Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  Loneliness is the weakest excuse for magic there is, and it mixes horribly with pride and ignorance.

  She’d meant it as a rebuke of me while I tried to help Annemette, yet I know this is different. This girl is lonely because this is her sister. Her twin. Her other half.

  She’s not prideful. She’s not ignorant—she knows much more about the situation than I did about the girl I once knew. That much is for sure.

  And she’s given me every indication she will go through with murdering the king to save both her sister and the merpeople endangered by the U-boats and the mines.

  My mind churns with all the possibilities. Who might live, who might die, what might become of the magical imbalance with another mermaid on land. With another exchange. It’s a long shot, but we all might get what we want.

  I add my other hand to the top of hers until we’re holding each other like fish skewered through the belly on a pike. Her hand is warm and reminds me a little of home.

  “I will change you, but listen closely.” The girl’s eyes widen with relief. “Here is what you must do. As I told you before, dying Øldenburg blood must fall on your sister’s feet, shed by this knife. If that happens by the last moment of the fourth day—at sunrise, because that is when she ascended—she shall live. Though she can never become a mermaid again.”

  She swallows. “Never? Not even with this knife?”

  “Not the terms of her deal. The magic is serious about exchange—the sea cannot take her back.” I wrap a tentacle around the girl’s waist. “Now, your deal is different.”

  I watch her eyes as I let that sink in. Her lip begins to tremble, and I don’t blame her—she feels as if she’s failed already because her sister can never again be a mermaid—but the girl’s eyes remain fierce and steady.

  “Your deal, Runa, is one of very specific action. You are there to help your sister, but still, Alia must kill the boy with this knife. I can’t change that either. Her life was her bargain, not yours.” This truth seems to puncture Runa’s resiliency even more. “But having you there by her side, like you’ve always been, is the greatest power you have to give. Do you want me to go on?”

  Runa swallows a sob and nods.

  “After Alia allows the blood to fall on her feet for her survival, these are the things you must do to return to the sea: You must gather the boy’s red stone ring and retrieve the knife. Then you must sprinkle the boy’s blood on your own toes. Fail to do any of that by the close of the fourth full day after your arrival, including sending me the ring and the knife, and you will remain human forever.”

  She swallows. “I . . . I won’t become foam in the tide? I’ll become human if I fail?”

  “Don’t assume you will fail—you didn’t come here to fail.” She squeezes her eyes closed for a second and then she’s right back with me. Good.

  My tentacle slinks off her waist and my hands drop hers as she runs it over in her mind. It’s a lot, true. And I gather that unlike Alia, the very last thing Runa ever wanted to be was human. But that was before she knew her sister might die. “Now, do you agree?”

  She’s nodding before the words are out. “Yes, I agree.”

  I watch her, making sure she means it. But she’s unwavering under my hard stare. “Give me the knife.”

  Without a word, she extends the weapon. There’s a little hesitation as I transfer the hilt to my hand and draw it close, inspecting the serrated edge, the coral so finely cut, it’s almost translucent in its sharpness.

  “Give me your hand.”

  The mermaid extends her left hand over my cauldron, clever girl. She’d been holding the knife in her right, dominant, hand. She may trust me to change her, but she isn’t so sure I won’t send her topside missing an important appendage.

  As a measure of good faith, I put a tentacle around her wrist instead, silky smooth and delicate. The cauldron is as deep and dark as the night, yet there’s a heat rising from it—part of my particular magic. I place my own arm over the cauldron, so that our arms are side by side. Then, without warning or hesitation, I drag the knife over the skin of my palm. Blood, onyx dark, oozes into the flat gray of the water, molasses slow and sparking with the magic I hold within.

  The girl’s eyes stay on the knife as she waits, knowing that it will be her turn next. My blood drips onto her flat white palm in the moment before the knife breaks her skin. She doesn’t move, recoil, or even wince, though blood as red as the flowers her sister gave me swirls into the gray. I smother her hand in mine and squeeze, our blood dripping into the pot’s belly below as one.

  With each drop, the cauldron softens with an inner light. It has the same silvery glow of a full moon on shallow waters, flashing mesmerizing rays into the starbursts of the girl’s amber eyes. I take a deep breath, and then I let my voice echo off the polypi, deep and commanding, with all the power her flowers have afforded me.

  “Líf. Saudi. Minn líf. Minn bjod. Sei∂r. Sei∂r. Sei∂r.”

  As I say the final word of the spell, the cauldron trembles with light—blinding and brilliant and enough to turn this whole pewter-rendered world stark, shocking white.

  When the spell is complete, the light recedes in an instant. From the depths of the cauldron, a silvery liquid swirls, as if the best pearls in the ocean had been melted down.

  I bring a tentacle up before the two of us, a small bottle grasped there. It’s much like the one I gave Alia. This one is light green in color, bringing all the power of the new spring sun. I dip the bottle into the potion, fill it to the top, and then stop it with a bit of cork.

  “Take this draught in the shallows, so you shall not drown,” I say, and then I give her one final reminder. “You have four days for yourself. Two for your sister. Ring, knife, blood.”

  With careful fingers, the girl seizes the bottle and the knife, pressing both to her heart, and repeats back what she must do. “Ring, knife, blood.”

  As she turns to go, I swear I hear her voice again, whispering a single refrain.

  “I’m coming, Alia. I’m coming.”

  8

  Runa

  TOPSIDE, THE FIRST FINGERS OF DAYLIGHT SWIPE ACROSS the horizon, a bright white light across the Øresund Strait, the promise of the sun coming fast. The morning glow touches the beaches of Havnestad, the mountains behind the town lit only at the very tops, the rest in the steely tones of the sea witch’s lair.

  The play of dawn would be beautiful if it didn’t signal another day gone for Alia.

  I’m coming, Alia. I’m coming.

  I cling to the shadows falling from the rocks that hug the sea witch’s black cove, the draught just as heavy in one hand as the knife is in my other. I need a place to change. I believe the sea witch that it would be best to take the draught in the shallows. It’s easy to picture Alia two dawns previous, changing on the main beach, timing it just so to coincide with the morning walks in which the king likes to indulge. She’d skipped breakfast for weeks on end just to watch him wander around, tossing sticks with his dogs, surveying his kingdom.

  But from where I am, my view of Havnestad’s main beach is already filled with townspeople. The docks beside the beach are alive with the sounds of men, cargo rolling along on horse-drawn carts tinkling with lantern light that won’t be needed in a few minutes’ time. Many of them carve a path straight up a skinny brick road that lines the ocean and leads up to Øldenburg Castle, carrying preparations for the wedding, I’m sure.

  The rest of the beach is an ode to that occasion as well. Tiny paper lanterns are strung from poles in a regal square closer to the castle, the skeleton of a bonfire pit to one side, an altar to another. I’d once been told the Øldenburgs loved to be married at sea, on the decks of their great ships, but I suppose it would be rather disastrous if the wedding party struck a mine planted in the waters its groom believed he owned.

  I don’t see the boy on his morning walk, not yet, though he will likely be there soon. And maybe with Alia, if I’m lucky. I tuck the knife and
bottle safely within my bodice, tight against the beating of my heart and the ríkifjor seeds I placed there before returning to the witch’s lair. My precious cargo safe, I swim around the black cove and to the other side of Havnestad, toward the sea entrance to the castle with its marble balcony. Cliff faces meet the waters here, so different from the rest of paper-flat Denmark, this little kingdom.

  Around this side, not yet to the castle’s channel, there’s a strange arch of stone, yawning over a fissure between the rocks. The water streaming under it is deep and sure, and I swim through, coming up onto a little lagoon. On a sliver of beach, between two large boulders, standing sentry at its mouth, is a tiny cave. To one side is a steep stairway of stone and switchbacks, leading up to the cliff. I strain my eyes in the low light to see exactly where it leads, but there are only trees, shading the clifftop from view of the castle above.

  Yes, this will do.

  But first, I’ll need clothing.

  The witch gave me nothing to wear, so I must make it myself, using what is around. Which isn’t much. Sand, rocks, and water. But under the surface—that’s something I can use. And so, I spend the rest of dawn pulling seaweed from the lagoon. It’s not much, but it’s just enough for a skirt to go with my sea bodice.

  My bodice is a salt-water ivory, the color of a seal tusk, spelled together with the sheen of a thousand pearls by Eydis, who won’t have any of her sisters wearing everyday canvas. Considering the silks and stays that Alia was wearing in the castle yesterday morning, it’s a good thing Eydis has such exacting standards.

  Once I have enough seaweed—dark green and thrumming with the closing summer—I lay it all out on the beach and close my eyes.

  “Snúa. Efni.” I command.

  A cool whiff of magic settles against my skin, my confidence spiking.

  My magic works here.

  My eyes fly open, and I watch, repeating the spell over and over, as the magic does its job, weaving each length of seaweed upon itself, twisting and braiding, each piece drying lacquer-hard once put in its proper place.

  “Snúa. Efni.”

  “Snúa. Efni.”

  “Snúa. Efni.”

  Soon enough, the seaweed has thatched itself into a skirt that is actually quite beautiful—as deep and shiny as the best emeralds. I wind it around my waist, securing it with one last fat piece of seaweed that finishes the dress like a silken ribbon. It feels a little strange—having something besides water flowing over my tail. There’s some seaweed left over, and I set it aside on the beach as I come into the shallows—someone will surely have a use for it.

  Pleased, I remove the knife and the draught—half of me above water and half of me below. The bottle catches in the light streaming over the rocks, the sun that much higher now, though the light is still blue with the receding night. The potion within glows like the moon on a clear night—so opaque as to be nearly white, shining as if it has a life of its own. Maybe it does.

  I take one last look at my tail fin, sighing in the sand here beneath the hem of my new dress.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” I tell it. “I’ll get you back.”

  I pop the cork and let it fall into the water.

  Bottoms up.

  The liquid is cool to the touch but burns going down—fire water coating my tongue, throat, and belly. The warmth spreads across my body in the length of time that it takes for a bullet to explode from a pistol. And, suddenly, I’m the sun itself, pulsing and strobing with heat we rarely feel in the sea.

  I cling to the knife in my hand, willing myself not to drop it, my fingers sweltering themselves numb, the bottle already dropped, my concentration only enough for one. I’m melting. I’m as liquid as the sea—hot, warm, steaming. Only the knife is solid; fire is what it bends to and I am fire. Fire and fury and nothing at all.

  All of it is intense enough that I wonder whether, in my anger and desperation, I’ve made a huge error. If the sea witch concocted a potion to end me, not aid me. Some old grudge mingling with a new one for Father’s recent attack, killing off two of the sea king’s children in one easy swipe. But just as that thought crystallizes, the heat backs off. The warmth cools into something hard. Solid.

  Legs.

  Bones and muscles and tendons and arteries and veins.

  Ankles and toes.

  My lungs sputter in my chest, no longer suitable for both worlds. Made for only one, and it’s not my home. I gasp in as much air as my lungs can hold, suddenly in need though I haven’t been underwater for several minutes. Somehow without my mermaid body, the air temperature is much colder, and I immediately begin to shiver, the adrenaline coursing through my veins notwithstanding.

  I push myself up out of the lapping tide, new legs wobbling under my weight, my toes digging into the uneven sand below. It’s almost stunning to me that I’m whole and solid. I look down past my seaweed skirt to those toes, flashing white. I am human. And now my clock is ticking right along with Alia’s.

  I test out my stride, taking a few uneasy steps. The shifting nature of the sands under my feet doesn’t help before I nearly fall over. And then I realize that even if I figure out how to walk, I still won’t be right. I need shoes.

  I backpedal and retrieve those extra wisps of seaweed.

  “Snúa. Efni.” I say the spell, but . . . something’s distant about the magic I’ve called forth.

  “Snúa. Efni.” I repeat, thinking it might improve things.

  It does, but the distance stays, even as the seaweed begins to obey, weaving itself into one slipper and then another.

  I keep reaching, reaching, reaching, for the magic as it works. It hears me, but it’s from across the room, not within my veins. After much longer than I’d expected—several minutes longer than it took the magic to create my entire skirt—my shoes are made. They aren’t durable in the least, but they should do for now.

  When I’m finished, the sky has evened out into a lush blue, the warmth of dawn gone. Another day begun. Two days behind. Time to find Alia.

  9

  Runa

  THE STAIRS AND SWITCHBACKS ARE AN IMMEDIATE test for this strange new body of mine. Nubby rocks and wayward roots tear at the soles of my slippers. My calves and thighs stretch and constrict with the movement as I climb, the lagoon growing smaller with each step. There’s no railing of any kind, so I balance with my hands out, the knife and the little ríkifjor bag cinched safely against my breastbone.

  By the time I reach the top of the cliff, I’m breathing hard on my unfamiliar lungs. I pause for a moment to catch my breath and stare out at the Øresund Strait twinkling in the sunlight. But I don’t have time to stand around. Once my breath settles into a more normal rhythm, I turn my back to the ocean and pick my way along the path leading from the stairs.

  I’ve been taught that autumn brings leaves to the ground, but here they still cling to their limbs, green but on the cusp of turning, dense and content in the new day’s sun. Through them, I can only view snatches of the castle on the hill. Still, I’m not yet skilled enough to walk and look up without tripping, so I point my eyes to the ground, watching each step for an errant root. The brush snags at my dress, and it occurs to me that I must be very careful here—entering the king’s company as a stranger will be hard enough, and if I look as if I’ve been spit out of the forest, that most definitely will sound the alarm.

  As I walk along, I try to fix my hair, knowing a cut this short won’t help me in the least—it’s unusual, and not in a good way. But with every spell I can think of, the magic doesn’t change it. Nothing changes it. It’ll have to do.

  I soon come to a cottage, sitting squat under the trees. It’s small and old, and I know without even peeking through the shutters that it’s abandoned. For some reason this makes me think of Niklas and his shiny objects—how can humans love things so much when they’re alive and then let them rot when they’re gone? Do they treat their people this way, or just the other things they collect in a lifetime?

&nb
sp; Past the cottage is a more defined path of cobblestones gone slick with time, zippered together like crooked teeth, padded on either side by overgrown grass. Where the cobblestones meet the road, heavier bricks run all along the waterfront—along the beach, past the lighthouse and docks—and wind up the hill toward the castle and the town proper, with its witch-hat roofs and cheery paint.

  I hesitate for a moment, thinking of Niklas’s beach walks and the possibility that Alia might attend. Even without knowing the terms of Alia’s magic, the king must not be daft enough to believe he can enjoy beach walks and sweet kisses with his “foundling” after the arrival of his bride-to-be. If he can’t or won’t understand that, his wife might kill him, unless Alia and I get to him first.

  I turn for the castle. It sits heavy on the hill, perfectly square, with turrets on each side. Manicured lawns of an almost otherworldly green bleed out from the base, stopping only for forced boundaries—the sea lane, the ocean itself, and a row of rather stately looking homes that butts up against the grounds like a doorstop.

  The castle guard is out in force on one lawn, shoes shining and hair smooshed in place, as they run through a formation that I can only imagine is intended for the wedding.

  For all the guard’s organization, everything else is abject chaos. People are running every which way, unloading carts from the docks—bolts of fabric, hand trucks of out-of-season fruits, taper candles by the armful. They’re even unloading people, uniformed valets rushing to guide silken ladies and starched gentlemen out of motorcars and up manicured paths.

  Chaos provides cover, and for this I am extremely grateful. Swallowing a deep breath, I plaster a smile upon myself and fold in with a school of men and women in fancy dress. My attire is light compared to what they’re wearing—I need to find something with sleeves or a shawl fast—but I say a little prayer again to Urda for Eydis’s sense of flair. The pearls on the bodice save me, as does the magic that wove my skirt.