My voice breaks. “Why do you talk to me this way? I have never stopped loving you.” I shake a hand at the curtain. “Despite all this, I could not stop. Have you?”

“Keep your voice down.”

A roar bellows from the other side of the curtain, raw-voiced and angry. “Who’s there? Agnet? Agnet, damn you! Who is there?”

We both rise. I promise to bring the brandy and leave. At the cottage’s little gate, I slip on a rotting squid and fall hard, a spiny urchin stinging my backside.

***

By midday, the stench is unbearable. People go to and fro with kerchiefs pressed to their noses to ward off the smell of the sea life rotting on the cobbles. I spend the morning scavenging for food. Sigga, the miller’s daughter, is willing to trade a sack of meal for the last coin I have. It is a paltry score, as the meal is fuzzed with mold, but it will put something in our bellies. I return to the church to find my sister pounding on the door of the vestry.

“Will he not come out?”

“He’s locked himself in,” Bryndis replies. Her hand is red from the hammering. “He won’t even answer me.”

“Why waste your time? Leave him,” I say, crossing to the tabernacle at the altar.

“He has duties. All those men need a burial.”

“The creature left nothing to bury.”

Her eyes narrow in disgust. “They still require a proper funeral. A benediction or something.”

Reaching into the tabernacle, I scrounge around for the hidden flask. There is the chalice and a hymnal, but no flask, no wine skin.

“What are you doing?”

“Where is father’s brandy?”

Bryndis wags her chin at the locked door. “Probably in there, with him. Why?”

“For Gunther. He’s out of his mind in pain.”

“Kaspar, the man tried to murder you. Why are you helping him?”

“It’s not him I’m helping.”

Bryndis blows out her cheeks in an exhale and flops into a pew. “For God’s sakes, Kaspar. Just leave the girl be.”

“How can I? She is all alone, chained to that mewling beast. He’s not even a man anymore.”

Frustrated, I join her on the pew. The skeleton of the legendary sea monster hangs on the wall before us. The haphazard patchwork of bone and fin looks preposterous in the greasy light of the window.

“Little Tito was taken,” she says. “Did you hear?”

A boy of seven, with almost white hair, and five sisters. “Ersham’s son? What happened?”

“He was out on the pier with his sisters. They had gone to watch the mermaid. It snatched him from the dock, right out of the hands of his sisters.”

“Good God. Now, Ersham has no heir.”