by Julia Ember
“Where is the pit?”
“Near the shark bay, in the iceberg just off the north point of the ice shelf.” Seeming to assess my reactions, Loki watched me while I thought. “You won’t be able to free her. The ice around her is much too thick.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” I snapped. The fact that the god hadn’t yet dissolved me into a splash of green oil loosened my tongue. “Just for information.”
Their eyes twinkled, and a grin tugged at the corners of their lips. “I want to give you a gift.”
I backed away from them, taking Mama’s hand. “I don’t want your gifts.”
The god pressed a hand to their left breast and wobbled on their feet; the mocking smile was in place once more. “You wound me. No, this isn’t a bargain. If you do not like the gift I give you, then you may return it at any time. But you have passed my test. I consider you worthy of my rare blessing.”
Test? I nearly lunged for them, wanting to gouge Loki’s eyes out and rip the teeth from their smug mouth. In these months of torture, they’d been testing me?
“A test? A test for what? What is wrong with you?”
Loki shrugged. “Many pray to me but few are worthy of my interest or my true assistance. You mortals think very highly of your value to us. I choose my followers carefully, but when I have chosen, I can be a valuable ally. Once you’ve had time to think and adjust, I will return.”
“You killed Vigdis as part of a test?” I seethed.
The god shrugged. “She was a useless girl.”
“She was a child!” Mama interrupted. “She didn’t even have time to know herself, much less see what she could become.”
Loki shrugged. “Ersel did not have to choose her. She did not have to accept my deal at all.”
With those words, they pushed a blade straight into my heart. The trickster rubbed their hands together and green sludge erupted from the tips of their fingers, spraying me like ink from a spooked squid. The liquid stank of dead flesh and decay. I screamed, waiting for the pain I was sure would follow and trying to scrub the slime from my skin. It began to seep in through my pores.
“I don’t agree to this!” I screamed, clawing at my flesh. “This is not a bargain. Odin, Freya—”
Loki inspected their long nails, as if judging their sharpness. “Oh, stop it. Odin won’t intervene. He knows you’ll like this. And as you said, it’s not a deal. It’s my gift to you.”
When all of the green slime had oozed in through my skin, I looked at myself, assessing the change. I didn’t look or feel any different. The eight monstrous legs still lurked beneath my torso, each casually exploring the room by touch, each compelled by a will all its own.
Loki crossed their arms and leaned against the fragile wood of the human closet. “I have given you three forms. When you learn to show me a little gratitude, I’ll give you more.”
“Gratitude?” I spat out. “You honestly expect me to thank you after everything you’ve put me through?”
“Forms?” Mama asked, looking at Loki as if she wanted to dismember them. Her fingers grasped one of the rust-dulled blades from the tabletop. After what I’d seen her do, it wouldn’t surprise me to see her embed it in Loki’s back. “What forms? What are you talking about?”
Loki held up three slender fingers and counted them off. “This beast, which you may inhabit to remind you of your folly. Merperson. Human. You will now be able to shift between them. They all belong to you, and I am sure you will find uses for all of them.”
My breath stopped. After all my months of struggle, they’d just given me the human form I had desired when I made that first, horrible deal that had sealed Vigdis’s fate and led to all of this. Rage burst from me in an explosion of flying tentacles. I hit the god again and again, focusing pure anger on them as my legs bombarded their head, back, and sides.
When they recovered from the shock, Loki straightened and made a fist in the air. Immediately, my tentacles stilled as if bound to my body by an invisible chord. They pulled an empty vial from their sleeve and pressed it into my shaking hand. “Use this to shift. It is an object forged by me and will help you activate what is inside you.”
I turned the bottle over in my hand. A small chain was attached to each of its sides, just long enough for me to wear around my arm like a bracelet… or a fetter. I had to resist the urge to bash it against the door and crush the vial to pieces.
The trickster cleared their throat, then said, “As I said, I will allow you time to settle, but I will be back. If you’d been a good girl and accepted your gift nicely, I might not have made you use a talisman.” They grinned and I struggled against the binding force. “But… I see you still have some learning to do. I’ve made an investment in you, in your training, and I don’t like to waste my time.”
Striding toward the door, Loki pulled it open and vanished in a flood of emerald light.
When the rusted door closed, Mama and I exchanged looks.
Wincing as if the metal burned my skin, I wrapped the chain of Loki’s gift around my wrist. I would think before I decided to destroy it. Whatever the vial contained was just as likely to curse me as bless me, but I was afraid of what Loki might do if they learned I had destroyed something so valuable.
“I’ll be back,” I said. “I want to check outside. I want to see…”
I didn’t finish my sentence, but Mama nodded, understanding my need to be alone and free after so much time bound to Loki’s whim. I’d find her later, and we would have all the time in the world to catch up and then plan what to do, now that we knew the rightful heir to our glacier’s throne was still alive.
I look around outside to make sure the god had truly vanished before pushing off the ship’s deck into the ocean. I didn’t want Mama to watch me try my two other “forms” in case this was another of Loki’s elaborate jokes—something they’d devised to give me temporary hope, just to see any shard of optimism in me dashed.
Once I was sure I’d gone far enough, I looked at the tentacles, bidding them goodbye. I shut my eyes and willed them to transform, but nothing happened. I expected a puff of green ink, or for something to swallow me up and spit me out in a new body. Even though the vial had been a gift and not something I’d earned, disappointment curled around my abdomen, squeezing as tightly as Loki’s sea serpent had done during our first meeting.
I still held the tiny vial. I looked at it and then turned it over with distaste. Loki had said it would tie me to them and activate my powers. I didn’t want any lingering bond with the sadistic god. Of course, Loki had known that when they gave me the new power. I clenched my fingers so tightly that I nearly shattered the little vial.
How would I activate it? Knowing the god’s ego, it probably involved a prayer or request to them. Loki would want to listen to me plead.
“I am not making a bargain with you.” I hissed into the open water. “With Odin as my witness, you gave this to me of your own volition.”
I sighed, hating myself as I whispered a soft invocation with my lips against the bottle. Even if I never used it again, I wanted my speed, my agility, and, if I was honest with myself, my beauty, to return.
Turquoise oil formed a perfumed cloud around me. It smelled sweet as baby kelp and sounded like the whisper of a summer ocean I could barely remember. When it diffused, I looked down and my heart leapt into my throat. My fins and tail were back, but they were different, enhanced. Before, my scales had been shades of royal blue, but now beautiful white and lilac scales were mixed among the palest shade of sky blue. My tail gleamed and shimmered like a pearl held to the light. Each fin was tapered and translucent and looked as delicate as the softest sea-silk. But I could feel the strength in them.
This tail would forever mark me as different, special. No one else under the ocean had such scales. Would that make me something to treasure or something to hunt?
&
nbsp; Loki was bribing me, trying their hardest to make me feel gratitude, as if I could forget the horrors of the past months. I wouldn’t let myself be drawn into their snare again. I would take this gift and use it, but I would never agree to do anything for the trickster.
Wearing a smile that stretched my jaw, I flipped, pivoted, and spun, relishing the feeling of my nimble tail and streamlined fins. The storm above had cleared, and sunlight filtered through the water, making creatures from dancing light. The ocean stretched out around me, blue and endless.
Four
I swam for the surface, making my body streamlined as an elegant harpoon. My new fins burned as I pushed them to the limit of their speed. I knew I couldn’t go back to the glacier, and I hated the idea of going back to my lonely sea cabin. Leaping into the air, I let the sunlight kiss my scales. I landed backward in the water, whooping with delight at the way the light made the pearl white sections of my new tail gleam brighter than fresh snow.
“Wow,” said a soft voice from someone swimming up behind me. I whirled, faster than I’d ever been able to spin before. “Your Mama told me about Loki’s gift, but…”
Havamal offered me a shy half-smile that didn’t quite reach his tired eyes. Though his muscular chest was as broad as it had ever been, he looked smaller somehow, hunched. Deep exhaustion seemed to cling to his graying skin. My jubilant best friend was truly gone.
Whatever he had done to me, I wasn’t shielded from his misery. The pit of my stomach dropped. I had to find some way to move forward. Holding on to grudges would only bring both of us pain. I threw my arms around him. His body went rigid at the unexpected embrace; his arms hung limp against his sides. Then, he patted my back and lowered his head to rest atop mine.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my hair. “Erie, you have to understand. I am so sorry.”
“I know. I’m not sure I will ever truly forgive you,” I said, squeezing him a little tighter. I looked up into his face and took his chin between my fingers. He looked away, averting his hurt eyes from mine. “But I’m willing to try to forget it. I can’t be your lover. Never. Not after what happened. But I can try to be your friend again.”
His muscles tensed, and he hugged me to his chest so tightly that he drove the air from my lungs. I sagged against him, letting him do the work of keeping us level in the water. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you.”
I smiled at him. “From what Mama tells me, you’ve already started.”
Havamal released me and nodded gravely. “I’ve started talking to some of the others. You’re not alone in how you felt. I guess I never realized how afraid The Grading made all of you. We were always told the birthing area was peaceful, natural.” He shook his head and snorted with disgust. “I can’t believe I bought all of that. I should have known better than to believe the king.”
I looked around us, surveying the open ocean for any other listening ears. Sound could travel a long way beneath the sea, and kelp grew everywhere, providing natural places to hide. It was a risk to share secrets when it was hard to tell whether you were truly alone. In Havamal’s ear, I whispered, “Did my Mama tell you the rest of it? What I asked Loki?”
“No. She told me there was more, but she didn’t dare tell me inside the glacier,” he said quietly against my cheek. “And I have a secret for you as well.”
“The king’s sister is alive.”
Havamal let me go. We drifted apart minutely while he gaped at me. “Inkeri? The princess?”
I nodded. “He’s been keeping her in an iceberg off the north point all this time.”
He sucked in a breath. “What? How? How did he get away with it?”
“He feeds her himself. Goes there alone.”
Havamal swore. He swam back and forth, nearly growling. “That’s where he goes… every afternoon the king ‘retreats’… he won’t let any of us accompany him. He says he needs to clear his head. When I first started, I used to argue, because we’re kept to guard him. What is the point if he just wanders away? He had me whipped the second time I asked about it.”
“And no one has ever followed him?” I demanded. “He’s been doing this for ten years. Not one of you has ever—”
“Once,” Havamal interrupted. His eyes hardened as he recollected. “One of the guards did. Rala.”
“The super quiet one with the black scales?” I remembered Rala. He usually stood by the door during the midday meals. He always stood with his arms crossed and remained silent while his sharp eyes took in everything.
“He has no tongue,” Havamal said, swallowing hard. “He’s so quiet because he has no tongue. The king cut it out. I don’t even think he saw anything. There never was a trial.”
“That’s vile.” I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering. Going up against King Calder would have to be planned carefully. Given what he had done to his own sister, I knew he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy us if we ever gave him the upper hand. “Loki said that the king has been building the ice wall thicker by the year. I’m not sure how we can break it. We’d need more heat than any of us could possibly generate with our scales. They said we’d need human fire.”
A crooked grin appeared on Havamal’s face. This time his eyes sparkled too. “My surprise might be able to help with that.”
* * *
Despite my protests, Havamal refused to give me any details as he led me to his waiting surprise. He ripped a long, flexible strip of kelp from one of the stalks as we swam over it. When he started to tie it around my eyes, I crossed my arms over my chest but didn’t make a move to stop him. After the blindfold was secured, calm settled over me. Havamal couldn’t see my eyes now, couldn’t read all the conflicting thoughts and feelings behind them.
The idea of a gift or a surprise scratched my already raw emotions, which were barely kept in check. It reminded me of things he’d done a hundred times when we were children, and the nostalgia hurt when it should have brought me joy. Through the kelp blindfold, I could see only the barest hint of shadows. Havamal took my hand to guide me.
When we stopped swimming, Havamal lifted my hand above my head. With my heart racing, I felt around until my fingers rested on something solid. I touched wood that had been blasted smooth by waves and salt. A film of algae covered a hull, which felt thin and grainy, suggesting the ship had sailed in colder waters for quite some time.
I sighed and reached behind my head to undo the blindfold. “Did you bring me back to a wreck? I told you, I want to move forward, but I’m going to need some time… dredging up old memories isn’t going to work.”
Grunting, Havamal snatched the blindfold. I blinked and looked up. A great ship floated above us, swaying gently on the waves. An iron anchor attached by a long, rusting chain kept the giant in place. Havamal surfaced, and I followed, wide-eyed. Why had the ship dropped its anchor? I couldn’t see any holes in the bottom, and, with the drifting icebergs all around, it didn’t seem like a good idea for the humans to linger.
I kept my head low in the water, surveying the vessel. I could tell that it was a different type of ship than the titans the humans used to hunt whales. It had a shallower hold and a narrower frame. The side rails and interior rested just five or six feet above the surface of the ocean, and dozens of oars extended from the deck. Brightly colored sigils depicting beasts I’d never seen or imagined were painted atop the rails.
Havamal knocked on the side of the hull; he drummed a distinct rhythm that no one would ever mistake for a shark or whale. Feet, slow to move, shuffled on the deck, and a groggy female voice commanded, “Check what’s over the starboard.”
A ginger head peered over the edge of the ship. The man scowled; a broken tooth jutted between his lips. Then he turned and shouted over his shoulder. “It’s that merman again. The one with the silver tail.”
Heavy footfalls clattered across the deck. Elegantly, the femal
e swung her leg over the side of the ship and sat on the rail. Blonde hair whipped in the gusting wind and wild eyes bore into Havamal, as if the girl were getting ready to thrust a spear into his side.
For a moment, my heart stopped. Suddenly I didn’t know whether to burst into tears or laughter.
Ragna’s skeletal frame had filled out, her cheeks were flushed, and her body had grown solid with muscle. Metal weapons were strapped to every inch of her: a pair of crossed swords over her chest, blades peeking from her boots, a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. But it was the gleaming silver hook extending from her stump of an arm that drew my attention. One of her delicate, long-fingered hands was gone, and jagged scars ran up her slender arm, overlaying her moving tattoos.
She brandished the hook at Havamal. “I told you that if you came back here, I’d put this through your cheek and drag you behind the boat like a tuna fish.”
Havamal folded his arms over his broad chest and gestured to me. I was still barely peeking out of the water, hardly daring to look up. I knew my lapis hair made me difficult to spot against the sunlit waves. Ragna squinted, then stiffened, her intact hand gripping the edge of the ship so hard her knuckles went white.
I kicked my tail harder, raising myself from the water a bit more. Ragna’s eyes softened. Her lips curved into a smile. I felt light enough to fly. She came back. She actually came back. The ice grip on my heart started to thaw.
Gripping the little vial, I said the invocation to the trickster and shifted back into my monstrous form. As I formed the words, a little punch went through my gut; I hated what I had to say in order to use this beautiful and terrible power. But all I wanted was to get to Ragna in the ship. I didn’t care what she saw as long as I could reach her. The mouths on my tentacles gripped the ship’s sturdy side, and I climbed aboard with ease.