The Merman's Children

I

Panigpak said it was necessary to wail until snow had fallen and igloos could be built. That time soon came. For three days and the three nights in which they were but a glimmer, the angakok fasted. Thereafter he went alone into the mountains while men made a house of a size that would hold everybody. They lined it with tent hides, but over a ledge opposite the doorway they laid a bearskin.

hen folk were gathered there after dark, Panigpak’s name was called thrice before he entered. “Why are you here?” he said. “This person cannot help you. I am only an old fool and liar. Well, if you will have it so, I will try to bamboozle you with my silly little tricks.”

He went to the ledge and stripped himself naked. The others already were unclad to the waist, or altogether, for the heat in the igloo was stifling. Lamps made sweat sheen, eyes glisten; the sound of breath was like surf. He sat down, and a man called Ulugatok bound his arms and legs with thongs that cut into the flesh. Panigpak gasped for pain but otherwise uttered naught.

The helper laid a drum and a dried sealskin nearby, before he joined the crowdedness on the floor. “Put out the lamps,” he said. “Stay where you are, whatever happens. To go to him now is death.”

Blackness rolled in, save for one tiny flame which did not make the angakok visible. He began to sing, a high-pitched rhythmic chant, louder and louder. The drum beat, the dry skin rattled, sounds which came from elsewhere in the murk, sometimes here, sometimes there, sometimes overhead, sometimes below ground. Slowly the people started singing with him. It came to possess them, they lost themselves in it, swayed back and forth, writhed across each other, spoke in tongues, howled and screamed. The madness gripped Tauno and Eyjan as well, until even with Faerie sight they did not know when or how Panigpak departed.

He was gone. The song quavered onward, endless as winter night. The Inuit were beside themselves, out of themselves.

Now, said their belief, the angakok swam downward through the rock to the underworld, and out below the waters. He passed the country of the dead; he passed an abyss where whirled eternally a disc of ice and boiled a cauldron full of seals; he got by a guardian dog, greater than a bear, which bayed and snapped at him; he crossed a bottomless chasm on a bridge that was a knife blade; and thus at last he came before huge, one-eyed, hostile Sedna, whom some call the Mother of the Sea.

It was as if time had gone on to Doomsday Five when finally Ulugatok called, “Quiet! Quiet! The shadow ripens.” He dared not give aught its true name here—a man must be a shadow, his approach must be its ripening-lest the spirits hear and strike. He quenched the single flame, for it would kill Panigpak did anyone see the angakok before he had put his skin back on, that he left behind when he went below.

Utter lightlessness brought a sense of spinning, falling, rushing helpless on a stormwind whose noise echoed off unseen heaven. Then the drum began anew, and the crackling sealskin. Ulugatok droned forth a long magical chant in words that nobody else knew. Perhaps its chief purpose was to bring calm. He did not stop until the only sound was the crying of frightened children.

Panigpak’s voice came weary: “Two of us must die this winter. But we will find abundance of meat, the fish will swarm, spring and summer will be mild, the Neighbors will go away. I have also word for our guests, but must speak to them later, alone. It is done.”

A man groped through the dark, sought a nearby hut for fire, returned and kindled the lamps. Panigpak sat on the ledge, bound by the thongs. Ulugatok went to release him. He fell back and lay swooned for a while. When he opened his eyes, he saw Tauno and Eyjan among those beside him. He tried feebly to smile. “It was nothing,” he muttered. “Just lies and tomfoolery. I am an old swindler, and no wisdom is in me.”

The Inuit did not talk about such things once they had happened. It was with diffidence that Panigpak himself sought out the siblings, after he had had rest and nourishment. The three went off to the strand.

That was in weather clear and cold. After a glance at the world, the sun was slipping back down, afar in the south. Its rays made steely and blue the forms of two icebergs which plowed by through gray waters. Sheet ice was forming along the coast, though as yet too thin to venture forth upon. Fulmars went skimming above; their cries came faintly to those who stood on the snow-covered shingle.

“Nothing in the sea is hidden from her beneath it,” Panigpak said, more gravely than was his wont. “Well did she know of your people, Tauno and Eyjan. Somebody had to compel her to disgorge a word, as he must compel her—if he can-to release the seals in a season when they are few for our hunting. She is not friendly, Sedna.”

Tauno clasped the angakok’s shoulder. Silence lengthened.

Eyjan lost patience, tossed her ruddy locks, and demanded, “Well, where are they?”

Wrinkles tightened in Panigpak’s face. He stared outward and said low, “It is hard to understand. Something has happened that vexes even her. You must help this lackwit speak, for you will grasp much that he cannot. Thus, while dry land is beyond Sedna’s ken, she does have names for many parts along the coasts. She got them from drowned sailors, I think. I remember the sound of them-one does not forget anything out of that place—but they mean nothing to my ignorant self, though doubtless they will to you.”

Given what he related, his interrogators could piece together much of the tale. The Liri folk had taken a ship, belike seized by them, from Norway. They were bound for Markland or Vinlandthe Norse hereabouts no longer knew just which of the regions west of them lay where-when a tempest smote. That must have been the same whose edge battered Herning. The other vessel suffered its full might and. duration. She was driven clear back to Europe. From their father’s teaching, Tauno and Eyjan were sufficiently well versed in that geography to recognize that he had then steered into the Mediterranean. The spot where he ended his voyage was in no part of their information, but Panigpak did give them names—the island of Zlarin, the mainland of Dalmatiawhich they could inquire about later. It seemed the merfolk had there been attacked, and had fled afoot.

What followed was perturbing, baffling. They must be in the same vicinity, those who lived, for they still appeared offshore: one or a few at a time, for short spans. Otherwise Sedna marked them no longer. And something had changed them, they were different from erstwhile, in a way she could not speak of but which filled her, the very Mother of the Sea, with foreboding.

-Tauno scowled. “Ill is this,” he said.

“Maybe not,” Eyjan replied. “Maybe they’ve found a charm that lets them enjoy a new home inland.”

“We must seek them out and learn. We’ll need human help for that.”

“Aye. Well, we were going to Denmark anyhow, on Yria’s account.”

Panigpak studied the twain with eyes that had seen a lifetime’s worth of grief. “Perhaps,” he said quietly, “someone can give you a little help of another sort.”

On a calm night, stars filled the jet bowl above until it was well-nigh hidden, save for the silver band across it. Their light, cast back off snow, let Bengta Haakonsdatter, who was now Atitak, walk easily along a slope above the dale. Breath wafted white as she spoke, though it did not frost the wolfskin fur of her parka hood. Footfalls crunched; else her voice alone broke the silence.

“Must you leave this soon? We would be happy to keep you among us—and not really because of the fish and seal you take in such plenty. Because of yourselves.”

Beside her, Tauno sighed: “We’ve kindred of our own yonder, who may be in sore plight, and whom we miss. In spite of the kayaks promised us—they should indeed let us travel faster than by swimming—the journey will take weeks upon weeks. We must hunt along the way, remember, and sleep, and often buck foul winds. We’re well rested, after the tupilak business. Truth to tell, we’ve lingered more time by far than was needful. Soon the Inuit will be rambling about. If we went along, we could hardly start home before spring.”

The woman gazed at his starlit nakedness, took his hand in her glove, and dared ask, “Why have you stayed at all, then? Eyjan is restless, I know. It’s been you who counseled waiting.”

He stopped; she did; he faced her, reached into the hood to stroke her cheek, and answered, “Because of you, Bengta.” He had been living as part of Minik’s household, and Minik was glad to lend her to him. They were only apart when it seemed, mutely, that she should join her husband for a sleep, and Tauno the first wife Kuyapikasit, lest feelings be hurt. (Eyjan bore herself not like a female, but like a hunter who shifted from family to family as the whim took her. She had enjoyed every man in the camp.)

Bengta stood quiescent. He could barely hear her: “Yes, it’s been wonderful. If you must go, will you return afterward?”

He shook his head. “I fear not.”

Hers drooped. “Your merman heart—” She looked up again. “But what about me has kept you? That I seem more like a woman of your race than any Inuk does? Well, Europe is full of white women.” I

“Few so fair, Bengta.”

“I think I know the reason,” she began, “though maybe you don’t yourself—” and broke off.

“What?”

She bit her lip. “Nothing. I misspoke me.” She started downhill. “Come, let’s go back, let’s seek the ledge.”

The snow cried out under their scarring feet. “What did you mean?” he said roughly.

“Nothing, nothing!”

He took her elbow. Through fur and leather she felt that grip, and winced. “Tell me.” She saw his mouth stretched wide, till teeth gleamed under the stars.

“I thought,” she blurted, “I thought I’m the nearest thing you have to Eyjan. . . and it will be a long journey with none save her- Forgive me, Tauno, beloved. Of course I was wrong.”

His countenance grew blank, his tone flat. “Why, there’s naught to forgive. What affront in your fancy, to a being that has no soul?”

Abruptly he halted again, drew her around before him smiled, and kissed her with immense tenderness.

—On the furs of their ledge, in the darkness of the hut, she whispered, “Let the seed in my womb be yours. It could be; I’ve counted. Minik is a dear man and I want his children too, but may his gods give me that much remembrance of my Tauno.”

Day had become a fugitive, scarcely into sight before darkness hounded it away. Night was no blindfold to Faerie eyes, but the siblings departed under the sun because then the Inuit could more easily bid them farewell.

The whole band was there, as far out on the ice as appeared safe. Land was white at their backs, save where a cliff or crag upheaved itself. Ahead reached the sea, grizzly, choppy, and noisy. Clouds blew low on a wind that stung.

Panigpak trod forth from the gathering, to where brother and sister waited. In his hand was a bone disc, slightly inward-curving, hung on a loop of sealskin that went through a hole near the edge. It spanned perhaps an inch—and—a-half.

“Vastly have you aided us,” he told them. “Tauno destroyed the tupilak that this person’s folly brought forth. Thus he won the awe of our enemies, and we have peace. Eyjan,”-he shook his gray head, chuckled, blinked hard-“Eyjan, when I am too old to be of any use, and go forth to sit on the ice alone, your memory is what will warm me.”

“Oh, you’ve returned whatever we did in heaped-up measure,” Tauno said, while his sister brushed lips across the angakok’s brow. She had told her brother that he was not strong to be with, but he was sweet.

“One does not count between friends,” Panigpak reminded. Had he never dealt with the Norse, he would not have know what to say. “Somebody would fain make a parting gift.” He handed over the disc, which Tauno laid in his palm and

considered. Graven in the hollow and blackened to stand forth against its yellowish white were signs: a bird with dark head and crooked beak winging before a crescent moon. Eeriness thrilled through him as he felt an enchantment cool inside.

“You will be seeking strange lands,” Panigpak said. “Their dwellers may speak tongues unknown to you. Whoever wears this amulet will understand whatever is heard, and can reply in the same tongue.”

Eyjan touched fingertips to it. “With such things, care is ever needful,” she murmured. “Your spells are not like ours. What should we know about it?”

“It is a deep magic,” the angakok told them as softly. “To make it taxed somebody’s poor powers to the uttermost. I must begin by opening my father’s cairn to,take a piece of his skulloh, he is not angry; he feels dim pleasure among the shades because he could help. . . .

“The amulet links spirit to spirit. Beware of gazing long upon the sigil-yes, best wear it under clothing, or with the blank side outward-for a soul can be drawn in if it feels any wish to leave the world, and that is death.” He paused. “Should this happen, the trapped ghost can come out again, into whoever wears the amulet, if that person desires. But who might want to become half a stranger?”

Tauno hastily closed his hand on the thing.

Eyjan’s fingers plucked his open. She hung it around her neck in the way Panigpak had advised. “Thank you,” she said, a bit unsteadily.

“It is nothing,” he answered. “It is only what an old fool can offer.”

When a few more words had passed, and the last embraces, the merman’s children took up their kayaks and walked outward. The ice broke under them, making a floe from which they lowered the boats. They got in, laced their coats fast, untied the paddles. With a wave and shout, they swung southward. The Inuit and Bengta watched until they were gone out of seeing.

II

Once while homebound, Tauno encountered a pod of Greenland whale on their way around the brow of the world, and heard their route song. Few merfolk had ever done that, for the lords of the great waters rarely came nigh land—and who would seek them out, what would he say to them in their majesty?

Tauno was hunting. Eyjan was elsewhere, towing his sealed Ikayak behind hers. They did this by turns, lest the craft, untended, drift unfindably far off course. When they eased cramped limbs with a frolic in the waves, they took care to stay close by; when they slept afloat, they tethered hulls and themselves together. It was troublesome, and certainly they could have hunted better as a team, but on the whole they were traveling faster and easier than Iif they had swum.

He had gone under, in hopes of a large fish. Lesser ones were hardly worth the killing to be the fuel bodies needed for warmth and work. Thus sound reached him far more readily than through air, and toned in thews, blood, bone as well as in ears. Through chill, sliding gray-green came a throb. Faint at first, it made him veer in its direction. He continued after he knew what stroked and clove so resistlessly, for the passage would alarm many creatures and he could well seize prey among them. Then the whales began to sing.

Almost helpless, Tauno went on, mile after mile farther than he had intended, until at last he saw them—their backs that rose like skerries, their bellies and enormous, feeding mouths down below, each fin more big than a man, flukes raising swells and currents as they drove, steadily onward, forms which outbulked most ships. The slow thunder of that hundredfold movement rolled as a part of the music, which boomed and trilled, dived and soared through ranges no human could have heard. The song took him from within, made a vessel of him for itself, for its might and mystery.

He knew little of the language, and Eyjan had the sigil. None of his father’s breed were much wiser, because it was not a speech remotely akin to any humankind or Faerie. The sounds were not words but structures or events, each as full of meanings-none altogether utterable-as a library of books, or as a life looked back upon when death draws near. Tauno bore in his mind a double heritage, and he was a poet. Afterward he recreated a fragment of what he had heard. But he knew, with longing, that what he then had was the merest shard, chance-splintered off a whole to whose shape and purpose it gave never a clue.

Through Pentland Firth go monstrous currents, and there are places where violence grows worse; one must pass by the Merry Men of Mey, and between the Swalchie and the Wells of Swona, and around the Bores of Duncansbay. Before daring these, the merman’s children found a lee on the Caithness coast, where they could mend their sea-weary kayaks and rest their sea-weary selves.

Cliffs stood ruddy on either side of an inlet which was hardly more than cleft in them. At its end was a strip of sand with a border of turf behind, boggy but soft. Thence a V-shaped slope led upward. A footpath wound through its boulders and sparse worts, but clear was to see that this site got few visitors, surely none in winter.

It was less cold here than might have been looked for, and to the travelers felt almost balmy after what they had known in the past weeks. Sunlight did not enter, so that the wavelets lapped dim silver in shadow; but reflections, of it off the strait which churned beyond gave some warmth to the cliffs, that glowed downward in turn. Winds were only a whistling past their heights. Tauno and Eyjan brought the kayaks above high-water mark. Over the turf they spread skins of seals newly taken. Blubber helped flint and steel start a fire in twigs gathered above, which kindled driftwood from below. Besides the flesh, they had an auk to roast and fish to eat raw.

“Ah,” said Tauno. “That smells good.”

“Yes, it does.” Eyjan stared at the spit she was handling, where she squatted. He clasped knees under chin and stared out at the firth.

“Enjoy this weather while it lasts,” he said after silence had extended itself between them. “It won’t for long.”

“No, it won’t.”

“Well, we needn’t linger over our repairs.”

“No. True.”

“After all, we are-what?-two-thirds of the way?”

“Maybe a bit more.”

Neither had anything else to say for a span. Eventide waned.

Eyjan poked the fowl with a bone skewer. As she hunched forward, the unbound hair that she had dropped over her bosom swung away from white skin and rosy nipples. “This will soon be done,” she said. “You might begin cleaning the fish.”

“Yes.” Tauno jerked his glance to them and became busy. Each movement sent a flow of muscles across him.

“We needn’t hasten our overhaul unduly,” she said, minutes later. “A breathing spell here will do us good.”

“Yes, we’ve talked about that. Still, we should have ample time on Bornholm, till Niels hears from us and can come.”

“We talked about that too.”

“Remember, let me deal with humans. Inuit garb in Europe is not too outlandish on a man, but a woman—”

“Yes, yes, yes!” she snapped. Redness went over her cheeks, down her throat, across her breasts.

“I crave pardon,” he said in an unclear voice, and raised his golden eyes to her gray. “Oh, no matter,” she hurried to reply. “I’m on edge. My gut is a-growl.”

He made a grin. “Mine likewise. That isn’t the sea you hear.”

The exchange eased them somewhat. Nonetheless they were nearly dumb while they finished preparing their meat, and held no converse white they ate it except a few words about how savory it was and how pleasant the fire.

When they were through, Tauno fetched more wood and stoked the blaze. Early night was falling, the strip of sky gone dusk-blue, a deeper violet in the niche. Their vision found ample light. They sat down on opposite sides for enjoyment of red, yellow, blue flicker with coal-glow at the core, homely crackle, pungency of smoke.

“We ought to retire, I suppose,” Tauno said, “but I’m not sleepy yet. You go if you like.”

“I’m not sleepy yet either,” Eyjan answered.

Both gazed into the flames.

“I wonder how Yria fares,” she said at last, quite low.

“We’ll learn.”

“Unless Niels and Ingeborg failed.”

“In that case, we can hit on something else.”

“How I hope they’ve not suffered evil,” Eyjan whispered.

“Well-nigh could I wish to believe a god would help them if I prayed.”

“Oh, they’re tough,” said Tauno. “I dare look forward to seeing them again.”

“I also. Niels is . . . I like him better than any other human I’ve known.”

“And she- Whoof!” snorted Tauno, squinching his eyes and fanning his nose. “Suddenly the smoke’s become mine alone.”

Eyjan lifted her face to him. A half moon made frosty his greenish-fair locks and threw soft highlights on the wide shoulders where firelight did not reach. “Come over here,” she invited.

He stiffened, then did. Side by side, flanks touching, they held out palms to the heat and gazed straight before them. Time blew by, over the cliff tops.

“What will we do, waiting at Bornholm for news?” Eyjan finally asked.

Tauno shrugged. The movement passed his arm along hers, and he swallowed hard before he could say, “Take our ease, no doubt, apart from chasing food. We’ll have earned that.”

Her bronzy tresses brushed him as she nodded. “Yes, we’ve done much, haven’t we? . . you and’I.”

“And more is ahead.”

“We’ll meet it together.”

Somehow their heads swung around, somehow they were breathing each other’s breath, the clean smells of each other, and her mouth was an inch from his. They never knew which of them reached out first.

“Yes, yes,” she half sobbed when the kiss came to a pause. “Oh, yes, now!”

He pulled back. “Our mother—”

She threw herself against him. Behind softness, he felt a heart that slammed even faster than his. Laughter gasped in her throat. “Too long have we fretted about that. We’re merfolk, Tauno, darling.” In flfelit splendor she leaped to her feet, tugged at his hand. “Over there, on the turf, we have a bed. . . only now do I know how I yearned.”

“And I.” He stumbled up. She nearly dragged him along, and down.

-The moon was sunken behind the cliffs. Stars glistened small.

Eyjan raised herself to an elbow. “It’s no use, is it?” she said bitterly. “Nothing is any use.”

Tauno threw an arm across his face where he lay. “Do you think I am glad?” he mumbled.

“No, of course not.” Eyjan beat fist on thigh. “The Christians can exorcise us,” she cried. “Why in the name of justice can we not exorcise the Christians?”

“There is no justice. I’m sorry .” Tauno rolled over so his back was to her.

She sat erect, regarded him, ran a hand along his side till it came to rest on his hip. “Scorn yourself not, brother mine,” she achieved saying. “There are worse curses. We both have a world for living in.”

He did not speak.

“We will remain comrades. Brothers in arms,” she said.

The toilsome journey behind him became merciful. He slept.

—He woke and saw different constellations. The fire had died, frost deepened, his body had been burning the food in it for warmth; hunger prodded him anew. He stretched and smiled. Memory washed back like a tide race. He snapped after air.

Shortly he noticed that Eyjan was absent. He frowned, rose, peered. She could not be hidden from him in this narrow space. Where, then? With Faerie perceptions, he cast about. She had not re-entered the water. Hence the footpath. . . aye, her spoor, faint but clarion-clear, thrilling through his blood.

There he paused. He guessed what she had gone for, but he could be mistaken, or she could meet danger in these Christian wilds. Decision hardened. He strapped on knife, took up harpoon, and started off.

The moon was down. Above the steeps, a ling-begrown slope descended toward moorland. Rime and patches of snow whitened its grayness. Tauno padded fast along the trail, which followed the coast until it bent south into a shallow dale. This sheltered a croft grubbed out of the heath: for a meager yield of oats and barley, but chiefly for sheep that ranged afar in summer. He saw their fold, the hayricks, a pair of huddled buildings. Beyond rose a Viking grave-mound and the snags of a Pictish keep.

The trail led thither. Tauno followed. As he approached, a couple of dogs came baying; and as ever, when they had winded him they whimpered and fled.

A softer noise caught his attention. He crouched, ghosted closer, till he could see through the open door of a shed. A woman—aged by toil, for all that she rocked a babe in her armsstood within, weeping. Two half-grown daughters slumped at her feet. They shuddered with cold; none of the three wore aught but a shift, that must have been hastily thrown on.

Tauno proceded to the cottage. Under the low eaves of a peat roof, light glimmered past cracks in shutters. He laid his ear against a wall, strained his senses.

They told him that four human males were inside, loudly breathing; and Eyjan, who yowled like a cat. While he listened, one fellow shouted. Straightway she called, “You next, Roderick!”

Tauno’s knuckles whitened around the harpoon shaft.

—Well, he thought long afterward, he had none but himself to thank, and what import had it anyhow? A chuckle rattled his gullet as he imagined what the crofter and the crofter’s sons had felt when she came naked out of night and beat on their door. The amulet would make her able to purr whate;ver she chose to them: belike that she was indeed of elvenkind but no mortal threat to life or soul; she feared not the Cross, she could name the name of Christ. They had not questioned their luck any further.

Tauno returned to camp. When Eyjan arrived at dawn, he pretended he was asleep.

III

Now that the vodianoi was gone, winter had become for the vilja altogether a time of aloneness. There was nothing else in the water but fish, that never were company and in this time of year grew sluggish, seldom delighting her with their gleaming summer grace. Frogs did not croak in twilight, but slumbered deep in bottom mud. Swans, geese, ducks, pelicans were departed; what fowl stayed at the lake were not swimmers or divers, and their calls sounded thin over snow and leafless boughs.

The vilja floated, dreaming. White and slim she was in the dimness. Her hair made a pale cloud around her. Great eyes, the hue of the sky when it is barely hazed, never moved, never blinked, never took aim at anything that a living creature might have seen. Nor did the slight roundness of her bosom move.

Thus had she drifted for days, weeks, months-she reckoned it not; for her, time had ceased to be-when the water stirred with an advent. As the force of it waxed, she came to awareness. Her limbs reached out, took hold, sent her in an arc and a streak toward shore. Faint though the undulations were that she raised, the newcomer felt them and swam to meet her. At first a wavery shade, he swiftly became solid in the view. Warmth radiated from him, strength, life. His motion made streams, gurgles, caressing swirls; bubbles danced upward.

He and she halted a yard apart and lay free a while, regarding each other.

He was not naked like her; besides headband and knife belt, he had a cloth wrapped about his loins. Huge of stature, fairskinned, golden-haired, green-eyed, he hardly differed from ordinary man save in his beardlessness, webbed feet, easy breathing under water. Yes, hardly: to one of the halfworld, the outward unlikenesses were little, set beside the blazing identity. In him was a human, Christian soul.

“Oh, welcome, be very welcome,” the vilja munnured when she had gathered courage. Her tones, which reached his merman’s hearing clearly, were tremulous as her smile.

Sternness replied: “Why do you think I am here?”

She retreated. “You. . . are you not he. . . memory is like mist, but an autumn and an autumn ago-you drove the vodianoi hence?”

“That which then was me did so,” said the deep voice.

“You were frightened of me.” The vilja could not but giggle. “Of me! You!”

Mirth released joy. She cast her arms toward him wide apart for him. “You’ve learned I’d not hurt you? How that does gladden me. Let me gladden you.”

“Be still, foul spirit!” he roared.

Bewildered, she shrank back from his wrath. “But, but I wouldn’t hurt you,” she stammered. “How could I? Why should I wish to, I who have no one for friend?”

“Tentacle of darkness—”

“We’d be happy together, in the summer greenwood, in the winter waters. I’d warm me at your breast, but you’d have me for your cool cascade, your moonlit leaf-crown—”

“Have done! You’d haul men down to Hell!”

The vilja shuddered and fell mute. If she wept, the lake drank her tears.

The other calmed. “Oh, you may not know yourself what you are,” he said. “Father Tomislav wonders whether Judas really knew what it was he did, until too late.” He stopped, watchful. Seeing his fury abated, she eased in her quicksilver fashion, ventured the tiniest of smiles, and asked, “Judas? Should I know him? . . Yes, maybe once I heard—but it is gone from me.”

“Father Tomislav,” he said like the stroke of an ax. She shook her head. “No.” Frowning, finger to cheek: “I mean yes. Somebody dear, is it not? But remembering is hard down here. Everything is so quiet. Maybe if you told me—” She tautened. Her eyes grew yet more enonnous. “No,” she cried, hands uplifted as if against a blow. “Please don’t tell me!” He sighed, as best he could underwater. “Poor wraith, I do believe you speak truth. I’ll ask if I may pray for you.”

Resolution came back. “Just the same, today you are a lure unto damnation,” he said. “Men fishing the lake for the first time, this past year, would glimpse you flitting through dusk; some heard you call them, and sore it was to deny such sweetness. They will be coming in ever greater numbers. You must not snatch a single soul from among them. I have come to make sure of that.”

She quailed, for this was he who had prevailed over the vodianoi.

He drew his knife and held it by the blade before her, to make a cross of sorts. “For the sake of the man who baptized me, I would not willingly destroy you,” his words tolled. “It may be that somehow even you can be saved. Yet certain is that none must be damned. . . on your account.”

“No more luring of Christians, Nada. No more wanton tricks, either, raising a wind to flap a wife’s washing off the grass, or stealing her babe on its cradleboard while she naps at harvest noon—”

“I only cuddle them for a while,” she whispered. “Soon I give them back. I’ve no milk for them.”

He did not heed, but went on: “No more singing in human earshot; it rouses dreams best left asleep. Vanish from our ken. Be to the children of Adam-born or adopted-as though you had never been.

“Else I myself will hunt you down. I will carry the wormwood you cannot bear the scent of, and scourge you with it, once and twice. Upon the third time you offend, I will come bearing a priestly blessing on me, and holy water for sending you into Hell.

“In Hell you will burn, you thing of leaves and mists and streams. Fire will consume you without ending, and never a dewdrop, never a snowflake will reach you in your torment.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she screamed, and fled.

He hung where he was until he had lost all sight and sound of her, until it was indeed as if she had faded into nothingness.

IV

Earlier in spring than skippers liked to fare-before the very equinox—a ship left Copenhagen for Bornholm. After a rough crossing through the Baltic Sea, she docked at Sandvig on the north end of the island, where it rises in cliffs to the stronghold called Hammer House. Her crew got shore leave. Those who had engaged her hired horses and rode to a certain unpeopled cove.

Gray whitecaps blew in, beneath a pale, whistling sky. When they withdrew, the rattle of pebbles sounded like a huge quem. Gulls flew about, mewing. On the sands were strewn brown tangles of kelp, that smelt of the deeps and had small bladders which popped when trodden on. Beyond those dunes and harsh grass was a moor, with wide heathery reaches and a bauta stone raised by folk long forgotten.

The merman’s children waded ashore to greet their guests. They were unclad save for their weapons, talisman, and what remained of their aureate arm rings. Tauno’s wet hair hung greenish-gold, Eyjan’s bronze-red with the same faint seaweed undertint.

Ingeborg and Niels sped into their embrace. “Mercy of God, it’s been long,” the young man quavered, while the woman could merely cling tight and cry.

When a measure of calm had returned, Tauno stepped off a pace, holding Ingeborg by the upper arms, and looked her over with care. “I see you’ve done well,” he said. “Not just good clothing and the marks of hardship gone. You have a kind of peace within you, am I right?”

“Now that you are here,” she answered unevenly. He shook his head. “No, I mean that hugging you, I feel you no more being always ready for the world to smite you. Have you prospered, then?”

She nodded. “Thanks to Niels.”

“Hm,” Tauno said. “I’ve an idea Niels has much to thank you for.”

Ingeborg had been studying him more closely still than he her. “It’s been worse for you, hasn’t it?” she murmured. “You’re haggard. . . and I felt you shiver. Have you failed in your quest?”

“We have not finished it. But here is a resting place.” Again he gathered her in. “I’ve missed you, I have.”

She gripped him so the blood went out of her nails.

Meanwhile they had not quite ignored what passed between Eyjan and Niels. The merman’s daughter had kissed fondly enough, but thereafter asked: “How fares it with Yria?”

“Margrete,” Niels replied, wincing. “She is none but Margrete any more.” He searched for words. “We got her share safely to her. Not easy; the hangman’s shadow layover us after the Junkers sniffed gold, until we found us a haven. We did, though, and this day she dwells in a house that’ll see to her well-being. But she is not ungrateful to you. . . but more pious than most. Do you understand? She’s happy, but best you not seek her yourselves.”

Eyjan sighed. “We expected naught else. That pain is leached out of us. We’ve done what we can for Yria; henceforward let her in truth be Margrete.” She considered him, where he stood in the bleak air with his locks fluttering, before she inquired further: “What’s your place in the woorld these days? What plans for the morrow do you nourish?”

“I’m doing well,” he told her. “If your own search is not ended—if I can help you in that, or aught else-you need but tell me.” His voice cracked: “Even if it means bidding you farewell forever.”

She smiled and kissed him afresh. “Let’s not speak thus as yet,” she said. “While we waited for you, with scant else to do—”

Ingeborg saw what happened on Tauno’s face. She kissed him in her turn; he seized her to him; her hand wandered, and suddenly he laughed.

“—we built a hut on the far side of yonder headland, for your coming,” Eyjan said. “It can soon be warm and firelit. Wherever we may go afterward, glad memories make light freight.”

She and her brother walked behind as the four left the strand, that their bodies might shield the humans from the wind that streaked in off the sea.

V

Althrough much remained for him to learn, Niels was fast be- coming worldly-wise. He was in partnership with an older man who supplied experience to match the money Niels could put into the shipping trade. When that merchant wew sufficiently aged to wish retirement, several years hence, and the younger took over entirely, their company should be as well off as any outside the Hansa, and able to hold its own in rivalry with the League. Mean- while the business gave them connections to many kinds of people, as did also its curious alliance with the bishop of Roskilde. More- over, Niels had found positions for his brothers and sisters, places chosen so that each might win contentment, prosperity, and the favor of powerful men. (His mother he simply gave a life of ease, which she was soon devoting to gardening and good works.

Thus, what Niels did not know, he could find out; what he could not do himself, he could get done for him.

Of course, this was not always possible overnight, especially when the strange reason for an endeavor must be kept secret. His plan was that Tauno and Eyjan take ship for Dalmatia, with letters from Church and Crown to ease their way after they arrived. That required creating identities which would make plausible their hiring of a vessel. He must feel his way forward with utmost care, lest suspicion rouse in someone. This required weeks, and his presence in Copenhagen-theirs too, for consultation at need and for practice at behaving like proper mortals.

Besides, neither he nor Ingeborg could have borne their absence, now when they were again in Denmark.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the woman breathed. “That was wonderful. You are always wonderful.”

Warm, wet, musky, tousled, she brought herself as tightly she was able against the merman’s son, He embraced her with one arm, laid a thigh across hers, and toyed with what he could reach of her, A taper cast soft glow and monster shadows around the bedchamber,

“Love me more, as soon as you can,” she whispered,

“Will you not grow sore?” Tauno replied, for he had the strength of his father in his loins,

Ingeborg’s chuckle held more wistfulness than mirth, “That’s not the kind of soreness which hurts me,” Abruptly she caught her breath and he felt her jerk in his grasp,

“What’s the matter?” he exclaimed,

She buried her contenance between his neck and shoulder, Her fingers dug into his flesh, “Your being gone, that hurts,” The tone shivered, “It’s never less than an ache throughout me; often it’s like a knife twisting around, Give me everything of you, beloved, while yet you may, Help me forget, this night, that soon you’ll leave, Afterward there’ll be time for remembering,”

Tauno frowned, “I thought you and Niels were happy together,”

Ingeborg raised her eyes, Candlelight trembled on the tears in them, “Oh, we’re fond of each other, He’s kind, mild, generous , . ,and, yes, he has a gift for making love”, but nothing like you, nothing! Nor is he you, in your beauty and brilliance. The difference is like-like the difference between lying in a summer meadow watching clouds pass by overhead—and being a-wing in the wind that drives them, the sun that makes them shine, I cannot understand how your mother could forsake your father,”

Tauno bit his lip, “Glad she was at first to go undersea with him, but as the years wore on, she came to know in her marrow that she was not of Faerie, Never has such a union failed to wreak harm, on one or on both, I fear I’ve already done you ill,”

“No!” She scrambled back, sat up, and gaped at him, appalled, “Darling, no!” Mastering herself: “Only look about you, See me here in a fine house, well fed, well clad, no longer a piece of sleazy merchandise; and this is your doing at root, yours, Tauno,”

“Hardly mine alone,” He remained stretched out, his gaze on the ceiling, “Besides, you spoke of hopeless hankering—which may, I suppose, imperil your soul-Aye, best I not linger here, much though I’ll miss you in my turn,”

“You will?” she cried, and bent over him. Her hair tumbled down to give its own caress. “I’ve not been bad for you, then?”

“No, Ingeborg,” he said most gently, and looked straight at her. “You’ve bestowed more on me than you will ever know. Therefore I should leave, before I give you a wound that eternity cannot heal.”

“But we have tonight!”

“And tomorrow, yes, and morrows beyond.” He drew her to him.

Niels came home from church grim of appearance. Eyjan, attired like a lady, met him at the door, saw, and quietly led him to a side room where they could talk unheard. “What’s wrong?” she murmured.

“Today Father Ebbe, my priest, asked me why my house guests are never at Mass,” he told her.

“Oh, has he heard about us?”

“How could he not? Servants and neighbors do gossip.” Niels scowled, hooked thumbs in belt, stared at the floor. “I, I explained. . . you’ve secret affairs in train which’d suffer were you recognized. . . and accordingly you go to a chapel elsewhere. He said no more, but his mien became graver than is his wont. No doubt he’s aware I sleep with you, and Ingeborg with Taunoand in Lent, in Lent-though we’ve neither of us confessed it to him. Yet before Easter, we must confess, that we may then take Communion.”

“Will that be dangerous? The two of you are openly unwed.” He glanced up, with a crooked smile. “Such is naught uncommon. He sets us a few Aves for it, since he takes into account the good works we do with our money. But if we tell him we’re again bedmates of you... you halflings... and not because it happened thus when we’d small choice about companions, and were in a worthy cause—but of our unforced will—I fear he’d command us to expel you at once. If we refused. . . aside from our souls, even our safety on earth, excommunication would ruin our chance of helping you.”

“Why, there’s an easy answer,” said Eyjan blithely. “Admit the swiving, but not our nature. Also, Tauno said I can come along to his services—I doubt the images would turn from usif you’ll tell us what to do there.” He shrank from her. “No!” he choked in horror. “You know not what you say!”

She shook her red head impatiently. “Belike not. Little about your Christendom makes any sense to’ me.” Plucking at her gown, she muttered a curse. “Could I but shed this stinking thing and bathe me in the waves—”

“My guilt is deep enough already.” Niels’ voice shuddered.

“To take the Sacrament with an unconfessed sin upon oneselfwhen Satan sees me thus, his fifes lick their chops for me.” Trouble came to Eyjan. She stepped forward and captured his hands in hers. “We can’t let that happen to you, Tauno and I. We’ll make our own way south-start at this very dawn—”

“No.” His words stumbled in their haste. “Forsake you two dearest friends that I have? Never. Stay.”

As if her presence had inspired him, he went on in sudden half-happiness: “See here. I can arrange that we be shriven just before Easter, and you depart just after. Then I don’t think Father Ebbe will make the penance too harsh. He likes to preach about what a man owes his shipmates.”

She groped for comprehension. “Suppose you die before you carry out that rite—or suppose he wants you to renounce us forever, and you don’t really intend to-are you not damned?”

He took a foursquare stance. “Maybe, maybe not. I’ll risk it. And I’ll try to repent later, but never will I regret having kissed you.” His look went over her tall fullness as an exile returned might walk step by step over his home-acre. “Instead I’ll yearn for you, waking and dreaming, in every heartbeat left me; and I; I’ll pray for death and burial at sea, Eyjan; your sea,”

“You mourn too soon.” She laid arms around his neck. “Don’t. We’ve many kisses to give yet, Niels.”

Presently she said, laughing, “Well, dinner’s not for a while, and here is a couch. Yes, let’s grab what comes our way, before the ebb tide bears it out of reach.”

“Good news,” the young man informed Tauno. “At last we’ve Christian names for you twain.”

“But you’ve given us those,” his comrade responded, surprised.

They had ridden from Copenhagen to be alone and because it was a sweet spring day. The common which they were crossing was vivid with new grass; in the distance, leaves made a green mist across the top of a woodlot. Against overarching blue, storks were returning, harbingers of summer, bearers of luck. The breeze was fresh, loud, full of damp odors. Hoofs thudded on drenched soil with almost unbearable softness.

Niels ran fingers through his hair. “You’ll recall those names were the best we could think of on short notice,” he said. “I’ve given out that they’re false, used by you because you’re on confidential business. Now we’re ready to come out into the open”—he grinned-“for a proper disguise is on hand. Best you and I talk rlrst, since you must needs play the man’s part.”

Tauno’s mount shied. He brought the beast under control, but Niels chided him for using the bridle too heavily. “Horsemanship is another art you’d better learn if you’d pass yourself off,” the human warned.

“Say on,” the other grunted.

“Aye. What took this long was, mainly, searching out what’d be possible for you. We want no hazard of somebody who meets you protesting that he knows your district well and has never heard of any such person. Certain documents were advisable too, but easier to arrange for; my amanuensis is a cunning rascal.

“Well, you shall be Herr Carolus Brede, a squire from a far corner of Scania-that’s the Danish territory across the Sound, did you know? Some of it’s thickly wooded and little traveled. Though you’re not rich, you’re well-born. A forefather of yours was a nobleman attending Queen Dagmar of beloved memory, when she came from Bohemia to wed Kind Valdemar the Victorious a hundred years ago. You’ve learned about ties of kinship reaching still further south, into Croatia, and decided to see if this is true and if aught can be made of it. You’ve been secretive lest agents of the Hansa grow alarmed at the chance of trade agreements outflanking them, overland through the Empire, and maybe even try to murder you. Though that chance is not great, as every sensible man will realize, still, it’s enough for my company to take the gamble of providing you a ship and crew. Besides, I trust they can dicker for whatever cargo they bring. My plea in turn ought to get you royal and episcopal letters of recommendation, if only because the Danish lords will be curious to know more bout the Croatian.”

Tauno crowed and shook his head. “Bones of my mother, but you’ve changed,” he exclaimed. “I can’t hear at all, in those elegant words, the plain crewman of Herning. In fact, the torrent of them carries me off.” Niels frowned, “You’ll have to learn how to swim in them, and many more of the same kind, Else you’ll betray yourself, likely to your death-yourself and, and, Eyjan,”

Skin stood taut on the knuckles above the reins, “Yes, what of her? How’ll she fare?”

“She’ll be Lady Sigrid, your widowed sister, traveling along with the avowed purpose of making a pilgrimage and the unavowed one of making a better match than she could in Denmark.”

Tauno gave him a hard stare. “My sister? Why not my wife?”

Niels gave it back. Invisible sparks flew, “Do you truly want that, you two?”

The Liri prince whipped his horse into a gallop.

Rain sluiced from heaven, brawled across roofs, made rivers of city streets. Lightning flared, thunder went on huge wheels, wind whooped,

A tile stove heated the main room of Niels Jonsen’s house; candles threw light on wainscot, hangings, carven furniture. Ingeborg had dismissed servants and had closed doors, that she might continue Eyjan’s lessons in womanly deportment.

“I’m no proper dame myself, of course, but I’ve watched their kind, I’ve studied how to imitate them, and you walk too proudly,”

“Ha’ done’” yelled the merman’s daughter. “You’ve gorged me with your nonsense,” She paused, quieted, offered a smile, “Forgive me. You’re doing what you can for us, I know, But it’s so hot and close in here, this wool clings and itches and stifles my skin, I can’t endure more.”

Ingeborg watched her for a while that was silent except for the storm battering at shutters. “You must endure,” she said finally, “It’s the lot of women, and you’re to be a woman while your journey lasts, Never forget that, or you could betray Tauno to his death.”

“Well, but can we stop for today?”

“Aye, perhaps best we do.”

“Let me draw a gasp or two ere we meet your world again,” said Eyjan. In motions which had become deft, she peeled the raiment off her and cast it violently down. Naked, she went to a sideboard and filled herself a goblet of mead. “Would you like some?”

Ingeborg hesitated before she said, “Yes, thank you. But beware of getting drunk. That’s for whores and slatterns—and men.”

“Is everything for men in your Christendom?”

“No, not really.” Ingeborg took the drink handed her and found a chair. “We learn how to worm a great deal out of them.”

“Undersea, nobody had to play worm.” Eyjan well-nigh flung a seat into position opposite her hostess, and herself into it.

“But we on land bear the curse of Eve. How often I’ve heard told me the word of God-’ in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband. and he shall rule over thee’—” Ingeborg clutched her chair arms. She would never bring forth children.

Eyjan saw and tried awkwardly to give comfort. “You’ve become better off than most, haven’t you? Niels is pleasant to live with, and I’ve seen how he wants your counsel on different things; you’re no mere pet of his.”

“True. Yet I’m his kept woman, whom no respectable housewife will have to do with if she can help it. Nor, of course, any respectable man. They greet me politely enough, those merchants and nobles and sea captains, but a greeting is where it stops. What they talk to Niels about, I mayor may not hear from him afterward. And he’s busy, must be much away from home. I can’t bring down his standing by growing friendly with any of our servants. Oh, less lonely was that shack on the strand.” Ingeborg uttered a laugh. “I don’t suppose it’s in you to pray thanks for what you have, Eyjan, but be glad of it.”

“Have you no better hope, then?” the Liri princess asked low.

The woman shrugged. “Who can tell? I do know full well how lucky I am, and learned years ago how to keep an eye cocked for the next chance that flits by.”

“As Niels’ wedded wife—” Ingeborg shook her head, hard. “No. He offered me that, but I could see how relieved he was when I refused. What does he want with a former harlot who has no family connections and can’t even give him sons? No, when he weds, out I go. . . oh, quietly, honorably, his protecting hand over me as long as we both live, and maybe a sleeping together now and then for old times’ sake-nevertheless, out.”

She struggled with herself before she could say: “If ever he does wed. His passion for you may grow too strong in him. With me he can be frank about it; many’s the time I’ve held him close while he wept for you; but another-Spare him that, Eyjan, if by any means you can.”

“How?” asked the other, “Your ways are not mine,” After a moment: “Is that immortal soul of yours truly worth a woman’s having?”

Ingeborg shivered, “God forgive me,” she breathed, “I do not know,”

Spring ran wild with blossoms and birdsong, a season of love, a season of forgetfulness and farewells, The cog Brynhild raised sail, slipped her moorings, and departed on the tide, Until she was hull down, Ingeborg and Niels stood on the dock, waving,

Then: “Well,” she said, “we had them for that span,”

His fist was clenched as if to strike, his vision lost along the horizon, “She promised she’d come back,” he mumbled, “At least once, to tell me how she fares, If she can, If she lives,”

“In the meantime,” she told him sharply, “you have your work. I. . ,should look wider about me than hitherto, I suppose,” She took his arm, “No use dawdling here, Come, let’s go home.”

On deck, Tauno watched land, water, sails pass by, drank deep of the air, and said, “Finally we’re out of that stinkhole! None too soon. I felt myself starting to rot,”

“Are we better off here?” Eyjan replied, “They cared for us, yon two.”

“Aye, they’ve been staunch,”

“More than that. What they spent of themselves on us-where else can we find it, ever?”

“Among our own kind,”

“If those are as we remember them, And even if they are—” Eyjan’s voice trailed off, After a stillness, during which the ship bore onward until the last spire in Copenhagen was lost to sight, she finished: “This will be a long voyage, brother mine,”

As the days and weeks of it lengthened, Brynhild’s men grew aware of something uncanny about their passengers, Not only were Herr Carolus and Lady Sigrid curt-spoken, downright moody, given to hours on end of gazing across the waves or up at the stars, or to staying latched in their cubicles, with the command that they desired no meat or drink brought them, No, a couple of mariners thought they had glimpsed one or the other slipping forth by night and overside, Nobody saw either of them climb back aboard; however, the owner had issued an odd standing order, that a rope ladder always be trailed aft for the sake of a hand who might fall into the sea-as if sailors could swim! Whether or not there was anything to this (Captain Asbern Riboldsen reminded his crew of what a notoriously superstitious and gullible lot their sort was), certainly the two never joined in common prayer, but said they would liefer perfonn their devotions in private. Devotions to whom? The mutter went that here were a sorcerer and a witch.

Still, sureness about it was lacking. Carolus and Sigrid gave no outward offense, nor did any grave trouble arise for the ship. At the same time, foul winds and dead calms showed that nobody was hexing the weather. Moreover, Niels Jonsen and his partner were known as fine fellows who’d surely not beguile poor seamen into trafficking with evil. He had let the crew be warned that this was a singular voyage, unlike any that they had heard tell of, venturesome as a cast of dice in a Visby tavern. . . but with good pay, good pay.

Thus, however much folk puzzled, things went peacefully on the whole: down the North Sea, through the English Channel, around Britanny, down the Bay of Biscay and along the Iberian shores—with a wary lookout for Moorish cruisers from Africaand through the Gates of Hercules. Thereabouts Captain Asbern engaged a pilot to show the way onward. It helped much that Herr Carolus knew the language of that Majorcan adventurer (how?). And so, toward midsummer, the cog reached Dalmatia, and worked her way up that coast.

VI

With horses and servants engaged in Shibenik, Herr Carolus and Lady Sigrid took the road to Skradin. The satnik had sent a message ahead from town to castle, and the zhupan had dispatched a military escort for his distinguished visitors. The party made a brave sight as it wound into the mountains, metal agleam, plumes and cloaks tossing in many colors, hoofs plopping, harness jingling, beneath cloudless heaven. Warmth baked strong, sweet odors out of the beasts, ripening fields of grain and hay on the right, greenwood tall on the left.

Nonetheless Tauno wrinkled his nose. “Faugh, the dust!” he said in Danish, which lent itself better than the Liri tongue to such matters. “My insides are turned to a.. . a brickyard. Can you believe merfolk would freely settle down ashore?”

Her palfrey beside his gelding, Eyjan gave him a stiff look out of the wimple that concealed her mane. “It may not have been freely,” she replied. “What did you find out?” As the man of them, he had necessarily done the talking, Panigpak’s gift hung inside his shirt. Eager to converse with such a stranger, the Croatians had left him no time until now for any real speech with her.

“Little,” he admitted. “I dared not press the question hard, you know, when it’s not our ostensible business. And I’m not skilled at slyly sucking his knowledge out of anybody. I could but remark in passing that I’d heard rumors and was curious. Folk shied away from the subject. That seemed to be less because they thought it uncanny than because those above them have discouraged mention of it.”

“But you did confirm that merfolk are living there where we are bound?”

“Aye, and also that sometimes they come down to the coast by two or threes, and swim about. That would be needful for their health, of course, but it’s said they do useful tasks like charting shoals and finding out where fishing is best. Lately, as well, a number of males have departed on ships, in the service of the duke or whatever his title is here. A war is starting up; I’m not clear as to why or who the enemy is.” Tauno shrugged. “Our host to be can doubtless tell us more.”

Eyjan regarded him closely. “Under that sour mien, brother, she murmured, “you’re a-tremble to meet them again.”

“Are you not?” he asked, surprised. “It’s been a weary search”-voice and eyes dropped-“and this latest voyage the loneliest part of it all.”

Her own gaze grew troubled and she averted it. “Yes. On” Herning, and later in Denmark, we had two who loved us.”

“But our own people—”

“Wait and see.” She would say no more. Tauno felt downright relieved when the captain of the guards drew close and engaged him in respectfully fascinated colloquy.

Though the birdflight distance between Shibenik and Skradin was not great, the road twisted far to avoid the woods, and departure had been somewhat belated. Thus the sun was low when folk reached the village, its rays golden through cool air, shadows huge before it. Riding along a street toward the castle, the merman’s children glanced about with heart-quickened interest. Houses were wooden, roofed with turf or thatch, as in the North; but the style of them, and the gaudy paint on most, was foreign, as was the onion-domed church at one end. Humans who paused; to stare at the procession were often tall and blond, but mainly round of skull and high of cheekbones, their garb of a cut and ornamentation never seen at home. They appeared well fed, and they did not cringe from the soldiers but their men offered cheerful hails. As elsewhere in Dalmatia, women kept meek in the background, several of them more heavily burdened than was common in Brynhild’s country.

Abruptly Tauno stiffened in the saddle. His stare went from; a shawl-wrapped face, across whose brow stole a greenish curl, to bare, webbed feet below the skirt. “Raxi!” he bawled, and jerked on the reins.

“Tauno, is it you, Tauno?” the person cried in their olden language. Then she shrank back, crossing herself over and over as the Hrvatskan words poured from her: “No, God have mercy, Jesus have mercy, I mustn’t, Mary help me—” She whirled about and ran stumblingly around a comer, out of his view.

Tauno made as if to leap down after her. Eyjan seized him by the wrist. “Hold, you fool,” she snapped.

He shook himself, caught his breath, fell still, clucked his horse back into motion. “Aye, they are a startling sight,” the guards captain said. “But fear them not, my lord. They’re good Christians now, good neighbors, loyal subjects of the King. Why, I’m thinking I might marry a daughter of my own to some young fellow among them.”

Beside Ivan Subitj to welcome his guests was a priest, not the zhupan’s chaplain but a robust, rough-clad graybeard introduced as Father Tomislav. While a repast was being prepared, and Lady Sigrid resting in the chamber lent her, these two discoursed privately with Herr Carolus.

That was high in the watchtower, where a room commanded a splendid overlook across the countryside. Westward the sun had dropped under the forest which hid the lake. Light still tinged wings of swallows and bats which darted around a violet sky. Thin mists were rising to sheen across the fields. Closer gleamed the conjoining rivers, farther to northward and eastward the Svilaja peaks. It had grown very quiet outside.

Dusk softened Ivan’s mutilated face, but there was iron in his voice as he stiffened on his bench and ended a time of amenities: “I sent for Tomislav, Gospodar Carolus, because he of everyone knows most about the merfolk-maybe more than they do themselves—and I understood from reports brought me that you were inquiring about them.”

“That was kind of you, sir,” Tauno replied uneasily. He wet his lips with a sip of wine. “You needn’t have gone to so much trouble or, or keep so close a watch on me; but thank you.”

“Naught is too much for a nobleman from abroad who may be establishing connections among us. Maybe, though, you’d like to tell me, Gospodar-since it doesn’t seem nigh your purposewhy you are this interested in the merfolk?” Like a whipcrack: “I can’t imagine why else you’d have come to this offside place.”

Tauno’s free hand found comfort in the hilt of his knife. “Well, we do have a race of the same kind in Northern waters.”

“Bah!” burst from Tomislav. “Stop that nonsense, both of you. Ivan, your manners are abominable. If you suspect this wight is a Venetian spy, say it forth like an honest man.”

“Oh, no, oh, no,” protested the zhupan hastily. “However, we do have a new war, and in the past couple of years we’ve met such weirdness—My duty is to be careful, Gospodar Carolus. And truth to tell, you haven’t sounded as if you knew these Hrvatskan kin of yours as well as you might, considering how perfectly you speak their language.”

“Does that make him hostile?” snorted the priest. “Look here, not only have the merfolk worked no evil, they do vital service. And surely the coming of that many pure Christian souls makes God smile on our land.” His tone changed, fell to a near whisper beneath which lay a sob. Tauno saw tears start forth. Yet joy welled up from the depths: “If you want a sign on that, Ivan, why, remember the vilja is gone. This spring she came not out of the waters to haunt the woods. Nobody has found one trace of her. If... if she really was the phantom of...a suicide...under judgment. . . then God must have pardoned her and taken her home to Paradise—and why else but that He was pleased at the salvation of the merfolk?”

His heart a lump within him, Tauno asked slowly, “So it’s true what people seem to believe, that they were baptized and lost all memory of what they had been?”

“Not quite,” Tomislav answered. “By rare grace, they keep their pa..,t lives, their knowledge and skills in aid of our poor countrymen. It’s a long story, but marvelous.”

“I. . . would like to hear.”

The humans considered Tauno for a silent while, wherein darkness thickened. Ivan’s gaze grew less distrustful, Tomislav’s ever more kind.

At last the zhupan said, “Well, I suppose there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. I make a guess you’ve surmised most of it already. I think, too, that you’ve your own reasons for being here, which you’ve not let out; but I dare hope they’re innocent.”

“Better than innocent,” Tomislav added. “Andrei-Vanimen that was-he told me about certain children of his who were left behind. . . . You needn’t say more till you feel safe in doing it, Carolus. Let me help you understand that you’re among friends. Listen to the tale, ask whatever questions you will.”

Even ashore, Tauno could move sQake-softly when he chose. None saw him glide from his room, down a corridor and a stairway, forth into the shadow and mist of the court, through an open gate where a pair of sentries nodded at their pikes. Once out among the villager homes, he stalked upright, for nobody was awake and no dog would dare bark. The sky was clear, amply starful. Evening chill had quenched the stenches of habitation enough for his nostrils to pick out the odors he sought: a hint of waters more deep and broad than any baptismal font.

Already several merfolk dwelt in human households. He passed them by. Nor did he consider seeking the settlement on the lakeshore which others, who were now fishers, shared with children of Adam. A few small dwellings, fragrant with fresh timber, had arisen on the edge of Skradin for the rest of the newcomers. These were chiefly females. . . no, women, he thought, mortal women who must in propriety no longer go adventuring.

A certain blend of cool fleshly scents brought him to a door whereon he knocked. Ears within had kept their Faerie keeness. A voice called, “Who is it? What will you?”

“It is Tauno, Vanimen’s son,” he answered. “Let me in, Raxi, lover that was in Liri.”

He heard whispers, scuffle of feet, fumblings about. The time seemed endless before the latch clacked free and the barrier swung aside. Two stood beyond. They had thrown on shifts, but he knew them at once: Raxi, the merriest lass in his tribe, and lean bluetressed Meiiva who had been his father’s special friend.

He felt the unsureness of his smile as he spread his arms wide. The girl gasped, sprang back, buried face in hands. Her older companion remained calm, yet it was with an effort that she said, “Welcome, Tauno. How good to know you live, you and Eyjanand to have you here at last-But you must cover yourself.”

Tauno glanced down. When he left his bed, he had not bothered to don clothes anew, save for knife belt; the spirit bone hung always around his neck. “Why, we’re alone, Meiiva,” he replied in a puzzlement that was half fear, “and you both know this body well.”

“I am not Meiiva any more, Tauno, and she, my sister in God, is not Raxi. We are Jelena and Biserka.” The woman turned about. “Wait here. I’ll fetch you garb.” The door closed.

It reopened shortly, a crack, and she reached out a coat. He belted it around his middle, sniffing with a thrill that it was his father’s. When Meiiva-Jelena-let him into the humble building, whose rafters made him bow his head, she had lighted a clay lamp from the fire banked on the hearth. “That’s better,” she said, and actually touched his elbow. “Be not ashamed. You’ve everything to learn. Sit down, dear, and let me pour you a stoup.”

Dazedly, he settled onto a chest. Biserka crouched in the opposite corner. Her look upon him was-fearful? Wistful? He could not tell, but he heard how quickly she breathed.

“Why are you here too?” he asked her roommate.

“Andrei, your father, my husband, is off to war,” Jelena explained. “For seemliness as well as shared help, I invited Biserka to come stay here meanwhile. She’s unwedded, and, well—” Aforetime frankness was gone; it was hard to finish: “She had a home with a family, but the eldest son was beginning to show lust for her, and that would not be the best match she could make.”

“You, Raxi?” Tauno blurted. “Why, I sought you tonight before all others!”

Jelena sighed, though in the dull yellow glow her cheeks smoldered. “I know. May the merciful saints aid me in remembering what you are, and not to blame you but to try to show you the way onward.” Having filled three bowls with mead, she brought him one. “Dismiss carnal thoughts, Tauno. This is not Liri, we are not what we were, and God be praised.”

“Well, there are some hussies!” flared from Biserka. She huddled back, crossed herself, and added fast, “Ask not their names,”

“Surely you’ll find one of them among us who were merfolk,” Jelena said, where she stood tall above Tauno. “We’re too newly born. How I pray we’ll never soil the spirits in us, fresh from God’s hand!” She paused, stared beyond him, and mused, “Oh, we will, I fear. To feel sure of our own righteousness, that would be a mortal sin in itself, pride. But may we always have grace to repent when we fall, to keep striving.” Her glance sharpened and speared him. “If any man would seduce us, let him bear in mind that we can yet wield edged weapons.”

“Then you do recall your past lives?” he mumbled.

She nodded. “Aye, though they seem strange, dim, like a dream that was long and vivid but is fading. We’ve awakened, you see. There before the altar, we awoke from the half-life of beasts to life eternal.” Suddenly she, who had been strong as Vanimen, wept. “Oh, that moment, that single first moment with God! What...remains...to abide for...but the hope of finding it again, forever, in Heaven?”

A waning moon had cleared eastern heights when Tauno entered the forest. It had not taken him long, for he ran the entire way across plowlands; stalks and ears of grain left welts in revenge for his trampling. However, the hour had been late when he could finally win free of the women, cast off his father’s coat at the door, and bolt.

It was not that they cursed him. They had been affectionate in their pleading, their wish that he too take the gift of an immortal soul. It was not even that they were utterly changed, flesh once delightful now housing an alienness greater than that which sundered him from the tribe of Adam. It was that-he thought, somewhere in his staggering mind-that they were carriers of doom. In them was the future, which held no room for Faerie. When he sprinted, he did not only seek to work out some of the despair wherein his quest had ended. He fled the unseen, while stars looked down and hissed, “There he is, there he goes, that’s his track to follow.”

The breath heaved raw in his throat before he found shelter. This was below an oak, for it spread darkness and upheld mistletoe. At last he moved on into the wilderness, toward the lake he could sense afar. He would bathe in yon waters, fill his lungs with their cleanliness, maybe catch a fish and devour it raw like a seal or a killer whale. Thus he would regain strength for returning to the castle and whatever was going to happen there.

Trees gloomed, underbrush entangled a heavier murk, on either side of the game trail he took. Moonlight filtered in streaks through the crowns, to glimmer off vapors which streamed or eddied low above the earth. It was a touch warmer here than out in the open, damp, smelling of growth a-drowse. Rustlings went faint, a breeze, an owl ghosting by, the scutter of tiny feet. Once a wildcat squalled, remotely, noise blurred into music by all the leaves around.

A measure of peace lifted within Tauno. Here was a remnanl of his world, the wildworld, which lived wholly within itself. loved, slew, begot, suffered, died, was born, knew delirious magics but never would probe and tame the mysteries behind them nor peer into a stark eternity. Here were spoor of Faerie. . . the spirit bone brought names into his awareness, as if he had always known them. . . Leshy, Kikimora, also flitting restless, shy of him but—

But what else was it he winded? No, he caught this one sensation otherwise, in his blood, part fear and part unutterable yearning. His pulse thuttered, he quickened his footsteps.

The trail swung around a canebrake, and they met.

For a time outside of time, both halted. In their sight, where a human would have been well-nigh blind, each stood forth white I against enclosing many-layered shadows, as if having risen from the fog that smoked about their feet. She was much the paler; it was as though the fugitive moonlight streamed through thinly carved alabaster, save that when she did move it was like a ripple across water. Very fair she was in her nakedness, with the slim, unscarred curves of waist, thighs, breasts which bespoke a maiden, with delicately carven face and enormous, luminous eyes. Her hair made a cloud about her, afloat on the air. She had no color except the faintest flushes of blue and rose, as upon snow beneath a false dawn.

“Oh,” she whispered. Terror snatched her. “Oh, but I mustn’t!

And for his part, recalling what he had heard that day, and earlier from his father, he shouted, “Rausa/ka!” and whipped out his knife. Hc darcd not turn his back. She vanished behind the underbrush. He stood tensed and snarling, until he decided she was gone and sheathed the blade. The intimations of her drifted everywhere around, maddeningly gentle, fresh, girlish, but he knew little of such beings; their traces might well linger. . . .

Would they?

Why, he had the talisman to ask. He need but ease himself, think in Hrvatskan about what he had seen, and let knowledge flow upward. Muscle by muscle, he summoned calm, until he could know and could call: “Vilja. Stay. Please.”

She peered around the brake; he barely glimpsed an eye, the gleam of a cheek, the delicacy of an elbow. “Are you Christian?” she fluted timidly. “I’m forbidden to come near Christians.”

So she was no menace; she was merely beautiful. “I’m not even a mortal man,” said Tauno against a rattle of laughter.

She crept forth to stand before him at arm’s length. “I thought I could feel that,” she breathed. “Would you really like to talk with me?” She kindled, she trilled. “Oh, wonderful! Thank you, thank you.”

“What is your name?” He must needs gather courage before he could lay down: “I hight Tauno. Half merman, half human, but altogether of Faerie.”

“And I—” She hesitated more than he had. “I think I am, I was Nada. I call me Nada.”

He reached out to her. She tiptoed close. They linked hands. Hers were night-cool and somehow not quite solid. He thought that if he took a real hold upon them, his fingers would part their frailty and meet each other: wherefore he gripped as tenderly as he was able. The clasp shivered.

“What are you?” he asked, that he might hear it from her own lips.

“A vilja. A thing of mist and wind and half-remembered dreams—and how glad of your kindness, Tauno!”

Desire, long unslaked, was thick within him. He sought to draw her close. She flowed, she blew from his embrace, to poise trembling beyond his reach. Fear and grief worked their ways across her countenance, which was young to behold but inwardly had grown old. “No, Tauno, I beg you. For your own sake. I’m no more of the living world. You’d die, yourself, if you tried.”

Recalling how Herr Aage had risen from his grave to comfort Lady Else his beloved-simply to comfort her in her misery—and what came of that, Tauno shuddered backward from Nada.

She saw. Briefly, her aloneness ruled her; then she straightened her shoulders (there was the dearest hollow between them, right below the throat) and said, with a shaken smile, “But you needn’t run away, need you, Tauno? Can we not abide a while together?”

They did until morning.

VII

Andrei Subitj, captain in the Royal Navy of Magyarorszag and Hrvatska-he who once was Vanimen, king of Liri-turned from the window out which he had been gazing. This was in Shibenik, on an upper floor of the mayoral palace. When such an officer took special leave from the war and came south, in answer to a message from the zhupan, he could have whatever place he asked for. Day had waned while he and Eyjan held converse. Towers stood dark against deep-blue gloaming, above walls and battlements within which links bobbed along streets. Bells pealed a call to vespers. Andrei traced the Cross.

“And thus we know each what has happened to the other,” he sighed. “Yet what do we truly know?” Tall in a gold-broidered kaftan, his body moved across the carpet with more fmnness than his voice. “Why would Tauno not bestir himself to come this short way and greet me?”

Eyjan, who was seated, stared at the hem of her gown. “I can’t tell,” she replied. “Not really. He said there was no use in it, that you simply are no more the father he sought. But he says little to anyone these days, nothing that might reveal his mind.”

“Not even to you?” Andrei asked as he took the chair opposite hers.

“No.” Fists clenced in her lap. “I can but guess that he’s poisoned with bitterness against Christians.” Andrei sat straight. His tone crackled. “Has anybody done ill by you twain?”

“Never. Far from it.” The red head shook, the gray eyes lifted to meet his. “Although we admitted early on we’d been lying to him-for we couldn’t well stick to our deception after our kin recognized us-Ivan did not resent it. Rather, he increased his hospitality, and that in the teeth of his chaplain, who’s scandalized at having two creatures like us beneatq yon roof. Ivan’s actually doing his best to keep our secret from leaving the village, that we may fare back to Denmark without hindrance if we choose.”

“Of course, he hopes to convert you.”

“Of course. But he doesn’t pester us about it, nor let Father Petar do so.” Eyjan smiled a bit. “I see Father Tomislav more gladly, aye, as often as may be. He’s a darling. Tauno himself can’t slight that man.” Her thought veered. “Something strange is there too. I know not what or why. . . but Tauno is very mild with Tomislav. . . almost the way one might be with somebody who’ll soon die but doesn’t know it. . . .”

“How is his daily life? And yours, for that matter?”

Eyjan shrugged. “As an acknowledged sea-wife, I’m not fastbound the way a Croatian woman is. I can swim or range the woods, provided no man sees me. Around mortals, however, I think it best to act the lady. There I pass most of my time learning the language, since Tauno keeps the amulet. Often the maidservants and I will sing together; Ivan’s wife joins us now and then, or his son.” She grimaced. “I fear young Luka is getting much too fond of me. Unwillingly would I bring woe on their house.”

“Tauno?”

“How can I tell?” Eyjan said roughly. “He goes off into the wilderness for days and nights on end. When he returns, he grunts that he’s been hunting, and is barely courteous to folk. I bespoke my idea that he hates the Faith for what it’s done to his people. Though why he shuns me—”

“Hm.” Andrei cupped chin in palm and gave her a long regard. “Might he have found a sweetheart in some distant hut? I’m sure neither of you can have a lover in Skradin.”

“No,” she clipped forth. “We cannot.”

“And time in a single bed hangs heavy. Ah, I remember. . . .If he’s not beguiled a mortal girl, well, Faerie beings do haunt these realms—” In shock, Andrei saw whither his thought was leading him. Again he crossed himself. “Jesus forbid!”

“Why, what harm, if he who is soulless couples with an elf?” Eyjan gibed.

“I’d not have my son lured beyond halidom. He might die before he’s saved.” Andrei’s look steadied upon her. “You might, my daughter.”

Eyjan was silent.

“What are your plans?” he inquired.

Unhappiness freighted her words: “I know not, the less when Tauno keeps apart from me. We promised our Danish friends we’ll rejoin them when we’re able. Thereafter-Greenland?”

“No fit place for you, who have seen far better.” Andrei hesitated. “Luka Subitj would be a forbearing husband.”

Eyjan grew taut. “I’ll never wear the bonds they lay on women here!”

“Aye, you’d be freer in Denmark, and I like what you’ve told me of that Niels Jonsen. Get christened, wed him, be joyous.”

“Christened. Become. . . your sort?”

“Yes, age and die in a handful of years, and meanwhile live chaste and pious. But you will live in the blessing of God, and afterward in His very presence. Not until you’ve taken this bargain Christ offers, can you know how measurelessly generous it is.”

With eyes as well as tongue, Andrei pursued: “I understand. You dread the loss of your wild liberty, you think you’d liefer cease to be. I give you my oath-not by the Most High: not yetby the love I bore for your mother and bear for you, Eyjan Agnetesdatter, I swear that in humanness you will win release. It will be like coming alone out of winter night into a fire lit room where those whom you hold dearest are feasting.”

“And where I see no more stars, feel no more wind,” she protested.

“Faerie has had its splendors,” he replied. “But are you not wisest to give them up while they are in some part as you’ve known them? Dh, Eyjan, child, spare yourself the anguish of feeing the halfworld go down in wreck and feeling that same ruin In your own breast. For it will indeed perish, It will. What happened to him was but a foretaste of what must happen to all Faene. Magic is dying out of Creation. A sage man showed me that, and I’d fain show you it, though each word scourges me too, if you’ll stay here till I must return to the fleet.

“Do what is kindest, to those who care for you as well as yourself. Leave Faerie where you can find no happiness, whatever you do, wherever you range. Accept the divine love of Christ, the honest love of Niels and of the children you bear him; and one day we will all meet again in Heaven.”

His tone sank, he stared beyond her and every wall. “Agnete also,” he ended.

How much like Tauno he is, she thought

In summer, when trees gave shade against the sun, a vilja could move about by day. Nada danced through the forest in a swirl of tossing hair. Among shrubs she dodged, overleaped logs, sprang on high to grab a bough and swing from it for a moment before she sped onward. Her laughter chimed, “Come, come along, sluggard!” Her slenderness vanished into the green. Tauno stopped to pant and squint around after tracks of her. Suddenly her palms’ clapped over his eyes from behind, she kissed him between the shoulderblades, and was off again. Cooiethough her touch had been, it burned a long while in his awareness. He blundered on. Unseen, she sent breezes to fan him.

At last he could go no more. At a dark-brown, moss-lined pool he halted. Trees crowded around, huge oak, slim beech, murky juniper. They roofed off the sky, they made a verdant dusk bespeckled with sunflecks. Butterflies winged between them. It was warm here, the air heavy with odors of ripeness. A squirrel chattered and streaked aloft, then he was gone and the mighty silence of summer brooded anew.

“Hallo-o!” Tauno shouted. “You’ve galloped the breath out of me.” Leafy arches swallowed up his cry. He wiped off the sweat that stung his eyes and salted his lips, cast himself belly down, and drank. The pool was cold, iron-tinged.

He heard a giggle. “You have a shapely bottom,” Nada called. He rolled over and saw her perched on a limb above him, kicking her legs to and fro. They would catch a beam of light, which made them blaze gold, then return to being white in the shadows.

“Come here if you dare and I’ll paddle yours for that,” he challenged.

“Nyah.” She made a face at him. “You wouldn’t. I know you, you big fraud. I know what you’d really do.”

“What?”

“Why, cuddle me and pet me and kiss me—which is a better idea anyhow.” Nada floated, more nearly than jumped, to earth. Blackberries grew beneath the tree, She stopped to gather as many as her small hands could hold before she came to kneel by Tauno, who was now sitting,

“Poor love, you are tired,” she said, “Wet allover, and surely weak in the knees, Here, let me feed some strength back into you,”

Herself she was dry-skinned, unwinded, ready to soar off at any instant, She would not sleep when he did, nor did she share the fruits she placed in his mouth, The dead have no such needs,

“Those were delicious, thank you,” he said when she was through, “But if I’m to stay out here much longer, I’ll require food more stout, Fish from the lake; or, if you’ll help me quest, a deer,”

She winced, “I hate it when you kill.”

“I must,”

“Yes,” She brightened, “Like the great beautiful lynx you are,”

She stroked fingers across him, He touched her in turn, caresses which wandered everywhere. They could never be strong, those gestures, She was too insubstantial, He felt rounded softnesses, which moved in response to him, but they had no heat and always he got a sense of thistledown delicacy,

What had formed her, he knew not, nor she, The bones of Nada, Tomislav’s daughter, rested in a Shibenik churchyard. Her’ soul dwelt in an image of that body, formed out of , , , moonlight and water, maybe, It was a gentle damnation.

Damnation nonetheless, he reflected: for him as well.

“You hurt yourself,” she exclaimed, “Oh, don’t,”

He wrenched his glance from her, “Forgive me,” he said in a rusty voice. “I know my bad moods distress you, Maybe you should go for a run till I’ve eased.”

“And leave you alone?” She drew close against him, “No.” Mter a space: “Besides, I’m selfish. You lift my aloneness off me,”

“The trouble is just that, I desire you. . and found you too late.”

“And I desire you, Tauno, beloved.”

What did that mean to her? he wondered. She had died a maiden. Of course, she had known, from seeing beasts if naught,” else, what the way of a man with a woman is; but had she ever truly understood? Afterward she was not one to ponder, she was a spirit of wood and water, her heart gone airy; and what might be the desires which reigned in her? Did any?

Beyond the wish for his company-was that what had captured him, her own swift adoration? She was so utterly unlike Eyjan, perhaps he had unwittingly fled to her. Yet other women lent refuge likewise, and they could quiet his loins and give him comradeship which endured, not this haring about with a ghost. Ingeborg—

Tauno and Nada laid arms around waists. Her head rested on his muscles; he could barely feel the tresses. It restored his calm, the pain-tinctured joy he found with her. Surely this could not go on without end, but let him not fret about the future. Forethought was no part of his Faerie heritage, and he had disowned the human half. In the presence of Nada, beauty, frolic, muteness together in awe below the stars, he lost himself, he almost became at peace with everything that was, this side of Heaven.

“You’re wearied,” she said at length. “Lie down. Have a nap. I’ll sing you a lullabye.”

He obeyed. The simple melody, which her mother had belike never sung to her, washed over him like a brooklet and bore away care.

He was content. Let flesh and blood wait until some later time. The vilja would never betray him.

Summer descended toward autumn. At first the fields were crowded with peasants stooped above sickles, or following to rake, bind, shock, cart off, and glean. They labored from before dawn till after sunset, lest a rainstorm rob them, and tumbled into sleep. The work was still less merciful than usual, because all signs portended a winter early and harsh. When at last the garnering was done, everybody celebrated titanically. Meanwhile, each night the stars came forth seeming more remote than ever through air that quickly grew chill.

In one such darkness, Tauno and Eyjan walked along the riverbank. She had insisted that they have a real talk. He yielded, grudgingly, but said he felt too trapped between walls.

A glow above eastern peaks portended moonrise. Erelong it would be the harvest moon that lifted. Carl’s Wain loomed immense, as low as it glittered in the Dalmatian sky; higher blinked the Pole Star, to show Northern folk their way home. Frogs and crickets were silenced, only the purling stream had voice. Unseasonable hoarfrost lay upon sere grass. Tauno felt it under his feet, for he had shucked his clothes once out of sight of Skradin. Eyjan had not; hooded cloak and flowing gown did what they were able to hide the fullness of her.

After a mile or two, she took the word: “Captain Asbern sought me out while I was in Shibenik. He warned that if Brynhild doesn’t start back soon, she’ll have to lie over till spring. Already there are few masters who’d embark on so long a voyage.”

“Yes, we knew that,” he replied.

“But did you, at least, think about it?” Eyjan paused, except for her footfalls, before she continued. “I’ve learned about human ways of late, maybe more than you’ve condescended to do. It would be costly for Niels to have ship and crew a year or more agone. And that wretched war-Father back at the siege of Zadar, where he could be killed without ever having seen you. . . . Well, I’ve been told our documents may not protect us from the Venetians. A commerce raider of theirs may decide the King of Denmark and his bishops are too far off to be a threat. The later we depart, the worse our chances.”

“Why, then, we can let the ship sail,” he told her. “But what’s in Denmark for us?”

Alarm replied: “What’s for us here?” She caught his hand. They stopped in midstride. “Tauno, what is it that keeps you in the wildwood?”

He answered the first question. “Well, true, we found our kin and they’re merely another lot of mortals. You must indeed be weary of the lady’s role. So leave if you wish.”

She searched his countenance. It was visor-blank, though hers quivered. “Not you?”

“I think not yet. But go you, and give Ingeborg and Niels my greetings. ”

“You promised you’d return to her for at least a while.”

“I will, I will, when the time is right,” he snapped.

“You’ve changed, Tauno-in a way, more than anyone else from Liri.”

“Unless what I am now was ready within me, like a thaw in a frozen pond. Enough. I care not for chatter about myself.”

As he watched her, his mood softened. “Aye, do hail Ingeborg from me, if you return,” he said. “Tell her I’ve not forgotten loyalty, wise counsel, patient helpfulness, and, yes, how dear she was when we joined. I could wish it were in me to love a mortal woman as Father did Mother.” He sighed. “It isn’t.”

She looked away, but did not ask whom it was he could love.

“What of yourself, though?” he went on. “After you’ve spent a few weeks or months with Niels, where will you go?”

She braced herself. “I may go no farther at all,” she said.

“Hoy?” he barked, astounded. After a minute: “Well, yes, his leman while he remains young. I can see where that would be pleasant. He’d leave you your freedom; and after he grows old—”

“I would grow old with him.” Stubbornly, against his stupefaction, she urged: “You should listen to Father. He’s right, the Faith is true, and we’re not condemned, it’s just a matter of choosing to take what it promises. . . and Faerie is doomed, Tauno. . . . I wanted to be sure we two spoke together this night, because tomorrow I fare to Father Tomislav in his parish and pray him to tell me more. Won’t you come along?”

“No!” he roared, yanked loose from her grasp and made a fist against Heaven. “Eyjan, you can’t mean that—”

“I’m not quite sure, but—”

“Crawling before a God Who twists and breaks what He made- At least Odin never claimed to be just.” Her own strength rose to straighten her back and level her gaze.

“Be glad that God is not just,” she said. “He is merciful.”

“Where was the mercy for Nada?” He whirled about and ran. She started to follow, then stood where she was.

Far in the west, the moon still made the lake tremble with radiance; but the east was whitening, stars above yonder treetops were gone, and up there, like a gleam of bronze, an early hawk was at hover. On earth lay a frosty silence.

Tauno and Nada stood side by side on the shore. The vilja’s mood was more grave than formerly. “You are always good to me,” she murmured, “but oh, at this meeting, somehow, kindness has glowed from you. I felt it, I feel it yet, as once I felt sunshine.”

“How could I be other than kind, to you?” His tone was harsh.

In her pensiveness she did not notice, simply squeezed the fingers he had intertwined with hers. “You make me remember things like sunshine,” she told him. “With you by me, I’m no longer afraid to remember. I know you’ll take away the hurt.”

“You, you help me forget.”

“What? But you’d not want to forget, would you? Your wonderful sea, that I never weary of hearing about. I, though, I was no more than a silly girl who stumbled into such woe that she drowned herself. Yes, I did; today I dare know it, though I can’t understand how I ever got that bewildered.” She smiled. “And over a boy, a mere boy. You are a man.”

“A merman.”

“Well, whatever, Tauno, dearest. Do you know what’s become of Mihajlo? I hope he’s cheery, wherever he is.”

“Yes, I hear he’s doing well.”

Her look upon him grew disturbed, for he was grimly staring out across the water. “You’ve been wounded by something new,” she said. “Can I help? How I wish I can.”

Surprised, for never before had she shown perception so close, he let slip: “I may have to leave soon. My sister, that I’ve told you about, she thinks we should and I fear she’s right.” Deep in his gullet: “As far as her reasoning goes; no further.”

Then Nada had recoiled from him, one hand across her open mouth to bar a shriek, the other palm thrust outward in denial.

N0, no, no. Tauno, why pease, no.

She crumpled together and wept. Not until tonight had he seen that.

He knelt to enfold her in his arms. The slim form clung, he stroked the loose hair of a maiden, he vowed he had misspoken himself and not for anything, ever, would he be sundered from her, and all the while he knew he was being as crazy as she had been when she ended her bodily life.

VIII

On the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle, the daughter of Andrei and Agnete was christened by Father Tomislav in his church. The name she had chosen was Dragomir. In Denmark, that had become Dagmar, which means “day maiden.”

Tall she stood before the alter, clad in white as though for her bridal, ruddy locks braided and covered as beseems a woman in the house of God. Beside her were her father, back again from the war for this moment; his wife Jelena; Ivan Subitj and his own lady. The dark little building was full of folk from the zadruga and her kindred of Liri, as many as could pack in. At the forefront stood Luka, with a look of hopeless yearning. At the back was Tauno. Some had said it was not right to let him in, but the priest had replied that he was her brother, and in any case there was inevitably much improvisation in this rite, and besides—who knew?—the spectacle might by sudden grace unseal his breast. He kept arms folded and countenance rigid.

Costly was the incense that scented the air, a gift from the zhupan. Fervent was the special prayer which Tomislav spoke, and radiant his face when he bade everybody kneel, took the water, and signed the brow of Eyjan. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Dagmar gasped and nearly fell. Andrei laid his arms around to steady her. Himself gazing Heavenward, he whispered, “Ag- nete, rejoice.”

The rest was soon done. Meanwhile she shed tears, but that was because she had no other way to utter forth her bliss. The sobbing ceased when she rose, and after exchanging embraces she walked out upright.

The weather had turned unseasonably cold. Wind drove clouds across a wan sky and soughed in leaves that were fast changing color. Shadows came and went. People who had been waiting at the door crowded around to bless Dagmar and welcome her to Christendom. They had prepared a modest meal of celebration. On the morrow the visitors must leave-she for the harbor, where Brynhild lay clear to sail.

Tauno, who had barely greeted his father that was, and had not knelt in church, stood aloof beneath a pine, as if to refuse a share in winter. It was a time before Dagmar could break free of her well-wishers and seek him out. None followed, as ill-omened as he seemed, roughly clad and armed with a spear.

She stopped before him and held out her hands. He made no response. Her veil and gown fluttered wildly, pressing cloth against hip and bosom. Nonetheless she was virginal. Perhaps that was because of an inner solemnity which no Faerie being could ever know.

Since he kept silence, she drew breath and spoke: “Thank you for coming. I wish I knew what else to say.”

“I had to bid my sister farewell,” he answered. “She was dear to me.”

Her lip quivered. “But I am your sister!”

He shook his head. “You’re a stranger. Aye, we share memories, we who shared a womb. Dagmar, though, is no mermaid; she’s a veritable saint.”

“No, you mustn’t believe that. I’m sanctified this day, like any infant newly received into Christ’s flock-yet I too will fall by the wayside over and over—but I dare hope I may repent and win forgiveness.”

“That was not Eyjan talking,” he said wryly. Her head drooped. “Then you refuse salvation?” He stood leaned on his spear. “At least you can’t stop my prayers for you, Tauno.”

At that, he grimaced. “I’ve no wish to cause you pain.”

“You’d gladden me if you’d fare home with me.”

“No. I’ve plighted a certain troth here. But won’t you wait until spring? Else it could be a stormy passage.”

“We are in God’s keeping. I must go to my rightful man, lest he die in his sins.”

Tauno nodded. “You are Dagmar in truth. Well, greet them from me, and may luck swim with all of you.” He turned and strode off into the woods. When he was out of sight, he ran as if hounded.

Nada was not in the glen where she and Tauno cornrnonly met, nor anywhere near. He strained his senses and skills that were of Faerie but could find only the dimmest spoor. Often the trail broke and he must cast widely about before he caught further traces. These showed in their far-scattering directions, and their own character, that she had been roving about distraught. The knowledge drove him frantic.

It took him a pair of days and nights to track her down. He did on the evening of the equinox. By then he was beside himself, and lurching with weariness.

Cold had deepened, gnawing inward through windless air. The sky was low and flat gray. She stood on the shore of the lake, which reached steely from a forest gone brown and yellow, a few splashes of blood-colored maple or somber evergreen, many boughs quite bereft. Her figure was tiny, lost, a wisp of pallor.

“Nada, oh, Nada,” he called, and stumbled toward her. His voice was hoarse from crying out while he searched.

“Tauno, beloved!” She sped to his arms. He folded them with vast care around her frailty. She felt almost as frozen as the day, and shuddered against him. Their tears mingled when they kissed.

“Where have you been?” he blurted. “What’s the matter?”

“I was afraid—” she whispered.

He stiffened. “What of?”

That you might not come back—”

“Darling, you knew I would—”

“before I must go under.”

“Under?”

“I shouldn’t have feared. I’m sorry. I should have trusted you. But I couldn’t think very well, it’s been so bleak.” She huddled still closer. “You’re here.”

Terrified, he said into the thistledown locks: “What do you mean, what must you do?”

“Go under. In the lake or a stream. Didn’t you know?” She pressed outward, slightly but enough for him to mark. He released her and she stepped back a pace to regard him. What blue had been in her great eyes was nearly faded away. “In winter, the sun is not too bright on the water for me,” she told him; “but the bare woods give no shelter from it. In the depths I find shadow. Surely you’ve heard this.”

“Yes—” He glanced earthward. The spear he had dropped lay between them. “Yes, but—”

“Erenow I could stay later awake. This fall, we’re bound straight into winter.” A dead leaf drifted from its twig to her feet.

“When must you leave?”

She hugged herself against the chill. “Soon. Today. Will you be here in spring, Tauno?”

He undid his belt. “Why, I’ll be at your side.”

She shook her head. Where he was now trembling and stammering, she had gained an odd clarity (and did she look more than ever translucent, a mist-wraith?). “No, dear love. I will float among dreams. Seldom could you rouse me, never for long. And there’s naught of your sea in yonder tomb-quietness. You’d go mad.”

He kept at work on his garments. “I can come ashore termly.”

“I think that would be worse for you than if you stayed up the whole dark while.”

For a span the vilja gazed steadily at the merman’s child. She had grown wise, had little Nada, in this twilight of her year.

“No,” she said at last. “Abide my return. That is my wish.” Mter another stillness: “Nor wait in the woods. Seek out mankind. . . for we’ve no elven women in these mountains such as you’ve told me of. . . and how often I’ve seen your desire that I cannot ever fulfill. My dreams down below will be happier if I’ve known you’re with someone living.”

“I don’t want any.”

Horror smote her. Crouched back as if beneath a whip, she wailed, “Oh, Tauno, what have I done to you? Go while you can. Never come back!”

The last garment dropped from him. His very knife lay fallen across the spearshaft, and he wore nothing but the spirit bone. She shrank further away and covered her eyes. “Go, go,” she pleaded. “You are too beautiful.”

Like tall waves joining, her despair met his and he was overwhelmed. “By the nets of Ran,” he choked, “you’re mine. I’ll make you mine.” He sprang forward and seized her. She wrenched her mouth from his raking kiss. “It’s death for you!” she screamed.

“How better to die. . . and be done-;—?”

They struggled. Dimly he knew he was being savage to her, but the force of it possessed him. “Nada,” he heard himself rave, “yield, be kind to me, this is what I want, and you’ll remember—”

She was out of his grasp, she had escaped him as might the wind. He lost footing and tumbled onto the withered turf. When he raised his head, he saw her yards off. She stood white against hueless water and sky, murkful trees, merciless cold wherein no breath showed around her. From her right hand hung the sigil.

He groped erect and staggered her way. She drifted backward. “I can easily leave you behind,” she warned. “I’d liefer not have to.”

He stopped and stood swaying, “I love you,” heaved out of him.

“I know,” she said with infinite tenderness. “And I love you.”

“I didn’t mean harm. I just wanted us to be together, truly together, the one time—if else we must be sundered forever.”

“There is a third way.” Calm had come upon her; she smiled. “You’ve told me about this thing. I’ll enter it, and you can have me with you always.”

“Nada, no!”

“Could I hope for more happiness than to lie on your heart? And maybe someday—” She broke off. “Stand where you are, Tauno,” she begged. “Let me see you while I can, and that be the wedding gift you give me.”

He could not even weep.

At first she did look at him as much as she did at the piece of a dead man’s skull which she held. But slowly the bird of the Otherworld possessed her, until at last she gazed only upon it as it winged across the new moon. Tauno saw how her form of a maiden grew ever more ghostly, until he could spy the wilderness through her, until she was the faintest glimmer in gathering darkness. And then she was gone. The talisman fell to earth.

He stayed in place for the quarter of an hour before he could go pick it up, kiss it, and hang it back where it belonged.

IX

On their homeward voyage, the crew of Brynhild marked how changed Lady Sigrid was. Had the decision of her brother Herr Carolus to stay in Croatia brought that about? Two or three sailors still believed that she slipped overboard of nights to disport herself in the waves. There was no eyewitness evidence, however, and most denied it. They bespoke her piety; now she did join the rest in prayer, where she was the most ardent person aboard, and she spent hours on her knees before the image of the Virgin at the aftercastle, often with tears streaming down her cheeks. At the same time, she was no longer curt and aloof, but quickly made herself beloved by her mild ways and her readiness to listen to the humblest among them. She became almost a mother confessor to several.

Captain Asbern had been doubtful about setting sail this late in the year. He went cautiously, as near the coasts as was prudent, running for haven at the first sign of a hard blow. Thus he did not reach Denmark until shortly before Christmas. But the passage was free of peril, with no more hardship than seamen should endure.

About midday on the feast of Adam, Brynhild lay alongside a Copenhagen dock. After learning whose she was, the harbormaster dispatched a boy to tell the owner.

Snowflakes drifted thinly out of a sky already dusking. The air was mild and damp. Scant traffic moved between walls and arcades, beneath overhanging galleries; yet light from windows, smoke from roofholes, savory odors, sounds of bustle and laughter and song, told how folk indoors were making ready to honor the birth of Our Lord. Those twelve days would be like a giant candle in the middle of that cavern which was winter. Slush plopped under the hoofs of the mules which man and woman rode. Ahead of them, high-booted against muck, went a pair of armed linkbearers. The flames flared and sparked, casting short-lived stars out among the snowflakes.

“We’ve only time for a few more barebones words ere we reach your house,” she reminded. “The whole tale will be days in the telling.” She thought. “No, years or a lifespan-for the understanding of it.”

“We will have that lifespan, we twain,” said Niels happily.

She clenched a hand tighter than needful around the reins. “It will not be easy. First, this same eventide—I dread- How. . . what. . . shall I tell Ingeborg? Help me think what may wound her the least.”

He flinched. “I was forgetting.”

“Blame not yourself. Joy can so easily be selfish. Once I would have forgotten.”

“Eyjan—”

“I am Dagmar.”

He crossed himself. “Could I forget your own miracle? God forgive!”

“It will not be easy for us,” she repeated. “You must needs bear with me more than most men with their wives: I who in flesh and mind am half a mermaid.”

“And the other half a saint,” Niels answered. A bit of his olden grin flashed forth. “That will prove hard on me.”

“No, never say such things,” Dagmar beseeched. “You’ll likeliest find me stubborn, quick-tempered, no real womanly meekness in me, strive though I will for it.” She reached toward him. “But oh, Niels, never will I fail in my love for you.”

He became grave, took her clasp, observed her through snowfall and dim yellow light. Finally he asked low, “Do you indeed love me, Dagmar? You care for me, yes, I know that, and I’ve no right to crave more. Yet—”

“I give you myself, since you will have me,” she told him in utter honesty. “My inmost heart you have still to win, but my prayer is that you may; and in that quest also, I will fare at your side.”

X

Ingeborg Hjalmarsdatter was a Jutish woman of about thirty winters. Early one spring she arrived at Hornbaek, a fisher hamlet on the north coast of Zealand, a day’s ride by the shore road from Copenhagen. The men who had gone before her, found a cottage for sale, and comfortably furnished it, had explained that she was a widow of means who wanted a place where she could take refuge, when she desired, from city life, among common people such as she herself had been before making a good marriage.

The dwellers gave her an awkward welcome but were soon at ease. She put on no airs; rather, she was soft-spoken in her funny dialect, and ever ready to help when a need was real, whether for a bit of money or for hours of toil. However, nobody came truly to know her, and unwed men presently stopped paying court. She did not seek out her neighbors, nor invite them oftener than behooved her, nor gossip, nor say much of anything about her past. Alone in her home, she did housekeeping, kitchen gardening, and marketgoing for herself. Each day when weather allowed, she would walk miles along the beach or into the woods. That was not as reckless as it would have been formerly; the King’s peace prevailed anew, for a while, in these parts. Nevertheless, no other I woman would have dared. When the parish priest counseled her’ against it, she told him with a smile, the sadness of which matched aught he had ever seen, that she had nothing left to fear.

Time passed. Raw winds and lashing rains gave way to blossoms, plowing and seeding of what fields the villagers held, boats bound forth to reap the waters. Blossoms fell, apples budded, furrows wore a tender green, forest filled with birdsong. On the roof of Einar Brandsen had long been fastened an old cartwheel whereon a family of storks nested, summer after summer. They were thought to be lucky for everyone thereabouts, and indeed the months wending past saw births, confirmations, weddings, large catches, merry holidays. But of course they also saw illness, death, burial, a drowned man wash up on this his own strand.

So time went as it ever had, until a new stranger arrived.

He came westward from the Sound, belike from Copenhagen, since his horse was of the best and his clothes, while sturdy for traveling, were too. He was very big and appeared young, beardless, hair yellow with a peculiar underwater tint, though the foreign-looking face was haggard. The lordliness of his bearing scarcely fitted with the absence of servant or bodyguard.

Nearing midsummer, the sun was yet above the Kattegat, over which it threw a bridge of molten gold. Eastward across the channel its low-flying rays glowed on clouds piled like mountains above Scania, which rested blue on the edge of sight. Elsewhere heaven stood clear, crossed and recrossed by wings. Far out, a few vessels lay becalmed, toylike, their sails also catching the light. Lulling of gentle surf and mewing of gulls were almost the only sounds adrift through coolness. Tang of sea and kelp mingled with odors from plowland and common on the rider’s left, and the woods which made a darkling wall beyond them.

Youngsters tending geese shrilled their delight when they saw him and sped to the roadside. A bit stiffly, he inquired how to find Fro Ingeborg’s house. His Danish resembled hers but was not quite the same. Could he be a different kind of Jute, or an actual outlander? The children buzzed like bees as he rode on.

Turning up Hombaek street, he was hardly more talkative to the grown persons who hailed him. “I am a friend bringing news solely for her ears. Tomorrow she’ll tell you what she sees fit. Meanwhile, please leave us be.”

Countryfolk like these were not shocked that he and she would spend a night together. Some snickered, some showed envy, a few who were more thoughtful recognized that here was no romp; the stranger’s manner was anything but lecherous.

Ingeborg’s cottage stood near the end of its row, an ordinary. building of moss-chinked timber gone silvery with age; thatch dropped low, full of lichen and wildflowers, anchored by cables against northerly gales. Dismounting, the newcomer unslung the bundle tied behind his saddle, took it under the same arm that held his spear, and gave a man a coin to stable his horse. The gathering goggled as he rapped on the door.

It opened; they saw Ingeborg wonderstricken, heard her shout; the stranger immediately stepped through and closed it against them. A minute later, the shutters were latched and nothing could.. be heard from within.

A peat fife on the hearth gave scant illumination, but she had thriftlessly lit several tapers. They. picked out newly installed stove, table, chair, stools, texture of woven hangings, brightness of kitchen gear, smoke that swirled among food-laden rafters, amidst flickery shadows. The cat which had hitherto been her” single housemate had given up seeking attention and slept on the rushes strewn over the clay floor. Warmth and pungency filled the room, as if to stave off the night that had fallen.

Tauno and Ingeborg sat on a chest whose top, cushioned, was a bench with a backrest. A goblet of wine rested on a shelf at his side for them to share, but it had seen no heavy use, and the meal she set forth remained untasted. For after the storm of kisses, embraces, caresses, laughter, tears, wild words of joy had laid itself to rest in her, he had starkly begun relating his story.

“—I came overland, in hopes I might find something that would give hope. But the journey was merely slow, hard, and dangerous. Well, here and there were remnants of Faerie, different from any I’d ever heard of before. Once I’d have spent much time getting to know them. Now I found I had no stomach to linger long anywhere. I reached Copenhagen a few days ago. Niels and Dagmar made me welcome, but still less did I want the lodging they gave-too thick with sanctity, no place for my Nada. I told them naught about her. Instead, I got what I needed to be respectable and came straight hither. Aye, they bade me greet you kindly and urge your return. They’d like to see you mingling, taking pleasure, making a match with some genial widower who needs a mother for his children.”

Ingeborg leaned against him, his arm around her waist, hers reaching across his back to comb fingers through his hair. But she did not look at him, she stared into that hole of darkness which was the open door to the rear chamber. The second storm he raised in her, by his tale, had likewise died down. She still trembled somewhat, hiccoughed, spoke in a voice roughened and unsteady after much sobbing; her eyes were red, she snuffled, salt lay along her cheeks and upper lip. Yet she could quietly ask:

“How is it with you and her?”

He too gazed beyond. “Strange,” he answered, no louder. “Her nearness-like a, a sweet drink that burns—or a memory of a darling lost, before grief has faded, though more than a memory: a presence- Is this how you Christians feel about your dead who are in Heaven?”

“I think not.”

“Waking, I have her with me, as I have my own bloodbeat.” Tauno smote his knee. “That’s all-that, and remembrance more sharp than any other ever-it hurts!” He mastered himself. “But it quenches too. It is her presence, I said; she has not gone away. And when I sleep, oh, then she comes back in dreams. They’re like life; we’re together, just the way we used to be; because it is Nada in the sigil.”

Ingebord summoned her last strength: “Do you, in these dreams, fully know her?”

He slumped. “No. We roam and gambol through her homeland or in lands and seas where I’ve been and call forth for her. She grows wide-eyed with amazement. . . until sorrow seizes her that she must deny me more than a kiss. I tell her these are simply dreams and she tells me they are not, they’re a meeting of shades outside of space and time; she’s a ghost, she tells me, and if I lost myself in her I would share her death.”

“Oh, don’t!” Ingeborg’s fingers grew white-knuckled upon his shoulder. Unvoiced was that he would die like a blown-out flame.

Silence.

“Fear not, I shan’t,” he said.

“Bless Nada for her care—” The woman drew a ragged breath. “Yet, Tauno, whom I myself love. . . you’ll not go on thus, will you? Year after year, century after century, living only what you’ve lost. . . no, what you never really had?” She twisted about to see him. Her mouth stretched out of shape. “God gave you no soul. How can He leave you trapped in Hell?”

“It isn’t—”

She clutched him with both hands. “Throw that thing in the sea, in the Pit!” she yelled. “This night!”

“Never.” Before the sternness in his countenance, she quailed back.

Abruptly he smiled. His tone gentled, he reached for her, touched lips to her forehead. “Good friend, be not afraid. Everything shall be made well. I misspoke me. You were suffering, and that roused my own ache; but it’s very near an end. I give you my word of honor it is.”

Numbed, she gaped at him and mumbled, “What will you do?”

“Why, this,” he said levelly. “Do you remember what I told you about the sigil after we returned from Greenland, that the angakok had earlier told Eyjan and me? Faerie scryers I met on the way back from Croatia, they agreed he spoke truth, and added more knowledge to mine.

“Nada dwells in the talisman. But she’s not locked there for aye. She can come forth, into a living body, if that person invites her.

“I will do that. Nada and I will become one, in a deeper fashion than I sought. I’ve delayed just so that I might see how you fare in Denmark—”

She screamed, wilder than before, and cowered from him.

He rose to stand above her, take her temples between his palms, speak anxiously: “Be at peace. Nada is. She’s ready to dare this venture with me.”

Ingeborg shuddered toward a measure of steadiness. She could not meet his gaze. “Find someone else,” she moaned. “You can if you search.”

He frowned and let go of her. “I thought of that, but Nada refused, and rightly. It’s an unhallowed thing to do: for she’s damned.”

“But a girl in despair... or a pagan, or—She’d gain, wouldn’t she? You. . . for a husband. . . and what else?”

“The vilja’s agelessness, her power over air and water, while keeping the sun-loving flesh. And, aye, Nada’s dear flighty spirit. Such a woman would be of the halfworld.”

“You’d find many who’d spring at yon bargain.”

“And sunder themselves from God, with who knows what fate after the body at last perishes? That was something which no magician could learn for me.” Tauno shook his head. “Nada will not. Nor, in my honor, once she’d explained the evil to me, could I allow it.”

Ingeborg lifted face and hands in pleading. “But what will you become?”

“That’s another thing which is unknown, I being of Faerie,” he replied. “Wherefore I’d fain wait several days yet, and nights, with you, old comrade.”

“Are, are, aren’t you afraid? You’ll nevermore be Tauno.”

He raised himself to his full height; his shadow fell huge. “I am Tauno Kraken’s-bane,” rang from him. “Should I fear to take unto me my bride?” She sat mute, until he touched her and murmured:

“The hour is late. Let’s to bed, shall we? Though this night, at least—after what’s passed between,us—I’m weary to the marrow. Let’s just sleep. You understand, don’t you Ingeborg? You’ve always understood.”

The second room was where she slept.

Having stolen from him after he was evenly breathing, she kindled a splint at the banked fife and used that to relight a taper. This she carried back. It gave her enough ocher dusk to see him by. .

He wanted no blankets, but lay on his right side on the pallet, unclad. Over the length of him, the great thews molded darknesses which stirred as his rib cage rose and fell. A lock of hair had tumbled across his brow, another curled beneath the jawline. A blind calm was on his face;. In the crook of an arm nestled her cat, purring.

Herself naked-she felt the rushes beneath her feet, heard them rustle, caught in her nostrils a phantom of bruised sweetness-she went carefully to the bedside. She had taken the crucifix off the wall. From that peg hung the talisman.

(“Doff it,” she had urged. “This once, that you may rest untroubled in your true dreams.”)

(“She would be lonely.”)

(“I see on you the marks of nature’s revenge. Would Nada not want you healed of them?”)

She had better not look at him for more than a few pulsebeats. He might awaken. She took the sigil by its thong and slipped back out again, closing the door behind her. Thereafter she could stand freely and by the light of the candle in her left hand behold the thing she bore in her right.

All else receded. The weight was small and was as heavy as the world. The dull ivory became a whole sky whose hollowness roofed her in, through which the dark-headed bird winged in eclipse of a moon; she was the earth below, she was the sea. It closed her off from every sound, it made a hush that snowed down through her, drenched her in its coolness until nothing was in Creation but one enormous hearkening, which was herself.

When silence had been completed, she could hear in her spirit, like a dying echo:—Who are you? What would you?

—I am Ingeborg, your sister, who also loves him.

She put the candle in a holder and brought the thong across her head, brushing her tresses aside, until the piece of bone lay on her bosom. She parted her breasts that it might fall next her heart. Her fingers she clasped above.

Clear within her, a song of longing: -Ingeborg. Yes. You have had what I never may. I’m glad to know you. He keeps remembeflng you. (Surprise) What, you weren’t aware? Well, he does.

(Later)—He is yours, however, Nada.

-He shouldn’t be. If I’d foreseen, I’d have fled him. . . I hope...But now I can’t.

—Of course you can’t.

(Later, tirnidly)—Ingeborg?

-Yes?

—I’m frightened, Ingeborg. Not for me, really not. For him. You know what he wants to do.

-Aye. Why do you suppose I’m talking with you?

-But- You? (Aghast) No! I mustn’t!

-Why not?

—I’m damned.

-Well?

-Not you too. I couldn’t.

-Not even if this is my dearest wish? asked Ingeborg into the weeping.

-It can’t be. You’ve Heaven before you.

-What’s that to me without him?

-We know not what’ll become of us . . . you-me. . . on the Last Day.

Ingeborg lifted her head. Candle-glow went fiery across her.

-Do you care?

—I should. For you.

-Nada, come to me. (With the strength of aliveness) We will be the bride of Tauno Kraken’s-bane.

There was a moment, though, when Ingeborg went on her knees. The rushes had slipped aside and she felt the cold clay underneath. “Mary,” she whispered, “I’m sorry if I’ve made you cry.”

She walked from the sleeping hamlet, down to the strand. While the Danish nights had grown short, they were still dark. Eastward, thunderclouds had gone to loose their anger elsewhere, and a ghost of dawn was paling the stars. Throughout the rest of the sky they gleamed in their thousandfolds around the Milky Way. Beneath that crystal black which held them, the Kattegat glimmered quicksilver.

She waded out. With no wind behind it, the surf had grown slight, and she was soon in water that merely clucked around her. Neither chill nor the numberlessly lumpy shingle hurt. Instead, they were like promises of a salt streaming that waited farther on. When the seatop kissed her nipples, she went below.

She could not breathe the depths as a mermaid did, and that was a loss, but she did not need to, either, She swam, she flowed, she gave back to the water the infinite endearments it sent gliding everywhere across her. She needed no more luminance than was down here to see how long brown vines with fluttering leaves sought upward from rocks whereto they were anchored, how fish darted like argent meteors, how shoals gave way to deeps and endless mystery. She could hear tides as they rolled around the world in the lunar wake, she could hear dolphins pass news onward from a coast of coral, across immensities she could hear the music of great whales. Beyond, she traced gleams, melodies, magics out of the realms that remained Faerie.

She remembered being Ingeborg and she remembered being Nada, but now she was both and she was neither. What swam was a creature of the halfworld, who could love and laugh and strive and sorrow, could do much that is forever denied to the children of Adam, but could no more know God than can an albatross or the wind whereon it soars. Made free, made whole, she felt ever more keenly how joyful she was. Let her doom take her when the Noms chose. This hour was hers. Soon, ere folk awakened, she would go back and rouse Tauno.

XI

For his guest Herr Carolus Brede, Niels Jonsen bought a yacht, small enough to single-hand but well enough built for the high seas. Her lading became tools, weapons, rope, cloth, and much else in the way of gear and stores. Rumor went that he planned to open clandestine trade with the Wends, under the nose of Hansa. But when he was ready, he simply dispatched three men and an extra pair of horses to Hornbaek. He and Carolus took the boat north, not south, up the Sound and west along the Zealand coast; and Fro Dagmar came too, though she was with child.

They passed the settlement. Off an unpeopled stretch marked by a tall fir, they dropped anchor and waited. Fishing craft were in view, from which night would veil them.

It came late, for this was the Eve of St. Hans, when the sun is not long nor far below Danish horizons. The sky was violet, so bright that few stars glimmered and they small and secret. Water sheened like burnished silver, changeably etched by cool air that carried fragrances of growth from the land. One could count the trees yonder, or read the palm of one’s beloved. On distant hilltops, baleflres glowed red; youths and maidens were dancing around them.

Clink, clink, said ripples against strakes. Bird calls sounded afar. Surf made a murmur. Little else broke the hush.

Then a swimmer surfaced and hailed softly in a foreign language. Tauno replied likewise. She drew nigh; he leaned over and helped her aboard. Drops gleamed downward off her nakedness.

They say there that the body of Ingeborg had become more fully rounded than erstwhile, for its muscles gave it the motion of a cat. Sunlight had laved it everywhere. Weather had turned brown braids to deep amber. These things hardly mattered beside the strangeness which radiated from her. The very countenance of Ingeborg had subtly changed, become somehow fluid, both shy and bold, heedless and wise, looking forth upon the world as a lioness might, yet with something of otter, seal, and wide-ranging tern in that gaze,

Tauno and she hugged each other for minutes, mouth to mouth, “How have your days gone?” he finally asked,

“Well indeed,” She chuckled. “Besides practicing what you taught me before you left, I’ve invented a trick or two of my own. But I’ve missed you hard, I hope the cabin holds a stoutly timbered bunk,”

“What?” he teased. “You seduced no handsome young men?”

Shadow-swift gravity fell upon her, “I want none but you, Tauno,” she said like a virgin in love.

They had been speaking Danish. Their words distressed Fru Dagmar, as their behavior had. She trod forward, “I’ve laid out clothes for you,” she announced, “Let me show you where they are.”

Brows lifted above sparkling eyes, “Why, what need? They’d be shucked before daybreak.” Mirth departed as fast as it had come. Arms enfolded the woman. “Oh, blood of my dearest, how good to see you,” Stepping back: “And you’re to be a mother! That’s making you glow from within, did you know?”

“Would that I might rejoice for you,” Dagmar answered sadly, “I can but pray,”

Tauno plucked the sleeve of Niels. “She ought to have stayed behind, your lady,” he said for the man alone to hear. “She’s too saintly for this.”

“But no less brave than aforetime,” her husband replied. “She cherishes a tiny hope we can keep you here, and thus maybe at last win your salvation, I’d like that myself,” His smile was rueful, “Also for the sake of your company, my shipmates. After you, I’m apt to find my fellows of earth lacking in salt.”

His glance fell on his friend’s vivid partner, lingered, sought hastily for his wife.

Tauno sighed. “Spare yourselves, and us,” he urged. “We’ll miss you likewise. But go we must, and unlikely it is you’ll ever greet us again,”

Their companions heard that, “Yes, quick farewells are best,” said she who had risen from the depths, “Go straightway home and be glad in your lives.”

“Have you decided whither you’re bound?” Niels asked.

“No. How could we, when it’s into the unknown?” Tauno responded. “Westward, maybe to Vinland or beyond. Whole vast realms of nature, Faerie, and man must be there, untouched by Christendom, open for our adventuring.” He grinned. “Why, we might become gods.” Seeing Dagmar wince and sign herself: “Not that we’d seek to, but we might. Anything might happen, which is why we are going.”

“To know as much wonder as we can reach in whatever our spans may be,” his leman said eagerly.

“But they’ll come to a close!” Dagmar cried.

Tauno nodded. “Aye, Faerie is fey, and the work of such as Niels and you is what will bring it to the end.” He squeezed the shoulder of the first, kissed the cheek of the second. “Regardless, we love you.”

“And we love you,” Dagmar said through tears. “Must we mourn you in eternity?”

“No. No more than you’ll mourn this whole world”—the female swept a hand around sea, land, sky, all the light night-“fair though you will remember that it was. We would not be other than we are: our part of the whole Creation.”

“lngeborg-Nada—” Bewilderment lowered the grief in Dagmar. “Who are you?”

“Both and neither. A child of sorrow whose mother died in the birthing. May yours be the child of abiding joy. . . . I need a name for myself. May I call me Eyjan?”

This time it was the mortal woman that embraced the woman of Faerie.

The yacht had towed a skiff, which brought Niels and his wife ashore. He was rowing when a yardarm rattled aloft. Tauno made sail fast and took the rudder. His mate called up a strong breeze. Their craft surged forward, north-northwest over the Kattegat, to round the Skaw and find the ocean. Above her mast, catching on their wings the light of a sun still hidden, went a flight of wild swans.