At the hearth, Tante Hansa is stirring something—by the smell of it, most likely the ham-and-pea concoction she brings to every Lithasblot to place beside the roast hog we have on the second day of the festival. Because “there can never be enough swine in this sodden fish market.” Hansa’s back is turned, and I feel the need to announce that we have company—it’s never safe for a witch to have no warning.
“Tante Hansa, I’d like you to meet my new friend.”
Hansa wipes her hands, and I know by the set of her shoulders she was stirring the soup without a spoon. Domestic spells aren’t spectacular, but they’re her favorites because she’d never planned on having a family of her own—and Father and I are more work than she’d like to admit.
When she turns, her face is pulled up in a smile, clear blue eyes flashing with the delight of catching me at something remotely unusual. Hansa is my mother’s older sister by almost two decades, the time between them filled with brothers who lost their lives to the sea’s moods much too young. She is as old as the grief of burying all her siblings suggests. But I have never been able to put anything past her.
Which means her reaction to Annemette is the same as mine. Only she actually says what she’s thinking.
“Why, Anna, returned from the deep, have we?”
Annemette’s mouth drops open as if she’s lost her tongue, her jovial attitude gone as well.
“Annemette, Tante,” I correct. “She’s from the valley. A farm.”
Hansa takes a step forward and raises a brow—quite the feat given the blood-drawing tightness of her hairdo.
“Is that so?” Hansa looks her up and down. “Those hands haven’t seen a day of hard work in all your years. That fair face hasn’t seen the sun. And that dress is worth more than the best cow in the valley.” She takes a step forward and grabs Annemette’s smooth hand. “Who are you really?”
“Tante, please, leave her be, she’s had a rough trip—”
“Hush. You only see what you want to see.” She turns back to Annemette, staring at the girl as if she could bend her will as easily as she tamed the soup. “So, again I ask—who are you really?”
Annemette’s eyes have gone red around the rims again, but she doesn’t cry. If anything, there’s an edge of defiance in the cut of them. Like she’s accepted Hansa’s dare for what it is. But when she speaks, she says the last thing I’d expect.
“Your soup is boiling.”
But the soup is more than boiling. The pea-green liquid hisses as it rolls in violent, unnatural waves over the iron pot’s rim.
“Ah!” Hansa cackles. “I’ve seen your type before.”
I’m stunned. Her type? Is Annemette a witch?
I stare at her.
Another witch. My age. Next to me.
Of all the things I can’t believe about Annemette, this might be the most unfathomable.
Something cracks open in my chest as the secret we’ve held so tightly as a family flies into the soupy air. I stare at this face so familiar and yet so strange, and my mind whirls. Anna was not a witch, but Annemette certainly is.
Annemette nods, and the liquid returns to a gentle simmer.
My aunt’s spotted hands grasp Annemette’s again, but this time there’s a funny light in her eyes, all her skepticism gone. “Evie, child, you’ve made quite an interesting friend indeed.”
It’s a long while before Tante Hansa allows us to escape, having thoroughly quizzed Annemette on her family. In the funny way of things, we both claim lineage to the town of Ribe and Denmark’s most famous witch, Maren Spliid. Tied to a ladder and thrown into a fire by King Christian IV 220 years ago, she became as much a lesson as a legend. Her talent was inspiring, but ultimately her audacity was her undoing. Her death and so many others under the witch-hunter king scattered Denmark’s witches like ashes in the wind. And our kind never recovered—our covens fractured, magic kept to families and never shared.
Given the time and distance, it shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s more than one magical family in Havnestad related to Ribe and Maren, yet I still can’t believe it. We’ve been alone for so long.
After Hansa is finally satisfied with her family tree, Annemette and I head outside. We walk into the woods behind the cottage, where we’re shaded from every angle, including from Øldenburg Castle and its sweeping views, and start to pick our way down toward the sea.
The ground is covered in gnarled roots and branches, a danger for anyone not looking where they’re going. But I know this steep path better than anyone, and I use this moment to steal another glance at Annemette. Her family may be from elsewhere, but her face still belongs here.
Anna did not have any magic in her blood, at least as far as I know. She had two “common” parents and a grandmother who loved her more than the sun. Her parents left shortly after Anna’s funeral. Took their titles and moved to the Jutland—miles and miles from this place and the daughter they lost. Her grandmother is still here, but she’s gone senile with grief, the loss of her family too much for her mind. I see her at the bakeshop sometimes, and she calls every person there Anna. Even me.
“What?” Annemette says, catching me looking as we pass between twin trees, slick with sap.
I can’t tell her what I’m thinking, but I do have questions for her. “It’s just . . . how did you know we were witches? If you’d been wrong, we could’ve reported you. You could’ve been banished.”
She dips her head to avoid a branch. “I could just feel it.”
Like Tante Hansa did.
“I must not be much of a witch,” I say. “I couldn’t tell. I mean, now my blood won’t stop singing, but an hour ago? No.” There’s so much I don’t know about the magic in my bones.
“I’m sure you’re a fine witch, Evie.”
It’s a nice thing to say, I suppose, but not necessarily true. Tante Hansa teaches me only the most mundane of spells. But I read her books and Mother’s books, and I know there is so much more. With a few words and her will, Annemette brought out all that possibility into the open.
“How did you do that? The soup, I mean.”
Annemette just shrugs and hooks a hand on a tree, swinging around it like a maypole ribbon. “It was just an animation spell,” she says as if impressing Tante Hansa was nothing.
The ease, the comfort, the understanding she has about her magic makes my blood tingle with envy. It’s so much of what I want. It took me months of studying and toying to create the spell to combat the Tørhed and even then, I’m not sure it actually works. My evidence is only anecdotal, and Fru Seraphine has taught me better than to use anecdotes as true measures of success.
In a few more steps we reach the sliver of rocky beach blind to Havnestad Cove, my own shortcut to Greta’s Lagoon. I try to calm my heart from beating so loudly, but I’ve never gone to the lagoon in daylight and I’m nervous. I steal a glance up the beach. It’s deserted as far as I can see, everyone off preparing for tonight’s festivities.
“Careful,” I say as we reach the end of the beach and the two large rocks. “The water is deep here.”
I take off my stockings and shoes and wade in. As I reach the sand, I turn around, but she’s still standing by the rocks. “Here,” I say, wading back out and extending my arm. “Take my hand. I’ll help you.”
With tentative steps, she walks forward and grasps my hand tight. I smile at her. “Come on. It’s okay.”
Once we’re in the right spot, I push aside the small boulders that obscure the entrance and steer her inside. Although it’s daylight, the cave is still steeped in shadows. I light a candle. Various mundane tools hang from juts on the wall, and on the floor, oysters sweat in a bucket—my latest failure. On a ledge in the rock wall are my tinctures, bottles full of octopus and squid ink, jellyfish poison, and powdered crab shells.
“You’ve made a lair.”
I laugh. “‘Secret workshop’ might be a more accurate term.”
“Oh no, this is a lair.” Annemette’s
hands move automatically to the ledge. She holds each bottle up to the light, admiring the slosh or swoosh of the contents.
Her boot nudges the oyster bucket. “And what are your plans for these little fellas?” She scoops one up and holds it in her hand as if it’s a baby bird and not an endless source of frustration for me.
“They’re barren, but I’d hoped to spell them into producing pearls to be crushed for—” Annemette stops me cold with a wave of her hand. She mumbles something I don’t understand under her breath, her eyes intent on the oyster in her palms.
Within moments, the oyster swells to a pink as vibrant as the sunset and springs open. Inside is the most gorgeous pearl, perfectly round with an opalescent shimmer.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, though the word doesn’t do it justice. It’s otherworldly, unnatural. I want to touch it, but I’m frightened of it all the same. It seems . . . alive.
Annemette’s grin grows mischievous. “Too beautiful to crush, I think.” With a simple Old Norse command—“Fljóta”—she sets the pearl afloat over her palm. Then, without saying a word, she commands a few lengths of thread—repurposed and therefore unspooled—from the nails on the wall. Next, she covers the thread and pearl with both hands, shielding from me the magic she’s clearly working with her mind, her eyes set on her work. Seconds later, her hands part to reveal a perfect pearl necklace.
“Turn around and pull up your hair,” she says.
I do as she says and she draws the thread around my neck, draping it so that the pearl lies at the base of my throat. I don’t own any real jewelry and have never even tried any on, save for my mother’s wedding band—Father keeps it tucked away in a little chest, along with letters and drawings and other tokens from their life together.
I touch the pearl and look up at her, but she is busy working on another oyster and more string. After a few moments, Annemette ties her own pearl necklace around her throat.
“And now we match,” she says.
My throat catches. I remember Anna saying those words to me that time we made necklaces from wooden beads the tailor was giving away. They were crude and childlike, yet still special. We promised to never take them off, but I couldn’t bear to look at mine once Anna was gone. It’s now in a small box underneath my bed.
I force a smile at Annemette. My pearl sits in cool repose against my neck, pulsing with vigor. It’s a curious feeling that is not altogether pleasant, and I wonder if the pearl will always beat like this. Oddly, I find myself hoping that it will.
“Can you teach me?” I ask, the words spilling from my lips.
“What is there to teach? You’re a witch, aren’t you?”
“I . . . Tante Hansa hasn’t taught me anything like that. Everything I know is like a recipe to make cheese—fail one segment and the whole thing falls to curd.”
Annemette scrunches her nose. “It shouldn’t be that hard.” She picks up an oyster. “Here. Try. Fljóta.”
Annemette sees the reluctance cross my face and tilts her head. “It’s just a command. Say it with confidence and you’ll have the magic do the work.”
With hesitant fingers, I take the oyster in my hand. It’s as gray and barren as ever, and stinky, too, a tinge of rot to it. “Fljóta.”
The oyster shakes in my fingers but doesn’t lift. I can’t seem to make that connection like I do when I spell Father’s ship. There’s something missing.
“You control the magic, Evie. It’s yours. Take it.”
There’s a note in her voice that’s like a jolt—like pushing me off the dock and into the water.
I square my shoulders and stare at the frustrating, rotting little thing. I feel my mother’s blood deep inside me. The blood of Maren Spliid. The blood of the stregha hiding within my father’s “common” façade. I feel the spirit of Urda, outside, inside, all around me, creating the natural energy we draw from. I spin these feelings with all the want inside me—the want to have the sort of power that could’ve saved Anna and my mother. The kind that can truly end the Tørhed for good, not just mask it with a daily spell. The kind that Annemette seems to have.
“Fljóta,” I say with all that want. With the wound that lives deep in my belly from the day I lost Anna. The day I almost lost Nik too. When I wanted more than anything to use my magic to make it better.
The oyster hovers.
“Líf,” Annemette whispers. Life. I should give it life.
“Líf,” I command. The oyster begins to change colors, its gray shell warming to pink and then to the burnt orange of dawn.
The oyster grows hot. Hot enough to match its new lively color. Its warmth licks at my palm.
In a moment, the oyster pops open, the most perfect pearl at its center.
It’s beautiful. Again, it’s almost too beautiful to crush for the magical poultice I’d planned, but there’s so much magic I now want to make with it.
Annemette laughs. “And that, my friend, is how you command the magic.”
Although the spell is over, I can still feel the magic pulsing through my veins, a blue fire so hot, it’s cold. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I don’t want it to stop, but I know there’s a danger in sipping from this feeling too long.
I set the oyster on the table I use for my inventions, fashioned from a piece of driftwood I found on the beach. It’s littered with more bottles and vials, but I clear some space and hold the pearl in my fingers. Unlike the pearl Annemette made, this one is still warm to the touch, not icy hot. The magic responds differently to the two of us, I suppose—I don’t know. But I want to learn.
It’s time I really embrace who I am. Tante Hansa has kept me in the dark for too long. My mother was an established healer by my age.
“Annemette, will you stay and teach me?” I ask.
“I can’t,” she replies quickly, her mouth drawn tight, but trembling. She turns and braces her arms against the cave’s opening, watching the tide come in and out.
But I don’t understand. Why is Annemette so upset? Why must she suddenly leave?
“You can stay,” I insist. “You’re safe here from your father, and we have more than enough room. And you’ll be with us. With a family that cares for you and understands you. You don’t have to run away to find that. To be yourself.”
Annemette meets my eyes with a look I know, and with every force of a Viking spell, she says it again.
“I can’t.”
She bends down and runs her hands through the sand, letting it fall between her fingers. “I can’t stay here.”
It’s her. I can’t deny it now. She’s not trying to deny it either. The look she gave me is the one I saw on the beach. The one that I saw on the girl’s face as she loomed over Nik. Before diving into the water and disappearing, only a tail fin popping up from the waves.
“You can’t stay,” I say.
She nods, her eyes nervous.
“You’re not a witch, are you?”
She shakes her head no.
“You’re a mermaid.”
10
“HOW IS HE—THE BOY?” ANNEMETTE SWALLOWS HARD and takes a step toward me.
I instinctively take a step back, bumping into the table behind me and knocking a corked vial of octopus ink on its side. I’m not sure if it’s Tante Hansa’s old wives’ tales telling me to run or the fact that Annemette is clearly more powerful than any folktale could have ever described. My hand reaches out and grasps the vial before it rolls and smashes to the floor. The pearl at my neck throbs. I want to leave, but her face looks pained, and I can see now that she’s been holding this question in since she arrived.
I realize she’s not here for me or my magic. She’s here for Nik.
In my stunned silence, Annemette goes on. “Is he all right? He was breathing when I brought him ashore, but I didn’t have time to—you came and then that man, and I had to go. I need him to be alive, Evie. Please, say something!”
I nod. “He’s fine. You saved him.” My throat tightens and
tears sting my cheeks. If it wasn’t for Annemette, I’d be dressed in mourning clothes. “He’s totally healthy. Strapping. Probably milking a goat at this very moment!”
Annemette practically collapses in my arms. “Oh, thank goodness! When he fell into the sea, I caught him, but the tide and the storm was so strong, I—”
“Stop. I shouldn’t know,” I say. “You shouldn’t say any more. It’s too dangerous for me to—”
“But you aren’t any more welcome here than I am,” she says, pulling herself upright. “Your magic is just as forbidden as mine.” And when my eyes meet hers and they’re clear and hard, I realize we’ve made an exchange. A dangerous one.
I know her secret and she knows mine. Breaking this trust would ensure our mutual demise. I slip the vial of ink I’d been clutching into my dress pocket.
We will only survive our secrets together.
“I promise I won’t say a thing,” I assure her, a hint of regret in my voice.
“Thank you,” she says. “My lips are sealed too.” She weaves a slim finger through her blond hair, twisting a long wave into a curl. “What’s his name—the boy?”
“Nik. His name is Nik. And he’s my best friend. I’m so glad that you were there. I saw the wave too late, and he was gone.” I realize for the first time that after saving Nik over and over again, even if it was only on the dance floor, there was nothing I could have done that night. That he’d have saved me from the sea, but I would have failed him. My smile falters and I look down to the gray oysters at our feet. “I wish I could repay you with more than a few scraps of food and a pearl necklace.”
Annemette loops a finger in mine. It feels strange, too close, but I don’t want to push her away. “I didn’t do anything special,” she says. “Mermaids are not the monsters you humans think we are. I could not just let him drown.”
Drown. Like Anna did. Like I thought Anna did.
At this moment, Annemette looks so pretty. So innocent. She raises her eyes to meet mine.
“Would you like to meet him?” I ask.
“Please,” she says.
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