The Seafarer's Kiss

  RAVES FOR

  THE SEAFARER'S KISS

  "A beautiful Norse retelling of The Little Mermaid, featuring a young mermaid desperate to break free and a shieldmaiden bent on revenge—dark and romantic, and definitely recommended.’

  —Laura Lam, author of Pantomime and False Hearts

  "Dive deep into the dark and brutal waters of the northern sea in this lush, original retelling of The Little Mermaid. The Seafarer's Kiss took my breath away."

  —Heidi Heilig, author of The Girl from Everywhere

  Copyright © 2017 Julia Ember

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-20-7 (trade)

  ISBN 13: 978-1-945053-34-4 (ebook)

  Published by Duet, an imprint of Interlude Press

  www.duetbooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Book Design and Cover Illustrations by CB Messer

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Interlude Press, New York

  For my mom

  Contents

  Part 1: God of Lies

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Part 2: Princess of Ice

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Part 1: God of Lies

  The trickster god takes many shapes, but they

  are without voice. Voices they must steal,

  or remain creatures of silence, powerless

  without their silver-coated words.

  ICE TABLET A21

  “On all the ships the sails were reefed and there was

  fear and trembling. But quietly she sat there,

  upon her drifting iceberg, and watched the

  blue forked lightning strike the sea.”

  —Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid

  One

  The amethyst dagger called to me from inside the drowned man’s chest. The purple hilt gleamed in the light filtering through the rotted floorboards of the ship’s deck. Careful not to disturb the bones, I slipped my hand through the skeleton’s exposed ribs and pulled the dagger out. It was a prize indeed, different from anything I had in my collection. The blade’s edge was still sharp, despite years at the bottom of the ocean.

  I could already imagine how the dagger would look glittering beside the helmet and breastplate that I kept behind my table. All my life, I’d collected contraband from these sunken ships: delicate jewels of pearl and gold, bronze statues of animals that roamed the lands far away, a shield engraved with flying creatures that looked like manta rays coasting through the skies. I hid the illegal trinkets in my room and treasured them.

  Dodging rusted nails and jagged planks of ancient wood, I swam up through the ship’s broken hull. The sunlight above was already fading; midwinter days were over in a matter of hours. I’d wanted to explore the rest of the wreck, to see what other treasures decay had unveiled since my last visit. But if I didn’t hurry back, I’d miss the noon meal, and, this close to The Grading, the king was sure to notice my absence. If we didn’t eat, weren’t seen to prepare, then he’d want to know why.

  Tucking the dagger into my satchel, I swam for home.

  When I reached our ice mountain fortress, the hallways were already empty as the rest of the merfolk inside congregated for the meal. I slipped into the great hall unnoticed and took a clamshell tray from the matron who supervised the food line.

  I helped myself to a portion of shark fin and a few sand crab legs, covered in a light dusting of brine, and found a quiet space at the end of one of the long ice tables. If I ate quickly, I might have an hour to explore before the sea went black.

  I caught the flash of Havamal’s silver scales from the corner of my eye. Scowling, I tossed my half-eaten shark fin onto my plate and then reached under the table to retrieve my satchel. A pair of chattering seals had woken me before dawn, and I was in no mood to talk to my former best friend today, not when I had things to do and a ship I wanted to get back to. But before I could I swim away, Havamal put his tray down and scooted along the ice bench to sit beside me.

  I growled under my breath. Havamal studied my plate, and then reached over. “Oh, shark fin. They were out by the time I got here. You going to eat that?”

  “Help yourself. I was just about to go.”

  “Oh, come on. I just got here.” He sank his teeth into the gnawed fin. Across the table, Vigdis and a handful of other mermaids giggled. Havamal gave them his most charming smile, and I fought the urge to be sick. He was always putting on a show. Then, his blue-gray eyes more solemn, he turned to me and tried to lay a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Erie, you can’t stay mad at me forever.”

  I stiffened. Before he’d betrayed all our plans by joining the King’s Guard, we had been inseparable. I couldn’t forgive what he’d done. After all the years we’d been friends, Havamal should know me well enough to understand that.

  But as I moved to pull away from him, I was thrown backward into the table by a sudden impact. Havamal reached for me as the floors of our ice fortress shook. A beam of yellow sunlight, brighter than any jellyfish, burst through a network of cracks across the ice of the vaulted ceiling. He tugged me out of the way as Odin’s bust shattered above us and sharp blades of ice plunged into the water. Fingers shaking, I reached for his hand. My heart beat so hard all the blood rushed to my ears.

  We all pivoted in our seats, looking to the king for answers. Pulling his whalebone trident from behind his throne, King Calder swam down from his frozen crystal dais. He glanced around the room, then motioned a trio of red-tailed guards toward him. With a sigh, Havamal squeezed my fingers, then released my hand. He adjusted the mother-of-pearl harpoon on his shoulder, then leaned over to whisper, “Stay here until we confirm that it’s safe.”

  He swam to the king and took his place among the other guards. I wanted to bristle—I had just as much right to know what was going on as he did—but my heart still pounded against my ribs. I wrapped my arms around my shaking chest.

  Havamal’s cousin Sila tucked her lilac hair behind her ears and shrugged. “I’m sure it’s nothing. A lightning bolt, maybe. It could be the start of the spring storms.”

  “It’s broad daylight.” I gestured up toward the sunlight pouring in through our fractured roof. I didn’t have a lot of patience for Sila or her stupidity, though she wasn’t the worst of Vigdis’s crowd. “Do you see any lightning or any rain?”

  “Maybe an ice bear?” Sila bit her lip.

  “That would have to be one enormous bear.” Vigdis snorted and rolled her coral eyes. “To crack the glacier? It’s an iceberg. Maybe a blue whale.”

  Neither of those explanations made sense either. We hadn’t had a storm in weeks, so the water was calm and the bergs bobbed in place. Spring could be months away. Though the tide was low enough to drop the water level in the hall to the top of the king’s throne, the sea kept its frozen edge. Whatever had caused this quake had to be heavy and traveling fast.

  “Maybe humans,” I whispered, and t
he other mermaids went silent. A little jolt of electricity passed through me, like the shock from a jellyfish. A traveling ship could hit the ice mountain with enough force to crack it.

  Few humans dared to sail between the treacherous icebergs of our northern waters. The past few years had been some of the coldest we’d ever known, and the floating death traps littered the sea. I’d never seen a human alive before. I only knew what the creatures looked like in death, when water had bloated their pale flesh and sea crabs had picked meat from their skulls, or after the harsh sea currents had stripped them to salt and bone. But some of our legends—those written on the ice tablets King Calder kept locked away now—said that the humans were as beautiful as the gods. I wasn’t sure I believed that. Their corpses always looked scrawny with ugly, bare skins. But if humans sailed above us now, I intended to find out.

  I pushed back from the table.

  “Ersel,” Mama hissed from the other end of the long ice bench. Her face was beluga-white, and she clutched the edge of the table. “What are you doing? Don’t you dare—”

  I might never get another chance like this. Before my mother or the king’s remaining guards could stop me, I dove through the archway and out of the hall. Swimming as fast I could, I darted down the network of tunnels and ice caves that wound like sea worm burrows through the glacier’s heart. My tail pumped so hard I thought my gills might burst. Only after I reached my own chamber, right at the edge of the fortress, did I chance a look over my shoulder. Nobody followed. I wasn’t really surprised. The King’s Guard were already few in number, and one still-untested mermaid wasn’t worth chasing.

  Gulping seawater to calm my breathing, I looked out into the ocean. Mama always cursed our luck. We’d drawn one of the most exposed caves in the year’s selection, but I loved how my room opened straight into the grayscale winter sea. From my resting shelf, I could watch the seals dive for fish and hear the belugas trill. I could have chosen to live in the pre-grading caves near the glacier’s heart, amongst the other merfolk my own age, but I’d never seen eye to eye with them.

  Venturing out through my cave’s mouth, I pressed my body against the outer wall of the glacier and swam toward the ocean’s surface. The water was dark and calm; the sunlight was blocked by a black shadow protruding from the ice. The ship groaned as water burst through the holes in its wooden bottom. My breath caught in my chest, and I forgot my fear as pure excitement took over. Humans. At last, I was going to see live humans.

  With a final kick, I reached the hull of the ship. Barnacles and half-frozen algae clung to its weathered bottom. I ran my hands over the wood, memorizing the foreign texture. The dark titan swayed as waves beat against it; its movement was steady and eerily gentle, almost as if the ship breathed.

  A boulder of ice the size of an orca broke off the side of the ice mountain and tumbled onto the ship’s deck. Above me, the hull creaked and moaned. Dozens of voices began shouting. In words I couldn’t understand, the strange accents blurred, growing louder and more desperate. I dodged to the side as another chunk of ice plunged into the sea and treaded water to stay level with the ship. The quiet breathing ceased, and the titan began sinking into the ocean.

  Men dove into the sea. They flailed in the water like underweight sea lions; their arms thrashed as they fought their way back to the surface. I swam closer and touched the bare ankle of the closest sailor. His skin was strangely warm against my scales. His legs moved strangely, kicking at odds rather than smoothly and in tandem. At my touch, he looked down, squinting against the cold and salt. His mouth was so red; his cheeks were so flushed and golden. The sailor screamed, and a cloud of air bubbled upward.

  I grabbed him around the waist. There were so many things I wanted to ask him about my treasures. No one had seen me rescue him. I could drag this sailor to the safety of the landmass beyond the ice shelf. I could save him. He kicked and struggled against me; one foot collided with my stomach. I winced at the pain and grunted as I continued to tug the sailor toward the surface.

  Then someone else took hold of me, dragging me backward by the arm into the deep. I wasn’t strong enough to resist. The sailor fought, desperate to keep swimming toward the surface. He slipped from my grasp and struggled in the frigid open water.

  “What were you thinking?” Havamal demanded. “You shouldn’t be here. And touching that human? What if it has a disease? What if it attacked you?”

  Fighting against him like an animal, I twisted in his grip. Talking to him had been a mistake; allowing myself to reach for him had been worse. That slip had made him confident with me again, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t want his comfort or his protection—not anymore. I clawed and punched to get free while Havamal swore. He had no right to take my chance from me.

  Behind us, the sailor convulsed. He kicked frantically in a last effort to reach the air above, but then the color bled from his angular face, and he stopped fighting. How had he run out of air so soon? The only other sky-breathers I knew were the whales, and they could last twenty minutes or more under water. Would the human have made it to the surface if I’d helped him? I shivered, suddenly cold.

  Havamal’s grip on my arm relaxed as the human gave a final twitch. “Get back to the hall before the king catches you.”

  I nodded slowly, and he let me go. But as soon as I was free, I punched him in the stomach. He doubled over in pain.

  “I just wanted to speak with him,” I hissed. “I just wanted to ask him a few questions.”

  “And where would you have taken him to have your little chat?” Havamal wheezed. A trail of bubbles seeped from his mouth as he tried to regain his breath. Then he straightened and a ghost smile played at his lips, even though I could still see the pain in his eyes. “You think the king wouldn’t find out? That’s right. You’d just haul around a fully grown human under his nose, and he’d be none the wiser.”

  His voice dripped with sarcasm, and, in that moment, I hated him even more.

  “Would you tell him?” I accused.

  “Of course not.” He sighed, rubbing at his abdomen, suddenly looking tired. Some of the rage bled out of me. “I’d never. Now please go back to the hall before someone else finds you.”

  I nodded, though I had no intention of going back to the hall. By now, everyone would be talking about me and about how I’d made a bizarre spectacle of myself yet again. I’d hide in my ice cave until the rest of them forgot I existed.

  Havamal squeezed my hand. I tried to ignore the way my chest tightened at his touch. Whatever we’d had was over. I had to keep reminding myself of that. He’d betrayed me the moment he joined the King’s Guard. Now he was defending the ruler who wanted to take away everything we’d once planned together. But he flashed me a tiny smile and the loneliness sang inside me, an echo of that secret song we’d once shared. Then he swam upward, through the rain of sinking bodies, toward the amber sun.

  * * *

  I curled into a ball on my ice shelf, wrapped my tail around me, and buried my face in my fins. The glacier hummed like a great white whale; the murmur of a thousand morning whispers seeped through the cave walls. Light from the dawn illuminated the crystal ceiling, and I could see Mama’s outline like an embossed shadow resting in the crevice above me. I swallowed hard, feeling a little bit queasy. I’d expected her to wake me when she returned from the hall. If she’d needed the night to decide what to say to me about my disappearance, it probably wouldn’t be good.

  Shaking with cold, I crawled from my shelf and studied my tail fins in the brighter light of our antechamber. Overnight, my topaz scales had darkened to midnight blue. My tail looked shriveled, with loose skin forming wrinkles around my flippers. Our scales had to burn blubber reserves to generate heat through the night. By the look of my tail, a northern current had swept through the glacier while I slept. If I waited much longer to visit the sun and recharge, I’d freeze before Mama had the chance to vent
her anger.

  As I brushed my hair and got ready, I wondered if Havamal had told anyone where he’d found me. Part of me couldn’t imagine him missing the chance to report something to the king and worm his way further into our monarch’s good graces, but another part hoped he’d meant it when he told me he still wanted to be friends.

  I shoved the hairbrush aside and swam from the cave into the purple dawn sea. Sunlight seeped through the water and lit the glacier from all angles. The ice mountain glowed soft blue, and dozens of shadows moved within its semi-opaque walls. The ship had vanished, but I could see where the ice had cracked, leaving someone’s resting chamber exposed to the open sea. A curious pair of gray seals wound in and out of the broken wall. They chattered as they played in the kelp curtains and batted a broken bowl between them.

  “You didn’t go back to the hall.” Havamal’s drawling voice called as he drifted from the ruined cave, scooting past the pair of seals. He was trying to hide his smile behind his hand. The metallic silver of his scales glittered, brighter than the North Star. I tried not to stare at the heaving muscles that made a coral-like comb on his pale torso.

  Edging over to the broken cave, I grabbed a jagged outcrop to steady myself. “I just wanted to sleep. I figured you’d make up some excuse for me if the king asked, seeing as we used to be friends.”

  His hand dropped, and a scowl replaced the grin. “Stop it, Erie. You keep saying that just to wind me up. We could still be friends. I want us to go back to the way we were.”

  “You sold out,” I muttered. Honestly, sometimes I did say it to get his reaction. His anger was the only confirmation I had that he’d ever cared about me. But knowing that our friendship had been real never made me feel any better. I drifted into the shadows of the cave, feeling self-conscious about how my dim, night-starved scales and scrawny tail must look to him.

  Havamal heaved a sigh so deep it was almost a growl. “No, I just learned to accept that we can’t change everything. Have you even thought about your grading next week?”