Anderson, Poul The Merman's Children

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soon given back-and a sprig of wormwood will keep her at a distance. No doubt a man who let her
beguile him would be in mortal sin. But surely none will, nor does it seem she s even tried. After all, a
ghost is terrifying in itself. I know that, sir, I know it better than I wish I did.
The merman gave the lad a close look. How?
Luka shivered in the sunlight, the noise and music and smoke.
I was with my brother on that hunt where she found him, two
years agone. I too saw her face, the face of Nada who drowned
herself the year before-
A hand grabbed him by the neck, flung him to the ground. You lie! Father Tomislav screamed. He had
wandered up, un-noticed, and overheard. Like the rest of them, you lie!
Standing over the sprawled boy, amidst a stillness that spread outward, amidst eyes that stared inward,
the priest mastered his fit. No, you don t, I ll believe you don t, he said thickly. A chance likeness or a
sleight of Satan deceived you. I m sorry, Luka. Forgive my foul temper. He looked from person to
person. The tears broke out of him. My daughter was not a suicide, he croaked. She is not a
condemned shade. She rests in Shibenik, in holy earth. Her, her soul... in... Paradise- He stumbled off.
The gathering parted to let him go.
Rain dashed against castle walls, in a night that howled. Cold crept out of the stone, past the tapestries,
and darkness laid siege to lamps. Ivan Subitj sat across a board from Vanimen of Liri. He had dismissed
his servants, keeping his wife awake. She sat in a comer, warming herself as best she could at a brazier,
till he signaled for more wine.
Yes, he said, I d better give you the whole tale. Else you might shun the lake; and I do have hopes of
your settling down amongst us, enriching us by your fisher skills. Besides, there s no shame for my family
in what happened-not really. Grief- He gusted a sigh. No, disappointment; and I m well aware I do
wrong to feel thus.
He stroked the scar that puckered his countenance. No shame to you either, Vanimen, that you
recoiled from her: not if such beings are as fearsome in the North as you ve related. I could tell you of
horrors I ll bear inside me to the grave, and I reckon myself a brave man. But-I know not why; maybe
we re different from the Rus in some way that endures after death itself-whatever the cause, a vilja is not
the grisly sort of thing that you say a rousalka is. Oh, a man would be unwise to follow her. . . but he d
have a soul to lose. You- Ivan chopped his words off short.
Vanimen flashed a hard smile.
Ivan drank. Thereafter he said hastily: My grudge against
Nada is just that she caused my older son to forsake the world. Well, I think she did. I could be wrong.
Who knows the well-springs of the heart, save God? But Mihajlo was such a lively youth; in him, I saw
myself reborn. And now he s in a monastery. I should not regret that, should I? It makes his salvation
likelier. Luka seems more cut out for a monk than ever Mihajlo was; and it s become Luka who inherits-
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No, he won t, for a zhupan is elected by the peers of his clan, or appointed out of it by the Crown, and
they ll see he s not a fighter.
Goblets went to mouths for a time in which the storm alone had voice. Finally Vanimen asked low, Was
the vilja indeed once the daughter of Tomislav?
He cannot endure that thought; Ivan replied, and those who care for him do not bespeak it in his
hearing. I forgive what he did to my son this day. No real harm, and Luka should have been more alert.
Nevertheless-well, let me share with you what everybody hereabouts knows. Maybe you, who are of
Faerie, can judge better than we ve done, we humans.
You must understand that Sena, Tomislav s wife, was a woman born to sorrow. Her father was a
bastard of the zhupan before me, by a serf girl, whom they say was of rare beauty. He manumitted his
son, who became a guslar-a wandering musician, a ne er-do-well-and at last shocked people by bringing
home a bride from the Tzigani, thos~ landless pagans who ve lately been drifting in. She herself was
Christian, of course, though it s unsure how deep the conversion went.
Both died young, of sickness. Their daughter Sena was raised by kinfolk who-I must say-blamed every
childish wrong she did on her heritage. I ve often wondered if it was pity as much as her loveliness that
made Tomislav seek her hand.
You ve heard of their afflictions, A while after Nada was
born, Sena sank into dumb, helpless mourning, and lay thus until
she died, What memories of her mother did the girl afterward
carry around? In haphazard fashion, Nada learned from neighbor
women what she was supposed to know, more or less. Her father
spent his whole love upon her, who was all he had left, but what
good can a man do? He may have confided in her more than he
should-a priest does carry the woes of many others he may
have made her see too early that this world is full of weeping. I
know not, I m only a soldier, Vanimen,
Ivan drank, summoned fresh wine, sat again mute before he went on:
I remember Nada well, myself. As zhupan, I travel much about in the hinterland, to keep abreast of
what the knezi-judges over villages-and pastors and such are doing. Besides, Tomislav brought his family
here whenever he could, as on market days. We ve no proper marketplace here, but folk do meet to
trade back and forth. I suppose in part he hoped to ease the restlessness of his older children.
Oh, Nada became fair! I heard, too, that she was quick-witted, and kinder-hearted, even toward
animals, than is best for a peasant, Certainly I saw her laughterful and frolicsome. Yet already then, and
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seldom though we did meet, I would also see her withdrawn, silent, sad, for no clear cause.
I suppose that s a reason she had no suitors, however gladly
the young men would dance and jest with her when she was in
the mood. Besides, her dowry would be very small. And she was
overly slender; how well could she bear babe after babe, to keep
a household alive? Fathers must have weighed these things on
behalf of their sons,
Ivan swallowed, put his goblet down, stared at a shuttered [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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