The good weather didn't hold, as was expected. The next morning it was raining and cold
- Himinglava was clearly nowhere to be found today - and we trucked down to Sandy
Neck...named, I expect, for the narrow strip of sand at the top of the beach. The rest of the beach
was composed entirely of pebbles, down into the water. The place was completely deserted, and I
had to wonder if the rain was engineered for the privacy of the mermaids. Joshua set up the fly
with poles in the front, weighted by rocks in the back, a fabric lean-to with a floor-tarp and
blanket underneath. I drummed and sang for a while, figuring that it was too cold for swimming
and I would just get my lesson up here in shelter....but it was clear, after a while, that I was
going to have to go it. I had Josh prick my finger and I stripped and walked in naked.
She was there, coming toward me in the water with a strange wriggling motion, and there was fear in the pit of my belly. I was more scared of this one than even of bloodthirsty Blodughadda. She swam in a circle around me - I was chest-deep by then - and surfaced, and I stared into a round mouth full of bared teeth. Her face was more pinched and her eyes more bulging, and her fair hair was cut short and flapping about her inhuman face. The eyes, they were the same. I was getting used to the eyes.
Her touch was slimy as she slapped lightly at me with her clawed hands, and her tail whipped back and forth in the water beneath her, a tapering spotted line. If Blodughadda had been shark and Himinglava dolphin, Hronn was eel. "Are you frightened of me?" she asked. "Good. You should be. I'm the whirlpool, I could suck you right down to the bottom of the ocean." I felt the waves around me take on a rougher rhythm, grabbing me around the waist and pushing me about. "You think you know all about fear just because you've died once? Don't be a fool. You're not done with it yet."
Hronn is Lady of the Whirlpool. Like her twin sister Hevring, she is a mistress of currents, but Hronn is mistress of the currents that suck you down into the water, rather than those that carry you horizontally across it. She seems to be connected also to the life of the deep sea bottom, especially the black waters where we cannot go and still live except with technological equipment.
Hronn's Lesson
All those warriors, they talk about fighting fear, as if it was some opponent that could be
slaughtered. When you fight fear and win - or when you think that you've won, anyway - all it
means is that you fought your way clear of the whirlpool...this time. The whirlpool is still there,
waiting for you. That's escaping, not winning. To win, you have to go all the way down, all the
way in. You have to go down to the center of it, to face the worst of it. The situation is terrifying?
What's the worst that could happen? Can you imagine it? Now go there. Go there in a way that
you can't just walk out of when the game gets too scary.
That means that just imagining it isn't enough, although it's a puny start. You need to do it, or do something like it. You need to feel it in your body, to force yourself to take those steps forward, to touch something. You need to walk into that fear with your flesh, making a mark on that flesh that you will always recall, with heart-wrenching physicality, every time you think about it. You remember, don't you? You remember how you lost the fears that you lost, how you came that close to Death? You remember Her Ladyship's bony knuckles clicking on your ribcage as She tore out your heart. You can recall that sensation, sharp as a convulsion, every time you think of it. That recall is a scar, a mark, a brand laid on you as a passport through that fear. Every deep fear requires such a mark, but it must be one that drives you on when you touch it, not one that paralyzes you. If it paralyzes you, you did it wrong, and you must rip it open and go into the maelstrom again, all the way to the bottom of the whirlpool.
That's the secret. You walk and keep walking, you keep going all the way to the bottom, and then you come out the other side. It really is that simple. It really is that difficult. And nothing else will ever do. If you sing this song, and sing it and sing it, while you're going there, it will carry you. It won't give you courage - you have to do that yourself - but it will create the current that pulls you through even without courage.
Hronn's Song
Hear a sample
By the cold grey waters
I draw you in.
By the pulse of your blood
I draw you in.
To the eye of the storm,
I draw you in.
To the fathomless deeps
I draw you in.
Sharp the wet stones,
I draw you in.
Chill my grey mantle,
I draw you in.
Sea takes your breath,
I draw you in.
Sea chokes your words,
I draw you in.
Sea kills your song,
I draw you in.
Silence your doom,
I draw you in.
Find you again,
I draw you in.
Find you again,
I draw you in.
Find me here
I let you go.