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By Root 976 0

took me to the ocean for the first time. Down south, just a few years before the old king died and our kingdom split in two. I wandered off by myself, out of my mother’s sight, collecting shells. My mother was not paying attention. I walked into the water, lured by the sight of a jellyfish. The tide was coming in more heavily, and I slipped somehow, and the sea pulled me into itself. I fell into the water. I could not swim. I would have drowned but for the woman who came to me then. She appeared from nowhere and carried me in her arms, singing to me all the while. Later, my parents found me soaked through to my bones but sleeping peaceably on the beach, curled into a snug formation of rock, protected from the bite of the wind. I think of it more and more often as I get older. It was the most extraordinary moment of my life.”

“She was a mermaid?”

He nodded. “Later, I found out that there had been many mermaid sightings in that area. The locals told stories about her, this beautiful woman with pink hair who emerged from the sea. But she never, as far as I know, saved anyone else the way she saved me. No one ever even claimed to see her up close, the way I did.”

“Did she … did she mark you in any way?” she asked.

“It has always made me feel like I had a special purpose,” he said. “Always. The way you feel now.”

“I mean, on your skin. Like this.”

She lifted the sleeve of her dress and held her forearm up to catch the light. As she twisted her wrist back and forth, her arm shimmered—though more faintly now, she thought, than before.

He smiled, his face open, his eyes bright. “Yes! Of course. For a long time, yes, my skin had this sheen to it, where she had held me. It is in the old lore, that the touch of the mermaid changes us. Not everyone can see it, you know.”

She nodded excitedly. “I thought that. My ladies, they could not see. He had the shimmer on him, too, Gregor. The prince. The three of us, we have all been touched.”

Her old tutor was watching her as if he hadn’t quite seen her before. Margrethe had never seen the expression on his face that was there now, as if he were years younger, full of childlike wonder and awe. He looked from her face to her arm, then reached up and traced the skin Lenia had touched.

“I know she brought him to me for a reason, Gregor. I know she’s not an angel, but I felt that God was working through her. I did not know who the man was, I had no idea he was Prince Christopher, and he did not know who I was, I promise you. He said he was forever in my debt, for saving him. He believes I am the one who carried him to shore.”

“How wonderful,” he said, “to see your destiny begin to unfold. To see my own unfold, after all these years.”

She smiled, wiping her eyes. She hadn’t realized until now how much she needed to share this with someone, someone who would take her seriously. She felt reconnected, suddenly, to that world of magic, as if it was tangible again, now that she’d shared it with him.

She took a deep breath. “Gregor, I know what my destiny is now. I know what I need to do.”

He nodded, waiting. She could hear her own breathing, her own heart.

“My father is intent on fighting. I know I cannot convince him otherwise. And I know it is wrong. Even though he is my father and my king, he is wrong. This isn’t God’s way, this suffering, this violence.”

Gregor nodded. “I hoped you would be able to convince him, but your father does not care what is true and what is not true. He wants only war. War is how your father exorcises his own demons, his grief. It is how he has always been. It made him a great warrior once.” He paused, became wistful. “You know, there was a time when we all lived in peace together, when we were all brothers and sisters, shared the same blood. But when the old king died …”

“I know,” she said. “It is strange, Gregor. The mermaid … she, too, spoke about how we were all unified once, but she was talking about humans and merpeople. How there was a time when all of us lived in the sea.”

“It is a never-ending dream for everyone, it seems, to find again what was