Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  Again, the crowd shifts, from self-appreciation to stern nods.

  “Humans have always made our world dangerous—threatening to murder us, expose us, exploit us. And now they attack each other, poisoning our waters with bombs that explode daily—littering our precious world with both their dead and the moral decay of humanity. Though we all know morality has never been humanity’s greatest strength.”

  I roll my eyes. This is a man who magically changed a human into a mermaid and then married her. Hypocrite. Moreover, his sense of empathy is nonexistent.

  “There have been numerous close calls since these mines appeared this summer—we’ve been fortunate that merperson injuries from these weapons have been scarce.”

  He pauses. Behind him, his daughters white-knuckle their chairs.

  “Today, our fortune ran out.” The sea king lets that news sink in. The silence sits leaden over the crowd.

  When the sea king has wrung the most out of that pause, he speaks again—if anything, he is quite the orator. “A human-laid mine went off this afternoon, killing a humpback whale and injuring ten merpeople who’d been hunting it to provide food for their families.”

  There’s a commotion and then applause—the king rotates toward the clatter, and the injured merpeople enter stage right. They’re bandaged and bruised, the worst one helped along by two others, clearly missing the majority of his tail fin.

  When they’re settled, the king returns to the crowd. “Pray for these brave souls to heal. And pray that we do not lose another whale this way—we cannot feed our people on animals riddled with shrapnel.”

  The people clap gently as the injured are shuttled from the stage.

  “Many of you knew of the mine explosion before tonight and urgently gathered your family, friends, and neighbors to this arena to pay your respects—it is best that we seek each other in times of great suffering.” When he speaks again, the sea king’s voice has grown quiet, heavy. “Yet what you may not know is how much more we have suffered this day. How much my family and I have suffered this day.”

  There’s an audible gasp from the crowd. I gasp too, his intent crystalizing in my mind in a way that I hear the words before he says them. “No, you can’t, you wouldn’t . . .”

  But he would. The bitter man he’s become. He definitely would.

  “Today, we had our first death from a mine explosion, and it unfortunately hits very close to home.”

  People in the crowd are craning their necks now, counting the women behind the king. Murmuring.

  “There is no easy way to announce this . . . Princess Alia has died from her injuries in a mine explosion.”

  The crowd inhales at once, their faces stunned.

  “I am told her death was almost instantaneous. She didn’t suffer. She may not have even known what happened. And I take solace in that. I want you to take solace in it too.”

  He pauses, and now it’s pin-drop silent.

  “Unfortunately, that is not where this story ends. As you may have guessed from the presentation of the royal family tonight, my Alia was not alone when those humans tore her limb from limb. No, she was with my youngest, Princess Runa.”

  White-hot anger shivers loose in my gut. Lies on lies on lies. Explaining away a truth—two daughters unaccounted for—with a story meant to feed the fear he’s worked so hard to build in the last fifty years.

  The crowd whispers panicked questions.

  “My Runa was lucky enough to survive the blast that took her twin sister, but she is badly injured and unconscious. She may never wake up.”

  The crowd reacts, unquestioning. They believe every word, though curiously, no one had heard of this mine explosion before. No rumor made the rounds. There wasn’t an eyewitness account. Not even a well-placed hero dragging the girls’ bodies into the castle, relaying the story.

  Nothing.

  He just says it and they believe him. No critical thinking. Not even a question.

  I nearly wipe my view right then. I can’t watch a man lying to his people. Using untruths to work them into a caustic froth of fear and vengeance.

  “The royal family will bury Princess Alia in her garden at dawn tomorrow. The funeral will be closed to the public, and I ask that you respect our privacy in this time. Meanwhile, I would be honored if you would pray to Urda to return Princess Runa to us soon.”

  He expects to get Runa back.

  He’ll visit again.

  And if she stays on land, he’ll kill her off, too, using her death as another strike against humankind.

  “The loss we as a people have suffered today is great. But hear me now: it will only become worse. This war above has the markings of being the greatest, most devastating war the world has ever seen, and the mines are not our only danger.”

  The people sit up, spines straight.

  “Great warships are already patrolling our waters, new cannons at the ready. Flying ships have appeared in the sky, dropping bombs a hundred times as powerful as the floating mines. And if a threat doesn’t come from a mine or a cannon or a great flying ship above, it may very well come from down below.”

  There’s another collective gasp.

  “Yes, down below. The humans have created ships that sail underwater. U-boats are what they have named them, but what I call them is the greatest threat we have ever faced from humankind.”

  Feverish, the crowd is in motion now, tails flapping, sending plumes of violent bubbles swirling.

  “The U-boats are meant to destroy large warships before being detected. They’re stealthy metal beasts, loaded to the teeth with ammunition. One has already sunk a large British warship, killing more than two hundred human men—a mission so successful it is sure to lead to a swarm of these boats in all waters from here to the Atlantic.”

  The crowd grows louder, and the panic on their faces makes it all come clear. Everyone is setting up scenarios in their heads—for the lack of thinking they did when accepting his story of Alia’s death and Runa’s “injuries,” the wheels are really turning now.

  “A swarm of these U-boats means not only more explosions, but, for the first time, we face a real, immediate threat of discovery. Humans can live on these ships underwater for days at a time. Reach depths no man can swim. They have equipment that can sense our settlements in a way no human has before.”

  He pounds on the podium, the coral spires threatening to snap.

  “If they can see us, they can capture us. If they capture us, they can prove our existence. And then we all know what comes next—mass imprisonment, enslavement, extinction.”

  The crowd has risen off the stadium steps.

  “Humans have always been our enemy. The most dangerous threat to our kind. We have lived in peace for millennia, but the time has come when we can no longer hide. We can no longer sit quiet. We cannot wait for them to find us. To save our kind and our way of life, we must act.”

  The stadium roars in approval. It’s loud enough that I not only hear the booming applause through the cauldron, but in echo as the tide carries it from the sea kingdom straight into my waters. The polypi tremble with the vibration of hundreds of thousands of voices yelling.

  The king finishes, his voice no longer thunderous but heavy and grave. “Go home, my dear citizens. Go home and hug your loved ones tight, have a good meal, and get a solid night’s sleep. Because the day is coming soon when we will fight back.”

  Ragn was right. He’s planted fear within them. He knows how to sow it and grow it into what he needs it to be. Yes, yes, he has. And what the sea king needs is war. He could have easily blamed Alia’s death on me. It would be true, and they’ve always feared me. But if he turns the merpeople against me, he’ll never get his Runa back.

  Still, there is no way he will win a fight against man. With magic or without, if humans are good at one thing, it’s destruction.

  I swivel the tentacle to capture the sea king’s face as he returns to his chambers after the big speech. Only Queen Bodil is with
him, the other members of his family stripped away. She leans into an embrace that seems somewhat forced, his stance cold. “Don’t stay up too late, my king. Heed your own words—even kings must sleep.”

  “I’ll be along shortly.”

  The queen tips her lovely head in acknowledgment and then disappears without another word.

  Bodil gone, the sea king closes the door to his study and pulls out a tightly corked bottle—what looks to be hvidtøl, pilfered from a human vessel.

  “Hypocrite,” I mutter.

  He settles into a chair at a great desk. Books and ledgers press in from the walls, heavy with centuries of information, though if I look closely, I can spy the empty slip of space where the ledger containing the details of Queen Mette’s change once was. He destroyed them after Annemette nearly revealed and ruined them all—Ragn has told me this much. I wonder if behind me, Anna senses this.

  The sea king takes a long pull of the hvidtøl, whispering magic that keeps it free of seawater—the same spell I use with my potions. When he retires the bottle to his desk, it’s as if he’s aged a hundred years more. His skin seems thinned, showing every line, wrinkle. Veins run crosshatch under his skin. The blue of his eyes seems to fade. Even his hair, usually long and flowing, has gone brittle and split at the ends. Weak. That’s something I never thought he’d appear.

  Yet, even as he looks as if he might dissolve into a pile of dust, the man takes another deep gulp of hvidtøl and then casts a summoning spell. “Koma, Svend.”

  In the space of another swallow, there’s a quick, efficient knock on the study door.

  “Enter, Svend.”

  A young merman with the polite posture and efficient movements of a favored servant sweeps into the room. “You called, Your Highness?”

  “I need a dose of ríkifjor serum tonight.”

  This servant isn’t the type to even remotely sass back, but his expression flickers just long enough to count as a hesitation. “Certainly, Your Highness.”

  He’s answered correctly, but his reaction isn’t lost on his king. “What is your concern?”

  Svend draws himself up. “I have no concerns, Your Highness.”

  “Ah, but you do. Out with it, Svend. However, if you take a cue from my mother and chastise me for my ríkifjor consumption, I will be sorely disappointed.”

  The young man shakes his head. “I would never presume to suggest such a thing, Your Highness.”

  “Good man.”

  The sea king nods for him to speak.

  “Your Highness, the ríkifjor flowers are . . . suffering.”

  “Suffering, how?”

  “This morning when I retrieved your dose, nothing was amiss. But over the course of the day, they’ve begun to shrivel.”

  The king’s eyes go wide. “Shrivel?” He spits the word with disbelief.

  The boy confirms it with a curt nod. “Yes, sir. At least half the crop is damaged.”

  The sea king runs a hand through his hair. “Are they salvageable? Can we retrieve serum from them somehow and store it?”

  “The flower keepers—we’ve tried. But the shriveled flowers produce no serum.”

  I’m impressed when this king, as awful as he’s been to me, as controlling as he is over his daughters, doesn’t lash out at this boy. He doesn’t even demand to inspect the flowers for himself. Instead, he settles heavily back into his chair. “They’re dying without Runa.”

  The boy doesn’t presume to nod, though he does have a question for his master. “Your Highness, would you still like me to bring tonight’s dose?”

  “Yes, Svend, the usual amount.”

  The boy bows and leaves.

  Alone, the sea king allows his anger to surface. In a blink, he’s smashed his bottle against a bookcase across the room, sparkling shards littering the space where the boy just swam a moment earlier.

  I turn from the cauldron, looking over my shoulder into the mouth of my cave, where Runa planted my ríkifjor. A handful of petals has fallen from the remaining plants and onto the seafloor. The flowers will be gone by the time Runa’s four days are complete.

  If he doesn’t get her back, the withdrawal from the ríkifjor might be enough to kill him.

  I shudder.

  The sea king, as bitter, furious, heartbroken, and sick as he is, will have nothing left to lose.

  21

  Runa

  MORNING DRIFTS INTO NIGHT AS I LEARN EVERYTHING this small coven of rebels knows about the Havnestad U-boat program. Which turns out to be quite a lot—they know dates, places, the program’s organizational structure.

  What they don’t know is much magic. Even Katrine, despite her reputation and her clear knowledge. Worse, there aren’t many of us. There isn’t a network of covens working together on this plot. Our army is solely composed of these three witches plus two more—Phillip, the other boy from the balcony, and Agnata, Sofie’s handmaiden. And neither of them made it to the safe house when things went south last night. Neither numbers nor magic are in our corner.

  It’s one thing to learn in daily lessons about the ways nonmagical humans, especially those in power, went about extinguishing the witch community—Hypatia in Greece, over a millennium ago; Salem, across the Atlantic; the Pendle and Chelmsford witches in the British Isles; and here, King Christian IV, the self-styled witch-hunter king, and all the women he tossed in a fire—but to see how it has left those who remain is quite something.

  I’d thought that maybe Will’s singular ability to fashion daisies was simply because of a lack of practice, but how can he be expected to learn when even his teacher’s skills are rudimentary and self-taught through the faded pages of ancient texts? Katrine can sense magic, and spell a door, but her magic only has practical applications.

  Like her cousin, Sofie has a finger on the thread of magic, but she can’t properly use it. Even now, I can barely recognize a whiff of her magical scent, it’s so weak. It’s not surprising, then, that she hasn’t successfully completed a spell—not even Will’s daisy-making one. Still, she can sense magic like the others—she smelled it on me and Alia, though she did not discern it was from the sea—so there is some small hope we can make a real witch out of her yet.

  It’s decided that we’ll take a quick break, wash up, eat something, and then I will work with these witches to see if I can teach them something of my magic.

  Which is another small problem. My magic is tied to the sea, even more out of reach than their own magic. If I am to be useful to these witches, and to myself in this body, I need to learn to tap into the magic of the land.

  I come up on Katrine as she’s clearing bowls and spoons from the soup she made, something hearty of clams she pulled from the shore the day before. “Katrine, may I speak with you alone?”

  She tosses a glance over my shoulder to Sofie and Will, who are adding new kindling to the small fireplace built into the house—something we’re only able to use at night to avoid detection. Drying her hands on her apron, Katrine nods and leads me into the small room at the back of the house.

  Earlier, I learned that this is her sleeping quarters. It’s not much more than a bed surrounded by trunks of clothes, and items meant for earth magic—craggy-edged gemstones, corked bottles of various potions, the dusty books containing all the magic known to her. This is where she found me a clean dress. It’s a rough-spun cotton thing that, though plain, fits me nicely after I wash the blood and the disastrous night from my hair.

  Now, Katrine lights a lamp on her bedside table as I close the door tightly behind us. She nods for me to speak.

  “Before I can instruct you tonight, I need your help,” I say, and then reach for a way to say what I feel. The fat orange tabby, Tandsmør, sways against my ankles, maybe trying to help. “I don’t know how to describe it, but my magic seems thin in this body. It still does as I ask, but it’s unlikely that I can do the sort of big spells we need reliably.”

  To my surprise, Katrine chuckles. It’s a gruff sort of thing tha
t has more weight to it than her natural voice. “You lit your arm on fire after busting down my door. If that is thin, you’re being a tad harsh on yourself.”

  Okay. Yes. Compared to what she does, what I do is impressive. It’s just not . . . right.

  “Since I’ve been here, my magic has felt distant. It still comes from the sea. Is there anything I can do to make myself feel more connected on land?”

  Her lips press into a line, and she gestures to my hand. “Is that not why you have that ring?”

  I look down—I almost forgot that Niklas’s ring is still on my thumb.

  Katrine taps it with a fingernail. “Stones ground us. This ring is made of mahogany obsidian—a very good choice to connect you to the earth. It’s made of the same iron that’s said to be at the earth’s center. A ring fashioned of this stone is meant to support integrity and courage—even under the most difficult circumstances.”

  My mind flashes back to my assumptions about Niklas that I spit into my sister’s face. That money would only line his pocket, kill his kind, and make our kind vulnerable to discovery, capture, imprisonment, and murder.

  She’d fought me on that, and then Will had confirmed it. This war ruined the summer whaling season, and his coffers were looking lean, so he took the bait. I tried to convince him he could make money another way.

  Maybe Niklas wasn’t lining his pockets, maybe he really did think he was doing right by his people. But it was a narrow-minded view that would affect so much beyond Havnestad.

  I blink at the ring. It may be mine now, and it may have helped me during our fight with the guards, grounding my magic in this place in a way I didn’t realize, but it also connects me to Niklas’s murder, and if we’re to go back into Havnestad, the last thing I can be caught with is this ring.

  “Do you have another stone that might work for me? Something that will help ground me in another way?”

  Katrine sinks to the chest nearest the bed and flaps it open. Within are pounds upon pounds of stones, all rough and jagged. She comes out with a purple stone about the size of a chicken egg.

  “Amethyst is the traditional way to go—one of the most magical stones we have. It’s meant to balance fear and manage emotions.”