Havamal doesn’t see you that way, a voice in my head insisted before I silenced it. Maybe once that had been true. Now I didn’t know what he saw when he looked at me.
The mage stretched her fingers over my belly. Then she began to massage the fleshy area above the line of my tail scales. Her deft hands kneaded my doughy stomach and I allowed myself a small grin of satisfaction. Vigdis could say what she liked about my sunbathing habits, but I ate well, and my body showed it. Even if the mage could only find a single follicle, my fat reserves could nourish a hundred developing eggs. I cringed inwardly. I didn’t want children, so why was I proud of that?
A sudden blast of heat cut through me. I struggled for breath as pain coursed in waves through my stomach and down into my tail. My back arched, and I let out a strangled cry. I’d never experienced pain like this. It was dizzying in its intensity, clawing at my insides. The heat abated, but it was replaced by a pulling sensation, almost like a rope tightening around my organs, dragging them out through my mouth. I screamed and screamed, trying desperately to grip the slippery ice table and steady my struggling body.
No wonder our mothers were forbidden to tell us about the ceremony. If I had known about the pain I would experience, I might have decided to hell with Vigdis. Her opinion of me wasn’t worth this torture. Above me, the mage was chanting. Her eyes glowed white, and she didn’t seem to see me. I thrashed on the ice table, and my tears made the room warm.
Then a sensation like liquid ice moved up my throat, forcing my mouth open. I tried to swallow, but a mist of glowing orbs erupted from inside me. They scattered in the water around us like multicolored stars: some turquoise blue, others green or coral, a few the same piercing silver as Havamal’s fins. The pain vanished almost as quickly as it had begun. I sat up and stared in awe at the orbs.
The old mage’s eyes regained their sharpness. She smiled at me and stroked my cheek with a long finger. Standing, she twirled with her arms spread wide. The orbs followed her fingers as if pulled by a current, forming a glittering cyclone around her.
A collective gasp rose in the hall.
“Are those… eggs?” Vigdis asked, looking at me. The pity in her eyes was gone, replaced by pure hatred.
“No,” the mage laughed. She snatched one of the delicate silver balls from the air and held it to her cheek. The little ball took on her glow and began to hum softly, almost like a lullaby. “They’re voices. All the voices she has the potential to create.”
After releasing the orb and letting it float away, the old woman squeezed my bicep. “The best result I’ve seen in decades. It would be fruitless to count. You could hatch as many children as you desire.” The wrinkles slowly etched themselves back around the corners of her eyes and mouth as she spoke. “But I know that isn’t what you desire. You’re a haustr child through and through. Full of paradoxes. Loki is playing their little jokes with you.”
Feeling suddenly drained and heavy, I wrapped my arms around my chest. Everyone was staring at me. Everyone was jealous of me. I should feel overjoyed. I’d showed them. Vigdis would never again be able to say there was something wrong with me.
But there was, wasn’t there? I wasn’t like the other mermaids. And the little silver orbs that shimmered so much like Havamal’s scales as they hummed their sweet ballads just made me feel all the more broken.
Five
I didn’t wait as the others queued up to face the mage’s touch. The walls of the fortress bore down on me, and I needed to get into the open sea. The orbs’ voices followed me as I rushed for the hall’s exit. They seeped straight into my skin as I swam, as if my body were made of nothing but water.
The mage called out to me, and a few of the other girls tried to grab my arms, but I pushed past them. I didn’t need to hear any congratulations they were going to offer. And I definitely didn’t want to know whatever the mage would say next.
A row of curious mermen waited by the hall’s exit. No doubt they were trying to get a first glimpse of the girls before the rest of the suitors, who waited with the king. I swallowed a lump of bile. The mermen moved aside when I swam past. The oldest, a blue-finned sentry, gave me a look that was almost pitying. They thought I had failed and couldn’t face it.
The irony made me want to laugh and scream at the same time. Aegir’s mage showed us the voices we had the potential to create, while our king stripped us of our own voices and condemned us to years brooding in chambers like prisons. No one ever asked me what I wanted. Our glacier’s need to survive had turned us all into slaves of this ritual and the king’s ugly pride.
I knew that the ceremony would last through the day and into the night. A feast would follow once all the mermaids had their results. If I left now, I could disappear until sundown before anyone would miss me. It might be the only opportunity I’d get to bring wood for Ragna.
I wasn’t willing to risk raiding Ragna’s own ship for materials. It was too close to the glacier. Any number of feasters, drunk on soured dolphin milk, could wander off looking for a quiet place to rest, or a place to mate if they were some of the newly paired. I shuddered. I couldn’t think about the aftermath of the ritual.
Would Havamal choose someone else? The question sent a wave of nausea through me. As a member of the King’s Guard, there would be more pressure on him to find a match. I imagined him with his Vigdis as his strong arms curled around her coral tail. Rage shot through me like a lightning bolt. I didn’t want the life he’d chosen, but the thought of him with someone else hurt almost as badly as the mage’s inspection.
I swam for the wreck I knew best, located a mile or so beyond the beluga’s surfacing hole. It was an ancient ship, half buried in the sand, rusted and rotting despite the cold of the water. A school of silver-finned herring came out to greet me as I dove into the ship’s hollow interior. The skeletons of a hundred dead humans leaned against the walls. Stray bones—fingers, ribs, and toes—were scattered over the decaying deck.
I trembled. The sight of the eyeless skulls and scattered bones had never bothered me before. As a child, Havamal sometimes picked up the skull fragments and wore them as masks. I would giggle as he rammed his head into the walls to impress me with his makeshift armor. But that was before I’d met a human: before I’d seen the depth, intelligence, even empathy, in Ragna’s eyes; before I knew that humans spoke the godstongue and smiled like starfish.
I swallowed another sob. What did it say about my life that, when everything was falling apart, the only being I could go to for comfort was a human I barely knew? An enemy.