Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  On the bed, Nik’s grandson takes his final breaths on the linens and furs. Somehow, I can’t look away from him. Despite the years, he reminds me more of Nik than I expected—dark hair, coat-hanger build, ears that could pink at the tips for the right girl.

  Maybe with the right spell, I could fix all this. Heal him, bring them back, and not upset Urda. Maybe—

  “Come out, you old squid. Explain yourself!” A booming voice echoes throughout my lair. It’s ancient and feminine, but no one would accuse this sound of being weak.

  Conflicted heart in my throat for Alia, Runa, and Nik’s grandson, I erase the swirling scene in my cauldron and hastily straighten myself, preparing for the hurricane to come.

  A woman appears, much older than I. Much older than the sea king, too.

  Queen Mother Ragnhildr.

  She’s spry, with tail-length hair so white it glows, straight and light enough that it swirls around her body like a halo. The ancient mermaid is swimming at me, full-speed, toward where I stay firm.

  Fury is in her movements, her face, her hair. She raises a hand, ready to topple my cauldron into the nearest polypus branch—very much like Runa, days prior.

  Before she lays an aged finger on my pot, the cauldron bursts into stark red flames. Her ancient reflexes do their job, snatching back her hand from the scalding heat, and—impressive—she doesn’t lose her focus.

  “How dare you, you washed-up witch!” she hollers. “Endangering two of my granddaughters by giving them legs and filling their heads with hope.”

  I meet her rage with a colorless, calm voice. “Everyone knows your granddaughters grow on trees. You still have eight left.”

  “Bah! Eight is not ten. Or can you only count as high as your tentacles?”

  I cock a brow, voice still cool. “Schoolyard taunts from a woman over two centuries old? I expect better from a woman of your reputation and stature, you old fish.”

  The woman’s eyes spark, and I know she’s taken the bait.

  “Does this look old to you?”

  I brace for a display of brute strength like the one her son threw at me, but where the sea king prefers a meat cleaver, his mother employs a razor-edged scalpel.

  “Fœra!” she screams. A searing bloodred light streams point-blank at my forehead.

  I dive and hit the sand hard as she shouts the command again and again. The second my shoulder smacks the sea floor, I roll back to a crouch, pewter sands swirling around me like smoke.

  “Reykr!” I yell back. The gray sand responds, lifting into a cloud as thick as a village on fire, and blows toward the old mermaid in a choking, blinding mass.

  She is more than mature, and she is ready, the breadth of her powers and years at her fingertips. As the first tendrils of my sand bomb reach her, she’s already shouted out a command. “Vaxa bálkr!”

  In the blink of an eye, the whole foundation of my lair begins to shift and shake. A wall of vines shoots out from the dead sands, thick and protective. The wall repels my own spell, sending the sand plume straight into my face. As I begin to hack and cough, the mermaid screams again from behind the wall. “Vaxa hellir!”

  The sea floor gives another furious shudder, and from its depths, one more wall shoots up, this one a great circle, surrounding me, the cauldron, and Ragnhildr. As the vines lace tightly together, the sounds of the ocean grow quiet. Even Anna has been cut off, the polypi tree excluded from our cocoon. The wall between us withers.

  “Alone at last, old friend.” Ragnhildr extends a hand, her skin near translucent with age. I take it, letting her help me off the sea floor—and then I offer her a smile.

  “I let you win, you old fish.”

  “I hear we had a close call.” The woman’s voice is softer now. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  “I almost wasn’t. Your son’s power is unstoppable under the spell of ríkifjor.”

  Ragn shakes her head, the necklaces piled around her neck tinkling. “The ríkifjor could’ve been a gift, but he’s used so many of the flowers, I wonder if he can survive without them. Too much of a good thing can be a worse curse than almost anything else.”

  She says this, and once again, I’m reminded of my fatal mistakes with the Tørhed. I made everything worse by trying to heal the drought with my spells of abundance. Yes, too much of a good thing can mean death just as easily as not enough. Balance is crucial for all living things and the structures that support them.

  Ragn goes on. “Yet, even with the ríkifjor and all that it’s cost him, he’s not powerful enough to do the things he wants. He can’t get his daughters back. Only you can do that. And though I know somewhere in that thick skull of his he loves them, I believe he loves more what they can do for him.”

  “I agree,” I say. “He seemed hurt by Alia’s betrayal, but he would not have come for me because of a broken heart.”

  “No, that tear we felt hurt him something terrible, even if the ríkifjor has masked his magical decline. That drug will only work for so long, especially now that Runa is gone too. With each missing piece, he grows weaker, their magic escaping him.”

  It’s not a perfect equation, but I can’t help but picture the sea king’s magic streaming out of him like the lifeblood out of Nik’s back.

  Out of Nik’s grandson’s chest.

  “What will he do?” I ask her. I’m not worried the sea king will kill me—not anymore. He’s hoping he can keep me on the edge of fear long enough that I’ll do as he commands. But there is so much worse he could do than end my life just by using what’s left of it.

  “You mean after he’s done having me do his bidding against you for sending Runa away and leaving the others with chic bobs?”

  I smirk a little. “He doesn’t like their new look?”

  “You’re pushing him, old squid, and I’m worried,” she says. “Even trimming their hair . . . that loss is painful too. It’ll take forever for their hair to grow back.”

  Yes, I know. They can’t magic it back. The hair is magic itself—and it is immune to whatever they’ll try.

  Oma Ragn pulls in a long, steadying breath. When she speaks again, the weight of her two hundred years colors her voice. “The humans are weak from the great war above—war always does that, you know. War airs the worst in all of us and lets it fester in the light.” The old woman draws a sad smile. “And while their ugliness rots in the open, their human magic is nearly nonexistent to stop it. What better time than now to attack and shift the balance of magic permanently?”

  The sea king will attack humans. I never thought this would happen. For millennia, the merpeople have survived as legend. Attacking humans means decimating the legend and the safety that comes with it. The ríkifjor has made him drunk with ambition.

  I blink and I see that boy king dying on the bed. Perhaps if there was magic on land, he might not have needed to commission U-boats or lay those mines, all things that have surely set the sea king on edge. Yet, still, striking first and destroying our shroud of mystery will bring nothing but more death to us below.

  “But who will fight alongside him?” I ask. “He’s spent the last fifty years ensuring the common merpeople are terrified of the surface.”

  Her answer is immediate and firm. “He’s planted fear within them. He knows how to sow it and grow it into what he needs it to be.”

  My mind drifts back to the Sankt Hans Aftens of my childhood—a bonfire on a beach meant to renew fear and hatred of my kind, to prove we’re devils, that we don’t belong, that burning, drowning, or banishment was the only fair way to go. Things are different now in the years since I saved Nik, but the seeds of that fear were sown deep enough that it took a very public, traumatic act of love to change any sort of perception.

  As that truth settles over me, Ragn speaks again, this time as quiet and uncertain as she was commanding and sure just a moment ago. “What should we do, Evie?”

  “He sent you here to weaken me again. Threaten me again. Make me think he’s winning so
my powers will be his to use as he sees fit.” I pause because I hate what I must suggest. “We need to make him believe he’s succeeded.”

  Ragn nods. “He’s a hard man to convince. I half believe he sent me here as a test—he knows we’ve had contact without direction.”

  Of course he does.

  “You can’t keep coming back here.” I hold up a tentacle. “I have an idea.”

  Yes, this might work.

  I grab a fresh swordfish spear and sterilize it over the magical fire I keep hot under my cauldron. Then, before I can think about the pain, I slice off a rabbit’s-foot-sized piece from the tip of a tentacle. Blood black as night streams out, and I cauterize the wound with the hot swordfish spear before turning to hold the tentacle tip out to Ragn—my one true friend in all these years.

  “Bring this to him as a gift. A trophy stolen by his mother’s abilities.” She takes it, but before she can slip it onto one of the many golden chains around her neck, I stop her. “Hold it out and still, please.”

  She does just that, my blood trickling onto her hands. I dip a finger in it and run it along an upturned sucker. Then, I swirl the same finger in the contents of my cauldron, whispering nearly the same spell that brought me my view of the fight in King Niklas’s bedroom just minutes earlier. Though the sea king has blinded me from viewing the sea floor, he has no control over what I see on the land.

  “Líta. Heyra.”

  The sucker sparkles with the golden light for a quick moment before fading into the same onyx monotone of the rest of the tentacle tip.

  Ragn’s feisty smile is back. “Clever witch.”

  “See to it that he wears your trophy proudly and often.”

  “I’ll thread it from his belt myself.”

  Ragn places the tentacle safely around her neck, and I know she must get back. The last thing we need is the sea king following up and surprising us.

  I pull her into a long hug. “Take care, you old fish.”

  “You do the same, my friend.”

  When we part, I dissolve the vines, leaving us in the open. The old mermaid leaves without a word.

  When she’s gone, Anna can’t help herself. “Evie, you’re hurt.”

  “It’s nothing,” I say, and turn my back to her. I nearly spell her silent again as I hear her draw in a breath, but she stops when she realizes what I’m doing.

  I lean over the cauldron, swirling the contents as fast as I can with a clean swordfish spear. Then, when the storm within spins on its own, I spell the king’s bedroom back into my sight.

  “Líta.”

  The room is filled with men in matching uniforms and shocked expressions. The king is dead, his blood spent.

  The girls are gone.

  15

  Runa

  THE FIRST PEALS OF THUNDER SHAKE THE GROUND AND sky as we hurtle from the belly of Øldenburg Castle. An unmarked panel delivers us onto a wisp of land balanced between the castle and the cliff face tumbling into the gray, churning sea.

  A crack of lightning rips through clouds, and for one stark moment, we’re completely exposed. Black dresses, clearly in disguise, clearly out of place and on the run. We have to get out of here. My head is fuzzy and bloodied, and I know my coherent thoughts right now are running on adrenaline alone, but our options are not good. We can’t go back into the castle. It’s easy to imagine the news of the king’s death spreading like wildfire through the kingdom—windows light one by one, signaling yet another person who knows. Another person looking for us. And we can’t make it to the water. From here, even as mermaids, we wouldn’t survive a dive into the cove or the sea proper without breaking a bone or several. In these human bodies, we might just break our necks and drown. Our only choice is to run.

  Straight onto the open lawn that spreads in front of the castle.

  It’s not yet crawling with men; it will be soon.

  I grab Alia’s hand as the sky coughs and sheets of rain pour down, plastering our hair in our eyes. “We’ll have to lose them in town. Did you ever go there with . . . him? Do you know your way around?”

  Alia shakes her head.

  No matter. We’ll find our way. I tighten my grip on her hand and take a running step, but she stops me with a hard yank, her heels digging in. Then she’s signing.

  Witch.

  “I know, we didn’t satisfy the sea witch,” I whisper in a hurry. “We’ll work that out later. We’ll find a way, but we can’t talk here. Come on—”

  I’m cut off by another peal of thunder loud enough to steal the words from my tongue. The whole sky lights up like the middle of the day—bright enough that we both instinctively shut our eyes.

  When I blink back into the rainy present, it’s to the loud bark of men’s voices. Up on the balcony, a pair of guards point directly at us, tangled together, still in plain view below.

  “Run!”

  Just like that first day when she tore out of the castle’s rose garden, Alia is quick and graceful, charging forward in a rush of wet hair and black silks. I stumble along after her, more sure than two days ago, but I hesitate more than I’d like with each footfall.

  “There they go!” A man screams, running down the same grand steps where I’d entered the castle searching for Alia. “Get them!”

  I don’t know how many men he’s commanded, but the boot strikes on the stairs and then the pavers are terrifying in number. Yet even worse is when they go silent, each man’s progress swallowed by the soft cushion of lawn.

  Now it’s Alia, swift Alia, grabbing my hand. Pulling me on. We snake to the end of the lawn and hit cobblestones again as we come to the row of stately courtier homes that abut the castle grounds. Alia doesn’t hesitate, her stride strong and sure as she yanks me down a flower-lined easement between two of the houses, towering and quiet.

  I steal a glance behind me, and there must be twenty uniformed guards running in our direction as more people—guards, castle staff, guests—pour out into the rain as if all of Øldenburg Castle is aflame.

  Somewhere, bells toll, screaming the news. The king is dead! The king is dead! The king is dead!

  When I turn back to Alia, I nearly smack into her shoulder as she realizes we’ve met a dead end. A ship-sized boulder stands in our way, a sheer, imposing wall of stone. Rainwater streams down the eroded face—it would be impossible to climb in our current state. It curves to our left, swallowing any option we would’ve had to go around that way.

  Our only choice: scale the garden fence to our right and hope we can make it to the cover of town before the guards realize which way we’ve gone.

  Alia is already yanking me toward the iron fence, its spirals spiked and imposing. She begins to climb—smooth and efficient, despite the rainwater making slick work of her grip. My sister: graceful, agile, athletic.

  My head is pounding hard enough that I’m not sure I can get my hands and feet moving in the same direction. I grip the fence below her, feeling completely uncoordinated.

  Alia waves from where she’s already scaled the fence. Stay there.

  Then she disappears.

  In a moment, she’s reappeared, wrenching open a hidden privacy gate and grabbing my hand. I’m moving before I command my legs to do so.

  We snake through a side yard as shutters open and lamps burst on beside us. A woman begins screaming at us like we’re vermin in the pantry. “Out of my garden! Out!”

  We push through her front gate, hoping for a free moment to wind around the fence’s corner and head straight into the adjacent town.

  Instead, we come face-to-face with a pair of guards. There’s the slightest hesitation as one guard can’t decide if he should yell an alarm or tackle us. As the other starts to scream, his hand fumbles for the pistol at his side. In my wooziness, their reactions play out like the last tendrils of a song, and it gives me just enough time to find a spell on the tip of my tongue.

  “Ómegin! Rata! Ómegin! Rata!” I cry, pointing my words and my effort at the idiot with the gun
and then to the other the moment his hand snags a length of Alia’s skirt.

  Blessedly, the magic comes again, just as it did outside the king’s quarters. It’s enough that they’re both falling to the ground, sound dying from the one guard’s lips. Alia grabs my hand. Her dress is ripped, white skin of a leg flashing in the night. The fuzz clears from my head, a close call making everything suddenly sharp enough to draw blood anywhere I look.

  We’re running again, this time on an actual street, pointed toward the slope of town as it climbs up Lille Bjerg Pass. Shops stream by as we gain speed. Alia is my compass, picking her way across the cobblestones, through the shadows, and dodging down alleys. Behind us, voices ring out. We’re not moving fast enough, but I can barely keep up this speed. My head is throbbing now, and the blood is sitting, matted in my hair, despite the rain. Again, my senses go woozy as my adrenaline wanes. Head down, I watch the path before me and Alia’s feet as she navigates. I have to see each step before I take it, or I know for sure I’ll fall facedown on the cobblestones.

  Impossibly, Alia quickens her pace, dragging me like a downed whale. When I blink up from the ground, I see why—we’ve reached the place where the street ends and the mountain trail begins. Past the trailhead, there’s an immediate curve into the trees. We’ve finally reached some cover. I gulp in a huge breath, heart hammering in my throat. But we can’t stop now. Up we climb, sprinting through the rain over rocky paths rife with sticks and brambles cut loose from the storm, until the world is a thick canopy of brush and trees.

  From our spot above, we track the guards’ path, peeking through the brambles to watch streetlamps flicker on as they knock on doors and search for anyone who’s seen us.

  As I take the first step toward the countryside, Alia grabs my hand—this time to stop me.

  I meet her expression, and I know I’m in for it. That anger building as she kept it locked away long enough to get us off the grounds.