“You should understand how the merfolk feel. It isn’t their fault they have no souls, and so can’t properly crave salvation. The paynim among humans don’t crave it either, do they? God made the merfolk for His seas. If they forget the nature He gave them, well, I suppose they could still breathe down below, that kind of thing, but what use would it be? Like a man forgetting how to walk. They’d never learn again aright, I think.
“Mostly, though, the sea’s been their life, their love. Yes, love. Even a dog can love, and the merfolk have minds as good as any man’s. Would I choose to forget my Sena? No. The memories hurt, but I cherish them. You know that, as many Masses as I’ve offered for her soul’s repose.
“Holy Andrei, seafarer, speak to God on behalf of the poor merfolk. Explain how they’ll accept baptism if it doesn’t cost them their memories. They. aren’t being defiant of Him or anything. It’s simply their way. When they have souls, they’ll be different. But why take away from them what they were before? Instead, leave them able to tell men of the wonders He’s created in the deeps, that we may worship Him the more. Isn’t that reasonable?
“Holy Andrei, grant me a sign.” The crude wooden image stirred. Lips curved in a smile, hand reached out in the gesture of benediction.
For a moment Tomislav gaped. Then he fell prostrate, weeping. “Glory be to God, glory be to God!”
When at last he got back on his knees, all was as erstwhile. The candle guttered low, the cold ascended, stars above the roof marched on toward midnight.
“Thank you, Andrei,” Tomislav said humbly. “You’re a true friend.”
After a minute, in sudden shock: “I’ve been vouchsafed a miracle! Me!” He folded his hands. “Lord, I am not worthy.”
He would keep vigil till dawn. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name—”
Near morning, when weariness had dazed him, he lifted a timid gaze to the saint’s face. “Andrei,” he mumbled, “they say such terrible things about my little daughter. Could you maybe give me another sign? I know the stories aren’t true. Nada’s where you are. Could be she’s right there at your side looking down on her old dad. If only people would see that. Can’t you show them?”
The carving never stirred. Tomislav lowered his head. Blood trickled into his beard. When daylight glimmered, he rose, bowed before the altar, and departed.
Vanimen and Meiiva walked down the wagon track that went through the forest. Snow had fallen of late, an inch or two that soon melted off bare dirt but abided in purity under the trees. Boughs and twigs reached austere across blueness. The air was quiet and nearly warm.
“His honesty is above challenge,” the merman said. “However, half asleep, he may well have imagined that that happened which he desired so much to happen.”
Meiiva shivered, not from cold. “Or else the dead man he invoked was playing a trick,” she said.
“No, I don’t ween the Most High would allow that. He is just.”
She gave him a startled glance. “Never erenow have you spoken thus.”
“We’ve none of us been wont to talk, or think, about such matters. They were beyond us, as the fashioning and use of a knife are beyond a dolphin. We knew only blind luck, which might be good or might be bad, save that in the end, soon or late, it was always fatal. God did not care about us . . . we supposed. . . and we had naught to do with Him.
“Today I wonder,” Vanimen said when they had laid several more yards behind them. He grinned as he used to when confronting a threat. “I’d better, hadn’t I?”
“Do you really hold that we should forsake Faerie?” Meiiva plucked at the gown, dun and itchy, which closed her off from a living world. “We had the freedom of the swan’s road.”
“I fear Pavle Subitj is right,” Vanimen answered heavily. “For the children if not ourselves, we should yield.”
“Will their lives be worth the cost? Man’s lot is seldom happy.”
“Our people can do well enough. Their swimming skills are in demand; they are liked; already, you must have noticed, mermen and maidens, mermaids and youths, begin to sigh for each other, and heads of households ponder the advantages of marriage alliances with persons of such excellent prospects.”
Meiiva nodded. “Indeed. The offspring of those unions will be more terrestrial than our kind. The next generation after them will be entirely human-drownable. We’ve witnessed this down the centuries, have we not? In one or two hundred years, the blood of Liri will be mingled unto evanishment, the memory of Liri be a myth that no sensible man believes.”
“Save in Heaven,” he reminded her.
A raven croaked.
“I wish—” he started to say, and stopped.
“What, dear?” Her fingers caressed his arm.
“I wish I were doing this because I truly want to be with God,” he got out. “I ought not come to Him as a pauper.”
“You, Vanimeq?” she whispered.
“Aye,” he said. They halted. She saw him square his shoulders inside the peasant’s coat. “Let me go first, so the rest of you may see what happens and thereafter choose for yourselves.
“I am your king.”
Father Petar was grossly offended that the ceremony would take place off in the woods, with Father Tomislav officiating. The zhupan must point out that this was at the Ban’s express command, because having many observers who often went to Shibenik or farther would be impolitic.
Having received religious instruction, Vanimen excused himself and went alone down to the coast. He spent the day and night of the equinox at sea. What he did or thought then was something whereof he later kept silence.
His return was on the eve of St. Gabriel. Next morning, after Mass had been sung, he entered the church. The inhabitants of the zadruga stayed there as onlookers. No image denied him. Outside, his people waited under budding leaves, in a hard rain.
He carne forth with arms widespread and cried in their own tongue: “Oh, hasten, hasten, beloved! Christ bids you welcome to blessedness!”
VI
Tauno and Eyjan reached Greenland months after leaving Denmark. First they had searched the nearer waters, albeit with scant expectation. Their tribe could only be living in those parts in dispersal, and that might well itself prove impossible. Everywhere from North Cape and the Gulf of Bothnia to the Galway coast and Faeroes, what few hunting grounds remained-not yet overrun by humans or barred by curse of a Christian priest-had long been held by others, who numbered about as many as could support themselves.
Though friendly enough to the siblings, these dwellers had no knowledge whatsoever of where the exiles might have gone. That was strange, as widely as news traveled with merfolk roving singly or in small bands, and with the dolphins. A few persons had heard of a migration up the Kattegat and across the Skagerrak, but there the trail ended.
Hence the siblings went on to Iceland, arriving about midwinter. They got no help from the three surviving settlements along yonder shores either, save hospitality during a season more stem than Tauno and Eyjan had known in their young lives. Elders who had seen several hundred years go by told them that through the past eight or nine decades cold had been deepening. Pack ice groaned in every fjord which once had been clear, and bergs laired in sea lanes which Eric the Red had freely sailed three centuries ago. .
But this was of no large moment to merfolk, who, indeed, found more life in chill than in warm waters. The king of Liri might well have led his community to unclaimed banks off Greenland. In spring, Tauno and Eyjan sought thither.
On the way, they encountered some dolphins who confirmed what they had suspected. Vanimen and his following had tak a ship westward from Norway. Alas, a mighty storm arose and blew the vessel farther off course than any of those animalswhose territories are large but nevertheless territories-Chose to go.