Legenda Maris (4 page)

One
morning—the sun shaft was there—Trisaphee took him away up the lake to a spot
they had never before swum to. Wide watery caves ran into the under-side of the
hills above. They were black as night, yet things clung in them, lichens and
weeds and stones that glowed.

Trisaphee sat herself on a rock, and
only her hair kept up its furling spun-silk motion. A mermaid’s hair is never
so beautiful above the water as it is below.

Presently she spoke in Elrahn’s language,
which—as only years later he came to see—she had grown more accomplished at as
her time with him progressed.

“You have been with me now a while, my
Man. If I were to ask what you would like most in the world that I could give
you, what should it be?”

Elrahn looked at her. He said not a
word.

“Well,” said she, “it’s tired out by the
lake you must be. And so it is with us. Soon we shall be turning down the
rivers to the sea. And there I will not take you, for there I could never keep
you safe. What shall I be doing with you, then?”

When it seemed she would wait on and on
for his answer, he looked her in the eye and he said, “So
now
you will
murder me.”

“No,” said Trisaphee. “You shall live.
But what would you like?”

“To live, then,” he said, “and to go
free.”

“It’s tired of me too, so you are,” she
said.

“How not, seeing you keep me on a chain
like your dog?”

“Have I not fed and cared for you, am I
not kind and loving to you?”

“As to your dog.”

Then she stretched out her hand and
tapped the harness where it circled him, and it flew off and went bounding away
through the water.

“Be free,” said Trisaphee, “and not my
dog.”

He thanked her.

“But what will you have?” she inquired.

“You have given it. And if you’ll let me
go up now to the light and air—that is all I ask.”

“Ask for something more,” said she.

Elrahn showed her the ring on his
finger. “I have this of you, which is worth money in the world. That is enough,
if I can keep it.”

“Oh, keep it, keep it, sell it and
forget me,” said Trisaphee.

“How can I
forget
you?” he
angrily asked. “Do you think I am
mad
? You are a mermaid of the deeps.”

Then she smiled. “Then what would you
have?” she asked again.

Elrahn had not been much with women, but
he had been with one, the dwarf lady, and so at last, a tinkling bell rang somewhere
in his brain. He widened his eyes at Trisaphee, wondering if he could be mistaken.
And if he were not, whether he wished he were.

“I do not presume,” said Elrahn prudently.

Then Trisaphee left the rock and she
came and wrapped him round with her arms and body and hair and tail. It was as
it had been that first time when she caught him and pulled him over into the
lake. Yet, much more gentle, and to say he did not care for it would be to
speak falsely. Then she kissed his mouth, and it was the kiss a woman gives her
lover, though her lips tasted of brine and her tongue of silver water.

And could there be any man in such an
embrace who would not wonder what he must do next, seeing she was formed as she
was. But before he could attempt a single thing with her, she suddenly let him
go, and floated from him with a look so sad and ancient now, he believed at
last she was old as the oceans and full of sorrow, and the salt in her was not
only sea but unshed tears.

“I will tell you now, my Man. You may
swim up to the land. And not one of us will harm you. But when you come ashore
you will feel a hurt in your chest. Have no fear of it. It is only the air
coming back into your body. Spit the moisture from your mouth and void it from
your nose and all will be well with you. But never again will you be able to
breathe in the water.”

“Very well.” said Elrahn “but—”

“I am not done,” said she. “Listen well
to me. Tonight you will dream of me, and everything you might like to have of
me you will have, but only in sleep. When you wake you will discover there is
yet something left with you that is ours, yours and mine. And heed me now, care
for it, that thing, or I will curse you. Thirteen years from this day’s night,
you must come back to this water’s- edge, and prove to me you have done as I
say. And on that night before that morning, distant by thirteen years, which to
me are like thirteen quarters of an hour, you will see me again in a dream. But
in the daybreak you will see and meet me among the reeds. And you will have
with you that thing I have left with you now. Or else woe betide you.”

All the while she spoke to him in this
way, Elrahn felt his skin crawl with a strange thin fear. And even as he felt
the fear he felt a sort of love for her and a sadness for her, and besides, he
lusted for her.

“Say yes, now,” she said. “Let me hear
you say yes, so that I know I have made you understand.”

“I understand nothing, but I will say
yes, to make you happy.”

“Ah,” said Trisaphee, “what is happiness?
I am familiar with a joy your kind can never know, except in heaven.”

And then she turned in the water,
brilliant as a star, and swift as a dart she shot away.

Elrahn hesitated only a moment or so.
Then he too raced from the cave, and raising his arms, he rushed for the
surface.

All the while he was diving up, with the
little fishes storming off before him, he was certain others of her tribe might
come and attack him. But he saw none of them, and in a space of minutes, the
water turned from sable to fair and then to jade and so to gold. And then he
broke the skin of the lake and swam wildly for the nearest shore. And a pain
began in his chest and lungs as if he breathed in molten bronze.

When at last he fell out among the
reeds, he coughed and choked and hawked and spat away the spell and the water.
And then he lay a time under the sun, until he was able to get up and go on his
way.

Elrahn
did not walk towards the inn, nor did he really recognize the place where he
had beached, to find that inn. He walked away from the reedlands, and up into
the hills, and everything he saw was a great marvel to him, from the tall trees
to the little sparrows, and the grey hares that sprang along in the fields. As
for the sky, he could hardly bear to look at it, it was so mighty and so
lighted up, so
blue
. When night came on, the stars made him weep. It
seemed, even by starshine, he had never seen such colours.

How long had he been in the lake? A week
or two, a month or two. But he might have been gone a lifetime.

And he resolved he would tell no one the
story of what had befallen him, for who would believe it but for the people of
the inn, or the people from the wagons who would blame him for the death of
their master?

Last of all he thought he might not
sleep, but keep himself awake, and he was hungry enough he fancied that would
not be so difficult. Truth to tell, he was frightened now by what she had said
to him, the mermaid, about the dream and that something would be left between
them, and he must care for it and show her, in thirteen years, he had, or be
cursed. He was afraid at last, if
all
the truth be told, of everything
that had happened.

But in the end, sitting up staring under
the burning stars, he slept.

And he dreamed what many a man would,
things being as they were. He dreamed of Trisaphee, and that he lay in the
reeds above the lake with her, and she had wrapped him in her reedy hair and
her fish’s tail, caressing him while he caressed her, and without possessing
her, yet he
possessed
her. And so vast was the pleasure that he cried
out loud. And in a while he looked her in her fiery eyes, and he said, “Yes,
there is one other joy, under heaven, that I know.”

But waking a second later, he was aware
that he had
not
possessed her in any way, but only given his seed to the
grass. And with a bitter sigh, he moved his sleeping place. And after that he
slumbered dreamless till the morning.

The
sun was over the trees by the time he roused again. The birds were singing, and
he lay in rapture to hear them, after all those shadow days of the mournful,
heartless songs of the mermaid kind.

When he got up, he saw how in parts the
dew still sparkled on the grass. And then he saw that one bead of dew was
larger than all the rest. And when he went to see, he found a big gleaming
pearl that lay in the lap of the earth. But even as he stood there watching it,
the pearl swelled larger and greater and soon it was the size of a thumbnail,
and then the head of a spoon and then of a cup and then of a plate, and then it
cracked open, and out fell a tiny child, white and translucent as an asphodel.

This child, a girl, lay in the grass
with her dreamy eyes gazing at him. Next she seemed to harden over, her flesh
losing its fairy look of flowers. Soon she was opaque, and big nearly as a baby
two months old. She breathed, and she hiccupped, and then she cried.

“What on God’s earth shall I do with
this?” said Elrahn. But anyway he picked her up, and took her where they could
both find food and shelter. And here he told the people a tale not the facts.
Such fact he told to her alone, to the child from the pearl, that in a while he
called Elaidh, his daughter, through a kind of birth, by the mermaid Trisaphee.

Now,
as they sat on the shore of the morning lake, to which they had come back in
her thirteenth spring, Elaidh looked up when again her father spoke.

“These have been good years together,
child.”

“Yes, dadda.”

“I have loved you, Elaidh. But you were
never more than half mine, and this I have told you often, from as soon as you
might hear.”

“I am a mermaid’s daughter,” said
Elaidh.

She was solemn as the quietness of the
lake, and her long hair was the pale brown of a duck’s wing, but her eyes were
green.

“Now and then,” said Elrahn, as if idly,
but not looking at her at all, “I thought I would see you grow to be a woman,
and I should dance at your wedding when the fiddler played his best tunes.”

Elaidh said “I would like that, dadda.
But now I love you first.”

“Do not be loving me,” said Elrahn, “and
I must not love you, for it’s your mother loves you best. She made you with me,
which is how all her clan make their children, by a sort of magic, and they are
always daughters. Last night I saw her again in a dream, only the second dream
I ever had of her. I never saw her all these years till then. But it was as she
promised or she warned me. She told me this, Elaidh. And she told me she will
swim up in a while today, out of the lake. And when you see her, she is that
lovely, Elaidh, and young still as when I met her last. She will never grow
old, and not for an age will she die. Her kind live for centuries, perhaps they
do for ever. And this too she said I must say to you: How they roam all the
waters, the fresh and the salt, the endless oceans that lead one into another,
and the rivers and the lakes that pierce and cross the land. How they own vast
treasures, huge rubies and diamonds and hoards of golden coins that have gone
down with ships, and pearls that grow in the shells of creatures in the sea.
How they play on sands miles under water, lit at night by a moon so vigorous
its light is as the summer at midday. And how they sing and make music. And how
they are free as the tides. And their beauty, Elaidh, and I should know it, is
like a secret of the heart.”

“Yes, dadda?” asked the child, all attention.

“You and I,” said he, “have had our life
together. A chancy travelling existence. Doing this and that, mending,
fetching, or pulling trick birds from a scarf to tickle crowds. I have taught
you the little I know, little enough it could fit inside an acorn. That was all
I could do, but it was given to me to do it. And at first it seemed too much
for me, the task. And then it was only simple as to breathe. And now, it’s
done. For when she comes from the lake, your mother Trisaphee, she will offer
another life to you. She will offer to take you among her own kind, half of
which kind you are. By her spell, your hair will turn to the colour of the
reeds, and you will have a tail like a fish, strong as a leopard. And water and
air will be alike to your lungs. You will live for centuries never growing
old. You will journey through the oceans, free as the tides, playing with
rubies and pearls. You will be a mermaid, if so you wish it.’’

The child stared. She said, “But if not?”

Elrahn said. “Then you’ll stay with me
and be my daughter. You will wed a man and bear his children, not as she and I
bore you, but in pain and labour. You will likely be poor, and certainly
hard-worked, and you will wither with the years, a piece of time which to a
mermaid is like an afternoon. Then you will die and be dust. Unless, as the
priest said, you have a soul. We have been good friends—but oh, a mermaid—you
would be a fool to refuse this chance.”

Then all at once Elaidh had turned from
him and Elrahn knew why. He heard the murmur of the water, the flutter of it as
if a great fish swam just under the surface. Then came a dash of light and
water-drops.