Mermaid_ A Twist on the Classic Tale - Carolyn Turgeon [92]
Margrethe dropped her voice to a whisper. “Can you … Can you change back?”
Lenia shook her head, but she did not look sad.
“I am so sorry,” Margrethe said.
Margrethe felt like she’d destroyed everything beautiful in the world. And at the same time, she loved the prince. She did. But she did not know how much she loved the mermaid, through him. Would she have felt the same way about him if she’d never seen Lenia bent over him on the beach, seen the shimmer she’d left on his skin?
In that bleak and windy place, once the mermaid had returned to the sea, Christopher had been the closest thing to magic left in the world.
“I have to marry him,” Margrethe said, sitting down on the bed and putting her arm on Lenia’s. “I would give him up, I would give up everything, for myself. I would die right now, to let you have him. But I must marry him. My father has agreed, he is on his way now, with the rest of the court; there will be peace, the two kings in the same room, breaking bread together, and we will be whole again, the way we were before.… So many people have died, have suffered, because of this war, and our union will end all of that suffering.”
Lenia nodded slowly, and Margrethe could not read her expression. Numb. Resigned. Peaceful.
The wet nurse returned then, and both women looked up at the infant in her arms.
“Christina,” Margrethe said. “She’s so beautiful.”
The nurse handed the child to Lenia, who clutched her in her arms. The baby seemed to melt into her. And then it was not numbness or resignation that Margrethe saw, but joy. Pure joy.
“I will do everything I can to give you and Christina the best life possible,” she said. “Here, in the castle—”
But when Lenia looked back up at her, Margrethe stopped in midsentence, stunned into silence by the tears running down Lenia’s cheeks, sparkling like tiny diamonds.
THE NORTHERN KING and his court arrived that day with great ceremony. After days of frenzied preparation, the Southern court was ready for his arrival, and the two kings stood in the same hall for the first time in decades, shaking hands and vowing allegiance to a common goal, one united kingdom. Huge crowds gathered at the castle—some to protest but most to celebrate the ending of the war, the beginning of a new, better age. Armed guards were positioned everywhere.
Margrethe barely paid attention to any of it. While the castle filled with diplomats and aristocrats and visitors from the North and the Southern countryside, while great feasts were prepared and dances given and entertainments of all kinds brought out for the celebration, and while soldiers positioned themselves at every doorway, Margrethe spent every possible moment with Lenia.
Even on her wedding day, as the seamstresses frantically made last-minute adjustments to her gown, and as Edele rushed about helping with final details, Margrethe’s heart was numb. All she could think of was Lenia and her child, trying to imagine what kind of world she would have come from, filled with mermaids, in the sea.
Margrethe’s mind kept going back and back to those moments on the beach. To that image of Lenia bent over Christopher that first day, the look on her face as she kissed him. It had been that, hadn’t it? That feeling that had made her leave her own world and come to him? Even a mermaid could want that, leave an unimaginably beautiful world behind, for a feeling like that.
She thought of the agony on Lenia’s face as she lay contorted on the bed, unable to scream. It was unthinkable to Margrethe that a mermaid would suffer. That she herself could be so central to that suffering.
“Why are you crying?” Edele asked, motioning for the seamstresses to stop. “Do you need to rest?”
“No,” Margrethe said, shaking her head. “I am just emotional, on such an important day. My wedding day.” She paused and then asked, “Where is Astrid?”
Edele gave her a look. “My friend. This is your wedding day. You should not think of her now.”
Margrethe nodded. She was numb with grief, and there