The village council meets in the church again. We have nothing to offer but water. The men rail and curse at their predicament. Does the mermaid mean to starve them out by preventing them from doing the only thing they know how? If they cannot harvest the cod and the redfish now, they will certainly not last the winter. Are they being punished? Have they offended our One True God in some way? Is there some way to make contrition and make the monster go away? The good Reverend Uriah has no answer for them. All we can do, he tells them, is pray.

Gunther declares them all cowards and walks out in disgust. The rest drift off in ones and twos. Bryndis and I stand at the window, watching them leave. Pip hides under the table, complaining that he is hungry. Bryndis gives him a piece of dried eel skin to chew on.

***

Early morning, and the wharf is empty save for a lone figure framed against a pink sunrise. The fishermen and their wives stay away from the water now. There is just this solitary villager, staring out at the sea. The skies are cloudless and the water calm. There is the sound of gulls and the lapping of waves against stone. Of the sea creature, there is no sign.

I stride out to the pier, one eye on the water for any telltale ripple. “Agnet? It is not safe out here.”

She turns slightly in acknowledgment but does not take her eyes from the sea. Her shawl is draped over her head like a veil and the sea spray is dampening the hem of her skirt.

“Come away from the water. Please.”

“Nothing will happen, Kaspar,” she says.

I take in the flat line of the horizon. “Tell me what you see out there.”

“Escape?” she says. “If I row out in my husband’s sloop and raise the sail, do you think the mermaid would try to sink me?”

“I think she would eat you like she did the others.”

With the shawl hiding her face, all I see is one brown eye. “I don’t think she would. I think she would let me sail away in peace.”

Her thoughts tack to strange winds. “What makes you think she’d spare you?”

“Maybe she doesn’t like the taste of women. Males seem to be her preferred delicacy.”

“And goats, if you listen to Hagar. That poor woman is inconsolable over her pet.”

“My mother once told me that the goat is her husband. When he tried to dither the skirts of the girl next door, Hagar brewed him a tea that transformed him into a goat.”

I laugh. “I never met the fellow. Hagar’s husband was gone before we settled here.”

She still hasn’t taken her eyes from the open sea. This troubles me.

“How long ago was that, Kaspar?” she asks. “How long have we known each other?”