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Her hand slipped into mine, hard and cool.
SIGRID SEEMED ENGROSSED IN PICKING THE DIRT and bits of rope from under her fingernails. She stared at them intently, avoiding Snow’s pale eyes.
“And that, little love, is where I cease to be the hero of my own tale. Seven years went by, and then my year on the river currents. My time was not so very different from any other Saint—I read, I prayed, I studied sky maps and sea maps; I illuminated countless manuscripts with tiny golden Griffin and their infants. My hair grew back; I did not cut it, as many of the others did. They wished to be humble before the Stars and their servant Saint Sigrid. I believed that I was blessed, chosen. I believed”—the great woman paused and grimaced, closing her eyes as if her mouth was flooded with bile—“I believed that I was the orphan of the prophecy—for I was alone in the world, was I not? My mother was alive when I left her, but perhaps by now she had died and her body was lying cold on a slab of ice in the Temple, tended by my sisters. This was my reasoning, my folly. I was more eager to believe my own mother dead than that I was not spoken of in some old ballad. I let my hair grow long, for I knew that the wolves had led me astray, and my destiny was to find the lost Maidenhead and her captain.”
In one swallow, Eyvind drained the last of his mug and grunted softly, mockingly. Sigrid smiled ruefully.
“As soon as I was able, I left the Tower and the Dreaming City, and took to the sea in my little ship—for the last task of a Sigrid is to build a ship with her own hands, to perfect its lines and sails, and prove that it is sea-worthy. On the day of my trials my craft performed beautifully, but instead of returning to receive my marks, I simply sailed away into the horizon. For years upon years I searched for any sign of the Echeneis, any tale of its passing. I scoured every sailor’s haunt and foul-smelling tavern for someone who could tell me where this creature swam. How could something so vast hide itself from me? I found nothing. Not even a whisper of such a beast. Most had never even heard the word. Finally, I was forced to admit that perhaps I had been mistaken, that my mother lived, or t
hat I simply was not the woman of the prophecy. And when this truth settled in me like a stone sinking to the bottom of a well, I died. I died to the world. I was despondent, and in my grief I sailed into a storm that my poor ship could not survive. It was dashed to pieces, and I was dragged from the sea by a Muireanner’s fishing boat, seaweed clogging my mouth and my lips gone blue as sapphires. The fisherman rubbed life back into my limbs and cleared the ropy leaves from my mouth, and fed me a thin broth until I could stand on my own. Muireann is far to the north, the last part of the world graced by Saint Sigrid’s ship and her crew. It seemed a good enough place to waste the last of my days.”
Sigrid looked up at Eyvind, a strange cloud passing over her broad features.
“There were other reasons to stay. Things lying in the secret corners of this town I thought were long dead. But in my failure, in my shame and my hubris, I could not seek them out. Instead, I tied the knots of men’s nets on the docks, and drank myself into dreams until I could forget that once I imagined myself a child of destiny, a heroine meant for the greatest task any Sigrid could wish for herself.”
Snow thought she could see tears well up in Sigrid’s tired eyes, but she could not be sure. She put her hesitant hand on the older woman’s fingers, warm and brown beneath her icy palm.
“When my parents died,” Snow said quietly, “and my hair went silver overnight, I thought it was a sign. A sign from the Stars that I was their special daughter, that they would be my mother and father. I thought I was meant for something more. But I do not even have nets to mend every day. I scrape in the street for a bit of fish and bread, I starve in the belly of a half-built ship most nights. It is not a grand destiny, but at least it is mine. And without it, I would not have known a real, living Saint.” Snow touched her long, shimmering hair, in awe of it as she ever was, and as ashamed.
“I’m afraid I am a poor kind of Saint for you, my girl. Maybe the worst kind—”
Her words were cut off by a loud bang—the door of the Arm slamming open as a riotous group of three bizarre creatures burst into the common room, laughing raucously, like a pack of raccoons squabbling over a rubbish heap. Two enormous men, their muscles knotting under tattooed skin—not an inch of flesh showed which was not covered in colorful illustrations of battles at sea, mermaids with their arms trailing kelp, snarling tigers, lighthouses with beacons alight—carried between them a massive wooden tub filled to the brim with sloshing water. It spilled over the side onto the floor every time the men moved, and by the time they reached the bar, half the floor was swimming in brine.
In the tub was a woman with green gills opening at her throat, an inferno of green hair blazing around her head, and skin that held the sickly pallor of a fish. Her meaty hands were webbed as a frog’s, her ears long and thin, like tiny fins. She was naked, and her ample breasts sagged heavily, tipped in blue nipples. From the waist down, her legs merged into a long, corpulent tail, silver-violet, with translucent tendrils flapping where her feet might have been. She took great pleasure in thrashing the tail about, spraying other patrons with water.
Snow stared in wonder. “Is that a mermaid?” she gasped.
Eyvind pushed back his chair with a loud screech of wood on wood. “If only! Mermaids are pretty as daisies, and they sing nice little rhyming songs all the day long, and they smell a fair sight better than that heap of dead clams. That’s a Magyr, and she’ll drink me into the street in an hour.” He trundled over to the boisterous trio, his face a cold glower. After a moment, Sigrid and Snow followed, curious as a pair of kittens.
“Oy! Eyvind!” the Magyr hollered, her voice like a wave sluicing through a tide pool cluttered with clapping mussels. “Fill my gullet with ale and my men’s bellies with some of that foul bread you cook up in your back room! Have I got a story for you! You’ll never believe it, not in a month of miracles!”
“I never believe any of your stories, Grog. And you’ll show me your coin before you get a drop.”
She ran a corpse-colored hand through her emerald hair, and when it came away, it was full of rough, filthy golden coins, so old that Snow had never seen their like. They were embossed—faintly, worn by countless hands and pockets—with the image of a single eye. Grog bit one of them with satisfaction. Sigrid stiffened.
“Aye, the great cow knows what these are! Coin from the Arimaspian Oculos! Two hundred years and more extinct, and yet I’ve got more of their coin than any collector in Ajanabh! Ask me where I got it! Go on, ask me!” Grog was crowing, stroking her shiny gills in delight.
“Where did you get it?” Sigrid asked, her voice icy and low.
Grog licked her bluish lips in anticipation and seized her tankard in one huge hand, the thin webbing between her fingers slapping wetly against the metal.
“My men—that’s Sheapshank and Turkshead, you know, and it don’t matter which one’s which—had booked us passage on a sweet little schooner captained by a beast the likes of which a mother wouldn’t even threaten her squalling brats with…”
SHE WERE SEVEN FEET TALL IF SHE WERE AN INCH, I swear it by my mother’s fifth teat. All sweetness and light from the neck up—a regular princess, with hair like melting butter and starry eyes—but oh, those legs! A deer’s legs, right down to the hoof, or would have been, if she had had hooves. Instead, she had great flapping frog’s feet, and turquoise wings, feathers and all, tucked against her back. Her skin was all over tiger stripes, and her hands were furry as a wolf’s, with great clacking claws. And of all things, a thick gray tail wagged through a slit in her skirts.
She was a perfect monster. But beggars can’t be choosers! I can swim just as fine as a young shark, of course, but poor Sheapshank, he can’t swim a stroke to save his throat, and Turkshead has a deathly fear of the sea. Anyway, I prefer to travel in style, with my tub full of warm water and a mug of rum in each hand. The ocean is cold as a witch’s womb, don’t you know, and it makes my tail peel to go wallowing through it week after week. A ship is far better suited to my taste, even if Turkshead retches like a pregnant wench every time a stiff wave washes the deck.
Now, my youngest sister had spawned not a fortnight before, and me being the maternal type, practically bursting at the gills with motherly affection, I wanted to see my little nieces and nephews whilst they was still wiggling little tadpoles—and enjoy a month’s helpings of my sister’s whitefish and squid pies. But the sea has spread my family far as the four winds would take us, and Tack’s grotto is a full month’s sail over the ice caps from Muireann. Muireanners don’t take kindly to those of the maritime persuasion mucking up the berthing on their ships, so Sheapshank and Turkshead asked after the most desperate captain on the docks, one who wouldn’t turn their dainty nose up at a paying fare.
And that was how we met Magadin.
Sheapshank and Turkshead carried my tub over to her fingerpier. I slapped the side of the old boat, fine old locust wood by the color, though more than a little dingy and worse for wear. I peered at the hull, where the ship’s name appeared to have been carved into the wood by an inexpert hand. Witch’s Kiss, it read, rather shakily. Just then her head appeared from behind the second mast.
“Are you looking for passage north, then? Old Man Glyndwr told me you’d be sloshing on by.”
That woman’s voice was like hot wine on a cold night. I gestured for my boys to set me down.
“What are you, woman, the City Zoo?” Sheapshank barked laughter at my little joke, but the lady just smiled.
