Save for Agnete’s, of course. . . . How she had striven to build into them a sense of what she held to be right and decent. After she departed, Vanimen had given them what he could of their earthside heritage; after all, he had seen something of that over the centuries. Now he wondered if he had done them any service.
Well, but those haggard faces were turned his way. He must offer them more than the empty wail of the wind.
He filled his lungs till his voice could boom forth: “People of Liri that was, here we must decide our course. Wallowing blindly about, we will die. Yet every shore we ken that might nourish us is either forbidden to beings of Faerie—most of them are-or hold as many of our kind as can live there. Where then shall we seek?”
A quite young male called, with a lilt of eagerness: “Do we need a coast? I’ve kept myself for weeks in the open ocean.”
Vanimen shook his head. “You could not for years, Haiko. Where would you go for rest or refuge? Where would you raise a home, or find the very stuff you need for its making? The deeps we may enter for a short while, but we cannot stay in them; they are too cold, black, and barren; the ooze covers all that we dig from skerries and eyots and shoals. Without an abiding place, presently without tools or weapons, you would be no more than a beast, less fitted for life than the shark or orca which would hunt you down. And before you perished, the children would, the hope of our blood. No, we are like our cousins the seals, we need earth, and air as much as we need water.”
Fire, he thought, was kept for men.
Well, he had heard of the dwarfs, but the thought of living
underground was shuddersome.
A lean female with blue tresses took the word: “Are you sure we can find no place nearby? I’ve cruised the Gulf of Finland. At the far end of it are rich fishing grounds which none of our sort inhabit.”
“Did you ever ask why, Meiiva?” Vanimen replied.
Surprised, she said, “I meant to, but always forgot.
“The careless way of Faerie,” he sighed. “I found out. It nearly
cost me my life, and nightmares rode me for years afterward.”
Their looks at him sharpened. That was at least better than the dullness of despair. “The mortals there are Rus,” he told them, “a different folk from Danes, Norse, Swedes, Finns, Letts, Lapps, any in these parts. The halfworld beings that share their land with them are.. . different also: some friendly, but some weird and some altogether terrible. A vodianoi we might cope with, but a rousalka—“ Memory bit him, colder than wind and thickening rain. “Each river seems to have a rousalka. She wears the form of a maiden, and is said to have been one until she drowned; but she lures men into the depths and takes them captive for frightful tortures. I too was lured, on a moonlit night in the tidewater, and what happened, what I saw-well, I escaped. But we cannot live along shores thus haunted.”
Silence fell, under the lash of the downpour. Color was gone, vision found naught save grays and darknesses. Lightning flared close; thunder went rolling down unseen heaven.
Finally an elder male-bom when Harald Bluetooth reigned in Denmark-spoke: “I’ve given thought to this as we traveled. If we cannot enter as a group where our kind dwell, can we not by ones and twos, into the various domains? They could take us in piecemeal, I believe. They might even be glad of the newness we’d bring.”
“For some, that may be the answer,” V animen said unwillingly; he had awaited the idea. “Not for most of us, though. Remember how few nests of merfolk are left; we were the last on a Danish strand. I do not think they could, between them, add our whole number without suffering for it. Surely they would be loth to have our little ones, who must be fed for years before they can help bring in food.”