Sea Witch Rising

by Sarah Henning

  “I need to go, I know,” I say, standing. I glance to Sofie. “Keep him safe.”

  And then I run.

  I haul my dress above my knees and sprint into the coming tide. The stream and punch of the full force of the sea resists me at every sloshy step. The wind whips my hair into my face, sodden ropes slapping across my cheeks, forehead, and into my eyes. Hail drives into my shoulders, eating holes into the tatters of my dress.

  The beach is no more. All the boats in the harbor have come loose from their moorings, piling up in a tangle of metal and broken glass. Some are capsized farther into the harbor and the Øresund Strait, their bows pointed up to the sky like drowning men reaching for air before falling under.

  Very soon, all of them, large and small, will tumble past the dockyards into the streets, and then climb the sea lane into town. If even one large boat makes it into the frontage, it could mean the end of all those people in the pub, any guards left breathing in the lane, and my friends, if they’re not out of the way.

  As I run, I raise a hand to the boats, calling on what I can to keep them from moving farther inland. I don’t know if it’ll work against the force of Father’s storms, but I have to try.

  “Dveljask!”

  Up ahead are the very tops of two large boulders, sitting sentry on the sea witch’s cove. There’s a historical marker that’s barely reaching over the tide now, too, the wooden pole and the plaque atop bending with the rush of the water.

  Almost there.

  Beyond the cove entrance, my feet are lifted off the ground, and I automatically begin to move my arms in a swimming stroke, trying to get farther out. But I’ve not swum in this body, and my legs are a sorry excuse for a tail. I’m barely moving forward, and I’m not sure I can make it into the boundaries of the cove. I look around for another way.

  In the middle of the cove is a massive wall of stone. I can climb.

  Better yet, looking at the wall now, it must be aligned with where the sea witch’s cave is. Outside her cave is her cauldron—the wall is my best shot.

  Each breath I take is half air, half water now. Waves rush up from below where the sea is surging, and from above, where rain still floods down in sheets.

  The sky cracks through with lightning, and I take a look back and up at the town. Every light is on. Windows gape open, little faces peering into the night. They’re watching the world end.

  Not if I can help it.

  I push forward and get a hand on the wall. It’s slick as ice, rainwater a finger thick buffering the stone from the air.

  “Purr bjarg,” I say, and the water flees from the patch of rock covered by my hand.

  It’s suddenly completely dry, affording me a handhold. Yes, this will work. I repeat the spell over and over with each new grip, each step on any finger of a ledge with my boots. My body is heavy with the water my clothes can hold, and it takes all my strength to pull myself over the side and onto the summit of the rock wall. Hail pits welts into every exposed inch of skin—my face, my neck, my hands stinging. But when my feet touch, I get to my knees and then I stand, wind gusting in big-mouthed threats to send me over the other side.

  But I hold strong. I push myself to the point that reaches farthest into the sea witch’s cove and well into the swirling storm. With all the magic inside me and all the fight I have to give, I yell out, “Sœkja, Sea Witch!” and fling the ring into the wicked, churning deep.

  37

  Evie

  I AM NOT TO BE OBLITERATED. NO, THE SEA KING WANTS my magic as much as my life.

  That means he’ll take his time. Draining. Absorbing. Cleaving. Until every last bit of power is leeched from my skin. Starved from my muscles. Carving marks left on my bones as he ensures whatever magic I have in me is properly added to his account.

  “Skafa fró∂leikr.”

  “Drjúpa fró∂leikr.”

  “Réna fró∂leikr.”

  “Samna fró∂leikr.”

  The sea king doesn’t wait for what went into his ghost soldiers to renew. That piece of me within them is already coursing through the sinew that forms his kingly body. I feel it like blood loss—a fuzziness in my mind, a lightness about my limbs.

  Each sip of light that he steals sends me lower, until I’m pressed to the sea floor and sinking in. Left staring up at his looming form, watching him grow stronger before my very eyes.

  The mass of him seems to burn beneath his golden armor, the sun rising beneath the swirling clouded ghosts of his polypi generals. Yes, generals—there aren’t enough of them to be called an army—two dozen, maybe. But the collection of them is enough that, if he leaves this place with them at his disposal, they can easily set off the mines, then unflinchingly lead any of the brave merpeople into battle.

  It’s exactly what he wanted.

  I watch them swoop and spin, ready to go, to move, to charge, and I feel something else within me fading. Not my magic—that has dwindled enough that I’m hollowed out, skin and structure and vacant space—but what is left of my soul.

  Anna told me once that mermaids don’t have a soul. Not like what inhabits humans. I’m not a human anymore, and I haven’t been for a long time, but I’m not a mermaid either. And for as long as I’ve known myself in this body, I’ve recognized that there’s a shadow of my soul left. Residue of the spirit I once was.

  Evie. That girl.

  It’s the last I have of who I once was, of Nik and his heart and what could never be. Of my mother’s sacrifice, and my father’s tragedy. Of Tante Hansa’s good intentions and wisdom. It’s fading, that last bit of the true being.

  The sea king can feel it. Of course he can. He closes his eyes and revels in it, arms above his head—his crown—in triumph.

  My eyesight is failing with my soul, with my magic, with the rest of me. My cheek is pressed into the pewter sands of my lair, and I sink in, ready to become one with it in the days after my last breath. Until I’m bones and nothing more.

  But then something floats into my vision. Small, fire-red, round.

  In this state, I nearly think it’s an illusion. My mind’s gift of peace. What I want and what I need appearing in front of me before my eyes close forever. I reach out to it, expecting to feel nothing but the end. But then my fingers dust across something real. Hard. Flecks of gemstone fastened in a perfectly round circle.

  Runa, my brave little witch.

  I slip the ring straight onto my ring finger, and it fits perfectly. The stone warms to my skin, merging with it. Becoming the epicenter of a thousand memories of my time on earth. Of Nik, of his love, of the magic both between us and in the lies I wove to hide my true self. I haven’t set foot on dry sand, in the salt air, under the full strength of the sun for fifty years, but somehow, I’m suddenly of the earth in a way I never realized I was when I was above. All that’s drained out of me has returned tenfold.

  From my deathbed, I lift my head and shoot my body upright, each of my tentacles flaring as I spin in wondrous, joyous movement. The sea king watches, jaw wired shut, fighting mightily not to reveal his surprise, but I glimpse the panic in his eyes.

  I’m not dead. I’m thriving with power. Sucking up all that’s around us. I’ve opened a vein straight to what the sea king has left. And he knows it.

  “Soldiers, line up!” he orders, ripping his eyes from me.

  The polypi generals do as he commands—they have no other choice. They’re marionettes without strings. Even Alia. Even Anna—who visibly struggles against his directions. Her eyes wild, confused, betrayed. She really did believe she’d earned her freedom.

  I feel the tiniest pang for her. Everything Anna did to get to this point was in the name of independence, having her own agency, being the mistress of her own destiny. It didn’t work the way she hoped, betrayal not paying what it promised.

  The sea king beckons his girls up front. Alia is first, her crown a sparkling second to her father’s. Anna follows because she must.

  “This isn’t over, Sea Witch
.” His voice lifts up at me as he rushes out of my lair, his soldiers in tow. The opening cannon fire of a war unlike any other just minutes away.

  When he’s gone and all is quiet except for the storm he’s created above, I answer him.

  “No, it isn’t.”

  I swim to my cauldron, still toppled flat on its side. I return it to its base and inspect the contents. Most of my serum spilled into the sea, but some clung to the pot’s curves.

  Dear Urda, please let it be enough.

  I get the fire going below, and the contents begin to boil, steam lifting to my face.

  When it’s good and hot, I again pierce the skin of my breast, this time right above my heart. The blood drips into the cauldron in fat rivulets. After a dozen good drops, I reach down with my left hand, Nik’s ring shining on my finger.

  The contents should burn but they don’t. Instead, the warmth of a summer afternoon streams up my arm, swaddling my heart in the sweet, luscious memory of true freedom. Of stick princesses and sand castles, and days defined by the tide rather than titles, duty, and secrets.

  There’s no blinding light. Shock of smoke. Searing, freeing, just-get-through-it pain. No. It’s more like the turn of a key. I’m not changed. My tentacles still coil beneath me. My lungs still find enough oxygen in the water to sustain me. My heart beats and buckles for what has happened and what is to come.

  But I am free.

  I sprint for the limits of my lair, no hesitation. This time it won’t be as if I’ve smashed into an unbreakable wall of glass when I reach where the gray of my home bleeds into the azure of open waters. For the first time in half a century, I can leave.

  Into the open sea and moving fast, seeking the sea king and his generals before it’s too late.

  The sea is choppy, the winds above ravaging more than the surface. The water is clogged with black-eyed fish, stunned belly-up by whatever magic the sea king has already used. He may not only send his people on a suicide mission, he may kill all the creatures below in his quest for power as well.

  I swim faster until the taste of blood settles in the back of my throat. My heart pounds and lungs clench. My muscles burn, but the path ahead is clear. I follow their magic building, like it’s the strongest current in the ocean.

  Up ahead, the noon-sky iridescence of the sea kingdom shimmers in the distance. The castle rises in spires and strokes of coral and sand, every glittering thing under the sea affixed to its walls. Homes cluster at the foot of the castle, separated from nobility by acres of gardens, pinned together in plots by orderly paths of sandstone and pearls. At midnight on the sundial layout is a fat swath of vines, shriveled and black.

  Runa’s garden—the ríkifjor. All dead.

  And that is where the polypi generals have congregated. Above them, a string of mines. Long enough to take out a good portion of the castle, the rubble barreling full-force onto the dwellings below.

  He’s mad. Completely mad.

  I swim faster.

  “Don’t do it, Your Highness!” I yell, as much for him as for his generals, and for the people sleeping below. They need to know the truth apart from what he’s sold them. I will scream at the top of my lungs until he is revealed for the urchin he is.

  His golden head whips around; true surprise again rings his features. Below, windows spark with light, the citizens waking. Yes, please wake. Please see your king.

  “Don’t set off those mines! Your people will suffer!”

  Groggy faces begin to appear in each window and balcony, eyes trained on us above.

  I won’t just let them see. I’ll tell them. Loudly.

  “Your king—”

  An explosion rips through my words and the sea, water shooting in every direction.

  “Tjald!” I scream. A leaf-green light shoots from my fingertips, running straight toward the massive cloud of debris. In a blink, a canopy of light stretches and curves with the weight of the explosion, catching the massive disturbance and holding the weight until the force of the bomb dissipates.

  I assume one of the polypi generals not only armed the thing as told but also accidentally set it off by brushing up against it. No matter how it happened, the sea king has realized two can play at my game.

  “The sea witch’s magic set off the mine! Look at it! The traces are still there!” he yells, as if he’s not wearing his golden armor and his crown, as if he rolled out of bed and heroically ran to save the day. “I’m disarming them!”

  It’s a feeble string of lies, but when you’re as practiced as he, it sticks. I won’t answer to it. Instead, I make sure there’s no way he can hurt his people for real this time.

  “Gœ∂alauss!” I shout, stripping each mine of its explosive power. Making them barren.

  “Stop!” the sea king yells, and rather than shout a spell, he orders the two closet soldiers after me. “Sœkja!”

  The men do as they’re told, their eyes blank with blind determination. Warriors in their first life, they are relieved of their weapons, but not of their skill.

  But I have skills too. “Sjo∂a!”

  A thick current of water rushes forth to meet the soldiers as they descend, seething, streaming, boiling. It hits their marble-white bodies with a certain fury, immediately singeing their exposed skin. I was unsure when the spell left my lips whether the ghost soldiers would feel pain, and now I have my answer. The pair of them arch back, trees bowing to a summer storm. They don’t make a sound as the smooth tone of their skin erupts into a mottled mess of boils and blisters.

  “Gœ∂alauss!” I scream three more times, disarming the last of the mines. Then, I turn to the crowd below. “Good people, your king had plans tonight to detonate a string of mines he set, to win your favor for a war against your best interests. All he cares about is power and revenge—to him, your lives are pawns to be spent.”

  The sea king’s voice grows louder. “Says the witch who brought us the black death and the famine of abundance! You’re an evil monster.”

  “My reputation is all of those things, and yet I’m fighting against you for the lives of your people. What does that say about you, Your Highness?”

  He explodes, a mutilation spell on his lips. “Meizi!”

  But I’m ready. “Skjoldr!”

  His spell ricochets off my shield. Two soldiers swim into the line of fire, hurtling toward the sand the second they’re hit.

  The sea king gathers himself from a lower position, hair singed by magic, crown tumbling straight off his head, itself taking the brunt of the spell. I could stun him now, but I want these people to see the desperation on his face. The cruelty. I don’t want them to miss a second of who their king really is.

  From below, he tries again, his mother’s favorite spell shooting from his fingertips. “Fœra!”

  I twist and dodge, red laser lights shooting past me, taking out an ear on the statue of Niklas in Alia’s garden. The merpeople crowding the paths of the garden dive into beds of rainbow flowers, hands over their heads as they scatter.

  “The sea witch speaks the truth!”

  My heart leaps—Eydis.

  The sea king’s second set of daughters lines up next to me, their faces defiant, daring once again to leave their tower. The three of them facing off against their father is more powerful than anything I could ever say.

  Eydis catches the eyes of the merpeople congregating below. She addresses them.

  “Our sisters were not maimed by human-made mines. Alia sought freedom to love a human by asking the sea witch to help her go above. Runa went up to bring Alia home once she knew the mission was doomed to fail.” Audible gasps rise from the streets, windows, and cracked doorways. “We lost our sisters to love, not hate.”

  More gasps. More eyes.

  “Ask Alia yourself. Her ghost swims before you,” Eydis says.

  Yes, ask her.

  I push my magic through the waters between us. Reaching only for Alia. Reaching for the bonds that tether her will to her father’s. In my
mind’s eye, I gather them up, bunching them, and rip them clean. “Bresta! Sjálfvili!”

  The bond breaks, and Alia’s eyes go wide. As the cord is cut and her free will is renewed, the sea king flinches hard, his body convulsing in actual, physical pain.

  I haven’t just freed her—I’ve severed a thread of his power.

  The polypi generals swim around me. I have two dozen more strings, tied straight to the strength he has left.

  As her father writhes in pain, Alia finds the voice he’s been stifling. “I am Alia! I am! Eydis speaks the truth!” she says to the people below, arms wide. “Runa did not die—the magic binds her to the earth now. She’s working with human witches to take back what our king has stolen from the earth and from you.”

  There’s a loud gasp—both at Alia’s admission and the sea king visibly suffering. I see now that Queen Bodil and the older princesses and their families are out of bed, pressed against the exterior walls of the castle. Though they are silent and shadowed, the sea king’s eyes stray to them, desperation sinking the corners of his mouth.

  “She left us for humans! She betrayed our kind!” he screams, desperate.

  “I left for myself!” Alia snaps. “And Runa left for me.” She looks from him to the crowd. Her people. “Runa will continue to make the world safe from you, Father, restoring the balance of power that you tipped toward the sea. Power you keep for yourself, Father, stabilized by the ríkifjor.”

  With each word, the sea king winces. It’s as if she’s ripping what was left of his control grain by grain from his skin.

  He shakes clear of the pain and zooms over the crowd. “What you are seeing isn’t the truth; it’s a lie twisted into the light.”

  “I’m not lying. I’m dead, Father. I have nothing left to lose. You have so much to lose that you just murdered your own mother before my very eyes.”

  There’s a commotion as heads swing around in the crowd, eyes searching for Ragn. The remaining eight princesses all react in mirrored shock, clinging to each other’s hands, shoulders, waists.

  “No, it’s not true!” the sea king screams, and shoves Alia away, knocking her into a polypus general. “The sea witch’s magic controls this imitation of Alia and the rest of the ghost soldiers! She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”