Today, I waited at the edge of the belugas’ abandoned surfacing hole. Our weather was finally starting to warm up, though this far north, we would always have ice. When summer began, the whales no longer worried about finding a place to breathe and dispersed throughout the sea to hunt. The warming water kept the hole in the ice open, and it widened each day. I had fashioned a sort of spear from a slender strip of wood that I found in one of the ship’s hulls. The belugas took me with them when they hunted, patiently accepted my ineffective spear thrusts, and kept me fed. Part of me hoped that Ragna would come back and seek me out now that the water was a little less treacherous, while at other times I hoped she was halfway across the world making a new life for herself.
I shut my eyes against the warming sun. I knew by now that the gods wouldn’t dissolve my pact with Loki, though I prayed to Odin every night to change me back. I wanted the All-Father to rewind time, to make it so Vigdis was never attacked, so that I never met Ragna. If I hadn’t known her, I couldn’t miss her so much now.
Red sails appeared on the horizon, and a moment later a dark ship began winding its way through the channels in the melting ice shelf. The bow was adorned with the outline of a skinny mermaid holding a shell. I snorted. I’d seen the design on more than one passing titan. It was ironic that most humans didn’t believe in us, yet featured us so proudly on their ships.
The hull sat low in the water; the ocean crept up the ship’s sides, reaching almost to the deck. Whatever the ship carried, it was heavy. As it drew alongside me, I ducked under the water. Sailors dressed in rich furs leaned over the rail, searching the sea. They clutched long metal spears and shouted to one another over the loud splashing of the oars. I scanned the men one by one, hoping beyond reason that I might catch a flash of sun-blonde hair or a glimpse of a fierce girl in an oversized fur coat. I couldn’t even be sure if I missed her or just having someone—anyone—to talk to.
Cutting through the water, a black-finned orca sped past me. She had a notch the shape of a half-moon on her dorsal fin, and I recognized her as the matriarch of one of the local pods—a group the merfolk of my clan often hunted alongside. A moment later, the whole sea seemed full of orcas; a legion of black fins streaked above the surface of the water like toy boats with midnight sails.
Ducking under the waves, I listened to them speak. Although I couldn’t understand their words, everyone knew that the orcas spoke a sophisticated language. I could have studied the whales’ tongues, but master linguists were becoming rarer and rarer in the ice mountain, and I doubted one of them would have agreed to take me as an apprentice. The orcas’ language was considered one of the most difficult whale languages for merfolk to master. The first female gave directions; her voice was high and ethereal. The water carried her words to the rest of the pod.
The group split in two. The females with calves at their sides went one way, staying deep under the ocean, while the rest of the pod went another. I could see what they were trying to do, and it pulled at my heartstrings. The orcas knew that ship carried men who had come to kill them. They were trying to save their babies.
On the ship’s deck, the sailors’ shouting turned to curses. But they didn’t fall for the whales’ trick. Clipping the ice and sending glassy shards flying in its wake, the great boat pursued the calves. My heart sank. Against this many humans, I didn’t know how to help the whales. I shuddered. Maybe the reason the ship sat so low in the water was that it was already overburdened with the bodies of whales the men had killed. With a ship that size, the length of a sperm whale at least, they could take a dozen orca calves.
The whales’ chattering became more frenzied. I could sense their fear in the vibrations that carried through the waves. The pod dodged in and out of the icebergs, leading the ship into the frozen heart of our deathtrap.
My whole body tensed. The humans on the ship’s deck were whooping and shouting, wild with bloodlust and the thrill of the chase. I sensed disaster pending. If one of the humans pierced a whale with a spear, I could remove it—if the orcas still recognized me as a friend.
The ship chased the whale pod, trying to herd them away from the treacherous bergs. When it passed less than an arm’s length from me, I pushed off the ice and attached myself to its hull. I still hadn’t mastered the art of swimming without my fins, but I’d come to appreciate some things about the tentacles. The ship towed me like an oversized barnacle. I dangled upside-down and watched the whales maneuver.
Above me, one of the men projected his voice above the deck’s chaos. “Milord, we can’t follow them through there again. The ship’s too wide. The ice hasn’t melted enough. We’ll crash on a berg.”
The rowers hesitated, and the ship drifted to the left, pulled by the tide toward the shelf. I heard a cracking noise above me. The oars twisted and churned with renewed vigor.
“One of those calves will feed my family for the whole winter,” another male voice roared. “The ice here is receding. It’ll be soft and break easy.” One of the oars clipped the edge of the shelf and a slab of ice—as long and sharp as a blade—fractured into the sea. “See, the ice is no problem. It’ll crumble if we hit it.”
The ship jolted, and I almost lost my grip. The momentary hesitation cost the humans. From my underwater vantage point, I could see the whales’ silhouettes fading into the ocean’s blue haze.
“We’re losing them!” The leader yelled. Feet scuffled across the deck, and I heard the cracking noise again, followed by a shriek of pain. We coasted forward, gliding through the sea like a shadowy kraken.
Suddenly, the ship lurched much more forcefully, and screams and shouts sounded from the deck: “What was that?”
“What did we hit?”
“Captain?”
“There’s water coming through…”
“Turn around, go back to the shelf!”
I could hear them racing around the deck like seabirds. Then metal and wood groaned, and the ship reversed course. The whales’ chatter quietened to a low hum. I remembered Mama telling me once that with orcas, silence meant danger. A long time ago, our glacier community had gone to war against the orcas. Our histories still told the bloody stories, and it had never happened again. Both sides had lost too many to think that victory was worth the deaths.
I released my grip on the hull and floated to the nearest iceberg. Splintered wood stuck out from the ice where the ship stabbed into the berg like a human spear in the side of a giant beluga. But it was the ship that was dying. Pushing my hair back from my eyes, I watched the men try to row as the ship sank lower in the water. I should have felt relief that my opportunity to obtain a human voice had come, but I felt only sickness spreading from my stomach up to my throat and making me dizzy.
The humans were screaming and praying to Aegir to save them. But everyone knew the whales were the sea god’s favorite children. The orcas swam nearer, clustering silently around their iceberg savior, waiting for the humans to fall into their domain.