by Julia Ember
Calder raised a challenging eyebrow and then folded his arms stubbornly over his broad chest. “I’ll see the lot of you stripped of scales and left to die. Maybe we can get some of that human fire and burn you alive. I bet that would be fun.”
Pure fury erupted inside me. I wanted him to pay for the system he’d created, for the princess he’d abused, for all the mermaids living in darkness, and for the sake of his prideful power that angered the gods and made them curse us. In a flash, I shifted into the monster’s form and climbed up the ice. I knew it could be dangerous to go inside alone. After the fire had burned away the surface, the glacier would be unstable. I’d lived inside the ice long enough to know how unpredictable it could be. The walls around the prison might collapse and kill both the princess and me. Worse yet, what if I was trapped down there with her, a prisoner?
Without pausing to think further, I shifted forms. I didn’t let fear stop me as I plunged into the fissure. Instinct positioned each of my legs exactly where it needed to be, bracing my body by sticking to both sides of the slick ice tunnel. I descended lower and lower into the ice, until water touched my scales. Diving into pure darkness, I stretched out my hand.
And someone grabbed it.
Keeping hold of Loki’s talisman in my left hand, I hauled the princess up with my right. It shouldn’t have been so easy to lift her outside the water. I peered at her, squinting to see her against the blue gloom. She was a skeleton with a shriveled body, her flesh stretched too tightly over her bones. Her limp green hair clung to her head in patches and her emerald tail was riddled with open sores.
She held onto my hand with all the strength she still possessed. She’d spent years sealed in this ice prison, all alone. It would have been easy for her to resign herself to her fate and let death take her. Inkeri wanted to survive and she wasn’t about to give up now.
But as I pulled her up and positioned her on my back, my grip on Loki’s vial slipped. The little bottle fell from my hand and was swallowed by shadow. My heart nearly stopped. I needed to get the princess to safety, but the fissure wasn’t stable. The outside wall of the north point had partially crumbled as a result of the fire. The tunnel I’d crawled through could close at any time, leaving both of us sealed within the dark chamber. But if I left the bottle behind, I might be stuck in this monstrous body forever.
I reached down with one of my tentacles, desperately feeling about in a space I couldn’t see. A piece of ice the size of a seal pup broke off in the tunnel and fell toward us. I ducked, and the princess let out a hoarse scream as the crystal boulder narrowly missed her face. If I didn’t pull us to safety, we would die here. And not only us. Havamal would die. The other mermen who had helped us would die, too.
Blood pounded in my ears. I’d be stuck in a monster’s form, feared by my own kind, an outcast, and unable to lie with Ragna intimately ever again, even if she accepted me as I was. I shut my eyes against the hot tears. Perhaps this was fate’s punishment for Vigdis. I swallowed hard and climbed for the opening that led to the sky.
I would wear this monster’s form, but I didn’t want a monster’s heart.
Another chunk of ice fell down the tunnel. It scraped my face, leaving a gash that dripped blood down my chest. The princess pulled herself so tight against me that I could feel the wild beating of her heart. Each of the mouths on the underside of my tentacles burned from the cold of the ice, but I forced myself to climb until we emerged into the sun.
A cheer erupted from the crew on Ragna’s ship, then from Havamal’s men. I jumped off the lip of the fissure, plunging into the water below. This time when I advanced on them, none of the guards loyal to Havamal looked at me with fear. Instead, they rubbed the back of their heads, mouths agape. Despite my situation, I felt a little glow of pride. They appreciated me for something I’d done, not how I looked.
Havamal extended his hand to Inkeri. She untangled herself from my grasp and placed her fragile hand in his. Havamal lifted the pale fingers to his lips and kissed them; his eyes never left Inkeri’s face. “My lady. It’s an honor.”
I almost laughed at his formality until I noticed the change in Inkeri’s expression. The corners of her lips twitched, and then a smile blossomed, lighting up her tired eyes. Havamal gestured to his guards. One by one, the men folded in graceful bows. The princess straightened, lifting her chin as their reverence gave her confidence. She needed this respect to help restore her as the queen she should have been.
“Kidnapping!” The king shouted, turning to his former guards with wild eyes. He looked at Inkeri, but didn’t seem to be able to address her. Maybe he had some sense of shame after all. Instead, he looked past the princess as if she didn’t exist to beseech Havamal, “Someone has kidnapped my sister and put her here all these years—”
“Silence,” Inkeri ordered, her voice shaky with disuse. She steadied herself on Havamal’s offered arm before continuing. “You poisoned me to keep me weak and sick, and when that failed, you brought me here and left me to rot, feeding me only enough to keep me alive so Aegir wouldn’t feel my death.”
The mermen gasped. The three who had been loyal to the king had roused in my absence, and even they looked at their sovereign with murder in their eyes.
Calder struggled, but the men held him. Snarling at his sister, he spat, “You were weak and useless. You could have never been a strong ruler.”
“No,” she said, looking from guard to guard, then back to her brother. “But maybe I’ll be a good one.”
A smile twitched at my lips. In the light of the open water, the damage to her body was even more shocking. Her bones jutted at odd angles, as if they had been broken and healed badly. The green of her scales had worn to leathery brown. She looked as though her body, starved of the sun and warmth, had already started to rot in her ice grave. But the strength of her words told me she would recover, and she would lead. And the way Havamal looked at her, as if she were a miracle despite the condition of her body, told me that he would help her, if only as a form of penance.
Havamal plucked the pearl crown from the king’s head and set it on Inkeri’s. She smiled as she adjusted it atop her patchwork hair. Then she turned to me. My heart leapt into my mouth as she held out a golden vial. “I think you dropped this.”
I wanted to sink onto the ice before her. I wanted to throw myself at her and kiss her. Relief made my body light and my head dizzy. I took the little vial and pressed it to my chest. My fingers trembled. “Thank you.”
She blinked at me. Her lashes were long, her eyes deep cerulean. She might be beautiful again, given time. “No, thank you. For whatever you had to do to achieve this.”
The princess took a firmer grip on Havamal’s arm. He gave her another half bow, then blushed all the way to his ears. “Half the glacier already knows,” he said. “They are waiting, and the others won’t support him once they see evidence of what he’s done.”
Inkeri nodded. Her eyes hardened when she looked at her brother. I saw the former king swallow hard.
“You should just let us gut him right here,” one of the guards grunted. “We could strip his scales off and give him to the humans. Let them turn him into soup. Or fry him up. They deserve something for their help, after all.”
The king went pale. He looked at his sister, then closed his eyes and bowed his head. The fight drained out of him. He was at the mercy of the girl he’d tortured for over a decade and he knew it.
“We’ll have a proper trial,” Inkeri said, brushing what remained of her hair back from her face. “I don’t want to start my rule as a tyrant. I don’t want to hide any of the details of what he’s done.”
The guards murmured their assent, and Havamal squeezed Inkeri’s arm a little tighter. I suppressed a smile. Something told me that Havamal might get his happiness after all.
“What about you?” Havamal asked, peeling his eyes off Inkeri long enough to turn
to me. “Are you coming back with us?”
With a new ruler, the glacier community could put itself back together. The people could establish new laws and customs. Girls who had feared years of dank imprisonment would be free to dream again. Maybe the clan would move to a new home in warmer waters. Inkeri would need time to recover her physical strength, but her mind was still sharp, and I knew she could trust Havamal to be her support and her friend, as he’d once been for me.
I let the smile I’d been holding back blossom. It was the first time I’d been able to think about the bond Havamal and I had shared without a trace of pain. I wouldn’t begrudge either of them if he transferred his affection to the queen.
I wanted to see what my home would become. But if I stayed, Loki would always know where to find me, and I’d never get to see the world or live out my own dreams. Even if my home changed, my desire to see everything had not. With my new forms, I could see everything, go everywhere. I still had that burning wanderlust. Only now, it didn’t seem so selfish.
When I could, I’d return to see what they’d built together.
I looked up to the surface of the water, where the dark shadow of Ragna’s ship’s hull hovered above us. “Someday,” I said. Then, after Havamal took a deep breath and anxiety clouded his eyes, I amended. “Someday soon. But first, I have to help someone else get home.”
Epilogue
The salt and wind whipped through my hair as I dangled off the ship’s bow. A green coast loomed ahead, framed by jagged rocks and a beach of sparkling sand. Flowers bloomed across the landscape. Trees taller than our mast dotted the hills beyond, and a flock of miniature polar bears grazed beneath them, bleating to one another. After a lifetime spent in the monochromatic world of the arctic, the riot of color nearly stole my breath.
Ragna rode the dragon’s head behind me; a smile spread wide across her face.
“Look at that farmland!” A jubilant boy’s voice shouted from above. “Have you ever seen somewhere so green?”
I took Ragna’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. For the past few days, she’d been growing more and more restless, waiting for the sight of land. I had spent nearly every waking moment above deck, taking in sights and smells I’d never imagined, relishing the might of the waves and the beauty of the ship that could take us anywhere.
Ragna tilted her face to the wind as she took in the smell of the coast and the blast of fresh air. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were brighter than I’d ever seen them. Ocean spray washed over us as the ship crested over a frothing wave. Even the sea felt better here, where the salt in the water was diluted by frequent rain. The spray was a familiar caress against my wind-chapped skin. She kissed the top my hair. I sighed with pleasure and rested against her knees.
The freedom of the open ocean embraced us.
What we had might not be forever, but it was now, and it was everything I needed.
The End
Acknowledgments
First, I want to thank my partners, my family, and my friends for putting up with me during the crazy, busy year that has been 2016. I’ve missed or cancelled a lot of plans in order to write or edit. Thank you for your support, your understanding, and your love. I know I’m not always easy.
The Seafarer’s Kiss was the work of a small village. It started as the kernel of an idea that transformed into a short story, then a novelette, then went on submission, before being reined back in by my amazing bookish friends and readers, who insisted it become a novel. I’m so glad you insisted.
Thank You:
To Nina Rossing, Jessica Gunn, and Carrie DiRisio, who read the rough passages and talked with me about this book from the very beginning.
To Katherine Locke, for taking an uneven first draft, insisting it had potential, and helping me whip it into shape with tact and brilliance.
To EM Castellan, Ava Jae, Marieke Nijkamp, Laura Lam, and CM Lloyd who offered invaluable feedback while this book was in progress.
To the Interlude Press team, especially Annie Harper, for taking the book of my heart and making it truly magical.
About the Author
Julia is a polyamorous, bisexual writer and native of Chicago who now resides in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she spends her days enmeshed in the book trade and her nights penning fantasy novels. Julia has been an avid traveler since childhood; her explorations inspire the worlds she creates. Her first novel, Unicorn Tracks, was published by Harmony Ink Press in 2016.
The Seafarer’s Kiss was influenced by her postgraduate work in medieval literature at The University of St. Andrews. It is also responsible for her total obsession with beluga whales.
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