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“But for now,” the abbess said, “let us get out of the cold.” She turned to the door and knocked.

A tired-looking young woman opened it. Her face changed when she saw them, and she immediately crossed herself and bowed.

“Welcome, Reverend Mother,” she said, moving aside to let them in.

“Good afternoon, my child,” the abbess said. “We’ve brought some treatments for your sick one, and some food to nourish you.”

Margrethe followed quietly, stooping to pass through the front door. She nodded at the woman and watched as the abbess blessed her and began handing her loaves of bread and small packages of herbs from her basket. In the back of the room, three children sat huddled on the dirt floor. A fourth was lying on his side on a thin mattress, moaning. The sick boy’s eyes were closed, his hair damp, a sheen of sweat shining from his forehead.

It was Margrethe’s first visit to a peasant home, and it was hard to hide the shock that she felt. She’d never seen conditions like it. There was one small room, with a low ceiling. A fire burned but did little to alleviate the cold. The boy’s pain was palpable, and seemed to color the walls of the house.

She walked over to the children and knelt down next to them. Behind her, the abbess and the woman spoke in low tones.

Margrethe saw then that one of the children, a young boy, was drawing with a stick in the dirt floor. When she saw the picture he’d created, she nearly gasped out loud. “What are you drawing?” she said. “What is that?”

He put down the stick. “It is a fish lady, Sister,” he whispered. And it was: crude as the lines in the dirt were, the woman’s head and torso connected to the tail of a fish were unmistakable. Mermaid.

She caught her breath and spoke in a whisper, matching his. “Why have you drawn it?”

“The last time I went fishing with my father, we caught one in our net, Sister.”

“You caught one in your net?”

“Yes,” he said. “My father thought we’d caught a giant fish, and then we hauled it up, and there was a beautiful lady, like you. But she had a fish’s tail.”

Looking down, Margrethe saw a faint dust of shimmer on the boy’s hand, even under the dirt that coated his skin and nails.

“Did you touch her? You did, didn’t you?”

“Forgive him,” the woman said, rushing over before the child could answer. “He is just a boy. The villagers tell these stories. My husband … He was a good man, but he encouraged these fantasies in the children … He is, was a fisherman. He went to sea some weeks ago and has not come home, and now we have to fend for ourselves.”

“He disappeared the day after we saw the fish lady,” the boy said.

“Philip!”

The boy looked down, scared suddenly, and wiped out the drawing.

The abbess was stern. “You must instruct these children that it is a sin to indulge these fantasies. Clinging to the old goddesses, you keep the world in darkness. It is only one way the devil works through them.”

“It is so hard to keep watch over th—”

“That is your duty,” the abbess said, cutting her off.

The woman nodded her assent and knelt on the floor. “Forgive us, Reverend Mother.”

Margrethe watched the boy. She smiled when he looked up at her, trying to comfort him. But the boy’s shame was clear, and she wished there was something she could say to reassure him.

“Let us go,” the abbess said, but Margrethe hesitated. Without thinking, she took a fur from her basket, knelt down, and wrapped it around the boy. “God be with you, child,” she whispered and then set out all her furs and blankets in front of him.

“Thank you, Sister,” the woman said, and Margrethe nodded. She would remember this family, she vowed, all of these families that suffered.

As they left, Margrethe could feel the abbess’s disapproval.

“I will pay for them,” Margrethe said. “For the furs and blankets. But they are so poor. I don’t … I don’t understand. How can they be that poor, when our kingdom is so rich?”

The abbess looked at Margrethe, her passion evident. She hesitated, and then spoke clearly. “It’s the war,” she said. “I am sorry