by Julia Ember
* * *
My trap was empty. For the third day in a row, the stick remained in place and the square basket I’d woven to net crabs stayed braced and ready. I exhaled slowly, trying to ignore the gnawing hunger tearing at me.
Since leaving the glacier a week before, I’d managed to catch only a single crab by myself. By the time I removed the creature’s shell, there wasn’t much meat left. I’d devoured it so quickly that I couldn’t remember how it tasted.
I couldn’t find the materials to fashion my own harpoon, and I’d never been trained with one. If I still had my fins, I would be able to swim fast enough to catch smaller fish without need of weapons or traps. As it was, I couldn’t catch a floating seagull. I had no desire to eat one of the birds, but in my desperation, even the stringy land-meat sounded appetizing.
On the third day, I’d made the crawl to the belugas’ surfacing pod for sun. The matriarch had recognized me and welcomed me. She’d spared my new legs no more than a glance before butting her head against the side of my hip. I’d never been more grateful for a kind touch. The whales had fed me that day, brought me a still-flopping grayling and tossed it onto the ice. But food was getting harder and harder to find as more human fishing parties came north, and I didn’t want to deprive the pod too often.
The missing scales on my back made movement agonizing. Although the wound had closed and scabbed quickly, the area tightened every time I lifted my arms, and the freezing ocean water stung the exposed skin. Sighing with disappointment and pain, I walked along the sand, back to my den in the ship’s cabin. After bashing the door open with a sideways kick of my tentacles, I wandered in and settled onto my wooden frame bed.
I’d given myself a week to tend to my physical and emotional wounds, but now I needed to make progress on the deal I’d made with the trickster.
I couldn’t force an animal to give me its voice, and in order to negotiate I had to be able to communicate. My mind wandered back to the belugas Ragna had trained to sing on command and to the whale with the terrible voice. She had been so proud of her training, and the whale hadn’t known or cared that his voice made me want to cover my ears. I might be able to communicate well enough with the belugas to make them understand what I wanted, but I couldn’t deprive the gentle creatures of even a part of their happiness, not when they accepted and fed me after my own kind had cast me out.
There was an orca pod in the area that might understand my gesturing and inquiries, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to seek it out. On one hand, I feared what the ocean killers could do to me now that I was in another form and clearly marked as an exile. Their respect for the merfolk was tenuous and subject to constant negotiation. On the other hand, I didn’t want to see an orca miserable, either.
Of all the creatures I knew, there was only one beast I knew that spoke the godstongue.
But to speak to Loki’s creature, I had to risk everything. The idea was insane, and yet, once it took hold, I knew I had to act before fear dissuaded me. I shot out of the bed and winced as my quick movement jarred the wound.
I crawled along the seabed, as close to the underside of the glacier as I dared, creeping along in the silt. I was so deep in the water, I doubted I’d be noticed. Crabs scuttled along the sand and over my tentacles. They clicked their claws as they scooped up fragments of fish carcass that had sunk from above.
Sunlight barely reached the bottom, but looking up, I could see the silver-blue reflection of the glacier. The pools of dark shadow running along the ice told me that it was sundown, or near to it. I hoped that most of the merfolk would be tucked into their ice caves, settling in to sleep after dinner.
The strip of exposed, raw skin where my scales had been throbbed. The extractor knew his work. He’d flayed a palm-sized area of my back so quickly I couldn’t register the excruciating pain until after he was finished. I imagined what it would be like to lie completely scaleless and bleeding on the ice while the sun pelted down on my blistered flesh and shuddered. I couldn’t afford to get caught.
Pushing off with my legs, I propelled myself upward. Swimming with the tentacles instead of my normal fins was exhausting. In order to move, my whole body had to contract and shut like a trap. I tried to control my breathing. All merfolk make a suctioning noise to draw air into our gills while moving, but I didn’t want any noise to alert the guards.
At the slick, smooth base of the ice mountain, my tentacles acted of their own accord. I flipped over and blood rushed to my head as water flowed up my nostrils. But my legs anchored me to the ice; suction prevented me from slipping or being carried too far by the water’s pull. For the first time, I wondered if Loki had accidentally given me a secret weapon.
But how would I climb inside without being seen, especially when full control of my limbs still evaded me? I focused all my thoughts and energy on the slim crevice that ran along the underside of the ice mountain and into the central hall. It was too narrow for whales or sharks. Anything else that might venture in could pose no harm.
The tentacles raced toward it, running along the ice, operated by some primal, fishlike part of my brain. A lone guard waited outside the crevice. My limbs reached for him before I could think and twisted his fragile body in a powerful grip. I tried to release him, but I couldn’t. My heart pounded, and primal instinct overrode my control.
The merman tried to scream, but as soon as he opened his mouth, one of my tentacles plunged down his throat. I felt him go limp, and fought to let him go with all my strength. His heart kept beating even though he had lost consciousness. Loki had truly made me into a monster, but I could avoid becoming a killer.
I focused on the crevice. My tentacles released their victim and scuttled through the opening into the heart of the ice fortress. My limbs braced against both sides of the walls, and I climbed quickly up the long tunnel. As I climbed, the familiar hum of voices echoed through the walls. I wondered what Mama was doing. Was she still going to meals after my disgrace? Or was she huddling in our ice cave with her dinner, truly alone now that I was gone?
The hall was dark, but I’d grown up here and I knew the inside of the fortress like the back of my hand, by smell as well as sight. Scuttling down the hall, I made my way to the very center of the ice mountain—to the dungeons, where they’d secured Loki’s demon.
My scales quivered. The king might have stationed ten guards or more around the prisoner. My new legs were strong, but I didn’t know how many I could fight. And with ten guards all trying to grab me at once, how much control would I have? Would I kill one?
Using the sticky cups on the bottoms of the tentacles, I walked along the ceiling. It was so cold at the heart of the glacier that the ice burned my slippery new flesh. Deep cold ran through my body. I hadn’t been to the surface in days. I wondered how skinny I looked and longed for the warmth of my scales after soaking in the sun.
Positioned on either side of the cell entrance, two guards muttered to each other. One of them had silver scales and bronze muscles. The sight of him made my stomach hurt with something that was neither hate nor love. Faced with the opportunity to hurt him, I didn’t feel any desire for revenge. I bit my tongue to stifle a cry. Even after what Havamal had done, some part of me still wanted both of us to be happy. And he had suffered, too. I’d seen the band of missing scales around his waist at my trial. But when I peered at the guards and studied their faces, I realized the silver-finned merman wasn’t Havamal at all.
I scuttled into position above them, then dropped from the ceiling with my tentacles spread out into a fan like a manta ray. I focused on my goal: getting past these mermen to the prison cavern. My body took over. My legs whipped sideways, out of my control and yet beautiful in their deadly precision. One of the guards screamed, but a stray tentacle knocked him sideways and his voice quietened. He slumped against the ice wall, but his chest continued to rise and fall. The other guard’s eyes widened, and he swam past me, racing
for the exit and the safety of the central hall. I cursed. I couldn’t catch up with him.
With most of the glacier on the verge of sleep, it would take the merman a few minutes to gather more guards. Still, I didn’t have much time.
The king’s men had secured the cell with a grate from the inside of a sunken ship; even King Calder realized the potential in human inventions when circumstances required improvisation. The grate was partially frozen into the glacier and would take at least four men to move. Our law didn’t have provisions for holding criminals below after their trials. Had the monster been one of the merfolk, his scales would have been stripped and he’d have been left to die on the ice shelf.
I swallowed hard, and clutched the new vial that hung around my neck. I would meet that fate if they caught me. But maybe I’d deserve it. After all, the only thing I could imagine the monster asking for was freedom, and if I provided that, any new crimes he committed would be my fault.
But it seemed a crueler fate than death to leave him imprisoned indefinitely. Did Loki’s creatures die? Would the shapeshifter remain here throughout the generations, never fading, never able to leave?
My tentacles wrapped around the heavy grate’s iron bars and lifted it as easily as a basket of kelp. The fallen guard moaned, but then stilled. I tossed the bars to the side. From deep inside the cavern, the sea-swine rose and peered over the edge of the crevice into the labyrinth of ice. His torso reminded me of the land creatures called boars that were depicted in some sculptures. At the center of each scale, he had an unblinking eye. His body tapered into a twisted, black tail with pointed fins.
When the animal saw me, he hesitated. All of his red-rimmed eyes burned into me. I gulped. The greatest danger might not be meeting my end atop the ice shelf, but being gored by the foot-long tusks that stuck out from the sea-swine’s snout.
I braced myself, spreading my tentacles wider to make my body look as large and dangerous as possible, the way some fish did when we hunted them. Looking into dozens of unblinking irises on the creature’s hide made me more aware of the vulnerability of my own single pair of eyes, and I turned my face to the side to protect them.
The creature folded its tail under its massive body and crouched on the ice. Then he said the last thing I expected. “I’m not supposed to leave.”
“What?” I brandished Loki’s vial at him. “I’m here to make a deal.”
His ears perked up, and his snout quivered. Then all his eyes focused on the glass bottle in my hand. “Loki actually sent you to me? At last? They’re ready to forgive me?”
Forgiveness? We only had minutes before the guard would return with reinforcements. Everything about his behavior confused me. But as Loki’s creature, the monster probably had some insight into how the god thought, and I needed all the information I could get. I folded my tentacles and sat beside him. “Loki didn’t send me, but they gave me this task. I need to find three voices. One of them has to come from a beast.”
He sighed. “Well, a beast I am, but they’ll never accept a voice from me.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “They never gave me any restrictions. They didn’t say I couldn’t use your voice.” I locked my smile behind my teeth. If Loki wouldn’t want the sea-swine’s voice, I had even more motivation to make this deal. “Loki is the god of wordplay, of precision. They’re going to have to accept the terms they offered.”
A gleeful feeling warmed my chest. I’d found a technicality Loki hadn’t thought of. If the sea-swine’s voice wasn’t what he wanted, that was too bad.
“There’s only one thing I want, and Loki won’t ever allow it.” All of the pig’s thousand eyes shut at once. I jumped; I had not realized the bulging eyes had lids. His long tongued flicked out as he spoke. It was almost impossible to imagine this creature as the dashing merman Vigdis’s mother had described. “They put me into this form a long time ago. It’s better for everyone that I stay imprisoned. I’m safe enough until there is a storm.”
I remembered the thunder that had rumbled through the glacier the night Vigdis’s wish came true.
The swine shuddered. “When there is a storm… I can’t control my mind. I become Loki’s plaything. No one is safe near me then. The worst is that during storms I become beautiful … and it’s all too easy for me to act out Loki’s viciousness when it’s concealed behind a smile.”
“What happens during storms? What were you… before?” I braced myself, almost dreading the answer.
“I was a human,” the swine said. “I fought for Loki in a war before your time, but then I turned on them to fight for Thor. The trickster captured me during one of the battles. Loki… they don’t forgive those who betray them. I was too insignificant for Thor to risk everything and save me, not when the war was over and they all wanted to forget and make peace.”
My heart pounded faster. In order to gain my freedom, I would have to get the better of Loki. But what would they do to me if I tried and failed? They had already turned me into a monster, but I still had my free will. At least, I thought I did.
The creature’s voice dropped almost to a whisper. “When storms come, they remind me of my treachery. The storms are Thor’s blessing, and Loki uses them to undo me. When they come, my mind becomes Loki’s. I do only their bidding.”
“When you seduced Vigdis… you had no control?”
He shrugged. “Not very much.”
“Do you even realize what you’re doing?”
“Yes. It’s like my mind is trapped and I watch my actions through someone else’s gaze. My body moves but I’m powerless… just a passenger in my own skin. But as I said,” he hesitated, then licked his crusty lips. My stomach churned. “At the time I enjoy it, so perhaps I do not resist Loki as much as I should. And I don’t know what that says about me. Your friend was very beautiful. Romancing her … it was not the worst task the trickster has given me.”
The full weight of that horror bore down on me. I could sympathize because of the limited control I had over my tentacles. But what would it be like to commit atrocities as this creature had, to know it was your body that acted, but have no ability to stop? If I angered Loki further… if I lost to him… that fate could become mine.
I looked at the swine, and my sick feeling intensified. But if Loki made me do evil things, curse or no curse, I would at least try to resist them, even if they somehow outsmarted me again, and I lost whatever shadow of freedom I still had. No matter how long I remained chained to them, I promised myself I would always try to fight against enjoying the twisted fantasies they enacted through me or comforting myself with my own powerlessness. Perhaps this creature deserved to lose his voice because, trickster god or not, he was responsible, too.
“What is it that you want?” I asked. “To be human again?’
“Nothing so complicated as that.” The swine studied his hooves. “I want to die. I’ve been alive for more than a millennium and all but thirty years in this cursed form. I can’t kill myself. I’ve tried.”
I tugged the vial from my neck so violently the rope snapped. My fingers trembled around the little bottle. Anything, Loki had said. No caveats. For a moment, I wondered if they had expected me to choose this course all along. But I didn’t believe they were capable of mercy, not after what the sea-swine had told me—a millennium. I started to pull the cork, shaking so badly I nearly dropped the bottle.
Was I about to become a killer? Would I be a murderer, or a dispenser of long-overdue justice?
The sea-swine leaned forward and nudged my hand with his snout.
I teased the cork fully out. A white liquid flowed up from the creature’s throat like silvery bile. His voice filled the vial to the brim. I had to be careful not to let even a drop spill as I sealed the container.
A smile of triumph appeared on the swine’s face. Slowly, his form shifted. The unblinking eyes vanished, and then his massive tail
split in two. As his body transformed into that of a human male, the creature began choking on the freezing water. My eyes snapped to his neck, the smooth plane of skin where his gills had been.
The swine laughed while he drowned. Thunder cracked overhead, and I imagined that Thor was laughing too. I didn’t wait for him to die. I grabbed the vial by its chain, unwilling to hang it from my neck; I didn’t want the creature’s polluted voice hovering so close to my heart. Then, pushing off the glacier’s wall with all the strength in my legs, I swam away as the creature’s life bled into the ocean.
Two
When Loki returned to collect the sea-swine’s voice, they didn’t speak a word. They arrived with no visual illusions—in a slender androgynous body, lips bound together with a thousand painful threads. Their scars were a reminder that all the gods were cruel, and that even Loki had known pain. But it wasn’t an excuse for what they had become, and none of us knew the original sin that had provoked Odin’s ire. Anger heated the ocean around them as they entered my tiny shipman’s cabin. Wordless, they snatched the new vial from the table and left, slamming the door so hard behind them that one of the rusted hinges flew off.
Their fury was enough to give me a surge of happiness that allowed me to sleep through the night for the first time since my transformation. Loki had never believed that I might be brave or stupid enough to return to the glacier, or that I would seek out the dangerous creature who had seduced Vigdis.
Well, I was through doing what the trickster expected.
But our bargain had been made more than a month ago, and I’d started to lose hope of completing their task. I couldn’t bring myself to think about stealing another mermaid’s voice. I knew I must, but I wanted that sin to have purpose. If I couldn’t obtain a human voice, I couldn’t complete the deal with Loki. And to find a human, I’d just have to wait.
A few ships had passed through the ice trap unscathed as the calm weather lured the humans’ tribes north to hunt whales and seals along the fracturing ice shelf. But the humans never docked, never stopped long enough in the icy waters to make camp or venture onto the precarious ice shelf. Most of them knew better, and, thanks to Ragna’s explanation, I knew why. It simply wasn’t worth the risk.