But maybe the sailors who find them were just lucky to begin with.”
“Are said?” I raised my own eyebrow in an attempt at disdain.
“Are.” Ragna said. She leaned toward me, and my heart beat faster. It was just going to be a quick kiss, why was I getting so worked up? “And I’m going to need a lot of luck.”
She brushed her silken lips across mine. The bitter smell of the sea clung to her now, mixed with the earthen sweetness that was her own. The sensation of her warmth shot down my back. She moved to pull away, but I wrapped my hands around her and crushed her lips to mine. The taste of her was like an elixir of salt and courage and freedom. I couldn’t get enough. Some animal part of my brain insisted that I needed more.
Her fingers began working their way into my hair, threading between the layers, massaging my scalp. Her tongue teased my mouth open and slipped inside. I couldn’t help the moan that escaped. She pushed against me with exactly the right amount of pressure; her lips were a thousand times softer and more agile than Havamal’s had been. We kissed and kissed until I couldn’t breathe, until my lips stung.
I pushed myself higher up the side of the craft. I wanted to crawl inside with her, to wrap my body around her and feel her downy skin beneath my fingers. Only the potential indignity of needing her to roll me from the boat kept my tail in the water.
I didn’t know what the kiss meant. I knew she was leaving to find whatever destiny awaited her in a place I couldn’t go. I wasn’t sure if this was the kind of kiss she’d had in mind. In the moment, it didn’t matter. The pure pleasure was enough. We were just two beings, adrift in the open ocean. Our hair whipped wildly around us, a billowing sail of blue and white.
I was equal, alive, free.
My eyes fluttered open at the sound of a single word: “Stop!”
Ragna’s lips were still locked against mine. Her hot breath tickled the hollow of my neck. How could I stop, when it felt so perfect?
“Stop!”
I spun around so quickly Ragna nearly fell over the boat’s edge into the sea. She scrambled to right herself in the boat as I turned to stare at the source of the commands.
Havamal treaded water an orca-length away. When our eyes met, he crossed the distance between us with a single kick of his muscular tail. His gaze flitted from me to Ragna. There was a heat in his eyes, a building pressure of rage and horror that pulsed behind the icy mask of his features like an undersea volcano. I’d never seen him look like that.
“What are you thinking?” he yelled, taking me by both shoulders and shaking me. “A human? You’re kissing a human?”
“It was nothing, just a kiss—” I tried to say, but was it? My mouth still tasted of her; my lips still burned. I wanted to kiss her again. I felt like myself with her, my real self. It wasn’t love, but it wasn’t nothing either.
Mocking laughter erupted from him. “Just a kiss? Just a kiss, she says. Oh, yeah, just casually kissing a bloody human. Where did you even find her, Ersel?” He shook his head. “Gods, was that your stupid plan for us? Go on an adventure and meet some humans? Maybe join their whaling parties? You seem to have forgotten: you have fins!”
Growling, he released my shoulders and pushed me away. He rounded on Ragna’s boat and shoved his full body weight into the side. The wood held fast, but the hull tipped almost enough to send Ragna into the sea. Panic seized me. We were too far from land. If she fell in the water here, she’d freeze. And if she survived the cold, would Havamal drown her?
As if in answer to my question, Havamal backed up to gather speed. Ragna fished a spear from under her feet and held it up. The metal glinted in the sun. Havamal just laughed. But it was a cruel laugh, without any humor, and the knot of fear inside me tightened. After seeing her fight the polar bear, I wasn’t sure who would win this battle. The water was Havamal’s domain, but Ragna was lightning made flesh. Worse, I wasn’t sure which of them I wanted to win.
I grabbed Havamal about the waist. “Don’t you dare,” I screamed, finding my voice at last.
“It’s my orders,” he said, trying to shake me off. “If we see a human, we’re to kill it. By order of King Calder.”
“Stop it!” I was unable to keep the plea from my voice. He was much bigger and stronger than I was, and there was only so long I could hold him back. “It was only a kiss. I just wanted to try it.” I said the words to placate him. When I glanced up at Ragna with her wild hair, her white fingers clutching at her spear, her lips still wet from my kiss, I felt as if I were the one he was drowning.
Some of the anger left him, and he stopped struggling. He turned to me and said in a flat voice, “Say that you’ll be my mate, and I’ll let her go.”
If I refused, he would drown her or die trying. I could see the resolve in the rigid set of his shoulders. Would he make me watch while he held her under? Or would he drag me away, leaving her to the mercy of the frozen sea? I thought of the bodies sinking into the abyss of the cold gray ocean after the shipwreck.
“Havamal, please,” I begged. Restrained tears and snot clogged my voice. “We were friends. Please. You know I don’t want that. You promised you’d never force me.”
“You promised me there was no one else,” he whispered, and for a second I thought his voice would break, but his eyes were hard as stone.
“Please.”
“No. Come or I knock her out of the boat.”
“All right.” I slumped. I’d always argued that Vigdis was wrong, that nothing inside me was frozen. But now defeat chilled me to the core, wrapping its fingers around my heart, turning it black. I could not watch him kill her. “I’ll do it. I’ll come with you.”
“Don’t you dare try to go back on it,” he warned. “Or I’ll tell everyone about the human. And they’ll believe me.”
They would. We both knew it. I kept to myself, and no one would support my word above his. If Havamal told the court that I had not only aided, but also befriended and… kissed… a human, the king would peel all the scales from my back and leave me to die on the ice shelf.
“I said I would do it.” I would try to plead later. There was no way my best friend had turned into someone so cruel. He was angry and hurt. It would pass and he’d change his mind.
Havamal nodded, then tugged on my arm. “L
et’s go.”
“Let me say goodbye.”
He heaved a sigh and then sank under the waves. I could make out his shadow, lurking just below my tail fins. Ragna would think he had gone, that we were alone. But I wondered if this was just the beginning. Would he watch me day in, day out, until we went through the mating ceremony? I heaved, and bile rushed up from my stomach to burn my throat with acid.
No. He was angry. That was all.
As I swam to Ragna’s boat, my fins dragged as if someone had tied the anchor of a human ship to my tail. She knelt in the hull and peered into the water at me with her dazzlingly bright eyes. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to jump in the boat and let her row us away. I wanted to escape.
Instead, I grabbed the side of the tiny ship, pulled myself up, and whispered into her ear, “Row. You have to get away from here.”
“What if he comes back? He nearly tipped me.” Her lips pursed. “I’m not sure the boat is ready to go out on the open water. I took my food so the gulls wouldn’t get it but… what if I sink?”
I managed a watery smile. “You won’t. Mermaid luck, remember?”
She winced. “It doesn’t look like it’s brought you very much luck.”
“I don’t think the legend works like that.”
“I can’t just leave you here… what is he going to do to you?”
I shrugged, then tried to make my voice sound confident. “I’m not sure. But we used to be friends, so maybe it will be all right.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not, but he will drown you if you don’t leave now.”
Ragna managed a weak smile, then pressed the hunting horn back into my hands. I stared at the silver mouthpiece, imagining her lips wrapped around it. Then she said, “I will come back.”
“You shouldn’t,” I whispered, even as my stomach did a back flip.
Her hand squeezed mine. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? Until then?”
Every part of me wanted to shout “no!” but I nodded, dropped her hand, and said goodbye.
Eight
I refused to speak to Havamal as we swam back to the glacier. He tried once to break the silence by clearing his throat, but I didn’t even grunt in response. My mind raced with thoughts of Ragna. Would the water in her canteen hold out? Would she make it to the shore? Would I ever see her again? Part of me wanted to imagine her sitting in her boat, looking up at the twilight, waiting where I’d left her. In my daydreams, Havamal stopped, apologized, and let me go back to her.
But in reality, his hand remained fastened around my wrist like a chain. I half expected him to haul me before the king and make me publicly announce my intentions. Instead, he escorted me to my own cave and then hovered in the alcove, biting his lip as though he had something to say.
When I still said nothing, he shook his head and murmured, “I’ll come back and check on you in an hour or so. When we’ve both cooled off.”
“And then you’ll apologize, and we can forget about this?” I rubbed the back of my head and tried to laugh even though I wanted to sob.
He frowned and gripped the edge of the ice cave to steady himself. “We can talk about when we’ll tell the king.” Then he swam away.
Feeling numb, I propped the horn up against the wall of my cave. I surveyed my human treasures, wondering if I should scoop them up and hurl them into the ocean so Havamal wouldn’t have physical evidence to use against me. But everything inside me ached, so I curled into a ball, wrapped my tail around me, and buried my face in my fins.
Havamal had me trapped and he knew it. Whether the king believed him or not, he would take Havamal’s side. By now, everyone would have heard about the ceremony. King Calder would see my body as too valuable to waste and he would make a decision based on what I could do rather than what I wanted. Would he strip my scales before he turned me over to Havamal? I tried to rest, but all I could do was imagine the king’s cruel laugh as he flayed rows of scales from my back, leaving my flesh bare to the burning cold salt of the ocean water. He’d done it to others before, even to his own sister.
Shivering, I raised my eyes to the ceiling. Havamal had been my best friend and now he wanted to be my jailer—a warden disguising himself as lover, forcing me to do his bidding.
I’ve never been particularly pious, but praying to Loki before the ceremony had seemed to help. Or at least, it had eased my anxiety even if the god of lies had had nothing to do with the ceremony’s outcome. I didn’t like the idea of adopting the trickster as my patron god, but if ever I needed a trick or two, it was now. The words of a remembered prayer tumbled from my lips. Everything inside me felt too frozen to make up my own plea.
Blue light shimmered against the back wall of my cave. It was pale and strangely electric and reminded me of watching lightning strike the sea from fifteen arm-lengths below. I swam to my crevice’s mouth. Peering out into the gray water, I squinted at the source of the strange glow. The light became so intense I had to look away. It radiated from a little ball I could hardly see. All of a sudden, it blinked and dimmed. A green and yellow sea turtle glided toward me. The electric blue light glowed from his eye sockets, and he stared right at me. A shiver ran up my back, and my blood cooled.
Above me, the patter of hail echoed through the ocean, followed by the crack of lightning. I wondered if I should scream for help. Was stress making me imagine things? Sea turtles couldn’t survive here, could they? With their cold blood, they needed the summer currents to survive. I shook my head to clear the image, blinked, but the turtle still swam toward me. If I screamed and there was no turtle, the king would think I was losing my mind, and I’d have less chance of defending myself against the things Havamal could say. Plus, I didn’t want to wake Mama. I took a deep breath. My heart felt raw and exposed, blistered and stinging, like a wound cleansed with ocean salt. I wasn’t ready to talk to her.
The turtle drifted peacefully toward me, like a moving lullaby propelled by the tide. The creature’s bright eyes dimmed further, and it cocked its head, winking at me as it coasted through a school of silver fish. Then it began to paddle rapidly; its thick flippers pumped faster and faster until its whole body became a green blur. Overhead, the hail and thunder intensified—almost as if Thor himself surfed across the waves. A bolt of lightning struck the sea and a fiery purple and yellow aurora of fiery diffused over the waves.
When I looked up toward the lights, the turtle slammed into me, knocking me back into the cave. Before I could scream, a hand covered my mouth: a hand that was pink, warm, and strangely dry.
As my screams died in my throat, the creature spun me around to face them. Their turtle shell had transformed into a billowing cloak of sparkling greens and golds. Caribou antlers covered with strips of fur stuck out on either side of a silver helmet; each antler was tall enough to scrape the ceiling of my little cave. Blue, electric light emanated from their very skin. A sea snake the color of dying coral wound about their waist. I couldn’t decide if I was looking at a man or a woman. Their form was slim and elegant, androgynous, with neither soft curves nor rippling muscle. High cheekbones and pursed midnight-blue lips set off hooded, bright eyes, deep-set in their chiseled face.
I wanted desperately to swim away from them, to hide behind my kelp curtain, but they gripped my shoulders so hard I could feel bruises forming under my scales.
“Do you know who I am?” they demanded, raising a turquoise eyebrow.
The blue light shining from them made my scales glow as if I lay under the sun. A bubble of dry air formed in the ice cave and expanded until it filled the space. A warm feeling crept up from the tip of my tail, even while my stomach sank in fear. The horns reminded me of images from our legends that had been carved into the ice sculptures decorating our central hall. The statues in the hall had frozen their stories into our collective memories.
I swallowed. I was seein
g the same face I’d seen every day since I was a child, engraved above me in the dining hall.
Loki, god of lies. I’d memorized their crystal smirk. But their eyes now carried an animation, a mischief that matched their hardened grin.
“You’re Loki,” I whispered. Why would the trickster god choose to help me? This was only the second time in my life I’d prayed to them. From everything I’d heard about Loki, my situation should have amused them. Maybe they were here to taunt me, to mock me for praying to them concerning a ceremony I didn’t care about and wasting whatever favor my birth season entitled me to.
They nodded, but their eyes never left my face.
“Are you here to mock me?” I asked, my voice trembling. It wasn’t a polite thing to ask a god, but after what I’d been through today, I didn’t have energy left for courtesy.
Laughing, Loki shook their great horned head. Their cackle was high and cruel, but then their eyes softened into something that seemed like affection. That look of care on their pale face was even more terrifying. They rested their warm hand on my back. I imagined their nails filled with poisonous venom and pulled away to avoid getting their toxin on my scales.
But Loki only smiled. “I’ve been watching you for a while, Ersel. It’s not normal for your kind to interact so closely with the human world. You’re curious and intelligent and you don’t follow orders like a sheep. I value all those things.”
I didn’t know what a sheep was, but I nodded at the compliment nonetheless.
Their fingers played with the edges of their blue and gold eyebrow. “I want to make a deal with you.”
My scales stood up on my back. Whenever the storytellers talked about Loki, they cautioned against making deals with the god. I cursed myself for carelessness, for letting Havamal follow me. If I hadn’t been such an idiot, maybe I wouldn’t have to decide between displeasing the god standing in front of me or doing what all our legends warned against: making a deal with the being who invented the lie.