“Sybil?” she called. To her surprise, her voice rumbled in her throat, the way it had above the surface of the water, in the air. She looked about, disoriented, but she was still at the bottom of the sea. Surrounded by black jewel walls. Nothing had changed.
There was no answer. Across the room was an archway, and she moved through it, into a second room, filled with strange plants that grew so thickly she had to weave through them. Even as Lenia approached, they grew and changed color right before her eyes.
She pushed through and came upon a mermaid busy tending a batch of flowering vines climbing up one of the cavern walls. The mermaid had a tail like melted pearl, wild pink-silver hair streaming to her waist.
“Hello?” Lenia whispered, suddenly afraid. It couldn’t possibly be her, she thought. Sybil had to be near three hundred years old by now.
Lenia started when the mermaid turned and looked at her. Her eyes were the strangest, palest gold, the kind of eyes you could feel yourself sinking into. They pulled her in like two arms, and Lenia immediately looked down at the floor, which was a black, glowing sand, scattered through with silver rocks.
“Hello?” the mermaid said, approaching her. Her voice was so lovely, and it seemed to take on a life of its own as it left her mouth, entwining itself in Lenia’s hair.
“Are you Sybil?”
“I was expecting you.”
“You were?”
“These plants,” Sybil said, pointing. “I can see bits of the future in the vines.” She plucked a flower and then opened it, let the petals collapse until only the thick center shot up. “Can you see?”
“See what?” Lenia could not see anything but the heart of the flower in Sybil’s hand. Suddenly, for just a flash, it took on the shape of a mermaid—of Lenia herself—and then it fell back and became, once more, the center of the flower. “Oh.” She looked up at Sybil, who smiled, dropping the flower onto the sea floor. Instantly, it shot up again to its full height.
“You need something?”
“Yes,” Lenia stammered. “I wanted to—”
Sybil put her hand on Lenia’s shoulder. “It is all right. Tell me.”
“On my eighteenth birthday, I saved a human man who was drowning, and I love him. I want to find him again.” It seemed to come out in one long breath.
Sybil did not even blink with surprise. “You have not fallen in love with just any human. He is a prince, is he not?”
“A prince?” Lenia said. “How do you know that?”
“My dear,” Sybil said, ignoring her question. “It’s best to accept your own nature, rather than try to be something you’re not.”
Lenia spoke the next words carefully, slowly. “But is it possible? To become something you’re not?”
Around them, the vines twisted and untwisted, sprouted leaves and flowers that grew and died in an instant. The black gem walls seemed to fade to silver, then grow dark again. Suddenly Lenia could see the witch’s years. She was as smooth and beautiful as before, but there was a deep sadness in her, a weariness that spoke of infinite loss.
“Yes,” Sybil said, finally. “But the cost is great. That is the thing about magic. There is always a cost.”
“What is it?” Lenia whispered. And everything shifted then, became serious, sacred. The cavern seemed unbearably quiet.
Sybil looked at her and cocked her head. “It has been a long time since any merperson asked this of me,” she said.
“It has happened before? Others have asked this?”
“Yes,” Sybil said. “You’re not the first mermaid to love a human. This has happened for as long as our worlds have been separated. It is one reason we have all these rules now, why they try so hard to keep us away. You, my dear, might simply have more human left in you than most. Maybe that’s what makes you long for their world.”
“Yes,” Lenia said. For the first time, someone understood. The witch knew what she felt. Others of her kind had felt this way before. Yes. “Please, tell me what the price is. What I can do.”
Sybil looked at her sympathetically. “I can give you a potion,” she said, “that will split your tail into legs.”
“A potion,” Lenia breathed. “It is that simple?”
“It is very, very painful. When your tail splits, it feels as if you’re being slashed by a huge sword, and it continues to feel that way. Though you keep your grace and ease of movement, you feel as if you’re walking on knife blades with every step, even when every human who sees you is struck by your uncommon elegance. Would you be willing to suffer all that? For a mere human?”
Lenia could not even imagine such pain, but she felt she could bear anything to see him again. How could she think that she could return to the palace and mate with Falke? “I think so,” she said.
“You cannot be a mermaid again, once you take on human form. You cannot visit your parents or your sisters. You cannot watch their children grow. You have to abandon everything of the life you’ve known, everyone you’ve loved. Could you do that?”
Sybil paused, waiting for her response.
“Yes,” Lenia said, but her voice was trembling.
“And furthermore, you must win the prince’s love. Win it so completely that he is willing to marry you, and a priest must cleave his soul to you. That is the only way for you to gain a human soul, Lenia.”
“He will love me,” Lenia whispered, nodding. “I know he will love me.”
“If he marries someone else, the next morning at dawn your heart will break, and you will turn to foam. If he does not marry at all, you will live as a regular human does, and die, but without a precious soul. Here, in the sea, you have hundreds of years left to live, as long as you stay away from humans. But in the upper world, you can die at any moment. Your body will be fragile, and there is danger everywhere there. And when you die, you will turn to foam.”
“Unless he marries me.”
“Yes. Unless he marries you.”
“And if he marries me, I can live forever, right? It is true?”
Sybil nodded. “You can gain a human soul, and a human soul lives forever, in heaven. But do not forget that we, too, continue to exist, as part of the sea.”
“But we turn to foam. We disappear.”
“Yes.”
“It is not the same.”
Lenia thought of her mother and father, her sisters and their children, their gleaming eggs. The sea. All that she loved of the ocean. The power of her own body as she glided through the depths, the water streaming on all sides of her and the glow of fish and octopi and starfish all around.
But what were the riches of her own world compared to everything that would come after death? Even the bonds of family would disappear, eventually—and then all that would remain would be memories, memories and foam, and eventually all those who remembered her would become foam as well. Their palaces would crumble, their stories be forgotten. Until there was nothing, no trace, left. She thought of all those who had come before her. With their loves and pains, their vicious battles, their children, their passions. All those sea folk who’d reveled in the feel of the water, who’d loved the ocean, who’d lived amid the coral. What were they now? What was left of them?
And then she thought of the brightness of the upper world, the sun streaming down, the infinite variety of sounds. The men falling from the ship, dying, screaming for life. And his lips under her own, the softness. She imagined herself with two legs, walking to him. His soul, already inside her—she knew it—joining with hers. A holy man marrying them, fusing their souls so that they would be together forever. She thought of Margrethe praying in the convent on the cliff. In the sea, Lenia would die, turn to foam, become nothing. All of this now would end. But with the prince, she could live in heaven forever.
“There is one more thing,” Sybil said.
“What else?”
“The price. It is how magic works, Lenia. What you are asking for is so great, you must also give up your greatest asset in exchange. Every m
erperson who asked this before you has had to do it. The potion will not work without it.”
“But what else do I have to give, if I’m willing to give up my place, my family, the sea?”
“Your voice.”
She clutched her throat automatically. “My voice?”
“Your beautiful voice.”
“But … how can you take that?”
Sybil looked pained as she spoke. “To do this, my child, I would have to cut out your tongue.”
“My tongue?”
“Yes. You would not be able to sing, or to speak.”
“My tongue,” Lenia repeated. “How could I make him love me, if I’m unable to speak to him?”
“You would have your form, your beautiful movements, your expressive eyes. You have more gifts than you realize. And in the upper world, they would be that much stronger. Humans can sense that there is something special about a merperson, though of course they do not know what it is they are sensing.”
Lenia’s mind was spinning. What would it be like to have no voice? Her voice was so much a part of her, who she was. Her singing, which could so easily move her fellow creatures to despair or laughter. It was a gift, simply, something she’d been born with. Not something that had ever mattered much to her, but even so, she could not imagine herself without it. Maybe it was for this, though, that she’d been given it. To have this.
Sybil leaned forward, taking Lenia’s hand into her own. “This is not a decision you can reverse. Do not make it lightly. Take some time to think about what it will mean.”
Lenia nodded. “And if I decide to do this, you will prepare a potion for me?”
“Yes. I can prepare a potion for you, and then take your payment. That is the last part of the spell.”
“And afterward, I could go to him? Right away?”
“Yes.”
Lenia was wild with excitement, possibility. Could she really leave everything, all she’d ever known, give up her voice? For him? All of that for him?
She thought of the prince so soft and warm in her arms. A web of light moving from him into her, expanding, filling her. Everything she’d ever wanted, right within her grasp.
CHAPTER NINE
The Princess
THEY RODE ALL DAY AND THROUGH THE NIGHT, THE steady, heavy rhythm of hoofbeats carrying them forward. They passed through pristine forests of giant snow-laced pine trees. They galloped through villages and walled cities. They raced across long stretches of countryside scattered with huts and farms, all of them iced over now, glittering under the winter sun.
In village after village, peasants and merchants appeared in windows and at doorsteps to catch sight of the king, his royal guard, and the rescued princess. The story had spread like fire: that the enemy prince had stolen into a convent where the princess had been in hiding, that he’d gone there to murder her, and that the king had arrived just in time to save her. All over the kingdom, people were enraged. The king’s coat of arms was displayed in windows and on shop doors. People stood in the streets and screamed for blood. Peacetime was over.
To go to war was one thing. To steal into a place of God with the intention of killing a young princess was another altogether.
All Margrethe could do was sit back in horror and watch it unfold. The anger of the people. The villages that had been devastated by years of war, where houses and shops still lay in ruins and the suffering was so obvious she could nearly taste and smell it. News of the prince’s stay at the convent had only strengthened her father’s hatred for the Southern kingdom and increased the blood-lust of his men, and now she herself was the wound around which they all rallied. She did not know where it came from, this hatred, this conviction that the land belonged to them and their bloodline. Her bloodline. That the Southern king and his predecessors were pretenders to a false throne. All this hatred and rage, extending so far back—it was like a great ocean wave she was powerless against.
She was riding sidesaddle, Edele was on a horse behind. They were both still in their novices’ habits, though Margrethe could easily have changed back into the dress she’d worn those few months before, the day she was first brought to the convent. But her father had wanted the country to see her and her lady wearing the holy garb, to know that all the rumors were true, and she had not dared to defy him. She needed to pick her battles now.
Pieter sat behind her with the reins in his hands, his arms around her, holding her in place. She knew that her father had chosen Pieter as her rider because he was the strongest of the group, and the most adept horseman, but she also knew that he was one of the main champions of the war effort, the one arguing it was time to deal the crushing blow. Not long ago she had thought she could marry someone like him. Now it felt strange and wrong, being pressed up against him, when she could still feel the prince’s lips on her hand.
The prince, the one they were all shouting against … For the first time, despite everything, she felt an opening. There had been a new beauty in that convent garden, standing over the mysterious, unfathomable sea, the possibility for a new kind of world. Where was he now? she wondered. Did he remember? Did he know who she was? And now, as they flew through the countryside, the horse under her, the cold against her face, the sacred garments protecting her, the memory of the mermaid so vivid in her mind, she was beginning to feel reborn, ready to fulfill a great destiny.
THEY ARRIVED AT the Northern castle after a full night and day of riding, just as the sun was beginning to set.
The gates opened, and they entered to cheers and waving banners. Hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate the princess’s safe return.
The riders slowed, and the people rushed up to Margrethe, bowing in front of her as she passed, reaching up to touch her habit, and then bowing to the king, who had so selflessly put his duties aside to rescue his daughter.
Margrethe had never been so exhausted. Her body ached from sitting in one position for so long. Finally one of the guards helped her down, and her feet touched ground again. The stablemen ran out to take the horses, and she rushed up the steps, through the front door, and into the haven of the castle.
Her father remained outside, and the others stayed with him as he began to address the people. Behind her, Margrethe heard shouting and cheers, her father calling for blood and retribution. She paused in dismay to listen. Lens appeared at her side and gently took her arm. “To war!” the people shouted as her father railed against the young prince and reminded them all that Margrethe would one day, according to prophecy, bring forth a great ruler for the land.
She leaned against the wall, catching her breath.
Lens stood back, watching her carefully. “You have had a long journey, Your Highness,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to rest?”
She nodded, grateful.
As they made their way into the great hall, it seemed the whole court was there, waiting to greet her. All the highest nobles, all the members of the royal council, the ladies who’d once been friends with her mother and who now vied for her father’s heart, not realizing that their charms were lost on him, that his heart had turned to stone the moment his wife died. Now all the courtiers turned to welcome Margrethe, bowing and kissing her hand as she walked past.
She knew she cut a ragged figure in her habit, her hair tangled, coming loose from the riding. She wanted to scream out to them: I am perfectly well! I was never in danger from that gentle man, you fools!
But instead she smiled gracefully as they all filed past, blessing her. She’d had years of practice at denying herself, stifling her very nature.
Finally, she was able to retreat to her own rooms. A fire was waiting for her, full of burning pinecones, and a hot bath was being prepared. It seemed like unbelievable luxury now. The smell of pine and wood and perfume from the bath, the sumptuous fabrics on the bed and furniture, the tapestries hanging from the walls. Her ladies waiting for her in exquisite dresses, their faces painted and hair strategically arranged. After so long in the co
nvent, it seemed almost shocking, all that beautiful display, yet at the same time her whole physical being responded with relief.
She was home.
Gently, her ladies stripped her of her habit, took down her hair. In the midst of everything, Margrethe was almost surprised to see that Lenia’s shimmer was still there, on her forearm.
“Do you see that?” she asked Josephine, the lady, after Edele, of whom she was most fond.
“See what?” Josephine asked.
“A sort of … sparkle, on my skin. Do you see?”
“No.”
“How strange,” she said, stepping into the bath. As they helped her sit in the warm water, another servant poured in fresh hot water from a kettle that had been heating over the fire, and Josephine began sprinkling dried herbs in the water from baskets she had set nearby. Margrethe sat and let the warmth envelop her. Her arm shimmered faintly from under the water. She watched it for a moment and then closed her eyes, breathing in the steaming herbal scent.
Her other lady-in-waiting, Laura, knelt down behind her. She gathered up Margrethe’s thick hair and began to wash it thoroughly, rubbing it with herbs and powders.
“We are so glad you are safe,” Laura said. “How terrifying, to think the enemy was so close to you.”
“It was not so bad,” Margrethe murmured. “He was … not so bad.” Despite herself—her exhaustion, her natural pride—she could feel a flush coming over her, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.
“Oh! You … liked him?” Laura said, widening her eyes. “You did! And he our enemy! Is it true? We do hear he is a very handsome man.”
“Oh, he is,” Margrethe said, no longer able to keep herself from breaking into a smile. “He is larger than life. Edele will tell you, too. He’s like something from a story.”
The two ladies gave each other knowing looks as they lifted Margrethe’s arms on either side, dipping pieces of cloth into the water and then squeezing them over her shoulders.
“There has been much talk of him here,” Laura said. “They say he’s a great warrior. They say he was sent to kill you. But it sounds like you were in a different kind of danger.”