A large wooden beam emerged from the deep, growing upward toward the light like a giant stalk of brown kelp. But instead of protruding from the sand, the mast grew out of a structure, a platform littered with objects that glimmered in shades I’d never seen.
Leaving Havamal behind, I swam down inside the structure. My eyes darted over everything as fast as a zebra fish. A wheel caught my eye. I raced toward it, wrapped my fingers around the spokes, and twisted. The ship groaned and shifted in the sand.
“It’s brilliant, right?” Havamal asked as he swam up behind me. He bit his lip to hide his toothless smile, but I could see the glimmer of mischief in his eyes.
“It’s amazing,” I whispered.
Red with an emotion I couldn’t read, his face hovered an inch from mine. Then he brushed a kiss across my forehead. “You’re amazing.”
Before I could react, he tweaked the end of my nose and swam away, laughing. He beckoned me toward the ship’s broken-down interior. “Try and catch me, scaredy! Let’s see what’s inside!”
*
I slipped into the great hall for the midday meal without passing Mama in the labyrinth. That was a relief, since I hadn’t seen her since I fled the hall the night before. She usually ate alone during the day, and preferred to weave her nets while the light was strongest.
After collecting my meal of chopped eel with a garnish of powdered crustacean shell—the cooks were going all out after the chaos of yesterday—I sat on a bench, near a group of merfolk my own age but few places away from them, hoping to avoid interaction; the last thing I wanted was for the conversational focus to shift to my dramatic exit from the hall. I just wanted to eat quickly and go check on the human girl.
But almost as soon as I lifted the first morsel of eel to my lips, Vigdis leaned across the table toward me. “Ersel,” she said, too loudly. “We’ve just been talking about you.”
I cringed and looked at the ceiling, praying to the carvings of the gods for help. The fissure made by the ship’s impact ran across Frigga’s forehead and through Aegir’s sea serpent eyes, but the portrait of Loki remained untouched. I took that as a sign and prayed to the trickster. Loki specialized in lies, and I didn’t plan to tell any of the other merfolk the truth about the human I’d seen.
Vigdis speared a sea urchin with her ice pick. When she spoke, her voice was layered with false sympathy. “Were you sick last night? You left so fast and looked so pale! I know it was frightening, but with The Grading coming up, I do hope you’re not unwell.”
With Vigdis, everything was about The Grading. Competition flowed through her veins like blood. She got worse the closer it came, and all her friends seemed to have taken on the obsession as well.
“I just needed to lie down,” I said. “My stomach felt queasy.”
Flipping her coral hair over one shoulder, she popped the urchin into her mouth and rolled it around with her tongue to crack the shell. “If you don’t start taking better care of yourself, your follicle count will be nonexistent. After lunch, why don’t you come bask in the sun with us?”
That was the thing with Vigdis: She saw me as competition, but still wanted everyone to believe she cared. A few of her friends traded looks, then nodded toward me, sycophantically echoing their leader’s sentiments.
“I don’t think I’ll do The Grading,” I stammered. This was why I still chose to stay with Mama. I never knew what to say to defend myself when they all ganged up on me, no matter how pathetic I found them. I couldn’t imagine choosing any of them to share my cave.
Vigdis’s eyebrows shot up. The sickly sweet tone dropped from her voice, replaced by genuine shock. “How do you expect to find a mate?”
“I’m not sure I want one at all,” I said, staring down into my bowl as my cheeks burned. I wasn’t sure why I was embarrassed when the choice should have been mine. But I knew that every other nineteen-year-old mermaid would take the test given by Aegir’s shadow mage, though, since every older mermaid was bound to silence, none of us knew what went on once the chamber was sealed and the mage began her work.
I wasn’t sure the king would let me refuse, but I clung to the hope that I could put it off for just a little while longer, until I could plan my escape. I hated the entire spectacle. Most of us paired off after the ceremony. Our scores were the only things the mermen ever learned from Aegir’s mage. The score was the only thing about us that mattered to them, as if everything else that made us who we were meant nothing.
If I found a mate, my days of freedom were over. Everyone would expect me to sit on the eggs until they hatched, day in, day out, waiting for my mate to return with the food he hunted and warm me with his scales. The king’s new laws dictated it. He enforced them as the birthrate in our glacier started to fall. He said it was to protect us and make sure that any viable eggs survived into childhood.
But I wasn’t ready for confinement, and I definitely wasn’t ready for the responsibility that came afterward. I’d heard the horror stories of cruel mermen who kept their mates locked below the ice, where they hatched brood after brood while their bodies withered and their minds broke. I didn’t know if all the stories were true, but some girls from years before mine had gone below and I’d never seen them again. People said King Calder was deaf to appeals.
When she recovered herself enough, Vigdis’s pixie features smoothed into a grimace of concern. “I know you must be worried. Everyone can see that you’re looking a bit… off. I’m sure someone will ask you, but not if you don’t come to the ceremony at all.”
“I’m not worried!” I burst out. I hated that they all thought I was afraid of failing, when in reality I was much more afraid of success. “I just don’t know if I want to have a mate.”
“Why not?” Havamal asked softly, sliding down the bench toward us. I almost groaned out loud. I hadn’t noticed when he joined us.
“Because she’s a silly child who would rather spend her time making pets of the whales than starting a life for herself,” Vigdis said, keeping her tone singsong sweet despite the venom in her words. She turned away from me and stroked Havamal’s muscular arm; her fingers traced circles over the band of silver scales that wound up his bicep.
I swallowed a morsel of bitterness. It annoyed me that Havamal had grown up to be so good-looking… so irksomely muscular and well-proportioned. The other mermaids fawned over him and hung on his every word. If there was any justice under the sea, he would have remained gap-toothed and gangly for the rest of his life.
Havamal shrugged her off. He focused his hunter’s stare on me. “Why, Ersel?”