Poul Anderson: The Merman's Children

“For some, that may be the answer,” Vanimen 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.”

He straightened, to stand as tall as might be in the storm. “Also,” he called to them, “we are the Liri dwellers. We have our shared blood, ways, memories, all that makes us ourselves. Would you part from your friends and lovers, would you forget old songs and never quite learn any new, would you let Liri of your forebears—your forebears since the Great Ice withdrew—die as if it had never been?

“Shall we not aid each other? Shall we let it become true what the Christians say, that Faerie folk cannot love?”

They gaped at him through the rain. Several babies cried. At length Meiiva responded: “I know you, Vanimen. You have a plan. Let us judge it.”

A plan—He lacked power to decree. Liri had chosen him king after the last leader’s bones were found on a reef, a harpoon head between the ribs. He presided over infrequent folkmoots. He judged disputes, though naught save a wish to keep the general esteem could enforce his decisions upon the losers. He dealt on behalf of his people with communities elsewhere; this was seldom necessary. He led those rare undertakings that required their united effort. He was master of their festivals.

His highest duties lay outside of tradition. He was supposed to be the vessel of wisdom, a counselor to the young and the troubled, a preserver and teacher of lore. Keeper of talismans, knower of spells, he guarded the welfare of Liri against monsters, evil magic, and the human world. He interceded with the Powers. . . aye, he hadguested Ran herself. . . .

His rewards were to dwell in a hall, rather than the simple home of an ordinary merman; to have his needs provided for when he did not choose to do his own hunting; to have splendid things brought him as gifts (though he in his turn was expected to be hospitable and openhanded); to be highly respected by a tribe not otherwise prone to reverence.

The rewards were gone, save perhaps the last, and it a heavy part of the duty which remained.

He said: “This is not the whole universe. In my youth I wandered widely, as a few of our breed have done sometimes. Westward I came as far as Greenland, where I heard from both merfolk and men of countries beyond. No living member of either race had ever visited there, but the knowledge was certain; dolphins confirmed it for me. Many of you will remember my bespeaking this now and then. Those appear to be wonderful shoals and shores, that Christendom hardly is aware of and has no dominion in. If we went thither, we would have them to ourselves—vastness, life, and beauty to grow into, free and at peace.”

Astonishment replied in a babble. Haiko was the first to exclaim above it: “You’ve just avowed we can’t stay in midocean. Can we—our young, indeed, and most of us who are grown—can we outlive that long a swim? There’,s the reason why nobody like us dwells yonder!”

“True, true.” The king lifted his trident. A hush fell. “But hear me,” he said. “I too have been thinking. We could make the passage with scant losses or none, were islands along the way for rest, refuge, and refurbishing. Not so? Well, what of a floating island that came with us? Such is called a ship.

“Men owe us for the harm they have done us, who never harmed them. I say: let us seize a ship of theirs and steer for the western lands—the new world!”

By eventide, the storm had gone away. Likewise had the stonn among the people; after hours of dispute, they were agreed. For the main part they sought sleep against the morrow, curled up behind dunes, though a number went out after game to keep alive on.

Vanimen paced with Meiiva, around and around the islet. They were close to each other, often lovers before and after Agnete. Less flighty, more feeling than most, she could frequently cheer him.

Eastward the sky was a violet-blue chalice for the earliest stars. Westward it fountained in red, purple, and hot gold. The waters moved luminous and lulling. The air was quiet and faintly softer than hitherto; it smelled of kelp and distances. A person could set aside hunger, weariness, woe, to enjoy an hour’s hope.

“Do you honestly feel this can be done?” Meiiva asked.

“Yes,” the king declared. “I’ve told you how I’ve been on the prowl about that harbor, again and again, the latest time not long ago. We may have to lurk, watching for our chance. However, at this season I expect that will be no great while; the town does much trade. Nobody will dare pursue us at night, and by dawn we should be well away, unfindable.”

“Do you know how to handle a ship?” she pounced. “That’s something which didn’t get talked about today.”

“Well, only a little, from what I’ve seen for myself or garnered from men—I have had friends among them once in a while, you recall,” Vanimen said. “But we can learn. There should be no big danger in it if we keep plenty of sea room. Nor should there be any haste.” His tone quickened. “For we will have our island. Able to rest on it by turns, we’ll need far less food; thus we can sustain ourselves by hunting. And, of course, we needn’t fret about fresh water as humans must. And we can find our way more readily than they can. The simple surety that we have a land to steer for, and not an edge where the seas roar down to the nether gulf—that alone should make the difference which saves us.”

He gazed from sand and scrub, to the glimmer of sunset upon the western horizon. “I know not whether to pity or envy the children of Adam,” he munnured. “I know not at all.” Meiiva took his hand. “You’re strangely drawn to them,” she said.

He nodded. “Aye, more and more as the years flow onward. I do not speak of it, for who would understand? Yet I feel. . . I know not. . . more is in Creation than this glittering, tricksy Faerie of ours. No matter that humans have immortal souls. We’ve always reckoned that too low a price for being landbound. But I have wondered”—his free hand clenched, his visage worked—“what do they have in this life, here and now, amidst every misery, what do they glimpse, that we are forever blind to?”

Stavanger, in the south of Norway, dreamed beneath a waning moon. That light made a broken bridge across the fjord, where holms rose darkling, silvered the thatch and shingle of roofs, softened the stone of the cathedral and came alive in its windows, turned the streets below the house galleries into even deeper guts of blackness. It touched the figureheads and masts of vessels at the wharf. . . .

Candle-glow through thin-scraped horn shone on the aftercastle of a particular ship. She was from the Hansa city of Danzig: onemasted like a cog but longer, beamier, of the new sort that were known as hulks. Day would have shown her clinker-built hull bright red, with white and yellow trim.

Moon-ripples trailed the stealthily swimming mermen. They felt no chill, no fear; they were after quarry.

Vanimen led them to his goal. The freeboard was more than he could overleap, but he had earlier gone ashore and stolen what he would need. A flung hook caught the rail amidships. From it dangled a Jacob’s ladder up which he climbed.

Quiet though he sought to be, his noise reached the watchman. (The crew were visiting the inns and stews.) That fellow came down from the poop bearing his lanthorn and pike. Dull gleams went off the steel, and off the gray streaks in his beard; he was no young man, but portly and slow. “Who goes?” he challenged in German; and as he saw what confronted him, a howl of terror: “Ach, Jesus, help me! Help, help—”