Poul Anderson - The Merman's Children

Youngsters tending geese shrilled their delight when they saw him and sped to the roadside. A bit stiffly, he inquired how to find Fro Ingeborg’s house. His Danish resembled hers but was not quite the same. Could he be a different kind of Jute, or an actual outlander? The children buzzed like bees as he rode on.

Turning up Hombaek street, he was hardly more talkative to the grown persons who hailed him. “I am a friend bringing news solely for her ears. Tomorrow she’ll tell you what she sees fit. Meanwhile, please leave us be.”

Countryfolk like these were not shocked that he and she would spend a night together. Some snickered, some showed envy, a few who were more thoughtful recognized that here was no romp; the stranger’s manner was anything but lecherous.

Ingeborg’s cottage stood near the end of its row, an ordinary. building of moss-chinked timber gone silvery with age; thatch dropped low, full of lichen and wildflowers, anchored by cables against northerly gales. Dismounting, the newcomer unslung the bundle tied behind his saddle, took it under the same arm that held his spear, and gave a man a coin to stable his horse. The gathering goggled as he rapped on the door.

It opened; they saw Ingeborg wonderstricken, heard her shout; the stranger immediately stepped through and closed it against them. A minute later, the shutters were latched and nothing could.. be heard from within.

A peat fife on the hearth gave scant illumination, but she had thriftlessly lit several tapers. They. picked out newly installed stove, table, chair, stools, texture of woven hangings, brightness of kitchen gear, smoke that swirled among food-laden rafters, amidst flickery shadows. The cat which had hitherto been her” single housemate had given up seeking attention and slept on the rushes strewn over the clay floor. Warmth and pungency filled the room, as if to stave off the night that had fallen.

Tauno and Ingeborg sat on a chest whose top, cushioned, was a bench with a backrest. A goblet of wine rested on a shelf at his side for them to share, but it had seen no heavy use, and the meal she set forth remained untasted. For after the storm of kisses, embraces, caresses, laughter, tears, wild words of joy had laid itself to rest in her, he had starkly begun relating his story.

“—I came overland, in hopes I might find something that would give hope. But the journey was merely slow, hard, and dangerous. Well, here and there were remnants of Faerie, different from any I’d ever heard of before. Once I’d have spent much time getting to know them. Now I found I had no stomach to linger long anywhere. I reached Copenhagen a few days ago. Niels and Dagmar made me welcome, but still less did I want the lodging they gave-too thick with sanctity, no place for my Nada. I told them naught about her. Instead, I got what I needed to be respectable and came straight hither. Aye, they bade me greet you kindly and urge your return. They’d like to see you mingling, taking pleasure, making a match with some genial widower who needs a mother for his children.”

Ingeborg leaned against him, his arm around her waist, hers reaching across his back to comb fingers through his hair. But she did not look at him, she stared into that hole of darkness which was the open door to the rear chamber. The second storm he raised in her, by his tale, had likewise died down. She still trembled somewhat, hiccoughed, spoke in a voice roughened and unsteady after much sobbing; her eyes were red, she snuffled, salt lay along her cheeks and upper lip. Yet she could quietly ask:

“How is it with you and her?”

He too gazed beyond. “Strange,” he answered, no louder. “Her nearness-like a, a sweet drink that burns—or a memory of a darling lost, before grief has faded, though more than a memory: a presence- Is this how you Christians feel about your dead who are in Heaven?”

“I think not.”

“Waking, I have her with me, as I have my own bloodbeat.” Tauno smote his knee. “That’s all-that, and remembrance more sharp than any other ever-it hurts!” He mastered himself. “But it quenches too. It is her presence, I said; she has not gone away. And when I sleep, oh, then she comes back in dreams. They’re like life; we’re together, just the way we used to be; because it is Nada in the sigil.”

Ingebord summoned her last strength: “Do you, in these dreams, fully know her?”

He slumped. “No. We roam and gambol through her homeland or in lands and seas where I’ve been and call forth for her. She grows wide-eyed with amazement. . . until sorrow seizes her that she must deny me more than a kiss. I tell her these are simply dreams and she tells me they are not, they’re a meeting of shades outside of space and time; she’s a ghost, she tells me, and if I lost myself in her I would share her death.”

“Oh, don’t!” Ingeborg’s fingers grew white-knuckled upon his shoulder. Unvoiced was that he would die like a blown-out flame.

Silence.

“Fear not, I shan’t,” he said.

“Bless Nada for her care—” The woman drew a ragged breath. “Yet, Tauno, whom I myself love. . . you’ll not go on thus, will you? Year after year, century after century, living only what you’ve lost. . . no, what you never really had?” She twisted about to see him. Her mouth stretched out of shape. “God gave you no soul. How can He leave you trapped in Hell?”

“It isn’t—”

She clutched him with both hands. “Throw that thing in the sea, in the Pit!” she yelled. “This night!”

“Never.” Before the sternness in his countenance, she quailed back.

Abruptly he smiled. His tone gentled, he reached for her, touched lips to her forehead. “Good friend, be not afraid. Everything shall be made well. I misspoke me. You were suffering, and that roused my own ache; but it’s very near an end. I give you my word of honor it is.”

Numbed, she gaped at him and mumbled, “What will you do?”

“Why, this,” he said levelly. “Do you remember what I told you about the sigil after we returned from Greenland, that the angakok had earlier told Eyjan and me? Faerie scryers I met on the way back from Croatia, they agreed he spoke truth, and added more knowledge to mine.

“Nada dwells in the talisman. But she’s not locked there for aye. She can come forth, into a living body, if that person invites her.

“I will do that. Nada and I will become one, in a deeper fashion than I sought. I’ve delayed just so that I might see how you fare in Denmark—”

She screamed, wilder than before, and cowered from him.

He rose to stand above her, take her temples between his palms, speak anxiously: “Be at peace. Nada is. She’s ready to dare this venture with me.”

Ingeborg shuddered toward a measure of steadiness. She could not meet his gaze. “Find someone else,” she moaned. “You can if you search.”

He frowned and let go of her. “I thought of that, but Nada refused, and rightly. It’s an unhallowed thing to do: for she’s damned.”

“But a girl in despair... or a pagan, or—She’d gain, wouldn’t she? You. . . for a husband. . . and what else?”

“The vilja’s agelessness, her power over air and water, while keeping the sun-loving flesh. And, aye, Nada’s dear flighty spirit. Such a woman would be of the halfworld.”

“You’d find many who’d spring at yon bargain.”

“And sunder themselves from God, with who knows what fate after the body at last perishes? That was something which no magician could learn for me.” Tauno shook his head. “Nada will not. Nor, in my honor, once she’d explained the evil to me, could I allow it.”

Ingeborg lifted face and hands in pleading. “But what will you become?”

“That’s another thing which is unknown, I being of Faerie,” he replied. “Wherefore I’d fain wait several days yet, and nights, with you, old comrade.”