Eyjan gave her a quick, rough embrace. “You got too great a share of our mortal side,” declared the older sister.
Tauno scowled. “And that is a terrible truth,” said he. “Yria is not strong. She cannot swim fast, or far without rest and food. What if we’re set on by beasts? What if winter catches us away from the warm shallows, or what if the Liri outcasts move to the! Arctic? I do not see how we can take her on any journey.”
“Can’t we leave her with some foster?” asked Kennin.
Yria shrank into Eyjan’s arms. “Oh, no, no,” she begged. They
could scarcely hear her.
Kennin reddened at his own foolishness. Tauno and Eyjan looked at each other across the hunched back of their little sister. Few were the merfolk who would take in a weakling, when the strong had trouble enough fending for themselves. Now and again one might; but he would do so out of desire. They had no true hope of finding a sea-man who would want this child as their father had wanted a certain grown maiden; nor would that be any kindness to the child.
Tauno must gather his will to speak it aloud: “I think, before we leave, we’d best take Yria to our mother’s people.
IV
THE old priest Knud was wakened by a knocking. He climbed from his shut-bed and fumbled a robe on in the dark, for the banked hearthfire gave no real glow; and he felt his way to the door. His bones ached, his teeth clapped with chill. He wondered who might be near death. He had outlived every playmate. . . . “I come, in Jesu name, I come.”
A full moon had lately risen. It threw a quicksilver bridge on the Kattegat and made glint the dew on cottage roofs; but the two crossed streets of Als lay thick with shadow, and the land beyond had become a stalking ground for wolves and trolls. Strangely quiet were the dogs, as if they feared to bark; the whole night was cracklingly still; no, a sound somewhere, hollow, a hoof? The Hell Horse grazing among the graves?
Four stood in a cloud of their own breath, unseasonably cold as this night was. Father Knurl gasped and signed himself. He had never seen merfolk, besides the one who had come into his church-unless a glimpse in childhood had been more than a marvelous dream. What else could these be, though? He had heard enough accounts from those of his parishioners who met them now and again. The features of the man and woman were cast in that alien mold, the boy’s less clearly so, the girl-child’s hardly at all. But water dripped and shimmered from her too; she too wore a fishskin tunic and clutched a bone-headed spear.
“You, you, you were to have. . . been gone,” the priest said, hearing his voice thin in the frosty quiet.
“We are Agnete’s children,” said the tall man. He spoke Danish with a lilting accent that was indeed, Knud thought wildly, out-landish. “Because of her heritage, the spell did not touch us.”
“No spell-a holy exorcism-“ Knud called on God in his mind and squared his narrow shoulders. “I pray you, be not wroth with my villagers. The thing was none of their doing or wish.” “I know. We have asked. . . a friend. . . about what happened.
Soon we shall go away. First we would give Yria into your care.”
The priest was somewhat eased by this, and likewise by seeing that his visitors’ bare feet were of human shape. He bade the four come in. They did, wrinkling their noses at the grime and smells in the single room which the parish house boasted. He stoked the fire, kindled a rushlight, set forth bread, salt, and beer, and, since the newcomers filled the bench, sat down on a stool to talk with them.
Long was that talk. It ended well after he had promised to do his best for the girl. Her three siblings would linger a while to make sure; he must let her go to the strand every dusk and meet them. Father Knud pleaded with them to stay ashore too, but this they would not. They kissed their sister and took their leave. She wept, noiselessly but hopelessly, until she fell asleep. The priest tucked her in and got what rest he could on the bench.