Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

“And time in a single bed hangs heavy. Ah, I remember. . . .If he’s not beguiled a mortal girl, well, Faerie beings do haunt these realms—” In shock, Andrei saw whither his thought was leading him. Again he crossed himself. “Jesus forbid!”

“Why, what harm, if he who is soulless couples with an elf?” Eyjan gibed.

“I’d not have my son lured beyond halidom. He might die before he’s saved.” Andrei’s look steadied upon her. “You might, my daughter.”

Eyjan was silent.

“What are your plans?” he inquired.

Unhappiness freighted her words: “I know not, the less when Tauno keeps apart from me. We promised our Danish friends we’ll rejoin them when we’re able. Thereafter-Greenland?”

“No fit place for you, who have seen far better.” Andrei hesitated. “Luka Subitj would be a forbearing husband.”

Eyjan grew taut. “I’ll never wear the bonds they lay on women here!”

“Aye, you’d be freer in Denmark, and I like what you’ve told me of that Niels Jonsen. Get christened, wed him, be joyous.”

“Christened. Become. . . your sort?”

“Yes, age and die in a handful of years, and meanwhile live chaste and pious. But you will live in the blessing of God, and afterward in His very presence. Not until you’ve taken this bargain Christ offers, can you know how measurelessly generous it is.”

With eyes as well as tongue, Andrei pursued: “I understand. You dread the loss of your wild liberty, you think you’d liefer cease to be. I give you my oath-not by the Most High: not yetby the love I bore for your mother and bear for you, Eyjan Agnetesdatter, I swear that in humanness you will win release. It will be like coming alone out of winter night into a fire lit room where those whom you hold dearest are feasting.”

“And where I see no more stars, feel no more wind,” she protested.

“Faerie has had its splendors,” he replied. “But are you not wisest to give them up while they are in some part as you’ve known them? Dh, Eyjan, child, spare yourself the anguish of feeing the halfworld go down in wreck and feeling that same ruin In your own breast. For it will indeed perish, It will. What happened to him was but a foretaste of what must happen to all Faene. Magic is dying out of Creation. A sage man showed me that, and I’d fain show you it, though each word scourges me too, if you’ll stay here till I must return to the fleet.

“Do what is kindest, to those who care for you as well as yourself. Leave Faerie where you can find no happiness, whatever you do, wherever you range. Accept the divine love of Christ, the honest love of Niels and of the children you bear him; and one day we will all meet again in Heaven.”

His tone sank, he stared beyond her and every wall. “Agnete also,” he ended.

How much like Tauno he is, she thought

In summer, when trees gave shade against the sun, a vilja could move about by day. Nada danced through the forest in a swirl of tossing hair. Among shrubs she dodged, overleaped logs, sprang on high to grab a bough and swing from it for a moment before she sped onward. Her laughter chimed, “Come, come along, sluggard!” Her slenderness vanished into the green. Tauno stopped to pant and squint around after tracks of her. Suddenly her palms’ clapped over his eyes from behind, she kissed him between the shoulderblades, and was off again. Cooiethough her touch had been, it burned a long while in his awareness. He blundered on. Unseen, she sent breezes to fan him.

At last he could go no more. At a dark-brown, moss-lined pool he halted. Trees crowded around, huge oak, slim beech, murky juniper. They roofed off the sky, they made a verdant dusk bespeckled with sunflecks. Butterflies winged between them. It was warm here, the air heavy with odors of ripeness. A squirrel chattered and streaked aloft, then he was gone and the mighty silence of summer brooded anew.

“Hallo-o!” Tauno shouted. “You’ve galloped the breath out of me.” Leafy arches swallowed up his cry. He wiped off the sweat that stung his eyes and salted his lips, cast himself belly down, and drank. The pool was cold, iron-tinged.

He heard a giggle. “You have a shapely bottom,” Nada called. He rolled over and saw her perched on a limb above him, kicking her legs to and fro. They would catch a beam of light, which made them blaze gold, then return to being white in the shadows.

“Come here if you dare and I’ll paddle yours for that,” he challenged.

“Nyah.” She made a face at him. “You wouldn’t. I know you, you big fraud. I know what you’d really do.”

“What?”

“Why, cuddle me and pet me and kiss me—which is a better idea anyhow.” Nada floated, more nearly than jumped, to earth. Blackberries grew beneath the tree, She stopped to gather as many as her small hands could hold before she came to kneel by Tauno, who was now sitting,

“Poor love, you are tired,” she said, “Wet allover, and surely weak in the knees, Here, let me feed some strength back into you,”

Herself she was dry-skinned, unwinded, ready to soar off at any instant, She would not sleep when he did, nor did she share the fruits she placed in his mouth, The dead have no such needs,

“Those were delicious, thank you,” he said when she was through, “But if I’m to stay out here much longer, I’ll require food more stout, Fish from the lake; or, if you’ll help me quest, a deer,”

She winced, “I hate it when you kill.”

“I must,”

“Yes,” She brightened, “Like the great beautiful lynx you are,”

She stroked fingers across him, He touched her in turn, caresses which wandered everywhere. They could never be strong, those gestures, She was too insubstantial, He felt rounded softnesses, which moved in response to him, but they had no heat and always he got a sense of thistledown delicacy,

What had formed her, he knew not, nor she, The bones of Nada, Tomislav’s daughter, rested in a Shibenik churchyard. Her’ soul dwelt in an image of that body, formed out of , , , moonlight and water, maybe, It was a gentle damnation.

Damnation nonetheless, he reflected: for him as well.

“You hurt yourself,” she exclaimed, “Oh, don’t,”

He wrenched his glance from her, “Forgive me,” he said in a rusty voice. “I know my bad moods distress you, Maybe you should go for a run till I’ve eased.”

“And leave you alone?” She drew close against him, “No.” Mter a space: “Besides, I’m selfish. You lift my aloneness off me,”

“The trouble is just that, I desire you. . and found you too late.”

“And I desire you, Tauno, beloved.”

What did that mean to her? he wondered. She had died a maiden. Of course, she had known, from seeing beasts if naught,” else, what the way of a man with a woman is; but had she ever truly understood? Afterward she was not one to ponder, she was a spirit of wood and water, her heart gone airy; and what might be the desires which reigned in her? Did any?

Beyond the wish for his company-was that what had captured him, her own swift adoration? She was so utterly unlike Eyjan, perhaps he had unwittingly fled to her. Yet other women lent refuge likewise, and they could quiet his loins and give him comradeship which endured, not this haring about with a ghost. Ingeborg—

Tauno and Nada laid arms around waists. Her head rested on his muscles; he could barely feel the tresses. It restored his calm, the pain-tinctured joy he found with her. Surely this could not go on without end, but let him not fret about the future. Forethought was no part of his Faerie heritage, and he had disowned the human half. In the presence of Nada, beauty, frolic, muteness together in awe below the stars, he lost himself, he almost became at peace with everything that was, this side of Heaven.