Nancy Farmer - The Islands of the Blessed

The fin wife had laid a table with dishes Jack recognized as Pictish beast bones, and they were each given a hardboiled seagull egg and a bowl of oyster stew. A single roast salmon graced the center of the table. The cow’s milk, served in hollowed-out whale teeth, tasted strongly of seaweed. “The flavor comes from what they eat,” pointed out Thorgil, who didn’t mind the taste at all. “During famine years the Northmen feed their cows with seaweed, and the milk is just like this.”

Afterward the entire farm family, numbering at least twenty, set out for the castle, with merlads going before and behind with torches. Everyone was excited, and Jack found it impossible to sort out the babble of voices in his head. The sky lit up with distant flashes of lightning, and dull rumbles ran around the horizon, yet the air was perfectly still. Farm smell—hay, manure, chicken-of-the-sea coops—seemed trapped next to the earth. The air seemed thicker at night.

Jack was queasy from the seaweed-flavored milk, and he glanced up at the cloud cover with longing. If only he could be out there with a wind throwing cool spray into his face!

The path took them past the black stream. Jack realized that although the water had seemed to rush past earlier, it had made no sound. Now he could see only the dark gash where it lay. Beyond, the barrows lay in a lightless land. They had melted together into one shadow.

With, of course, the queems snaking around underneath like the roots of a midnight forest.

“Will you look at that!” exclaimed Thorgil. Jack looked up to see the castle outlined in light. It seemed that the very air had come alive and twinkled with a thousand tiny sparks. They surrounded the partygoers, who were streaming in from all sides. Even the currents the fin folk made in passing glittered briefly before fading.

Presently, the glittering sparks found Jack and the others and illuminated them. He tried to see what they were, but the sparks winked out before he could focus on them, to be replaced by others. “They’re sea mites,” said the Bard. “They come out on warm, humid nights, somewhat like our fireflies. I suspect they’re attracted by the smell of kelp lager. Thousands of them manage to drown themselves in it—another reason to avoid drinking the wretched stuff.”

Once inside the walls, Whush appeared and led the Bard, Jack, and Thorgil up to a dais overlooking the courtyard. Torches blazed everywhere, making the air even warmer and more breathless. Fire pits smoked with dripping blubber. Buckets of lager were lined up against the walls, and Jack noticed that they glowed brightly with drowning sea mites. Fin men, fin wives, mermaids, and merlads descended on giant platters of roast beast, dipping down to bite off chunks and swimming away, the heavy fin wives moving more ponderously than the others.

Until then Jack had accepted the fin folk as odd almost-humans, just as he had once accepted the trolls. Now they seemed utterly alien. They resembled nothing so much as crabs tearing apart a dead seal. No emotion except ravenous hunger showed on their faces as their V-shaped mouths tore at the beast flesh. Between bites, they plunged their heads into the buckets and sucked up both lager and mites with mindless ferocity. Even the beautiful mermaids seemed devoid of intelligence.

Imagine being married to one of those, Jack thought. You’d have to live in this dank kingdom under the sea, knowing that your bride is not really human. That was why Father Severus had never considered marriage with his mermaid. For the first time Jack felt a slight sympathy for him.

“Pay attention,” murmured the Bard. Jack had been so riveted on the scene below, he hadn’t noticed what was on the dais. At first he thought he was looking at a jumble of rocks, but their brightness and color told him he was wrong.

“I’ve never seen so many jewels,” Thorgil said in an awed voice. Like all Northmen, she had a huge respect for wealth. “I don’t even know what most of them are.”

“Emeralds, rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and pearls,” said the Bard. “Amber, tourmalines, and jade. You name it, the Shoney has it. Everything’s available at the bottom of the sea. The gold and silver coins have been taken from sunken ships.”

“Do you suppose he’d miss—” began Thorgil.

“Don’t even think of it. He knows to the very last emerald the contents of his hoard.”

The shield maiden frowned. “If he pillaged it, others have the right to do the same.”

“The Shoney found it,” the old man emphasized. “All things that fall into the sea are his, including the gold dust he’s using for a floor down below.” Mermaids diving to retrieve shreds of meat caused the gold dust to spurt up and fall down just as quickly. It was very heavy.

“Well, what’s the point of heaping all this wealth in front of us?” demanded Thorgil.

The point is to make you desire it and know that it is beyond your reach, a voice suddenly said. A tall, shadowy figure had materialized on the dais. It was cloaked in shimmering silver that reflected the torchlight. The creature threw back his hood.

“Shoney!” the Bard said heartily. “What a pleasure to see you!”

The Shoney regarded him from yellow, slitted eyes like those of a snake. He was larger and older than any fin man Jack had seen before. No visit of yours is ever an unmixed pleasure, he replied. The creature waved his hand, and merlads swam to the dais with chairs. These were made of dark wood inlaid with ivory. Thorgil ran her fingers over the beautiful patterns before she sat down. Do you covet my chairs, shield maiden? the Shoney asked. Jack felt uneasy. How did the creature know she was a shield maiden?

“Indeed I do,” Thorgil said enthusiastically. “I’ve never seen such fine work.”

They were made in a land to the far south where the seas are ever warm. The ship that carried them was swift and strong. It had eyes painted on the prow to find the way, yet it did not see the rocks that slew it. Do you truly, truly covet them, shield maiden?

“Absolutely! And I can’t tell you how much I want to pillage all the gold and jewels you’ve got lying around here. I don’t know when I’ve been so jealous of a wealth-hoard.”

Ahhhh, sighed the Shoney, half closing his eyes. That’s what I like about Northmen. You can always count on them for heartwarming envy. Not like you, Dragon Tongue. You care nothing for earthly wealth.

“That’s not true,” the Bard said. “I love beautiful things, and these chairs are certainly beautiful. I’d welcome them in my house.”

Bah! You’d be just as happy with a chunk of driftwood. What of you, apprentice? The Shoney turned to Jack. Again the boy was uneasy that the creature knew so much about him.

“Well… I like silver.” He struggled to say something that sounded sufficiently greedy. “I don’t have experience with jewels, you see, so I don’t know how to crave them. Not that yours aren’t wonderful. I once had a silver-hoard, but I gave most of it to my parents.”

Gave it to your parents! cried the Shoney, almost making Jack’s heart stop. You have corrupted the boy with morals, Dragon Tongue. He stood up as if to leave.

“My heart-father, Olaf One-Brow, was the most covetous man in Middle Earth,” announced Thorgil. “Shall I tell you how he burrowed into a dwarf forge and stole thirty-seven gold rings?”

The Shoney sat down again. I have often longed to get my hands on dwarf rings. Alas, I am chained to the sea. Tell me more, shield maiden.

And so Thorgil related many fine tales of Olaf’s cunning and greed. She began with the thirty-seven dwarf rings and went on to Olaf’s pillaging of an entire shipment of wine meant for a Frankish king. She told of how he tricked a jeweled goblet away from a troll by using loaded dice and of how he made off with the Mountain Queen’s scepter, although she got it back.