The rest of Havamal’s hunting party surfaced behind me. Most of the men kept their distance, but at their new leader’s beckoning they swam a few feet closer. We waited for Ragna to move into position.
When the ship rounded the corner, positioning itself alongside the glacier, a few of the mermen gave cries of fear. But Havamal steadied them with a few quiet words. I smiled at him across the waves. It was the first real smile I’d given him since our ordeal began. He had matured so much in only a few months, had grown into a military commander other men trusted and followed—and maybe into a friend that I could trust too.
Havamal, Ragna, me… we’d all made unforgiveable mistakes. But maybe forgiveness wasn’t necessary. We couldn’t change what we’d done, but I hoped that today we’d create something new, something good.
When they got close enough, I could see the archers on Ragna’s ship climb onto the prow. The crew rolled the barrels of tar forward. The boat groaned under the added weight, and its bow tilted toward the water.
“Aim for the crevices,” Ragna shouted. “The arrows won’t penetrate the ice. They need to rest on the shelves and burn.”
She climbed onto the dragon’s head that decorated the bow and sat atop it. The wild arctic wind made her golden hair billow behind her as if she had her own set of sails. I watched her as she screamed directions. Longing bubbled up in me. The vial’s magic wasn’t the only thing I wanted to claim as mine.
A flurry of flaming stars shot through the morning sky. Some missed their targets and slipped across the ice’s slick surface until their flames were extinguished by the ocean waves. But bit by bit, the archers coated the surface of the ice with sticky tar that burned.
“This is crazy,” the king announced, trying once again to wrench his arms free. He turned to Havamal, entreating, “Stop it. You’re accomplishing nothing but allowing these humans to pollute the ocean with their toxic fire. Release me, and we can discuss this. It needn’t end badly for you.”
Havamal pressed his lips together and ignored his former sovereign. The ice glowed with fire, and we all waited. Then a cracking noise pierced the silence, and a section of the thick ice broke off from the glacier to hit the ocean with a mighty splash.
We all swam forward to look. Havamal swore. A great fissure had broken in the ice, but it was several feet above the waterline. Even if the guards managed to breach high enough to jump inside and look for the princess, they would never be able to crawl back out. There wouldn’t be enough water inside to allow them to swim.
Calder raised a challenging eyebrow and then folded his arms stubbornly over his broad chest. “I’ll see the lot of you stripped of scales and left to die. Maybe we can get some of that human fire and burn you alive. I bet that would be fun.”
Pure fury erupted inside me. I wanted him to pay for the system he’d created, for the princess he’d abused, for all the mermaids living in darkness, and for the sake of his prideful power that angered the gods and made them curse us. In a flash, I shifted into the monster’s form and climbed up the ice. I knew it could be dangerous to go inside alone. After the fire had burned away the surface, the glacier would be unstable. I’d lived inside the ice long enough to know how unpredictable it could be. The walls around the prison might collapse and kill both the princess and me. Worse yet, what if I was trapped down there with her, a prisoner?
Without pausing to think further, I shifted forms. I didn’t let fear stop me as I plunged into the fissure. Instinct positioned each of my legs exactly where it needed to be, bracing my body by sticking to both sides of the slick ice tunnel. I descended lower and lower into the ice, until water touched my scales. Diving into pure darkness, I stretched out my hand.
And someone grabbed it.
Keeping hold of Loki’s talisman in my left hand, I hauled the princess up with my right. It shouldn’t have been so easy to lift her outside the water. I peered at her, squinting to see her against the blue gloom. She was a skeleton with a shriveled body, her flesh stretched too tightly over her bones. Her limp green hair clung to her head in patches and her emerald tail was riddled with open sores.
She held onto my hand with all the strength she still possessed. She’d spent years sealed in this ice prison, all alone. It would have been easy for her to resign herself to her fate and let death take her. Inkeri wanted to survive and she wasn’t about to give up now.
But as I pulled her up and positioned her on my back, my grip on Loki’s vial slipped. The little bottle fell from my hand and was swallowed by shadow. My heart nearly stopped. I needed to get the princess to safety, but the fissure wasn’t stable. The outside wall of the north point had partially crumbled as a result of the fire. The tunnel I’d crawled through could close at any time, leaving both of us sealed within the dark chamber. But if I left the bottle behind, I might be stuck in this monstrous body forever.
I reached down with one of my tentacles, desperately feeling about in a space I couldn’t see. A piece of ice the size of a seal pup broke off in the tunnel and fell toward us. I ducked, and the princess let out a hoarse scream as the crystal boulder narrowly missed her face. If I didn’t pull us to safety, we would die here. And not only us. Havamal would die. The other mermen who had helped us would die, too.
Blood pounded in my ears. I’d be stuck in a monster’s form, feared by my own kind, an outcast, and unable to lie with Ragna intimately ever again, even if she accepted me as I was. I shut my eyes against the hot tears. Perhaps this was fate’s punishment for Vigdis. I swallowed hard and climbed for the opening that led to the sky.
I would wear this monster’s form, but I didn’t want a monster’s heart.
Another chunk of ice fell down the tunnel. It scraped my face, leaving a gash that dripped blood down my chest. The princess pulled herself so tight against me that I could feel the wild beating of her heart. Each of the mouths on the underside of my tentacles burned from the cold of the ice, but I forced myself to climb until we emerged into the sun.
A cheer erupted from the crew on Ragna’s ship, then from Havamal’s men. I jumped off the lip of the fissure, plunging into the water below. This time when I advanced on them, none of the guards loyal to Havamal looked at me with fear. Instead, they rubbed the back of their heads, mouths agape. Despite my situation, I felt a little glow of pride. They appreciated me for something I’d done, not how I looked.