“Good evening,” he said awkwardly.
She smiled at the tall, frightened boy. “Welcome,” she said.
“Have you…may I…mayI join you?”
“I wish you would.” Eyjan pointed to where the .luminance
picked out a couple of widely spaced roilings on the port and starboard quarters. “I long to be with them. Take my mind off it, Niels.”
“You-you-you do love your sea, noT’
“What better thing to love? Tauno made a poem once-1 cannot put it well into Danish-let me try: Above, she dances, clad in sun, in moon, in rain, in wind, strewing gulls and spindrift kisses. Below, she is green and gold, calm, all-caressing, she whose children are reckoned by shoals and herds and pods and flocks beyond knowing, giver and shelterer of the world. But farthest down she keeps what she will not ever let the light see, mystery and terror, the womb wherein she bears herself. Maiden, Mother, andMistress of Mysteries, enfold at the end my weary bones!. . . No.” Eyjan shook her head. “That is not right. Maybe if you thought of your earth, the great wheel of its year, and that… Mary? . . . who wears a cloak colored like the sky, maybe then you could-1 know not what I am trying to say.”
“I can’t believe you’re soulless!” Niels cried softly.
Eyjan shrugged. Her mood had shifted. “They tell me our kind
was friendly with the old gods, and with older gods before them. Yet never have we made offering or worship. I’ve tried and failed to understand such things. Does a god need flesh or gold? Does it matter to him how you live? Does it swerve him if you grovel and whimper? Does he care whether you care about him? “I can’t bear to think you’ll someday be nothing. I beg you, get christened.”
“Ho! Likelier would you come undersea. Not that I could bring you myself, My father knows the magic for that; we three don’t.”
She laid a hand over his, where he gripped the rail till his fingers
hurt: “Yet I would fain take you, Niels,” she said low, “Only for
a while, only to share what I love with you,”
“You are too, . . too kind,” He started to go. She drew him back.
“Come,” she smiled, “Under the foredeck are darkness and my
bed,”
“What?” He could not at once comprehend, “But you-
but-“
Her chuckle cuddled him, “Fear not, We sea-wives do know
the spell that keeps us from conceiving unless we wish it,”
“But-only for sport-with you-“
“For sharing of more than pleasure, Niels,” However gentle,
the pull of her hand on his arm became overwhelming,
Tauno and Kennin did not swim watch for naught. They called
up warning of a rock, and alter of a drifting boat, perhaps broken
loose from a ship that was towing it, These were trafficked waters
this time of year, Ranild felt cordial toward the brothers when
they came aboard at dawn,
“God’s stones!” he bawled, laying hand on Kennin’s shoulder.
“Your breed could turn a pretty penny in royal fleet or merchant
marine,”
The boy slipped free. “I fear the penny must be prettier than
any they own,” he laughed, “to make me stand in an outhouse
breath like yours,”
Ranild cuffed after him, Tauno stepped between. “No more,”
the oldest halfling rapped, “We know what work is to be done
and how the gains are to be shared. Best not overtread-from
either side,”
Ranild stamped from them with a spit and an oath, His men
growled,
Soon afterward Niels found himself circled by four off watch, up on the poop, They cackled and nudged him, and when he would not answer them they drew knives and spoke of cutting him till he did. Later they were to say it was not really meant, But that was then. At the time, Niels broke through, tumbled down the ladder, and ran forward.
The merman’s children lay asleep beneath the forecastle. It was a blue day of blithe winds; a couple of sails were on the horizon, and gull wings betokened the nearness of land.
The slumberers woke with animal quickness. “What’s wrong now?” asked Eyjan, placing herself beside the human youth. She drew the steel dagger that, like her brothers, she had gotten In-geborg to buy for her with a bit of Liri gold. Tauno and Kennin flanked them, harpoons in hand.