Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  A modicum of relaxation hits the braced cut of each girl’s spine. It’s not much, but it’s a relief.

  “Now, before you return to your castle lair, here’s what you must do. I cannot leave this place—your father has made sure of that—but you can. I need you to go to Runa. She is in a little cabin built into the country earth five miles from Lille Bjerg Pass in the valley along the southern cut of Havnestad’s shore.”

  The girls nod.

  “Call to her in your way, and when she emerges, you must warn her of your father’s plans for war. He isn’t just coming for humans, he’s coming for all the remaining magic on land. Meaning, your sister must prepare any witch she can find as fast as possible. Your father will move soon—he needs that land magic like he needs another hit of ríkifjor serum. When the flowers run out, he’ll have no choice but to strike.”

  Again, the girls nod, accepting my terms. They turn to go, but I stop them—because their mission isn’t just one of warning but one of retrieval. In a swirl of long, beautiful, magical hair, the three of them face me.

  “I have one additional request. As part of her bargain, Runa retrieved a ring from the Øldenburg king. Ask her to give you that ring, and deliver it to me.”

  23

  Runa

  MY WILDFIRE SPELL ISN’T WORKING.

  Not at all.

  Oh, I can call the fire on command over and over again, the distance I was trying to ignore now a gap filled, if not healed and closed. But my comfort has no time to set, completely rattled as I am by the impossible task ahead of me. These witches are practically untrainable.

  After running Agnata through the abbreviated version of what we’ve decided to do, we prioritize our tasks ahead of implementing our plan, and every witch knowing how to call wildfire leaps to the top of list. Useful as offense, defense, and an excellent distraction.

  The presence of the amethyst warming my palm and Niklas’s ring still circling my thumb, I demonstrate the spell to the three girls—space is scarce, and Will volunteered to sit out until someone got the hang of it and would trade out.

  I stand in the center of the room, beside the table, cleared of Agnata’s late supper.

  “When I call to my magic, it’s with authority and a command to action. I don’t give it any room to hesitate or disobey.”

  I point my left arm aloft, fist formed and pointed toward the rafters, though I know I’ve got a good five feet of overhead to work with. I set my legs in a strong foundation beneath me and call to my magic.

  “Villieldr.”

  Purple flames flicker off my arm, lighting the hopeful faces of the witches across from me.

  “Your turn. Command the magic. Ready? One, two, three.”

  “Villieldr!” the three shout at nearly the same time.

  And nothing.

  I shake it off. “Again.”

  “Villieldr!”

  Nothing.

  “Again.”

  This time they’re even slower. Out of sync. Less enthusiastic. “Villieldr!”

  It goes on like that for the next hour. Failure after failure. The only success is a handful of sparks that amount to nothing but blacked spots on the floor in front of Katrine. But Sofie, Agnata, and Will all fail to call anything. No matter how forcefully they ask. No matter how hard they concentrate. No matter how many times I try to explain the proper way to do it.

  Maybe I’m a horrible teacher.

  Sofie presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I need a few minutes.”

  “Me too,” says Agnata. I’ve only watched them interact outside the castle for a few hours now, and I get the feeling Agnata’s handmaiden act wasn’t really an act. She defers to Sofie on literally everything. Which makes Sofie nothing but happy—and makes me want to vomit.

  Yet this time, even with Agnata’s agreement, when Sofie’s hands come clear of her eyes, all the determination has been stripped from her face. She claims a chair at the table, props up her elbows, and drops her head into her hands.

  “I don’t feel anything at all,” Sofie whines as Tandsmør hops in her lap and sticks his ginger tail in her face. “Is there such a thing as a bystander witch? I feel like a dog on a hunt—I can sniff out the rabbit, but I only get a sniff, never a taste. That’s for others.”

  “Don’t be hard on yourself, Sofie. I can feel the magic, but it won’t listen to me a lick,” Agnata says, slumping into the chair beside her.

  Will doesn’t chime in, but the way he’s squatting by the fire rubbing a hand through his hair shows me it’s been the same for him too.

  My legs itch to move, pace, work out the disappointment and irritation mingling in the pit of my stomach. Why aren’t they getting it? I go through the motions, breaking down to the basics of how I form a spell. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. In my hand, the magic of the land beats like a pulse from the stone, and inside, the magic of the sea swirls like a whirlpool in my veins, calling the wildfire forth.

  I stop and open my eyes before the spell has left my lips, shaking my head in disbelief. How blind I’ve been. This spell, this wildfire spell, is from the sea. No wonder they can’t do it. A mermaid’s sea magic comes from within, but these land witches must somehow summon it. Perhaps there is a way.

  “Katrine,” I call, though I’m already entering her room. She’s in the rocking chair in the corner, paging through a reedy old book with a crooked spine, searching for something to help me go home. I gesture to the chest next to her, thrown open and full of gemstones, dusty bottles, and any books she’s already paged through and discarded. “Do any of these bottles contain octopus ink?”

  “Sure, and squid too. Why?”

  “I have an idea.”

  I hug as many of the little bottles to my chest as possible, the inks within sloshing merrily with each step. I ask Katrine to take the rest and goad Will up from his spot by the fire to grab enough gemstones for everyone.

  Sofie perks up as we plunk the goods on the table.

  “What’s this?” Clearly these items have never been a part of her lessons with Katrine.

  “An idea,” I answer again.

  The other girls’ gowns are exactly like mine. Rough-spun and long sleeved, with buttons around the wrists. But Will—he’s got his sleeves rolled up, forearms filled with the requested gemstones. Their unpolished edges mince the light into flickering pieces—lavender, sea green, fire-kissed reds. He sets them gently on the table, transferring them one by one to the corner closest to his cousin.

  When the gemstones are accounted for and his arms are empty, I snag his wrist without preamble. His lips drop in surprise, ruddiness returning to the hollows of his cheeks.

  I haven’t laid a finger on him since our dance at the wedding reception, when we were both pretending to be something we weren’t. My eyes rise to his. The blue in them rages near black in this light and heat immediately creeps up my cheeks. I lift his wrist up a little, gesturing with it, and ask his permission a moment too late. I hold up the bottle too, suddenly a little flabbergasted. “May I?”

  He accepts without question.

  I draw his arm down in front of me, uncork the bottle, and dip my forefinger inside. The ink adheres easily, half soaking in, half sitting atop. I paint the near-onyx ink from the thick band of his wrist up the farm-strong muscles of his forearm to the crook of his elbow. The process would feel something close to intimate if it weren’t for our audience, taking in each stroke with confused stares. Will watches me work, too, cheeks pinking deeper, but body completely still. When I’m finished, I hesitate to drop his arm. So I don’t. Instead, I work my fingers through his and thread them together. I lift our arms as one and give him a confident smile.

  “Okay, we’re going to do this together,” I tell him. “On three, let’s tell the magic exactly what we want.”

  A smile quirks up at the corners of Will’s mouth, self-effacing. “I suppose we’ll find out if my flowers are flammable.”

  “Only if you say the wron
g spell and have grass hidden in your fingers.” The smile on my own lips drops, and I spear him with all the concentration I have left. “On three.”

  “One.” We count together, eyes locked. “Two. Three. Villieldr.”

  My arm lights as it always does, despite my amethyst hanging low in my pocket—Will’s connection to the earth spinning through the power within me, tethering me to this place, an anchor in the deep.

  In the moment after my arm goes alight, my stomach quivers with the mistake I’ve made. I’ll burn him like I did those castle guards. Melt his skin into something scarred, scabbed, boiling red.

  But Will doesn’t rip himself away. Instead, he stays, fingers hugging the backs of my flaming knuckles. And, finally, his inked skin begins to glow, fuzzy and lavender. The disturbance grows, along with a smile on his face, and within the space of two blinks, that slow burn becomes deep purple flame as defined as my own.

  In our periphery, the girls’ chairs scrape back as they stand.

  “Will!” Sofie exclaims. “You did it! You did it!”

  “He did,” I say. And then, holding his eyes with mine, I ask, “You ready?”

  “Yes.”

  I peel my fingers one by one from his until he’s standing there on his own, a torch alight. Finally, hours later, proof that the magic of the sea can meet the land when the spell is just right.

  We coat each witch’s chosen arm in octopus ink, and within minutes, all of them save for Sofie have successfully called forth flames.

  She’s tried several times but still finds the spell’s power frustratingly out of her reach. She’s threatened to retire for the night, Katrine’s copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales calling her name as all the magic she needs. But I won’t let her give up. Not yet.

  Maybe the distance she’s described isn’t so different from what I’ve been feeling, though my magic hasn’t yet completely failed. Perhaps she needs grounding in the same way I do. Not just connection with the sea through the ink, but maybe with her own land too.

  I pull her aside, into the corner of the kitchen with the washbasin. “I have an idea for you. But only for you.”

  Her face seems to fall farther, as if this isn’t an opportunity but yet another strike against her. “Let’s face it, I really am a dog on the hunt. Woof.”

  “Stop.”

  She rolls her eyes but says no more.

  I hold up my left hand. Niklas’s ring shimmers there, red as the center of the earth. “I want you to try with this ring.”

  Her lips drop open and she hesitates for once. “That’s his.”

  “It was.”

  I tell her of its origins—a gem heaved from the belly of the earth to the crust. And though she might have reservations about wearing it given the past twenty-four hours, it might be exactly what she needs. “Please try it.”

  Sofie stares at the ring, sitting at the ready in my palm. “I . . . I don’t know. He’s worn that ring since his grandfather passed. It seems too . . . close.” Pain flashes in her beautiful green eyes, the hurt she had planned for Niklas never physical. Never so permanent as what I’ve done.

  It’s then that I notice her wedding rings are gone. They didn’t make the journey from the castle with her. I wonder if they would have if she’d slept in them, or if she would’ve ripped them off the second she was free of her father’s arranged marriage, the plan she’d developed underneath those circumstances dead along with the king.

  I take her hand and press Niklas’s ring into her palm. “If it doesn’t work, you don’t have to keep it. Give it back and that will be that.”

  I close her fingers around it.

  Sofie sucks in a deep breath and places the ring on the thumb of her ink-black arm. Her hands are so petite it slides on a little too easily. “May I?” I ask, my hand hovering over hers.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Just tighten it so it isn’t a flaming projectile when the spell works for you.”

  There’s nearly another eye roll from her, but she extends her hand anyway. I place a single finger on the ring. “Smár.”

  The red stones shimmer just a touch, that specific burnished red of sunset. Sofie holds her hand out in front of her, as she must once have admired the ring Niklas gave her in the beach ceremony. It fits perfectly; the distant candlelight dances off each facet. She tears her eyes away long enough to glance over to where the others are trying to race each other in calling the spell, seeing whose arm lights first.

  “Let’s give it a go right here,” I say.

  “Now?”

  “Sure.”

  In response, Sofie raises the arm, ready. She squeezes her eyes shut, a grounding breath filling her lungs.

  “Feel the magic,” I whisper as she takes a few more deep breaths, visualizing success. “Reach for it. Tell it what you want.”

  There’s a long moment where I think she might chicken out.

  Then . . .

  “Villieldr.” Her voice is so quiet it’s almost as if she didn’t say it at all, her eyes closed.

  It starts with the shimmer of the high summer, just barely. Sofie’s eyes fly open as the sensation runs from her mind’s eye to the actual flesh of her skin.

  “Hold it. Concentrate. You’ve got it . . .” I say just under my breath.

  The shimmer shifts into a haze. And then, blessedly, her arm becomes hot, unequivocal purple wildfire.

  24

  Runa

  BY MIDNIGHT, WE’RE FLUSH WITH SATISFACTION AND completely drained. Not only has each witch successfully pinned down the wildfire magic—both restricted to a single torch-like arm and allowing it to take over one’s whole body—but they’ve also learned the shield spell I used in my fight with the castle guards.

  In the morning, I plan to teach them how to put a man to sleep. And then, when night falls again and it’s relatively safe to be out in plain view, I plan to teach them more uses for the wildfire spell, including how to blow the flames onto a specific target with magic-made wind. But for now, we can call this a triumph.

  Everyone begins making motions to bed down for the night, Sofie and Agnata heaping quilts by the fire, Katrine carefully stowing away her little library collection in her trunk. Tandsmør is already out, a poof of orange fur curled next to the hearthstones.

  Exhaustion hangs off my bones—I haven’t slept since the night before the wedding, and even then, I was playing catch-up. That lack of sleep piles upon my shoulders, adding to the weight of what has happened since I last slept—the wedding, the murder, the failure, Alia’s death, and my own uncertain fate. Focusing on the U-boat plot and our magical breakthrough has kept it all from dragging me down. Yet deep in those same weary bones, I know I can’t sleep. Not yet.

  I stand on stiff legs and accidentally make eye contact with Will, who whispers, without missing a beat, “Would you like to get some air?”

  “Yes, please.”

  We step out the door and into the sweet heart of midnight. The sky is clear of storms, but there’s a restless wind kicking up from the water, bringing the sea to me. Closing my eyes, I inhale deeply, letting the scent fill my nose, throat, lungs.

  For the first time, I feel like an outsider to the sea. Though I’m standing in a field and not on the beach, it’s as if I’ve got the tide lapping at my heels and the waves at my back, my toes gripping the dry land as I straddle these worlds.

  The moon sits low over our shoulders, fat and silver. The light of it bathes Will’s hair in a fuzzy halo, and highlights the hair sparkling on his cheeks like individual grains of sand.

  “Can I ask you something?” he says after a few steps into the cooling night. It’s going to rain again, and that promise sits in the air between us.

  When I don’t say no, he looks me right in the eye so there’s no escaping. “Do you want to go back?”

  I’m not sure if he’s asking because he wants me to teach him more, or because he doesn’t think they can pull off our plan without me, or even because of the way
he couldn’t stop the color from rising in his cheeks when my hand touched his. Whatever the reason, I tell him the truth.

  “It doesn’t matter if I want to,” I say. “I broke my promise to the magic. It won’t be kind.”

  “From what I’ve seen of you, I firmly believe you can do anything.”

  He says it with a sort of openness that makes me blush, and I hope he can’t tell under the moon. I dodge, looking at the grass smashed flat beneath our feet. “You’ve been talking to Katrine.”

  A smile kicks up on his mouth. “She may have told me the story of Annemette and her four days. And that you’re hoping for inspiration in those old magic books.”

  “It’s home. At this coming dawn, I’ll have a day, or I’m here forever. I have to try.” He nods, and a shock of realization nails me right between the eyes. “You can go home, can’t you? To your chickens in Aarhus?”

  Will’s nose scrunches a bit as he frowns. “I’m afraid home is a dicey prospect once they realize I didn’t go there after Niklas’s murder. And considering what we have planned with the U-boats, it will be an impossibility.”

  “What we’re doing or how we’re doing it? It’s magic, yes, but . . . but the magic is in your blood. Someone has to be a witch in your family. They’d understand, wouldn’t they—”

  Will twines his fingers in mine and the surprise of it cuts me off cold.

  “We don’t discuss our abilities any more than we discuss what we’ve already lost with this war. If I go home, and my family chooses to protect me, it’ll mean them sending me off to be conscripted by the German army.” His eyes lift from our twined hands to mine. “If they call me a traitor on the spot, I’ll be turned in to the Havnestad crown without so much as a good-bye.”

  “Your family would do that to you?”

  His lips tip up, but there’s something sad in it. “There’s nothing quite as dangerous as a child who thinks he knows better than his parents and acts on those instincts.”