The Sea Witch and the Mermaid (The Seaforth Chronicles Book 3)

by B. J. Smash

  A few moments of silence passed and she commanded, “Just do what I say. Tomorrow morning, return to the boat.” Then she stood up without any problem at all, like she was a teen or something. She might be old, but she was chipper. “I must go now. I have something else to attend to.”

  GG Edmund and Granddad hopped up out of their chairs and walked her to the door. Gran sniffled a bit and wiped her eye with a hanky. My father grumbled something that we couldn’t hear, stood up, and walked to the door. Eadgar squeezed me close to him, and Ivy and Drumm exchanged looks of dread.

  I would return to Magella’s boat tomorrow. There was nothing anybody could do about it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eadgar left an hour before we did. He thought it best to return to the ocean, unseen. If Magella noticed him, it could only make matters worse. And so I exited Granddad’s big black Cadillac and waited for Ivy and my father to give me hugs.

  Magella had pulled the boat up to the dock and stood on the deck, ready and alert. I could see the stiff and menacing grin on her ugly face. She knew I’d be back, as there wasn’t any way around it.

  I put my chin in the air and forced my legs to move. I still had an ounce of pride, and I would show her so. But with each step, I felt as if a weight was added to my soul, and dread filled me like water in a balloon. When I was finally on board, she hit the deck with her staff. Boom! She was in an extra mean mood today.

  To my amazement, the boat did not move.

  “What ails you, you damn boat! Get a move on!” She slammed her staff down again, almost breaking it in half. But the boat did not move.

  Again, she banged the staff into the deck. The boat did not move and floated calmly by the dock.

  I looked to my father and Ivy with confusion, and they stood there watching us. Then I saw my sister’s face light up, and then I heard Magella say in an exasperated way, “Mother!”

  Turning, I saw that Aggie stood behind us on the deck. She leaned on her umbrella, her hands folded over the wooden handle. Her lips were scrunched up, and she appeared stern.

  “Mother! What—what are y-you doing here?” Magella cowered back to the door that led below, and she held onto the handle with a firm grip.

  Aggie held Magella with her eyes. “I have come to give you an order. And you will follow it.” She paused to grin. “You will allow my great-great-granddaughter, Zinnia Seaforth, to visit once a day for three hours with her friend from the ocean. You WILL NOT lay a hand on her, or use magic that will harm her health in any way.” She paused again to let it all sink in. “And if you do not obey me, so help me, Magella…” She lifted her umbrella and pointed it at Magella. “So help me, you will regret it.”

  The old woman was scaring me, and she was acting in my defense! I looked to Magella to see her cowering by the door, one hand on the knob and one hand held up to cover her face. She peeked through her fingers and said, “Yes, Mother. I will do as you wish.”

  “Good!” Aggie slammed her umbrella to the floorboards, and the boat began to move. I turned to look at Ivy and my father. They were pleased with Aggie’s sudden appearance, and I was glad that they could return home knowing that I’d be all right.

  When I turned back to look at Aggie, she was no longer there.

  ***

  Magella let me have it later on. She didn’t dare to use any magic on me, but she verbally assaulted me, saying that I was a useless creature with little going for me.

  She stood before me now as I knelt, scrubbing the floorboards with soap and water. “You just had to go and tattle on me. You just had to bring Mother into this. Well, I will have you know, she doesn’t scare me in the least.” This was a bold-faced lie, but I pretended to listen to her ramble on anyway. “I will let you swim in the sea and visit your boyfriend, only because I want to. Not because mother told me to. That will give me some time away from you. I’m sick and tired of you.”

  She rambled on and on, but it went in one ear and out the other, and soon I was allowed to jump overboard and swim with the merpeople.

  We spent our short time together each day, swimming and enjoying each other’s company, sometimes lying on the island, absorbing the heat and energy from the sun. While the air was getting colder and had an icy feel to it, it wasn’t too bad when I was in mermaid form. Some fish, after all, can withstand the cold waters as well as warm, and likewise, I guess so can mermaids.

  It was a different story when on board. In human form, I felt the cold. I felt the ice. Magella made me work from sunup till midnight, in rain, sleet, and snow. She was relentless and still furious that Aggie had gotten involved. So she would push me to work and work, scrubbing the already spic-and-span deck and painting and repainting things, and de-icing the railings and masts. Oftentimes, I was so tired that when I got to spend time with the merpeople, we would rest ashore or I would take naps in the tall seaweed that spanned up from the ocean floor. To me, these labors were physical abuse, but Aggie never showed. Magella wasn’t laying a hand on me or working magic against me; she wasn’t breaking the rules.

  There came a time when my body could take it no more, and I caught pneumonia. I lay below deck on a small brown cot in a small but warm cabin. Magella would bring me teas and soups, and she would fix up remedies. After all, she didn’t want me to die. Then she’d get in trouble, and furthermore, she would have no one to boss around.

  I finally recovered, but I had been sick for a week or so. I had seen neither hide nor hair of the merpeople, not even a glimpse of their tails disappearing into the ocean. I didn’t get back into the waters for another week after I recovered, and by that time, it was time to head to Gran’s.

  Eadgar never showed that weekend, and neither did any of the other merpeople. There was nothing anybody could do to help me, and so when I returned to Magella’s boat, I hit the waters in search of them.

  Nothing.

  For three days I searched for them in my free time, and in the evenings, I sat watching for them. And then one day, I spotted Stella swimming close to the boat. It wasn’t time for me to jump into the water, and when Magella saw that I was about to jump in, she warned me not to do it. I did it anyway.

  I swam out to Stella. She was weak and could barely swim, and her head lolled to the side. Her long golden hair floated in the water, and she was hardly breathing. I tugged her into the shallow waters and pulled her up on the beach. She passed out. And then I noticed, to my utter amazement, her tail had been sliced, and blue blood oozed out of her silver-blue tail.

  “Oh gosh. Oh gosh. Stella! Wake up.” I gently slapped her face.

  She did awaken. “Zinnia.” Her sweet, young voice said, “I just escaped…through the bars. Byron bent them enough and I had to…” She stopped to gain her breath. “I had to squeeze out, and I cut my tail on the rusty bars. And I swam and swam till I couldn’t swim any longer.”

  “W-where were you? Where is everyone?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “Jonesby the Jinxer. He’s going to kill us and take our souls. He—” She gasped for air. “He is going to do this tonight. If he gets our souls, he can use them to become a merman permanently.”

  “Who has he captured?” I asked.

  “Byron, Harleena, and…Jina, Nicoli, and Eadgar,” she managed to say.

  I inhaled deeply, trying to slow down my spinning thoughts. If Jonesby thought he would succeed with this, he was wrong. Somehow, I would stop him. Even if it meant risking my own life.

  “All right. I am going to run and get you some help.” I pulled her farther onto the shore, and hid her behind the rocks. “Hang in there!” I shouted over my shoulder. I didn’t know how much time I had before my limbs would start to numb and then begin to feel like they were on fire, and then eventually implode. But I knew where I was, and the café was a mile down the beach. I ran as fast as I could, as I knew Stella’s life was in grave danger.

  When I arrived, I was sorely in need of air, and I bent over until my breath was somewhat back to normal. I th
ink I had just run a four-minute mile.

  It was just after breakfast time, and the café only held a few people. I didn’t care what they were about to hear or what they thought of it. I ran inside to find Aunt Clover on the phone. She was lively and laughing, and her eyes were shining in the artificial light of the café. I grabbed the phone from her hand and hung it up.

  “Zinnia! What are you doing here?” she screeched.

  “Listen up, Aunt Clover. I need your help. You need to call Ivy. Tell her to get down here. There is a mermaid on the beach, a mile that way.” And I pointed down shore. “She is bleeding. Tell Ivy she needs help.” By this time, Magella’s spell knew I’d left the waters, and it began to do its work. My arms and legs did indeed feel like pins and needles were being poked into them, just like a voodoo doll. Thousands of prickly needles. I felt like a stinkin’ pincushion. I rubbed my legs to try to get some blood flowing, but it was no use.

  “Okay, okay! No problem, I’m on it,” Aunt Clover said.

  “Oh! And, Aunt Clover, I need one more favor,” I said.

  “Sure. Anything you want,” she said.

  I told her my request and shortly after, I left the café, sprinting as fast as I could to the dock. There were people standing there observing and feeding the seagulls: two children and three adults. When they saw me running at full speed for the water, they jumped aside.

  I flipped off the dock and spun in the air, my arms stretched out before me, and landed in the water. Instantly my legs switched to mermaid form, and I swished my tail up above the water and then surfaced. My arms and lower half still felt like pins and needles, and I paused to rub them.

  It was then that I heard one of the children on the dock say in a high-pitched squeal, “Look, Mama! A mermaid!”

  And then I heard gasps of shock and then, “Oh my God!”

  “Oooops,” I said but I waved quickly, and then I was underwater and headed to Magella’s boat.

  By the time I reached her boat, my body felt like it was being roasted over a fire. I thumped the side of the boat, and Magella tossed down the ladder.

  “Where have you been, you stupid fool?” she asked.

  My temper flared. “One thing you must know is that I am not stupid.” I jumped over the railing and was standing on the deck right in front of her. The burning feeling in my limbs began to subside, and then the pins and needles feeling faded away. I was bound to this boat; there was no doubt of that. But things were about to change.

  I pictured the page and reread the spell that I had seen in Aunt Clover’s grimoire. I had heard that my Aunt Clover used to practice magic, and while I knew she had given up on magic, I also knew that she’s a Seaforth. She would still keep a grimoire, even if she kept it hidden away in the sock drawer, or buried out in back of the café in the ground beneath a trash can. I knew Aunt Clover would have some spells. Magic called to us, even if we didn’t want it to.

  I had been correct.

  She had run upstairs to her apartment, and I had followed. We had gone to her bedroom, where she stood on her dresser, reached up, and pulled a rope. A compartment from the ceiling came down, and she reached in and grabbed a book and threw it at me. The book was pink, and on the cover were dark pink rhinestones formed to make a moon.

  “Tell me where to find your best spells,” I had demanded.

  She jumped down and stood beside me as I paged through the book. “That one!” she had said. “That’s the only one that you are going to need.” And then she grabbed a small stone from her jewelry box on the dresser, handed it to me, and sent me on my way.

  When I had seen the spell, my eyes had fully opened up to the size of tennis balls. And now, standing in front of Magella, I began to chant the words as I pulled out the stone. Of course I knew that she would want to retaliate, and so I said it quickly and threw the stone at her throat, and it landed right where the voice box would be and stuck to her neck like a slug. She tried to paw the green-blue stone away and scratched at it, drawing blood, but it was no use. She was now under my command.

  I will add here that the stone that was now stuck to her voice box was an amazonite. The stone of truth.

  “What have you done to me?” She spit on the floorboards. I don’t think she could swallow.

  “I need you to tell me…how I can get into Jonesby the Jinxer’s lair without being killed. What is his weakness?”

  “If I knew that, I’d have done it long ago!” she said. I knew she was telling the truth, because right now, she was not able to tell a lie. “But there is—”

  “Right now, he has my mer-friends held prisoner in his lair. If I do not get them out, he will take their souls from their bodies and use them to turn himself into a merman—permanently.” I watched her expression, and she clearly looked confused.

  “Tell me right now, Magella, what can I do to save them?” As she thought this over, I gritted my teeth, waiting for her to answer.

  “You must steal the belt that encompasses his waist. If—and I mean IF—you can succeed in doing this, he will virtually have no power. The four souls of four maidens reside in the belt buckle. The four maidens are mermaids—virgins, they are. They are pure and innocent, and he gets most of his power from their innocence.” She grabbed her throat and spat on the ground again. “I advise you to just let it go. Don’t go down there. Your friends are doomed.”

  I squinted my eyes at her. I would not heed her warning. “Tell me your best spell. The one that can aid me in rescuing them.”

  “Very well. My best spell. Let me get my book.” She walked to the door to go below deck.

  “Stop!” I said. “I’m no fool. You only get your book so that you can retaliate against me.”

  “No. I do not.” Again, she had to be telling me the truth. “If you can pull this off, I’d be glad to be rid of Jonesby the Jinxer. I don’t care for him at all.”

  And so I let her go and retrieve her grimoire from below deck.

  I paced the deck, hoping and wishing that I would be able to save Eadgar and the others. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. How was I going to get Jonesby’s belt? He was so huge and so fast. He could crush me with his big hands; he’d almost done it before. Oh, but he was a horrible, horrible man. He stole four young maidens’ souls, just to have power? I, myself, like power. But would I steal souls just to have more? I couldn’t imagine it.

  Over these past few months, I had learned to live without power. And to be honest, when I was with Eadgar, I didn’t miss it. He made me a good person. He made me enjoy things as they are.

  I laughed then. Oh my, how I had changed. I used to long for power. I loved the way magic had coursed through my veins when I recited a spell, and the knowledge of magic had fulfilled me and made me strong and powerful.

  Then again…

  It hurt me now, just to know that Eadgar might be suffering. I truly had to admit to myself that I did not need power. I needed Eadgar. Well, I didn’t need Eadgar, but I wanted him. My Aunt Clover had always told me that a woman does not need to have a man, because she can live well enough on her own. But I would trade all of the power and magic in the world, just to have him back. It was Eadgar that made me whole.

  Magella returned, but she did not have her grimoire. Instead, she held a dagger. “I don’t have a spell that will help you.” I could tell it pained her that I was in charge, and she was being forced to help me. “You must use a regular cloaking spell, and get as close as possible to Jonesby. This dagger is enchanted, and you must cut the belt completely off his body. It cannot dangle, it cannot almost be cut—it has to be cut and removed from his body. Do I make myself clear?”

  “You do.” I took the dagger from her long, brown-spotted hand and then told her that she must take me closer to Jonesby the Jinxer’s lair. She was still under my spell and couldn’t do anything about it. She slammed her staff onto the deck, the boat turned, and we were off. The waters splashed up against the sides of the boat and over the railing, and I wa
s doused by the waves a few times, but eventually we arrived about a mile from Jonesby’s. I could see the island off in the distance.

  I turned to leave but looked over my shoulder one last time. Magella, who was still fuming mad because I was in control, said, “Good luck. You will need it. And if Jonesby doesn’t kill you…when you return, I just might.”

  Again, she was telling the truth.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I swam briskly through the cool, velvety waters, down over a long, sloping trench, and past a narrow but deep abyss that probably held some sort of sea monster or giant sea snake. I shuddered to think about it. I swam even faster when I remembered Barnabee the Big Brute. Who knew where he resided? The ocean was a vast place. I passed a great white shark at one point, and he didn’t even glance my way. That was a big relief. They usually didn’t bother mermaids, I was told. Mermaids could freeze them in their tracks and end their lives quickly with long, sharp spears. This shark probably thought I held that power, and he continued on his way. I had once learned that shark’s brains were tiny and that they were stupid. Not so, the merpeople said. It’s just an act.

  Finally, I came upon the giant rock wall beneath the island and made my way down, down, and farther down until Jonesby’s cave entrance was in view. But it was bad luck for me. In front of the entryway, a group of barracudas lingered. Their slim but long bodies were not a pretty sight, and their long lower jaws with sharp, pointy teeth made them out to be scary predators. To put it bluntly, they had homely fish faces.

  I would guess the longest one to be five feet long, and what I knew about barracudas was this: they loved to rip the flesh from prey even bigger than themselves, and would just as soon eat a dolphin or a human. They didn’t fear merpeople, even though the merpeople could freeze them where they swam, just as they could with a shark. They still did not care, and would attack. They were impressive predators. And while they usually lived in tropical waters, the merpeople informed me that they sometimes liked to travel out this way.