The Mercies

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Last night Maren dreamt a whale beached itself on the rocks outside her house. She climbed down the cliff to its heaving body and rested her eye against its eye, wrapped her arms across the great stinking swell. There was nothing she could do for it but this. The men came scrambling down the black rock like dark, swift insects, glinting and hard-bodied with blades and scythes. They began to swing and cut before the whale was even dead. It bucking and all of them grim and holding like nets tight about a shoal, her arms growing long and strong around it—so wide and fierce she held it—until she didn’t know if she was a comfort or a menace and didn’t care, only watched its eye with her eye, not blinking.

“The Lensmann is beneath the King, and the King beneath God.” “Your husband must be verily crushed,” says Agnete, winking back.

Her sister is hot and too light, like a newborn pup.

the dark glitter and chatter of the dining room.

Though she had no friends to speak of, Father having withdrawn them so much from society, still she’d imagined women like Mother used to dine with, their long bare throats backed by bright collars, golden hair twisted about their heads. Men in fine suits with ruffs jutting at their necks like well-wattled birds, bearing gifts of sugared plums and silk. Pomade and lavender in the air, a table laid with roasted goose and creamed spinach, a whole salmon poached with lemon and chives, carrots heaped with butter. Candles burnishing the scene golden and precious.

During the long winter nights now thankfully past, when Mamma had latched onto her side like a babe with its mother, Maren longed to dash her mother’s hands from her, to sling her from the bed. The frustration is edged with hurt, she knows: hurt that Mamma seems not to acknowledge that Maren has lost just as much, and a near-husband besides, and with that a home of her own.

Maren nods to both, and carries her meal out to watch Kirsten finish flensing the skins. Fat is still looped in yellowish strings against the smooth underside of the hide, and Kirsten scrapes a seal knife across it.

Kirsten is not even looking at her work. She is looking out towards the sea, her profile strong and hawk-like. She is Mamma’s age, but her skin has the weathered aspect of a man’s. It makes her look older and timeless, all at once. This farm life seems to suit her, and when Maren tastes the beer it’s good: free of the bitter aftertaste Pappa’s brews always had.

Vardøhus.” Ursa knows he wants comfort, but it is something she can’t give him. The look on his face when she had soothed him on their first night had made her afraid: he is hungry for her approval and she has no idea why.