Ragna would have to wait for the wood to fix her raft. It was noon already and winter, when days were short. My stomach fluttered. I had so many questions for the human girl, and I’d waited a lifetime to ask. I wanted to bring her each of my treasures in turn, and go through them one by one. But as soon as she fixed her boat, she’d sail away, and I needed to leave as well.
Pushing Vigdis aside, I sped down the hall before my tears could warm the water around her. I couldn’t let her know that she’d hurt me.
By the time I reached the ice shelf, my breath came in gasps. I even struggled to push myself from the water and onto the ice as exhaustion clawed at me. Who was I kidding? As tired as I was, there was no way my grading would go well.
Ragna waited beside the ice hole with her legs curled under her. She was scratching the tongue of one of the bolder belugas. The whale flapped his fins jubilantly, bobbed his head, and opened his jaw wider so she could reach the back of his mouth. Ragna was laughing. Her thin frame shook so hard she nearly slipped into the ocean.
She didn’t notice me at first, but when I flexed my aching tail and groaned in relief, she looked up. Catching sight of the bursting satchel, her eyes grew bright as a sea eel’s. “Is all that for me?”
“Will it be enough?” I knew nothing about how humans fed. How fast did they digest? They were in the sun all the time, continuously charging their skins. All of that sunlight had to give them energy. But then why was Ragna was so bony?
“This will keep me for a month,” she said, chuckling. “And it’s easy to keep it frozen, but I’ll have to use some of my fish oil to cook it. Did you bring the wood?”
“Cook it?” I knew the godstongue, but words or concepts related to fire, I never quite understood. We couldn’t make fire in the ocean. Did she mean to burn the fish? A bolt of dread went through me. Maybe she wasn’t going to eat it. Some of the gods liked their sacrifices eviscerated by smoke, Heimdallr included. She couldn’t mean to offer all the food I’d smuggled.
“You know, heat it up? Make it not raw? So you can eat it?”
My nose wrinkled in disgust. She wanted to eat quality food hot. Everyone knew that food rotted it when it got warm. I’d never experienced a summer, but Mama said that when she was a child and our pod sometimes ventured south to the summer waters, she had seen fish bloated with worms and dead whales whose carcasses filled with gas until they exploded. Ragna wanted to eat that! The idea was so disgusting I almost vomited into the ocean.
She chuckled, then winked at me. “I forget you live your whole life underwater. The whole cooking thing probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you. It’s good, though, trust me.”
I stuck out my tongue and made a gagging noise at the back of my throat.
Ragna took another long drink from her flask of fish oil.
The low winter light dimmed further as a cloud covered the sun. I squinted at the sky. It would be sundown in less than an hour. I needed to leave quickly if I was to prove myself at the ceremony. “I have to go. I’ll bring the wood you need tomorrow and some things I want to ask you about—some human items.”
Mischievousness sparkled in her dark eyes. “Items? I thought you weren’t supposed to keep things that belong to us?”
I chewed my lip. “We’re not… but I’ve collected a few. I just want to know how they work, what they do…”
“So you keep all those things but you were wary of my necklace? I think you just didn’t like it.” She pressed her lips together. “Are you saying my pendant is ugly?”
“No!” I snapped, irritated at how she was turning the conversation around. “I just can’t have something so obvious. I kept your necklace. I’m just not wearing it.”
Ragna giggled; her fake frown disappeared. “Are all mermaids this easy to wind up?”
I glared at her.
“We’ll trade again. My knowledge for wood.”
I sighed, then rolled my eyes. With the stress of The Grading, I couldn’t recognize a little gentle teasing. “It’s a deal.”
Gathering up the basket of food in her skinny arms, Ragna stumbled to her feet. “I’m starting to feel faint. I’m going to go cook this.”
That was my cue to leave. Nothing sounded less appealing to me than watching how she destroyed our food. Besides, I knew I had to hurry. I scooted to the edge of the glacier. Ragna gave me a one-handed salute, then shuffled into her makeshift shelter. I’d see her tomorrow, after she’d desecrated the fish.
Tomorrow, I thought, watching her pull the curtain of fur closed behind her, when The Grading was over and everything could be different.
Four
Mama’s fingers twisted through my hair, threading oyster pearls and tiny shells into my long blue locks. The pearls had been my idea—a little extra decoration to illuminate the topaz lights in my thick hair. Vigdis thought I never saw the sun because I never drew attention to the subtle lights in my hair or the freckles across my nose. I wanted to show her up in more ways than one. Mama took a green net of the finest weave I’d ever seen and fashioned it into a short veil over my eyes.
Her fingers quivered as she braided the net into place. “You don’t have to do this, you know.” Her voice shook as badly as her hands. “I’ve always imagined, well, that you might do something else. You always talked about it when you were a child. Maybe you could ask Aegir’s mage to take you back to the sea god’s court. It’s happened before.”
“No one acts like there’s a choice,” I said with an agitated sigh. “And if I go with the mage, I’d just be another kind of prisoner.”
Mama stroked my head. “I know there’s a lot of pressure. We could try to delay it. We might buy you some time—”
One of the pearls slipped down into my lap. Looking up, I saw that Mama was crying. “Do you ever wish you just started weaving right away? That you hadn’t hatched me?”
“Oh, gods, no.” She spun me around to face her. Wrinkles of concern lined her forehead and creased her eyes. “But I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t sometimes glad your father died young. There was never any love between us. I let him choose me because I thought I had to accept whoever asked for me. If he hadn’t passed, maybe I’d still be brooding eggs. I imagine that sometimes and it gives me nightmares. It’s not easy. Don’t make a decision just to prove something to your friends.”
My hand found hers and covered it. “Mama, I’m just going so they’ll stop talking. For all we know, I might be infertile. And if someone asks me, I don’t have to say yes.”
Her arms wrapped around me, and she pulled me close. The water around her was warm with emotion. “You might get swept up. It’s easy to do. A young merman approaches you, and before you know it, you’ve agreed, even if you didn’t mean to, even if you didn’t want him…”