“Are you here to mock me?” I asked, my voice trembling. It wasn’t a polite thing to ask a god, but after what I’d been through today, I didn’t have energy left for courtesy.
Laughing, Loki shook their great horned head. Their cackle was high and cruel, but then their eyes softened into something that seemed like affection. That look of care on their pale face was even more terrifying. They rested their warm hand on my back. I imagined their nails filled with poisonous venom and pulled away to avoid getting their toxin on my scales.
But Loki only smiled. “I’ve been watching you for a while, Ersel. It’s not normal for your kind to interact so closely with the human world. You’re curious and intelligent and you don’t follow orders like a sheep. I value all those things.”
I didn’t know what a sheep was, but I nodded at the compliment nonetheless.
Their fingers played with the edges of their blue and gold eyebrow. “I want to make a deal with you.”
My scales stood up on my back. Whenever the storytellers talked about Loki, they cautioned against making deals with the god. I cursed myself for carelessness, for letting Havamal follow me. If I hadn’t been such an idiot, maybe I wouldn’t have to decide between displeasing the god standing in front of me or doing what all our legends warned against: making a deal with the being who invented the lie.
“What is the deal?” I asked, wringing my hands.
“One wish. Anything you want. Truly, anything,” they insisted, noticing my raised eyebrows. Their aura turned silver, flashing as they grew excited.
“What do I have to do?”
“I need a voice.” They took a little vial from their coat and held it out. Inside, a glowing white liquid splashed against the glass. “A voice from a merperson. I can’t talk to the other creatures in the sea without it. Everyone knows I can change my form at will but… voices I have to collect.”
My hand went to my throat, then crept down to my belly. Was that why they had helped me at the ceremony? Did they want me to give them all the voices I carried inside me? Or my own?
“Not yours. I’m not a fool and I know you’d never give that up.” They patted my shoulder again, and I recoiled. The dryness of their skin felt like sand trapped between my scales. “And the ones you carry… I know what you’re thinking, but they’re not voices. Not yet. They’re just potential. But there must be others—an old woman perhaps? A silent maid? A merperson who would not miss their voice anyway? Who would be happier left mute and in peace?”
I couldn’t think of anyone like that, but I nodded anyway. Who could be happier living the rest of their life with no voice? I couldn’t imagine how isolating that would be.
“Tell me what you want to do,” I said, lowering myself to sit on the edge of my pallet. “I’m not saying I’ll do it; I just want to hear what the conditions would be.”
To escape the situation Havamal had put me in, I was willing to listen to anything. If I could just escape, I could vanish into the ocean. I would catch up with Ragna, and who knew after that? I could find a new world.
Loki’s grin widened. They stepped forward and hung the vial from a cord of twisted fibers around my neck.
Loki vanished, and the water flooded back into the cave, leaving me dizzy with nervousness. I didn’t know when Havamal would return or how long I had spent negotiating with the trickster, but I knew I had to hurry if I was to succeed before I was dragged in front of the king.
I slipped from my cave into the labyrinth of halls and storage bays. I didn’t know if my plan would work, but there was only one mermaid I could think of who might accept Loki’s conditions. Soon, I was in a less familiar part of the fortress—the most luxurious part—where each individual cave was a crystal palace of ice with its own dining chamber and sitting room. Mama and I never won numbers high enough for one of these residences, nor would we ever. Everyone knew the system was rigged. With Mama refusing to take another mate after the death of my father, and me being, well… strange and, before The Grading, undesirable, to say the least… our chances had never been good.
If I were staying, maybe we’d be allocated something better next year, since the results of the fertility ceremony made me valuable. Something tickled the back of my throat. What would Mama do, once I was gone? Would the king hold her responsible for my departure? But with my former best friend about to make me a prisoner, I couldn’t let myself dwell on that.
At the end of the twisting hall, the water warmed. I crept to the doorframe of the last cave and peered inside. I hovered in the doorway, stunned by the moment of weakness I was not supposed to see. Vigdis tilted her head back to stop the flow of misery, wiping snot on a square-cut piece of seaweed.
Part of me was taken aback. I hadn’t expected to find her still crying. It had been days since the ceremony. And yet I supposed that Vigdis felt as trapped as I was now, with all her dreams stripped away. I wished our positions had been reversed. I couldn’t help feeling, in that moment of prayer before The Grading when I’d asked Loki for help, that I’d somehow exchanged our fates, that I’d stolen something from her.
I knocked on the outside wall, and my fist sank into the ice. She’d cried so much her home had started to melt around her. I almost felt guilty, using her like this, but given the state she was in, maybe she’d thank me. Maybe we would both get what we wanted. “Vigdis?”
“Did you come to rub it in?” she asked, pawing at her eyes. “I get it, okay? The irony of everything. That you’re fertile and I’m not. “
“There’s always next year,” I offered. I didn’t want to be too quick with my bargain, not until she relaxed and understood that I hadn’t come to mock her.
“Next year?” Vigdis gave a hollow laugh and banged her head on the wall. “I got a score of eight. Eight. I have eight viable follicles in my entire body. With a score that low, nobody will ever want me. I’m too much of a risk even if I get a higher count next year.”
“Have you thought about doing something else? Lots of merwomen have other jobs…”
“After!” Her voice broke, and boiling tears seeped into the water. “They do things after they’ve proved themselves. I never learned any skills. I didn’t really pay attention in our lessons. Why would I? I always knew what I wanted. What am I possibly good for now?”
“I don’t know. You could work in the nurseries?” Even as I said the words, I realized how insensitive they sounded.