Once, mermaids had been able to visit the upper world whenever they wanted. They’d appeared to sailors, bewitched travelers, stolen beautiful young men from seasides, brought them down to the world below. But things had changed in the last few hundred years, as humans took more and more to the sea. After a group of mermaid sisters had been hauled up by fishermen and brutally killed, Lenia’s great-grandmother had issued a royal decree forbidding any further interaction between the two worlds. “They are dangerous,” she had said. “They will kill us all if they have the chance.” Still, to honor that long-ago link between merpeople and humans, every mermaid and merman was allowed this one day, on his or her eighteenth birthday, to travel alone to the upper world, as long as they kept carefully out of view of humans.
To most of Lenia’s kind, humans were base, predatory. They lived short, violent lives before dying and leaving their bodies to rot, which most merpeople found quite inelegant—as they themselves lived for three hundred years before turning gracefully to foam. The bloated bodies of humans littered the ocean floor; human ships sank and became tombs full of garbage and bones. In recent years, some merpeople had even elected to stay in the sea on their eighteenth birthdays, refusing any contact with the upper world at all.
Her sisters, more than anyone, had mocked Lenia’s love for humans. Nadine would bring Lenia the bones of sailors and, whenever she could get to them before the fish, decaying body parts. “Look how disgusting,” she would say, holding up a disintegrating finger, pieces of skin flapping off it like small sails. “Look what happens to them.”
But none of her family’s prejudices had lessened Lenia’s desire to see the upper world for herself. She had anticipated her visit for so long that she had insisted on going the night before, right after midnight, in the middle of a terrible storm, one so strong and fierce they had felt it at the bottom of the sea.
“You might want to wait a few hours more,” her grandmother had warned, the coral walls quivering around them, but Lenia had waved off her concern. The eve of her birthday had finally come, and she’d gone through the whole ceremony—the elaborate feast, the clipping on of oyster shells and pearls, the singing in front of the entire court—and she was not going to wait a second past midnight to visit the world above.
“I want to see all of it,” she’d said. “Even the worst of it.”
They had wrung their hands and tried to distract her with gifts and baubles. Her mother had had the cooks find giant clams and stuff them with monkfish liver and crab and roe, prepare lupe de mare with sea mushrooms, wrap crabmeat around imported rascasse, lay out platters heaped with the rarest caviar, and present a selection of oysters and percebes and periwinkles and crabs and lobster and conch on huge plates lined with starfish. Her father had given her a shell that, when held up to the ear, played the songs of whales and selkies. And her sisters had joined together to make her a bracelet strung with sea glass plucked from the oldest, most tragic shipwrecks.
The golden banquet table had tilted and shifted from the shaking of the storm above. Sand from the ocean floor had whirled up and spun around them as they feasted. The musicians kept playing their instruments made from coral and bones and shells, even as the palace swayed and the mussel shells above them snapped open and shut. No one had experienced such effects from an upper-world storm in hundreds of years, some of the merpeople whispered. This was extraordinary, and surely a very bad sign.
“Sing, Lenia,” her sisters had insisted, trying to distract her, and, to defy them all, she opened her mouth and sang the sweetest song she could about the beauty of the world above them. She remembered details from her grandmother’s stories, from her sisters’ visits, from her own dreams. Creatures that flew through the air. Lightning that flashed across the sky. Souls leaving bodies and drifting up to the stars.
That is what the other merpeople did not understand, and what Lenia did: that humans had souls, and that their souls lived forever. It was not the same as when merpeople died, dissolving into foam and becoming part of the great ocean. Souls were webs of light that contained the essence of a human’s life. Memories and loves, children and families. Every moment of a life, pressing in.
“Stop!” her mother had cried, seeing the effect Lenia’s voice had on the court. Even those who had never been to the upper world and never wanted to go, who accepted it as a place filled with danger, had felt a deep longing within them when Lenia sang. They had all come from the same place, after all, humans and merpeople. No one could be whole in a universe so divided. Lenia’s voice—so sweet and clear—had snaked into each one of them, filling their hearts and illuminating the parts that were empty.
Lenia had stopped singing, and there was silence as each guest struggled to regain composure.
“Just go, Daughter,” her mother had said, resignedly, and her father had nodded beside the queen the way he always did. No one was even sure how much he actually paid attention to anything anymore, he was so used to echoing his wife. “It is almost midnight. Go and you will see that nothing is as wonderful as our dreams can make it.”
And Lenia had left the palace and swum straight up to the surface of the ocean. Up, up, so fast it was like she was being pushed on a wave, as the water swirled around her. The surface was miles away, farther than she’d realized even on days when it felt so far from her it might as well have been another universe. The closer she got, the more intense the current became, thrashing her about, throwing fish and shells against her, wrapping seaweed around her limbs.
When she finally reached the surface and pushed her face above water, the sheer wall of sound nearly sent her back under. The crash of thunder, the pounding of rain, the rush of air as it hit her mouth and lungs. A strange, raw feeling—as if she were being hollowed out, the air swooping through her, invading every cell of her body. She struggled for breath as the waves rose and fell all around her, howling. The sky was black and then ablaze with lightning. She cried out, and flinched when her voice distorted as it hit the air. Even among the crazy cacophony of the upper world, the sound of her own voice seemed to shatter against her.
As her eyes focused, she saw something in the distance, tossing on the waves. She’d only ever seen ships at the bottom of the sea. It confused her, the force of it battling the storm. The dragon prow twisting this way and that.
She ducked back into the water and made her way to the ship. She cut through the wild water with ease and swam right under the vessel, watched in wonder as it tipped to the right and left, shedding oars and chests and other treasures into the sea. Like a monster riding the sea. She darted out from under the ship, pushed her head above water.
And then, there, on the vessel. Right in front of her.
Human men.
She watched their faces raging with life, as they fought to hold the ship steady on the impossible sea. But the vessel began to split apart beneath them. Whole chunks ripped off, twisting in the wind, crashing in the water, where they would sink to the bottom of the ocean and become new ruins for her and her sisters to explore.
A man fell from the ship. Just fell into the water like a bit of debris. She slipped her head below the surface and watched him being pulled under. He thrashed and struggled to get above water, to the air, and she wanted to tell him that he was safe now, that the world under the water was beautiful, that she could take care of him there. But, as she watched, his face became horrible, lurid. He stopped struggling. She swam to him. She wanted to help him, to pull him down to the palace and tend to him, but then his body stopped moving and she knew he was dead. She grabbed him and shook him. Her face was next to his, her hands under his shoulders.
It struck her, what she knew already: men could not survive under the surface of the water.
She’d seen many dead humans, of course, but she’d never seen a human die before. It was horrible. Merpeople had a different kind of death. Everyone knew when they would die, and it seemed long enough to them, their three hundred years. They passed gently, turnin
g slowly to foam, fading into the water and then disappearing altogether, to become part of the sea. She’d seen many merpeople die, and those left behind always celebrated the passing with song and feast. But she believed it was even more beautiful when humans died because they had immortal souls. She remembered again, now, how her grandmother had described to her the way a soul would slip from a human body, shimmering and beautiful, and rise to something called heaven, where it would have eternal life.
But that was not what Lenia saw as she watched more men die around her. These were awful, painful deaths. Limbs thrashing and going slack. Men struggling, with all their strength, for air, the horror on their faces as they began to drown.
It was the most terrible thing she’d ever seen.
She let go of the man’s body in horror, watched him drop farther and farther, until he faded into the black of the sea.
She looked up. Men were falling all around her now, spilling through the water, clawing for land, for air. Dying. She pushed her way back to the surface. The ship was nearly gone, just slabs of wood falling into the sea. Men were swimming, trying to grab onto pieces of the ship. Their strange legs flailing, their screams ripping through the stormy air. She watched as a piece of ballast fell and smashed in a man’s skull. Dead men floated past her. And the sky still crackled with lightning, like an angry god.
It was chaotic, terrifying. She did not know which way to turn.
Until she saw him. The one man clinging to a slab of wood. His eyes moved up and caught hers. Had she seen him before? He was so familiar to her. The water was pulling him. There were barely any men left above the surface.
Her body began moving before the thought crystallized: she would save him, this one man.
She swam to him, pushing past bodies and debris, and he was frozen, staring at her, stunned, the rain pounding down. He was so strong, clinging to life so ferociously, his powerful legs kicking to keep him above water. She found it moving, his passion for life. This will to live.
“Come,” she said, holding out her hand.
He didn’t move.
“Come to me. I will save you.”
Her voice seemed to have some magical effect on him. He looked at her, his eyes wide with fear and wonder, a smile beginning to form on his face, despite everything. She smiled back at him. Her grandmother had told her this, how easily men were enchanted by mermaid sounds. How easily a mermaid could cast a spell on a man and lead him to his death. This made sense to her now. Her soft, beautiful tones in this harsh, loud world.
She put one arm behind his shoulders, the other winding about his waist.
“Let go,” she said. “Hold on to me.”
His face was right next to hers. She could feel his heart beating.
“My men,” he said, his voice rumbling into her. “My ship.”
“Shh,” she said. “I will take you to shore.”
He was wearing cloth over his chest, and the material felt strange under her palm. She loved the smell of him. Even over the sea and rain, she could smell his hair, his skin, feel the warmth of his beating heart. As she began swimming, she leaned her cheek into his wet hair, surprised at the feel of it. He was so soft, full of life. She had to stop herself from pulling him down to her garden and wrapping herself around him. He will die there, she repeated to herself. Take him where he will live.
She swam harder, pushing against the current, leaving the wreckage and the bodies far behind. She realized that she knew where to go, that her body could sense it.
It was wonderful, swimming for the first time between the two worlds, half in the air and half in the water, as the rain beat down against her. She liked the challenge of the crashing waves, the way the lightning cracked the sky open, the beauty of the night and the rain and the moon, faintly visible. She liked the feeling of him in her arms. For a human it’d be hard work, carrying a man of his size, but he felt easy in her arms. He had slipped from consciousness, but she was aware at every moment of his breathing, the air moving in and out of his lungs, how crucial it was to keep him above water and not let his breath stop.
She swam as her body told her to, slipping into a kind of trance between his breathing and the churning of the storm-ridden sea.
After a while, the rain stopped, the sea calmed, and there was no sound but the lapping of water and his faint breath. Above her, the black sky cleared, until she could see the thousands of stars strewn across it. Even in her most vivid imaginings, she had not understood the vastness of this world, how far it extended. She looked down at the man in her arms, his soft, perfect face, and a ferocious love moved through her.
I will save you.
She pushed her powerful tail behind her. She swam harder than she ever had, holding the man as if he could break, her arms under his shoulders. And then, finally, in the distance: the glimmer of windows. Humans. The way her sisters had described it. There was a wall of rock, and above it, a large stone structure. The sun was coming up behind the structure, on the top of the cliff, splitting the sky into pink and cream and blue.
“Look,” she whispered, and his eyes fluttered open. “Look at the sky.”
He turned his head, looked right at her, and, in the breaking sunlight, she could see the strange tawny color of his eyes. There was so little life in them now.
She shoved her tail against the waves and swam as hard as she could, to the shore, to where he would be safe.
Her eyes scanned the cliff, the building, and then rested on a lone human girl, standing on the cliff, near a long staircase that wound down to the rocky beach. Lenia focused in on her.
Save him, she thought.
She reached the shore and pulled him out of the water, onto the rocks.
She had only seconds.
She lay beside him and stroked his face and his hair. His eyes fluttered open and shut as she leaned down and kissed his lips, his eyelids, his forehead. The feel of him under her lips, combined with the sunlight, the air that swept along her bare skin, her wet hair—all of it filled her with a kind of euphoria she’d never before felt. The material of his wet shirt tickling her breasts as she leaned against him. His open mouth and warm tongue.
He was so beautiful. She had never seen anything so beautiful.
But she could feel the life leaving him, and knew that she had done all she could do, that it was time to let other humans take care of him so that he could live. She looked up at the girl on the cliff, standing there watching them, transfixed. Her black hair blowing around her, her pale skin and brown eyes, her furs.
You, she thought again. Come now.
CHAPTER THREE
The Princess
THE MAN WAS SOAKED THROUGH AND SHIVERING WITH cold. His arms and legs were wrapped in seaweed. There was a strange shimmer, Margrethe saw, where the mermaid had touched him, on his face and arms. He had a warrior’s body, though his clothes were those of a civilian. Even sprawled as he was on the beach, half dead, he looked like a soldier about to go into battle.
She knelt beside him, her knees pushing into the rocky beach, and touched his face the way the mermaid had done moments before, running her fingers along the trail of shimmer the mermaid had left on his cheeks and lips. There was no feel to it, no particles that rubbed off onto her fingers. His skin was smooth, like stone, and his light hair had already formed into ice. Just as she poised her hand to touch his eyelids, to trace their curve, he blinked and stared up at her.
His eyes hit her like an open palm. In them, she could see the same glint that was on his skin. She jumped back.
“You,” he said, in a strange accent, his voice like a growl. He grabbed onto her furs, and she saw how weak he was. The rocks around him were stained with blood. She did not know what to do. She thought of her childhood nurse, who had been able to heal with a clove or a piece of bark or a dried herb she’d plucked from the castle garden. But she had never been trained in the healing arts. She was the daughter of a king, she was not made for such things, she had never learned a
nything useful at all. She was alone, and no one would be able to hear her over this wind. She wanted to cry. Why did she know so little of the world? But she knew enough to see that the man was blue, his teeth clacking, that he would die, and her heart burst open, with grief, with love, and she jumped to her feet.
She winced as she slipped off her furs and placed them over the man, carefully tucking them under his arms and legs. Immediately the wind beat against her. She was wearing only a light wool tunic, as all the young nuns did, with a white robe over it. The thin wimple did little to protect her head from the cold. The man stared up at Margrethe as the cold slipped into her skin, into her blood and bones. “I will be back, with help,” she said, and she spun and raced up the stairs as fast as she could, her body turning to ice, her hair to icicles that clanked together, and finally, after what seemed like days, she reached the garden, the gate, and then she was inside the abbey, gasping for air.
She pushed past the few nuns outside the abbess’s chamber. “Quick! I need help!”