Without giving me time to say goodbye to anyone, the bailiff marched me down the long outcropping of ice that made up our main underwater entrance. I didn’t look behind me, but I could hear people shuffling and scraping, trying to get closer. I was sure that some of them just wanted a last look at the freak—a memory to keep for their children about what happened when you went against the king.
The bailiff jabbed his harpoon into the small of my back. The blade nicked my skin and I yelped. The merman just laughed. He probably thought an extra cut served me right.
At the edge of the platform, I raised my eyes and murmured a last prayer to Odin before I dove into the watery loneliness that awaited me.
I drifted until I touched the ocean bottom. My new legs were clumsy and hard to maneuver, but at least the seabed gave me something to follow. I made my nest inside the hull of an abandoned ship with the skeletons of the dead for company. Barnacles had claimed most of the interior, and forests of seaweed grew through the cracked floor, but the cabin at the rear remained mostly intact. It wasn’t a welcoming home, but I needed a place to hide out of the open water. Without my tail and my fins, I was slow and vulnerable. Anything could catch me as I lumbered through the water. And I doubted even the belugas would accept me as their friend now.
When I wrenched the cabin door open, a whole human life seemed to surround me: a body, a room full of trinkets, animal skins bloated with water, a table laid for a last meal with an empty plate and perfectly aligned cutlery. I threw the pieces of the skeleton outside, into his watery grave, and claimed his space for my own.
The king had allowed me to take a small bundle with me. No food. No kelp. Nothing to help me survive outside the glacier on my own. I was allowed sentimental things; I’d taken my human trinkets. Ragna’s necklace dangled around my throat, and a comb of my mother’s pearls adorned my hair. It was ironic, how well-groomed and adorned I looked now, when no one was here to see me.
I tried to rest on the watery bed, to clear my head of memories and the pain of my missing scales. But my new legs had other ideas. As I laid my head back, they explored: touching, sucking, grasping everything in the cabin. The noise they made and the constant sensation of uncontrolled movement kept me awake. A human sword leaned against the bedframe. I grabbed it, held it to my breast, and pondered driving it into my heart. Then I positioned it over one of the tentacles, imagining what it would be like to hack them off, one by one. But I didn’t have the courage, and some hope remained. Maybe I could make this right. Maybe there was still something I could do.
Until then, I’d never sleep.
Part 2: Princess of Ice The old poets sing of Love and Honesty as sisters standing arm in arm.
But Love has two sisters and her arm locks also in Deception’s cold embrace.
ICE TABLET C76
“In the midst of this spot stood a house, built with the bones of shipwrecked human beings.
There sat the sea witch, allowing a toad to eat from her mouth, just as people sometimes feed a canary with a piece of sugar.”
—Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid
One
Hours later, a faint green light pulsed under the door. I wanted to curl up into a tight ball and ignore it. I wanted to pretend I was hallucinating, but one of the tentacles reached out and grasped the cabin’s door handle, pulling it open.
Loki swam in. They were wearing their signature horned helmet, but their body had transformed into the form of a human woman. Blonde hair floated around their shoulders, and a white top clung to their slender, muscular form. Dark brown eyes flecked with gold stared at me, rich and deep. If not for the helmet and the cruelty in their beautiful smile, I wouldn’t have recognized them.
I wished I could control my new legs well enough to strangle Loki. I didn’t know if it was possible to strangle a god, but I longed to try. My tentacles flailed uselessly, and Loki laughed.
“You lied to me,” I spat.
“Now, now, little Ersel,” they chided, removing their helmet and placing it on the rotting table. The voice that passed through their lips was female: high, patronizing, and instantly grating. It was a voice I recognized immediately as the one that had belonged to Vigdis. “I never lied. You just weren’t very specific about the things you wanted.”
“Right. You’ve been watching me, you chose me, you offered me legs, and you thought I wanted these?” I sat up and glared at them, focusing all my energy on their left cheek. A tentacle splayed forth and clapped them across the side of the head—not hard, but a victory of control nonetheless.
Loki stumbled backward; their mocking grin slipped.
“And Vigdis?” I demanded. “You sent that creature to her. She wanted a mate. She wanted children to love. She gave you her voice in exchange. You knew what she wanted, and instead you gave her a monster.”
“She liked him well enough at first.” Loki rubbed the back of their head. “I gave you what you asked for. Learn to be more specific.”
My mouth gaped, opening and closing like a salmon. “Learn? I learned never to trust you again. I learned that I can’t have what I want because it gets other people hurt. Get out and leave me alone.”
They threw up their hands and spun around the room. “Shall I leave you to all of this? Have you decided to make this your palace?”
“What choice do I have?”
Their eyes gleamed with green light. “There’s always a choice. Let me make you another proposition. I just wanted to up the stakes a little, before… make it all seem more worth your while. Maybe now you’ll have learned to be more specific about what you ask for. Go on.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “No.”
“I’m your only way out of this. You’re banished. You can’t even see your mother again. You’re a cursed animal, living in a ship full of human bones. You can change that, but I’m the only one who can help you.” Loki caught one of my tentacles when I tried to hit them again and stroked the slimy topside. “Do you want to be this forever?”
Their words made my stomach clench. I hated them for what they’d done to me and to Vigdis. I hated myself for letting it happen. But they weren’t lying. No one else could help me fix this. They were my tormenter and my salvation. Worse, they knew it.
“What is the deal?” I asked.
A sly smile came over their face. “Three voices this time. One human, one beast, one mer.”
“One beast? How am I supposed to convince an animal to give me its voice? I can’t take it by force… I won’t. They have to agree, don’t they? For the magic to work?”
Loki snapped their fingers. “That’s your problem. You have to bring me three voices, and those are the types I need. You can grant them anything in return.”
“For what? Why do you need them all? Surely you must have thousands in your collection by now, enough to match your limitless forms.”
They shrugged, eyes narrowing. “You don’t need to know my reasons. Do we have a deal or don’t we?”