Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

“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 candle, he solemnly cursed the sea people and bade them in God’s name forever be gone.

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 centuries; there were contests in swimming, wrestling, harpooning, music, and runecraft; 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 their 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 merfolk 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, chitterings, 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 ivory and whale ribs, delicate and fantastically scrimshawed in this world of low weight, widespaced 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.

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, buming—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. Otherwise 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 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.