Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  He’s so serious, but I nearly laugh because he’s summed up exactly what Alia and I have done. Instead, I look him in the eye. “It won’t make you feel better, but I think your instincts are right. Rebellious or not.”

  The grief in the dark blue of his eyes shifts, that sad little smile curving into something real. We’re standing inches apart, his hand still tangled around mine, and yet somehow, though I’m not sure I’ve physically moved, we’re closer.

  He brushes my hair back behind my ears and brings his mouth a breath away. I lean in, but before I can meet his lips, something catches my ear.

  Singing.

  The wind carries a song I know as well as any in my heart. Will hears it, too, as I pull away. “What—”

  “Stay here—please. I’ll be right back. Just stay.”

  Heart in my throat, I sprint toward the sound. The wind off the Øresund Strait beats against my progress, pressing back on each step. My legs creak like a rusted door, but I dip my head and push through, feet aching with the stretch and contact of each step.

  I crest the top of a low hill, and there it is—the shore, sand twinkling in the moonlight. The surf whips and breaks heavily, agitated in the coming storm. Between the whitecaps and waves are three bobbing heads, the song they sing undeniable.

  My sisters.

  I sprint toward them, joy and shock working together as a balm for my exhaustion, the pain in my legs, the cooling of my skin where Will’s hand once was. I hit the shoreline and keep going, my legs not stopping until the sand beneath my feet is far enough away that only my head remains above. I don’t know how to swim, but I can’t stay away. I have to be as close as I can.

  Eydis, Ola, and Signy greet me with open arms, and I collapse into them.

  My sisters, oh my sisters.

  “Alia’s dead. I’m so sorry. I failed. I tried and I failed and I’m sorry,” I sputter into the crook of Eydis’s neck. My legs nearly give out, too, but my sisters hold me up. “I should’ve told you what I was going to do. I’m sorry. I knew Alia wouldn’t go through with it on her own, and I had to try. I had to.”

  “We know, Ru, we know,” my oldest sister assures me. “You’ve always been so very stubborn.”

  “And unable to accept reality,” Signy says, droll as usual.

  “And a know-it-all,” Ola adds.

  I laugh sadly. “And look where it got me.” I glance down, and though my legs are barely visible under the roiling tide, the meaning is clear. Still, I hug them closer. “I missed you girls. Hey, wait, your hair—”

  “The witch returned it on the condition that we deliver a message,” Signy says.

  “Wha . . . what does she want?”

  “She knows what happened to Alia, and that you failed your mission too.”

  I nod. “Alia lost the knife in a tussle with the king’s bride. Who’s a witch, actually—go figure.”

  “Does the bride have it?” Ola asks, hopeful.

  I shake my head. “No, it fell off the balcony . . .” And then I realize where it would’ve ended up. “Into the sea.”

  Eydis’s eyes light up with understanding. “Wait. If it’s in the sea, we could get it. Or she could retrieve it maybe, with some magic. Either way, if it came back to her, and we brought her the ring, do you think that would be enough to satisfy the spell and bring you back?”

  “I don’t know. . . . It all went wrong. The Øldenburg king is dead, but I killed him, not Alia.”

  “That’s still a sacrifice,” Eydis says. “Maybe Urda will oblige.”

  It’s just like my eldest sister to give me hope. “Well, I have the ring, and if the knife makes its way back to the sea witch, the only thing missing from the spell is the Øldenburg blood on my feet.”

  “I suppose there’s no way to get our hands on that,” sighs Ola.

  Wait. My mind pages back to those early minutes in Katrine’s home, when Sofie stepped out of the shadows in her nightgown.

  “I actually might have access to some.”

  “Øldenburg blood?” clarifies Signy, brow arched.

  “Yes!”

  “This could work!” Eydis says.

  I want to agree with her but it can’t be that simple. It won’t be.

  “But quick, bring us the ring. The witch asked us to retrieve it,” Ola squeals, releasing my arm and half shoving me in the direction of the shore.

  “Wait!” Eydis snaps, drawing me back. “The witch had a message as well.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Ola says, shrugging. Signy is appalled and frowning at such a blasé reaction, which means this must have been important.

  I look to Eydis, and her expression is dire. She’s dreaded sharing this, whatever it is.

  “Since you left, your garden . . . it’s dying. Without your magic, the ríkifjor can’t seem to survive. More than half the crop died right away. Now it’s almost all black and wilted.”

  My heart catches in my throat. “And Father . . .”

  “Father is panicked. He blamed Alia’s death and your disappearance on the humans, saying you’ve been maimed in a mine explosion.”

  My lips drop open as I process this. I hadn’t thought at all about how Father would explain away my absence or Alia’s—I thought the truth would be enough. Everyone knows the truth of Annemette. . . . I hadn’t thought this would be any different.

  The wind kicks up, and the tide comes with it. Suddenly my mouth is full of salt water. I gag and cough, spitting it back out as my sisters pat me hard on the back, my lungs choking and gasping in a way I’m totally unused to.

  When I can talk again, my voice is fuzzy and weak with another coming cough. “What . . . why . . . what’s the point?”

  Eydis tugs back a lock of hair matted into my eyes after my hacking fit. “Without the flower, and with the people’s anger and permission, he’s planning to wage war on the humans.”

  “But that goes against everything we’ve done for survival. I don’t—”

  “Without the ríkifjor, Father needs more power to sustain himself. He already possesses all the power in the ocean. The only thing he doesn’t have a finger on is the remaining magic on land.” Eydis clutches at my wrist. “Runa, he’s telling our people we must attack the humans for revenge, but the sea witch believes he’ll attack the witches and claim whatever magic he can get on land.”

  “But . . . no . . . we’re trying to stop the war already raging here—there is something much worse than the mines, called U-boats, and we’re seeing them destroyed.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you—they are trying to do here,” Eydis says. “He doesn’t care. He only wants the magic. His anger has spun to madness.”

  It can’t be. This can’t happen. Yet, I believe my sisters. I believe the sea witch.

  “What if I come back? Then would he hold off? I’ll grow him a thousand flowers. A million. I’ll eat and sleep in the garden, and make them every waking breath. I . . .” My voice trails off, high and unwieldy. “He can’t attack the witches here. They’re so few . . . and they’re so weak. They barely know how to spell more than warm soup.”

  “Soup? What’s that?” Ola asks.

  But I continue, “And they’re doing what they can to halt the great war that’s already arrived here. They’re good people, and they’re trying to make a difference and save lives.”

  Eydis spears me with a look. “If you come back, it could make the difference, Ru.”

  Yes. This might work. The ring, the knife, the stains on Sofie’s nightgown. I’d have a day to complete the exchange. And a day to finish training the witches for their mission.

  It could work.

  “I’ll get the ring. Stay here.”

  My steps are heavy, but I run back to Katrine’s as fast as I can. I’m much better at running now but still not as fast as I wish to be. Will is waiting for me outside, sitting cross-legged under the shuttered window. I run past him.

  “Runa, what is it?” he says, tailing me as I wrench open the door and quickst
ep across the room to where Sofie sleeps facing the fire, Agnata curled head-to-toe in the opposite direction next to her, Tandsmør between them.

  I maneuver around Agnata’s arm, propped out like a pillow, and around Sofie’s stocking feet, and touch her shoulder. Her hands are pressed together beneath her cheeks. “Sofie,” I whisper louder than I mean to.

  The girl stirs, confusion puddling in the fine features on her face. “Wha . . .”

  “The ring, I need it.” Still working at half speed, she lets me take her hand, and I wrench off the king’s ring, scraping her thumb knuckle as I go, the magic doing its job of keeping it snug.

  “Wait. No, you gave that to me. It’s mine. I—”

  She pushes herself up, but I’m already hopping over her and Agnata and running for the door.

  “Runa—” Will says, trying to catch my arm.

  “It’s important,” is all I say to the room before sprinting out the door and back into the night, the ring tight in my palm.

  I’ve almost made it to the hill where I first saw them, lungs working hard against the resistance of the wind, when I hear it.

  The unforgettable boom-and-spray of an explosion at sea.

  “No, no, no . . .” I drop my chin and dig deeper, cresting the hill.

  White foam shoots for the moon in a huge starburst, right where my sisters would’ve been waiting.

  A mine. A floating mine where they were.

  “No!” I scream, and thunder down the hill.

  The water roils and rolls, whitecaps as tall as I am pulsing and shaking, dipping and cresting.

  This time, I keep my distance, toes barely in the tide.

  “Eydis! Ola! Signy!”

  I scream their names, but there’s nothing. My sisters are gone.

  Escaped, injured, or murdered. I know not which.

  And then, far in the distance, under the fat moon, I see the outline of a tail fin.

  At least one survivor. I’m relieved, though I know with the same certainty that I can sense a storm, that I will likely never see her, or any of them, again.

  25

  Evie

  AS I WAIT FOR THE SISTERS TO RETURN WITH THE RING, a new crop of flowers appears in my lair. Right outside my cave, the red flowers Alia brought me from her garden take root.

  Without a body, Alia’s polypus will be unusual. Though Anna expected her, I wasn’t sure the magic would agree. The polypi surrounding me were made from humans—not just Anna but the king’s guards who died during my last stand. Their bone-lined branches are the work of real bones, their structure created from what they were.

  Alia wasn’t a real human, and she didn’t die here. But there she is—flowers like blood, taking root and growing fast. Their blooms are already misshapen, once-supple petals gone knobby, rigid, graying in this new existence beyond life.

  “I told you she’d come,” Anna says, an edge of satisfaction in her voice.

  I’m reminded again that I don’t know this Anna at all—the one who delights in being right even if it means a life is gone.

  Bile churns within me at the finality of it all. Those little flowers represent a life I’d tried to improve, only to lead to its end.

  My voice wavers when I speak again, and in her glee, I hope Anna won’t notice. “You did. You were right.”

  “I always am.”

  We sit in silence with that statement for a few moments more before the clear swish, swish, swish of tail fins announces the arrival of the princesses.

  They enter in a heap, blackened with sand embedded in their skin like soot—Ola is worst off, the length of her right side a full rash of pits and protrusions.

  “What happened to you?”

  “A mine. Stupid humans. Some bull fish got too close and it went off not feet from us.”

  I swim up to Ola, hands out. “May I?”

  “May you what?”

  “Heal you.”

  The girls exchange a look. I press. “My aunt was called the Healer of Kings for a reason. Let me try. It won’t hurt, and your father won’t be able to tell when he visits you in your captivity.”

  In response, Ola turns her head away, the sand-blasted portion of her body edged toward my hands. I press my palms lightly on the curve of her neck up to her ear, where the grains of sand first appear embedded in her skin.

  “Forsjá, afli, fullting, li∂.”

  Ola braces and then melts under the press of magic. Her quick breath slows; her heartbeat normalizes. In a shimmering shower, the sand dislodges itself, falling to the sea floor below. The micro-pits in her flesh smooth over until there’s nothing left but unblemished skin.

  I remove my hands and face the other girls. “Who’s next?”

  Once they’re clean and whole again—a simple matter of minutes later—I can’t hold my questions back anymore. “Did you make contact with Runa?”

  “Yes,” Eydis confirms. “But we don’t have your ring.”

  “Runa went to fetch it right before the blast,” Signy explains.

  “Fetch it? No retrieval spell?”

  They shake their heads. “We got the sense that even being in the open was dangerous for her, let alone doing that sort of magic.”

  Of course it would be. The palace must be on the lookout for both her and Alia after the incident.

  “But we did learn your knife is safe!” chimes in Ola, rubbing a hand over her newly healed arm.

  Eydis explains. “Runa says the knife slipped from Alia’s hand on the balcony and went into the waves beneath the king’s window. There was a little cove she was always yammering about to Runa late at night, something that butts up to the kingdom.”

  I know exactly where that inlet is. I could look down on it from the cliff where my home sat under the watchful eye of the castle. Father would bring particularly unwieldy catch—a full whale and the like—straight up to the castle through that inlet rather than carting it through the streets. The kitchen maids would meet him, and they’d carry the thing on a shoulder apiece like pallbearers at a funeral.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “She seemed to think if you were able to get the knife, plus the ring, she might be able to satisfy the magic . . . all she’d need is the king’s blood.”

  “Which she might have!” Ola pipes in.

  This is news to me. I saw that boy dead in his bed myself, his lifeblood wasted. Still, the hope in the sisters’ voices is so tangible, I wish I could tell them that with the king’s blood, Runa would return to the sea—to them. But I can’t. Not with any confidence. Alia didn’t kill Niklas—Runa did, and their deals were linked.

  I shift my tentacles beneath me. Is it possible? A sacrifice was made to Urda, but no, I can’t give these girls false hope. If Urda accepts this boy’s life for Runa’s, we’ll know for sure in one day’s time.

  “I’m afraid she’s mistaken,” I tell Eydis, and I’m truly sorry to do so. “But were you able to warn her about your father’s plans?”

  “Yes,” the eldest confirms, her eyes far away. “She says the remaining witches are weak and in no state to fight him. They’re barely holding it together in trying to undermine the human war already raging.”

  “They’re going to destroy something . . . U-boats?” Signy adds.

  The fire spell, failing repeatedly in my view, comes to mind.

  “But we don’t know how. She says they can barely spell soup, whatever that is,” Ola says, lips pinched. “And that’s exactly when she started talking about trying to come back. She believes if she can grow Father more ríkifjor, it’ll prevent an attack.”

  What’s left of my heart trembles for this girl. Runa, always trying to fix and heal things. Unafraid to sacrifice her needs and wants or even herself for another.

  I’d say it reminds me of the girl I used to be, but that would be too generous. I was only interested in saving Nik—and when I wasn’t saving him, I was saving myself from the plague I’d caused.

  There’s not much to say after that
. The mermaids turn without a good-bye, dread trailing in their wake as they return to their captivity and to a guard who hopefully kept their secret.

  “You’re kind to help them,” Anna says when we’re alone.

  “I wish they were the only ones who needed help. So many are in danger—Runa and the witches, the merpeople—literally all magical creatures above and below are at risk.” I gesture to my surroundings. Uneaten catch litters the pewter sands; everything I own is either tucked away in my cave or strewn about, my life for the last fifty years dumped into this place. This prison. “I can’t just stay here eating shrimp while the world is at war.”

  “Go up, then! You don’t need him to release you—you’ve had fifty years. Surely you can break the magic that keeps you. You’ve just made two mermaids human, one permanently. If anyone is talented enough to crack these magical bonds, it’s you.” Her voice grows more frantic and emphatic with each word. “You’ve got to go up and help them.”

  It’s too much, I think. “You’re quite insistent about getting rid of me for someone who just days ago thought for sure if I died the sea king would, and I quote, ‘vaporize this whole place and those of us literally rooted to it.’”

  “Evie, he’s coming for you anyway. Once Runa’s changed for good, he won’t need you anymore.”

  She’s right. I don’t respond because we both know it.

  After a time, Anna speaks again. “It’s probably better for all of us if you leave.”

  My vision skips to Alia’s fledgling body. My cross to bear. My mistake.

  I close my eyes and twist my tentacles to face the approximate direction of the little inlet cove my father would navigate with a whale heavy enough to sink a lesser ship and a lesser man.

  “Koma minn knífr.”

  A thread of the magic from within me shoots through the murk, past the bubbling mire, through the forest of polypi, and into the cool blue of the open ocean.

  Reaching, reaching, my magic scrapes for the knife. And then I feel it coming like a shot blast from a rifle, big and bold and unstoppable. A few seconds more and the distinct whiz and whisper of an object rocketing through the water echoes through my lair. Then it’s slicing right past the spindly arms of Anna’s tree, smacking into my hand hilt-first.