“You’re a god. You’ve been alive for millennia. I’m sure ‘abstract’ is something you can overcome. If you cannot fulfill our deal…” Mama trailed off.
Loki snarled. Moving so fast their body blurred, their hands were on my throat. I gasped and spluttered as strong fingers crushed my windpipe. “How did you get her to come here? How did you do it? You cheated somehow, I know it.” Dropping me, they rounded on my mother. “Maybe your daughter will find happiness, but you will be an outcast. You’re here against your king’s wishes, against your all your laws.”
“I know the repercussions of the choice I’m making.” Mama’s jaw stiffened. “And my voice is not the part of me I value the most. That part grew up a long time ago. She’s standing right in front of me.”
Loki glared at her before smoothing their hair back. “I won’t give you that deal.”
Above us, I heard hail fall on the surface, followed by the clap of thunder.
“You said, ‘anything,’” my mother reminded him. “You already gave your conditions.”
Loki paled, and something like confidence grew inside me. The legends were true. The fear in their face told me as much. They would have to keep their promise. Thunder struck. I imagined Thor surfing on the waves and holding his hammer outstretched as he descended to bring justice. Loki and I looked up.
When I turned back to my mother, she held the bottle out to me, filled with the pearl white liquid. Her hand pressed against her throat, and when she mouthed, ‘I love you,’ I heard nothing and everything. In my hands, I clutched the third and final voice.
Loki held out their hand.
Trembling, I took the bottle from Mama. My whole body crawled with fear. I had the thing he wanted. I could ask for whatever I wanted and I had learned to be specific.
I cradled the vial against my chest. Mama had given up her voice, but I was the one who didn’t know what to say.
Thunder cracked overhead. The gods were impatient. They wanted to see the deal fulfilled so they could turn their attention elsewhere. The vial felt warm against my scales; it was comforting in a way none of the others had been. I could almost hear Mama hum a soothing lullaby within the milky liquid.
With the attention of all of Asgard on me, I took a chance. The god of lies might kill me where I stood, but I had to take the chance. “Our deal is complete.”
“Yes, yes. Nearly. Give me the bottle.”
I hugged Mama’s voice closer to my chest; my heart beat so hard it threatened to escape up my throat. “Our deal is complete. I brought you three voices. It was never stated that I had to actually give them to you.”
I wouldn’t have dared to try something so brazen before; I feared Loki’s wrath. If it had been anyone else’s voice in my hands, I still might never have dared. But Mama had stood up to them and her stubbornness gave me the courage I needed.
Loki lunged for me. The bottle slipped from my fingers, but they focused entirely on me. Their eyes glowed red, and heat emanated from them. I shut my eyes, knowing this was the end. I waited for them to kill me.
The water in the room flashed as lightning struck the surface of the water.
“Our deal is complete,” I whispered a final time.
They glanced up to the ceiling, then jabbed a thick finger at me. “This isn’t over. You’ve made an enemy of a god.”
“You’re right, it’s not over,” Mama said, and I almost cried at the sweet sound of her voice. “Ersel is owed something in return. Her choice.”
I could ask Loki for the legs I’d wanted all along, so that I could search the lands for Ragna and a new fortune. I spoke the godstongue, and perhaps someone would have heard of her. We could find our freedom together. I would learn to build, to construct things the way humans did, and engineer a new a life for myself away from the archaic rituals of the glacier.
I had always wanted something more. With her willingness to sacrifice herself, Mama presented me with a second chance.
But as the wish tickled my tongue, I bit down on it. Loki crossed their arms over their chest. A fresh smirk twitched at the corners of their lips as if they were daring me.
But my home… Vigdis was dead, and in the wake of my departure others like me had come forward to tell Havamal their stories. Vigdis and I had never been friends, but if I took this chance and left the other mermaids to the fate I feared more than anything, my guilt might destroy me. My tentacles were strangely still; the gaping mouths were at rest.
All I had to do was ask Loki to change me back, to give me the fins I’d hated and now longed for. The words stuck in my throat. I couldn’t be selfish, not after what Mama had been willing to do.
“Tell me how to change it,” I said, meeting the god’s green-rimmed stare. “Tell me how to get rid of these laws, the king… tell me how to change things so that no one else has to feel like I did. Tell me how to stop all this suffering.”
Loki’s turquoise eyebrows shot up. “What?” they asked, shock evident in their tone. “After all of this, you’re telling me you don’t want legs? You don’t want me to do anything? You just want answers?”
I raised my chin. “If I ask for answers, then I’m the one who decides what to do with them. The outcome is outside your control.”
“What of your human love?” The god’s eyes laughed at me. “All this to reunite with her, to be on land and be together, and what, you’re just going to forget about her?”
They were right. I would never forget Ragna, and I would cling to the fruitless hope that one day she might come back. But I set my jaw and crossed my arms over my chest. Although every part of me itched to slap them, I knew it would make Loki angrier if I refused to rise to their baiting.
“You’re just like the king. You don’t understand me at all,” I said, shrugging and taking the tiniest step toward them. “If you think I did all this for her.”
For a moment, I felt the ghost of Ragna’s kiss heating my lips, but when I blinked I felt only scalding tears sliding under my lashes and making their way to my chin. Then I whispered, “It was about something more than that.”
Loki’s gaze bore into mine; the color of their irises shifted from kelp green to storm-cloud gray. Deep in their soulless depths, I saw a flicker of respect. “King Calder’s sister, the princess Inkeri… she lives.”
Behind me, Mama gasped.