Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [82]
She was sick, clutching her swollen stomach. Her body was changing, and she felt as if a fish were trapped inside her. Her stomach seized up right then, and she bent over and vomited into the sea.
What was this inside of her? What would it become?
She was terrified that she would give birth to some kind of mutant, part merperson and part human, a child who would not be accepted in either world. There was nothing she could do now but wait.
All the grace she’d had in her old life, in her former body, seemed to be gone forever. She wanted only to eat, and sleep, and be with him. The prince visited or sent for her frequently still, but he seemed afraid to do anything but hold Lenia, as if she would break.
“I will not do it,” he vowed, running his hands through her hair, feeling the slope of her belly. “You are my true wife, no matter what.”
She spent more and more time in the chapel or by the sea when everyone else was out enjoying the seemingly endless amusements of the court. She knew that everything depended now on the Northern king. If the king allowed it, Christopher and Margrethe would marry, the North and South would make peace, and Lenia would die. If the king did not allow it, legally Christopher and Margrethe could not marry. And then, only then, would the prince be free to marry her. Despite what Katrina said, he would marry her if he could, Lenia was sure of it. The way he looked at her when they were alone … the way he touched her hair and whispered into her ear and her belly left her little doubt.
It had been over a fortnight since the king had sent messengers to the North. Any day now they would receive King Erik’s response.
She prayed to the human God, to Christ and to Mary. She stared up at the crucifix in the chapel, at the suffering man with blood dripping down his face and a crown of thorns on his head. Sent to earth by his father to die for the sins of humans. His beautiful face, turned to the side in suffering. His wracked body, which she longed to touch.
Please let him marry me, she prayed, but she was not sure that the humans’ gods would listen to her. Help me and my child.
Because even if her child was deformed and monstrous, as hideous a creature as the land and sea had ever seen, Lenia loved it. No matter what it was, it was her child, her child and the prince’s child, something they had made together. She would die a hundred times over so that their child might live.
All Lenia could do was pray and wait, pray and wait, as word came trickling down from the North that the king was very likely to relent.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Princess
MARGRETHE LAY IN BED, UNABLE TO SLEEP. SHE HAD never felt this way about someone before. Never hated anyone. But now she hated the prince’s lover. Astrid. Wanted desperately for her to just disappear. She was sure she could kill her with her bare hands if given the chance, and was tortured with dreams of her kissing the prince, of her bending over him on the rocks instead of the mermaid, her breasts against his bare skin.
She learned about the prince’s lover from Princess Katrina’s handmaidens: how Astrid had shown up at the castle one day wearing nothing but an astonishing, priceless necklace, how she was unable to speak, how she spent most of her time in her own room or walking by the sea when she was not keeping company with the prince. How strange she was. She learned that Katrina was the one who’d initially shown her kindness, but that the prince had been immediately smitten and still was, to the surprise of all the ladies, who thought Astrid was actually quite boring.
“It’s the baby,” one of the ladies said. “He is a good man, the prince, and that conniver managed to get herself pregnant the moment she arrived.”
When she was alone, Margrethe stared at herself in the mirror, criticizing every flaw. Was she not beautiful enough? Did he not desire her? She stared at her long black hair and brown eyes, her pale skin and angular features. She had an intelligent look to her, people said, just like her mother. Before,