Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

Poul Anderson

The Merman’s Children

1979

Prologue

THE coast of Dalmatia rises steeply. A bare league inland, Shibenik town stands high on a hill above the

river Krka and sees mountain peaks in the east. Here the water forms a broad basin, which narrows as it

moves on to the sea. Upstream, however, it tumbles in ringing cascades out of the lake which it and

others have made.

In the days when the Angevin Charles Robert became boy-king of Croats and Magyars, the land along

those falls was mostly wildwood. Likewise it was around much of the lake, save where the Krka empties

into this. There folk had long since cleared it and laid it under the plow. A little farther up the river, about

where the Chikola flows into it, Skradin village clustered by the stronghold of its lord, the zhupan.

Nevertheless, even within castle walls, the wilderness came a-haunting. Not only might one hear wolves

howl by night and jackals bark by day, or have one’s fields raided by deer and wild boar, or glimpse the

horned mightiness of elk and aurochs. Un-canny beings dwelt yonder-Leshy among the trees, a vodianoi

in the deeps and lately, it was whispered, a vilja.

Ivan Subitj, zhupan, paid scant heed to such talk among his serfs. He was a stark man, though just, near

kin to the great Ban Pavle and thus aware of a larger world than theirs. Moreover, he had spent years

outside, many of them in the wars that hardened and scarred him.

Nor did his eldest son Mihajlo fear woodland bogies. Indeed, this youth had well-nigh forgotten

whatever legends he heard early in life: for he had been educated at the abbey in Shibenik, had traveled

to the bustling ports of Zadar and Split and once across the narrow sea to Italy. For his part, he wanted

wealth and fame, escape from the changelessness wherein he had passed his cltild-hood. To that end,

with Ivan’s help, he attached himself to the retinue of Pavle Subitj the kingmaker.

Just the same, he remained fond of his home country and often visited Skradin. There they knew him as

a merry soul, kindhearted if occasionally thoughtless, who brought with him color, song, and vivid stories

from beyond their horizon. On a certain morn in a new summer, Mihajlo left the castle to go hunting. Half

a dozen fellows accompanied him. Three were guards and body servants who had come along from

Shibenik. Peace prevailed for the moment, both with the Venetians and among the powerful clans; and

Ivan Subitj had beheaded the last bandit in these parts several years ago. Still, few men ventured far

alone, and no women. The rest of those with Mihajlo as he rode forth were his younger brother Luka and

two free peasants who would be guides and do the rough work. A pack of hounds trotted behind.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The party made a brave sight. Mihajlo was clad in the latest Western fashion, green doublet and hose,

saffron shirt, silk-lined cape, Cordovan half-boots and gauntlets, flat velvet cap on long brown curls, face

clean-shaven. A hanger slapped at his waist whenever his horse grew frolicsome. He sat the beast as if

they were one. His own attendants were hardly less gaudy; their spear-heads flashed aloft. Luka was in

much the same knee-length coat, over tunic and cross-gaitered breeches, as the peasants; his garb was

simply of better stuff, with finer embroidery along sleeves and hem, his brimless conical hat trimmed with

sable while theirs had rabbit fur. He and they alike bore short, recurved bows, as well as knives of a size

to cope with bear.

Hoofs racketed in the street, thudded on paths beyond. Unlike Frankish lords, those who were Croatian

generally respected their underlings; had Mihajlo ridden across the tender green of crop-lands, he would

have answered to his father. Passing a meadow, he did frighten a few calves with a joyful blast on his

horn, but rail fences kept them from bolting.

Presently he was in the woods, on a game trail. This was mingled oak and beech forest, soaring boles,

over-arching boughs, murmurous leaves, shadowy vaults and reaches where sunlight struck through in

flecks and speckles, the hue of gold. Birdsong sounded remote and hushed against the quiet that brooded

here. The air was warm, yet carried an edge, and full of odors that had naught to do with house or byre.

The hounds caught a scent. Their clamor awoke. In the next hours the men took a stag, a wolf, a brace

of badger; a wild sow eluded them, but they remained well content. Reaching the lake, they startled a

flock of swans, let fly their arrows, brought down three. They thought they might return home.

That happened which God allowed.

Another stag trod onto the shore, a hundred yards from them.

Late afternoon sunbeams washed aureate and blue-shadowed across him, for he was white, well-nigh

the stature of an elk. Already his growing antlers made a tree athwart heaven.

“By every saint!” shouted Mihajlo, and soared to his feet. A pair of shafts missed the deer, which waited

until the men were in the saddle again. Thereafter he fled them. Yet he did not seek thick brush where

horses could not follow. He stayed on the trails, ever glimmering in dimness. Vainly, the chase hallooed

after. Back and forth he led his pursuers, up and down, round and about, while time waned. The mounts

were blown, the dogs gasping, when at last he came back to the lake.

Timber gloomed above its gleam. The sun had sunk and left only a smear of sulfur on western blue.

Eastward was purple, swiftly darkening; a star trembled forth. Mist lay in streamers. Bats flitted on high.

It was turning cold. Silence filled everything that was.

Like a patch of fog, the crowned animal shivered and was gone.

Mihajlo choked on an oath. Luka crossed himself over and over, as did the servants. Both peasants

sprang from their stirrups, down onto their knees, whipped off their hats, and prayed aloud.

“We have been lured,” mumbled Sisko, the senior of them.

“By who and for what?”

“Let us begone, in God’s name,” begged his friend Drazha.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“No, hold.” Mihajlo rallied his courage. “Our steeds must rest.

We could kill them if we push right on. You know that.”

“Would you, you spend the night here?” stammered Luka.

“An hour or two, till the moon rises and we can find our way,”

Mihajlo said.

An attendant of his stared across the quicksilver above the depths, at a ragged murk of foliage beyond,

and protested, “Sir, this is no place for Christians. Old heathen things are abroad. That was no buck we

hunted, it was the very wind, and now it has vanished to wherever the wind goes. Why?”

“What, and you a city man?” Mihajlo gibed. “Our senses failed us, that’s all. Not surprising, weary as

we are.” He peered through the dusk at their faces. “There is no place on earth which is not for

Christians, if they have faith,” he said. “Come, let us call on our saints. How then can devils harm us?”

Weakly heartened, they dismounted if they had not already done so, prayed together, unsaddled their

beasts, began to rub these down with the cloths. More stars appeared in deepening twilight.

Mihajlo’s laughter rattled through the stillness. “Do you see?

We had no need of fear.”

“No, never,” sang a girl’s voice. “Is it really you, my dearest?”

He turned and beheld her. Though he and his companions had

become blurs among shadows, she stood forth almost clearly, where she came out of the reeds onto

land. Her nakedness and the unbound hair were that pale, her eyes that huge and bright. She neared him,

arms held wide.

“Jesus and Mary, save us,” moaned Drazha at his back. “It is the vilja.”

“Mihajlo,” she cried low, “Mihajlo, forgive me, I am trying to remember, I truly am.”

Somehow he stood his ground, there on the wet lakeside in the gloaming. “Who are you?” he uttered

through the earthquake in his breast. “What do you want of me?”

“The vilja,” Sisko quavered. “Demon, ghost. Pray it away, men, before it draws us down to its watery

hell.”

Mihajlo traced the Cross, stiffened his knees, confronted the

being and commanded, “In the name of the Father, and of the

Son, and of the Holy Spirit-“

Before he could say, “-begone !” she was so close to him

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

that he could make out the sweetly carven features. “Mihajlo,”

she was pleading, “is that you? I’m sorry if I hurt you,

Mihajlo—“

“Nada!” he screamed.

She stopped. “Was I Nada?” she asked him, with puzzlement

upon her brow. After a while: “Yes, I think I was. And surely you were Mihajlo. . ..” She smiled. “Why,

yes, you are. I brought you here to me, didn’t I, Mihajlo, darling?”

He shrieked, whirled, and ran. His men fled likewise, every which way into the dark. That made the

horses stampede. When the noise had died, Nada the vilja stood alone. More stars had awakened. The

last sunset glow was gone, but the west was yet pale. These different lights sheened off the lake, which

cast them onto her until she was a slender curve and ripple of white, a glistening of tears. “Mihajlo,” she

said. “Please.”

Then she forgot, laughed, and flitted into the forest.

The hunters won home separately but safe. What Sisko and Drazha had to tell made people warier than

ever of the wild-wood. Mihajlo related no more than he must. Others soon marked that he was no longer

the glad youth he had been. Much time did he spend with the chaplain at the castle, and later with his

confessor in Shibenik. Next year he entered a monastery. His father the zhupan was less than happy

about that.

Book One

Kraken

I

THE bishop of Viborg got Magnus Gregersen for his new arch-deacon. This man was more learned

than most, having studied in Paris, and he was upright and pious; but folk called him too strict, and said

they liked no better to see him coming, with his long lean frame and his long sour face, than they liked to

see any other black crow in their fields. The bishop felt one like that was needed, for laxity had set in

during the years of strife that harried Denmark after King Valdemar the Victorious died.

Riding along the eastern Jutish coast as episcopal provost, Magnus came to Als, not the island but a

hamlet of the same name. It was poor and lonely, deep woods behind it and Kon-gerslev Marsh to the

north. Only two roads served it, one on the strand and one twisting southwesterly toward Hadsund. Each

Sep-tember and October its fishermen would join the hundreds that made catches in the Sound during

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

the great herring run; otherwise their kind saw little of the outside world. They dragged their nets through

the water and farmed their thin-soiled acres until time and toil broke them and they laid their bones to rest

behind the small wooden church. Many old ways were still followed in steads like this. Magnus thought

such doings pagan and bewailed to himself that there was no ready way to stop them.

Thus a baffled zeal grew double strong in him when he heard certain rumors about Als. None there

would own to knowledge of what might have been happening since that day fourteen years ago when

Agnete carne back out of the sea. Magnus got the priest alone and sternly demanded the truth. Father

Knud was a gentle man, born in one of those tiny houses, who had long turned a blind eye on what he

thought were minor sins that gave his flock some cheer in their bleak lives. But he was aged now, and

feeble, and Magnus soon wrung from him the full tale.

The provost returned to Viborg with a holy flame in his gau.

He went to the bishop and said: “My lord, in making my rounds

through your diocese I found woefully many signs of the Devil’s

work. But I had not looked to come upon himself~no, say rather

a whole nest of his foulest, most dangerous fiends. Yet this I did

in the strand-hamlet Als.” ,

“What mean you?” asked the bishop sharply; for he also dreaded a return of the old witchy gods.

“I mean that offshore is a town of merfolk!”

The bishop eased. “How interesting,” he said. “I knew not that

any were left in Danish waters. They are not devils, my good Magnus. They lack souls, yes, like other

beasts. But they do not imperil salvation as might the dwellers in an elfhill. Indeed, they seldom have

aught to do with the tribe of Adam.”

“These are otherwise, my lord,” answered the archdeacon. “Listen to what I have learned. Two and

twenty years ago lived near Als a maiden hight Agnete Einarsdatter. Her father was a yeoman,

well-to-do by his neighbors’ reckoning, and she was very fair, so she ought to have made a good

marriage. But one eventide when she walked alone on the beach, a merman came forth and wooed her.

He lured her away with him, and she passed eight years in sin and godlessness beneath the sea.

“At last she happened to bring her newest babe up onto a skerry that it might drink sunlight. This was in

earshot of the church bells, and while she sat rocking the cradle, they began to chime. Homesickness, if

not repentance, awoke in her. She went to the merman and begged leave to go hear again the word of

God. He gave unwilling consent and took her ashore. Beforehand he made her vow not to do three

things---let down her long hair, as if she were unwedded; seek out her mother in the family pew; and

bow down when the priest named the All Highest. But each of these she did: the first for pride, the

second for love, the third for awe. Then divine grace drew the scales from her eyes and she stayed on

land.

“Afterward the merman came in search of her. It was another holy day and he found her at Mass. When

he walked into the church, the pictures and images turned their faces to the wall. None of the

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

congregation dared lift hand against him, he was so huge and strong. He pleaded with her to return, and

well might he have prevailed as aforetime. For this is not a hideous race with fish tails, my lord. Save that

they have broad, webbed feet and big, slanting eyes, and the men among them are beardless, and some

have green or blue hair-on the whole, they look like beau-tiful humans. His own locks were golden as

hers. And he did not threaten, he spoke in tones of love and sorrow.

“Yet God strengthened Agnete. She refused him and he went back beneath the waters.

“Her father had the prudence, and the dowry, to get her wed inland. They say she was never cheerful,

and before long she died.”

“If it was a Christian death,” the bishop said, “I cannot see that lasting harm was done.”

“But the merfolk are still there, my lord!” cried the provost.

“Fishermen see them often, romping and laughing in the waves. Does that not make a poor toiler, who

dwells in a wretched hut with an ugly wife, ill content, yes, even questioning of God’s justice? And when

will another merman seduce another maiden, this time forever? That is the more likely now when those

children of Agnete and her lover are grown. They come ashore almost as a habit, they have struck up

friendships with some of the boys and young men-more than friendship, I heard tell, for the female among

them.

“My lord, this is Satan’s work! If we let souls be lost that were in our charge, how shall we answer on

the Last Day?”

The bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. “You have right. What shall we do, though? If the Alsmen

already do what is forbidden, a further ban will hardly check them; I know those stiff-necked fisherfolk.

And if we send to the King for knights and troopers, how shall they go beneath the sea?”

Magnus raised a finger. It blazed from him: “My lord, I have studied matters of this kind and know the

cure. Those merfolk may not be demons, but the soulless must ever flee when God’s word is properly

laid on them. Have I your leave to conduct an exorcism?”

“You do,” said the bishop shakenly, “and with it my blessing.”

So it came about that Magnus returned to Als. More men-at-

arms than usual clattered behind him, lest the villagers make trouble. These watched, some eager for any

newness, some surly, a few weeping, as the archdeacon had himself rowed out to a spot above the

underwater town. And there, with bell, book, and can-dle, he solemnly cursed the sea people and bade

them in God’s name forever be gone.

II

TAUNO, oldest child of fair Agnete and the Liri king, had counted his twenty-first winter. There waS

great merrymaking in his honor, feast, song, dances that wove their flitting patterns north, east, west,

south, up, down, and around, between the shells and mirrors and golden plates which flung back the

seaflTe lighting the royal hall; there were gifts, cunningly wrought, not alone of gold and amber and

narwhal ivory, but also of pearl and lacy rosy coral, brought from afar by travelers throughout the

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

centuries; there were contests in swimming, wrestling, harpooning, music, and rune-craft; there was

lovemaking in dim rooms which had no roof because none was needed, and in the rippling gardens of

red, green, purple, and brown weed where jellyfish drifted like white and blue blossoms and true fish

darted like meteors.

Afterward Tauno went on a long hunt. Though the merfolk lived off the waters, he fared this time in

sport, mostly to visit anew the grandeur of the Norway fjords. With him came the girls Rinna and Raxi,

for his pleasure and their own. They had a joyful trip, which meant much to Tauno; he was often a sober

one among his lighthearted kindred, and sometimes fell into dark broodings.

They were homebound, Liri was in sight, when the wrath struck them.

“Yonder it is!” Rinna called eagerly. She darted ahead. The green tresses streamed down her slim white

back. Raxi stayed near Tauno. She swam laughing around and around him; as she passed below, she

would stroke fingers over his face or loins. He grabbed for her with the same playfulness, but always she

was out of reach. “Niaahr’ she taunted while blowing him bubbly kisses. He grinned and swam steadily

on. Having inherited their mother’s shape of foot, the halfling children were less swift and deft in the water

than tJ1eir father’s race. Nevertheless, a landman would have gasped at their movement. And they got

about more readily on shore than their cousins; and they had been born able to live undersea, without

need for the spells that had kept their mother from death by drowning, salt, or chill; and the cool-fleshed

mer-folk liked to embrace their warmer bodies.

Above Tauno sun smote waves, making a roof of bright ripples that traced its pattern across the white

sand beneath him. Around, the water reached in hues of emerald and amethyst until distance brought

dusk. He felt it slide by, answering the play of his muscles with caresses like a lover’s. Kelp streamed

upward from barnacled rocks, golden-brown, swaying to every current. A crab clanked over the

seabed; a tunny glided farther off, blue and white and splendid. The water was never the same: here cold,

there mild, here roiled, there calm, and a thousand different tastes and odors beyond the tang men smell

on a strand; and it was full of sounds for those who could hear, cluckings, chucklings, croakings,

chit-terings, splashings, the hush-hush-hush where it lapped against land; and beneath each swirl and

gurgle Tauno felt the huge slow striding of the tides.

Now Liri rose clear in his sight: houses that were hardly more than arbors of seaplants or frames of ivJry

and whale ribs, delicate and fantastically scrimshawed in this world of low weight, wide-spaced among

gardens of weed and anemone; in the middle, the hall of his father the king, big, ancient, stone and coral

in subtle hues, bedight with carven figures of fish and those beasts and fowl which belong to the sea. The

posts of the main door were in the shapes of Lord Aegir and Lady Ran, the lintel was an albatross with

wings spread for soaring. Above the walls lifted a dome of crystal, vented to the surface, which the king

had built for Agnete, so that when she wished she might be dry, breathe air, sit by a fire among roses and

what else his love could fetch her from the land.

The merfolk flitted about-gardeners, craftsmen, a hunter training a brace of young seals, an oyster

gatherer buying a trident at a booth, a boy leading a girl by the hand toward some softly lighted cavern.

Bronze bells, taken long ago from a wrecked ship, were being chimed; they pealed more clearly through

water than ever through the air. .

“Harroo!” Tauno shouted. He plunged forward in a burst of speed. Rinna and Raxi fell in alongside him.

The three broke into the “Song of Retumings” he had made for them:

Here may I hail you, my homeland, my heartstrand.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Well for the wanderer’s weal is the way’s end.

Call up the clamor on conchs and on kettles!

Stories I’ll strew from the silver-paved swanroad. Gold the dawn glittered and glad wheeled the gulls

when----

Suddenly his companions screamed. They clapped hands to ears, their eyes were shut, they milled about

blindly and wildly kicking till the water seethed.

Tauno watched the same craziness take all of Liri. “What is this?” he cried in horror. “What’s wrong?”

Rinna wailed her anguish. She could not see nor hear him. He caught her. She fought to break loose. His

strength gripped her from behind with legs and one hand. His other hand closed on the silken tresses to

hold tight her jerking head. He laid mouth to an ear and stammered, “Rinna, Rinna, it’s me, Tauno. I’m

your friend. I want to help you.”

“Then let me go!” Her shriek was ragged with pain and fright. “The ringing fills the sea, it shakes me like

a shark, my bones are coming apart-the light, the cruel blaze, blinding, burning, bum-ing-the words-Let

me go or I die!”

Tauno did, altogether bewildered. Rising several yards, he made out the shivering shadow of a fisher

boat, and heard a bell. . . was a fire aboard too, and was a voice chanting in some tongue he knew not?

No more than that. . . .

The houses of Liri rocked as in a quake. The crystal dome on the hall shattered and rained down in

bright shards. The stones trembled and began to slide from each other. That crumbling, of what had

stood here since the Great Ice melted, sent its shuddering through Tauno’s flesh.

Dimly he saw his father come forth, astride the orca which had its airspace in the hall and which no one

else dared mount. Oth-erwise the king had naught but a trident; and he was clad in naught but his own

majesty. Yet somehow his call was heard: “To me, my people, to me! Quickly, before we die! Seek not

to save any treasure beyond your children-and weapons-come, come, come if you would livc!”

Tauno shook Rinna and Raxi back to a measure of sense, and led them to join the throng. His father,

riding about rallying the terrified merfold, had time to say to him grimly: “You, half mortal, feel it no more

than does this steed of mine. But to us, these waters are now banned. For us, the-light will blaze and the

bell will toll and the words will curse until the Weird of the World. We must flee while we still have

strength, to seek a home far and away.”

“Where are my siblings?” Tauno asked.

“They were on an outing,” said the king. The tone that had

trumpeted went flat and dead. “We cannot wait for them.”

“I can.”

The king gripped his son by both shoulders. “That heartens

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

me. Yria and, aye, young Kennin need more than Eyjan to ward them. I know not where we are going.

Maybe you can find us later-maybe-“ He shook his sun-bright mane. His visage drew into a mask of

torture. “Away!” he screamed.

Stunned, beaten, naked, most of them unarmed and without tools, the merfolk followed their lord. Tauno

hung, fists clenched on harpoon, until they were out of sight. The last stones of the royal hall toppled, and

Liri was a ruin.

III

IN the eight years that she dwelt beneath the waters, fair Agnete bore seven children. This was less than

a seawife would have done, and maybe the unspoken scorn of those females helped drive her back to

land, even as the bells of the little church and the sight of little thatch-roofed timber houses had drawn

her.

For though the merfolk, like others of Faerie, knew no aging (as if He Whose name they did not speak

thus repaid them for lack of immortal souls), their way of life had its harsh side. Shark, orca, sperm

whale, ray, sea serpent, a dozen kinds of killer fish hunted them; the creatures that they in turn hunted

were often dangerous; tricks of wind and wave could be deadly; poison fangs and spines, cold, sickness,

hunger carried many off. This was most true of their young; they must reckon with losing all but a few.

The king had been lucky with those he got with his human mate. Behind his home were only three graves

whereon the sea anemones had never been let die.

The four children who remained met in the wreckage of Liri. Round about were the heaped chaos of the

hall, the farther-off bits and pieces of lesser homes, gardens already withering, fishflocks already

scattered, broken scrimshaw, crabs and lobsters swarming through foodstocks like ravens over a corpse

on shore. The meeting spot was where the main door had been. The albatross lay wingless; kindly Lord

Aegir had fallen on his face; Lady Ran who takes men in her nets stood above, grinning. The water was

chill and waves raised by a storm overhead could be heard mourning for Liri.

The merman’s children were unclad, as was usual undersea save at festival times. However, they had

gotten knives, harpoons, tridents, and axes of stone and bone, to ward off those menaces which circled

closer and closer beyond the rim of their sight. None of them looked wholly like merfolk. But the elder

three shared the high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and male beardlessness of their father; and while they

had learned the Danish tongue and some of the Danish ways, now it was as merfolk that they talked.

Eldest among them, Tauno took the word. “We must decide where to go. Hard it was to keep death at

bay when everyone stayed here. We cannot do it long alone.”

He was likewise the biggest, tall, wide in the shoulders, might-ily muscled from a lifetime’s swimming.

His hair, caught by a beaded headband, fell to his collarbones, yellow with the least tinge of green; his

eyes were amber, set well apart from the blunt nose, above the heavy mouth and jaw; because he had

spent much time on the surface or ashore, his skin was brown.

“Why, shall we not follow our father and tribe?” asked Eyjan.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

She had nineteen winters. She too was tall, for a woman, and

strong with a strength that lay hidden beneath the full curves of breasts, hips, thighs, until she hugged a

lover tight or drove a lance into a wallowing walrus. Hers was the whitest skin, for her hair was bronzy

red, floating shoulder-length past a challenging gray gaze and cleanly molded face.

“We know not where they have gone,” Tauno reminded her. “It will have to be far, since these were the

last good hunting grounds left to our kind around Denmark. And while such merfolk as dwell in the Baltic

or along the Norway coast may help them on their way, there’s no room for as many more as Liri’s

people are. The seas are very wide to search, my sister.”

“Oh, surely we can ask,” Kennin said impatiently. “They’ll leave traces. The dolphins are bound to know

which way they headed.” A sparkle jumped in his eyes, making them more than ever summer-blue. “Haa,

what a chance to gad about!”

He was of sixteen winters, had yet to fare far, and knew only youth’s eagerness to be off beyond the

horizon. He had not gotten his full growth and would never be tailor broad. On the other hand, he was

well-nigh as agile a swimmer as a full-blooded mennan. His hair was greenish brown, his countenance

round and freckled, his body painted in the loudest-colored patterns the dwellers had known. The rest

bore no ornament; Tauno was in too stark a mood, Eyjan had always scoffed at the trouble it cost, and

Yria was shy.

The last one whispered: “How can you joke when. . . when. . . everything is gone?”

Her siblings moved closer in around her. To them she was still the babe, left in her crib by a mother

whom she was coming more and more to look like. She was small, thin, her breasts just bud-ding; her

hair was golden, her eyes huge in the tip-tilted, lip-parted face. She had stayed away from revelries as

much as a king’s daughter might, had never gone off alone with a boy, had spent hours a day learning the

womanly arts at which Eyjan jeered-more hours in the dome that had been Agnete’s, fondling the

treasures that had been Agnete’s. Often she lay on the waves, staring at the greenhills and the houses

ashore, listening to the chimes which called Christian folk to prayer. Of late she had been going there with

one or another of her kin when these would allow, flitting along a twilit strand or behind a wind-gnarled

tree or down into the ling like a timid shadow.

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

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: