But the gardens had consumed it.
The courtyard was barely visible and would be inaccessible to an orca. It resembled a poor nest; the gardens had eaten up the base of the columns and were growing on the outside of the nest in great slimy patches. Inside, Calla imagined, all sorts of creatures might live.
Or perhaps not.
Because this sea was abandoned. There was loneliness in the air, the sense that she was the only thing breathing for miles. The water hugged her, still and undisturbed, and rubbed through her hair as though it wished to taste her. The terrifying emptiness overwhelmed her as she pushed through the weeds into the courtyard, an elaborate mosaic barely visible through the carpet of spotty leaves.
“Hello?”
Her voice shivered around the abandoned palace and disappeared. Seaweed waved disapprovingly back. And silence rolled in like a thunderous cloud. Of course it did. Why would the Witch help her? Why would the Witch help any mermaid?
But she was here, so Calla spoke out again, her voice shaking in the dark quiet.
“I—I’m here to see—”
“I know who you are here to see.”
Calla gasped. The voice whispered out of nowhere, high and dangerous. It was like a breath: delicate and soft, and so impossibly loud. And it came from everywhere, all at once, as though it were in her very head.
“I—I have…questions…”
“Which are?”
Unsure of where to look, Calla stared straight ahead. In the middle of the pillared courtyard was a circle of white stone from which rose a flat plinth, and she watched it without really knowing why as she asked for the voice’s name.
“You know who I am.”
“Then—then you can help me?”
“I could. Whether I should…that is something else.”
Calla twitched nervously. Her heart was beating in her throat.
“Please come out,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“You—you—”
“Do I frighten you?”
The word was breathed in her ear; a wash of warm water brushed her hair, and Calla spun with a shriek, lashing out at—bubbles, put there by her own frantic turn.
“You are a jumpy little thing, aren’t you?”
Calla spun again—and there she was. Atop the white monument lay a mermaid, draped over it like a cloth. An immensely long mermaid, at least forty hands, and terrifyingly handsome. Her face was carved from raw beauty itself, perfect in every way, and framed by a rush of thick, dark hair that rippled and danced around her like a living shawl. She was not bare, like a royal mermaid, but wore a long dress of kelp and sea foam—however was that possible?
“You—you are the sea witch?”
The mermaid hummed. Propped her chin, atop a long neck, on her upturned hand.
“Far greater than any witch, my dear.”
“I’m—I’m sorry—”
“You are the king’s daughter.”
“Yes. Calla.”
“I know.” The high voice was bored, and the mermaid examined her nails. “And why has the king’s daughter come this far north to talk to witches? I cannot imagine her great father would look kindly on it.”
Calla’s mouth thinned.
“Her great father,” she said, “has lied to her about skymen. They exist! I saw one. I touched one.”
“Of course they exist,” the Witch said, as though they were discussing dolphins or cod. “If that is all you require help with—”
“No!”
A sharp look. Calla wilted.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but no. There’s—I think there’s something wrong with me.”
The look turned quizzical.
“I touched the sky,” Calla whispered.
The other brow rose, and a smirk adorned the mermaid’s face.
“I assure you, you did not.”
“I did! I touched a cloud! And a skyman!”
“A human.”
“A—what?”
“Human. They live above the sea. The sky—the true sky—is above them. And their clouds. Tell me, do the men run amok over them, and do they sport great white faces?”
“Yes,” Calla breathed. “You’ve seen them.”
“Ships. Not clouds. Ships.”
“Ships?”
“The men make them, to sail across the water.”
To walk on water. They walked on water with ships.
“I rescued one,” Calla whispered. “He fell into the water, and I rescued him, and he—he kissed me.”
The Witch eyed her but said nothing.
“It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” Calla breathed, curled her fingers around each other into fists. “It felt—it felt like magic. Real magic. And Father says I must stop telling silly lies, but they’re not lies. They’re real. I know they’re real. And him—he was so beautiful. So beautiful…”
The mermaid looked faintly disgusted at that.
“I want to see him again.”
“Then drown him, and keep the corpse.”
“No!”
“There are plenty of mermen in the sea. Content yourself with one of those.”
“They aren’t like him. He felt different. His skin, his warmth—he was entirely waterless, when he touched me, and—”
“That is their world. They cannot breathe underwater for a reason. And you cannot breathe above it for the same.”
“I want to be in their world,” Calla whispered.
It leaked out, like a secret she’d never known she had. But there it was. She wanted their world. In her own, she was out of place. She didn’t fit. There was something that wouldn’t let her be happy in her proper place.
And when those warm fingers had kissed her own, she’d felt it all become so—so insignificant.
“I should have been born human,” she whispered.
“Really.” The word was an idle roll as the mermaid twisted over her back and stretched. “A fanciful dream.”
“But the story is that you can do anything!”
“Stories are stories. Not real.”
“The skymen were stories, and they’re real.”
“If I could make you sprout legs and lungs, then I would, if only to remove this chirping from my home. Begone. I have no need for silly stories of love on the shore.”
“Please,” Calla begged. “The stories are that your husband used to walk above the sky. You must know how he did it. You must know some way of helping me!”
The Witch had gone very still.
Then, slowly, she rolled back onto her front.
Stared.
Then, in a swooping dive, she nearly fell from the pedestal, and towered at once over Calla, black eyes searching her face, two cold fingers pinching her jaw to examine her. The dress fell so long that her tail was entirely hidden.
And then she smiled.
Her beauty was suddenly a terrible ugliness, and something cold and terrifying hardened in Calla’s stomach.
“Yes,” the Witch murmured, as if to herself. “He would miss you.”
“I—I’m sorry?”
The fingers let go.
“There is a price.”
“For—for what?”
“I have a potion. One that my husband used. It will turn you human, and allow you to breathe in their air, but only for three days. At sunset on the third day, your body will change back, and you must return to the water.”
“Three days?”
Three days above the sky? She yearned for it, yet she recoiled from it, too. Would the Witch just give it to her? What would she have to exchange for three days? And what if she wanted more?
“I fell in love,” she whispered. “I want—I want him. What if three days isn’t enough?”
“Then you will return and beg me for more time,” the Witch said. “More likely, I think, you will fall very out of love with their world, and return gratefully to your own skin.”
Their world, perhaps. But him? That intox
icating touch, that infecting stare? The very blue of his eyes was burned into the back of her mind, and she was shaking her head before the Witch had even finished speaking.
“I love him.”
“You are infatuated with something exotic and exciting, nothing more. It will fade,” the Witch said, drifting lazily back. The dress lifted a little in the water. There was no tail, and Calla caught her breath.
“What are you?”
“A water spirit. Have you heard of me?”
“Mother—Mother said the water spirits can control the world.”
“Oh, no, nothing that exciting,” the Witch murmured, and that terrible smile emerged again. “I have magic, but—it’s been years. I haven’t brewed potions since Aht was taken from me.”
“Aht?”
“My husband.”
“He—Father said he le—”
The gardens shivered. The water chilled, and Calla clutched her arms about herself.
“Aht was forced to leave,” the Witch said. “He died alone and in agony, where it was ensured I could not follow. And now you—”
She stopped.
“Me?” Calla whispered.
“Three days,” came the abrupt reply. “Take it or leave it.”
She turned, and the water rushed around them as her enormous form swam back up to the plinth.
“Wait!”
She settled herself there, almost eel-like, and propped herself up on her elbows again. The smile was a smirk. The posture that of a gleeful merling.
Calla’s fingers trembled as she reached up imploringly.
“Please,” she said. “I need this.”
“No, you don’t. But you want it, very much.”
“Yes.”
“You will become human. The transformation will hurt a great deal, and you will be unable to breathe or swim. I suggest you get yourself to shore before you drink, unless you wish to drown. And believe me—” A hand waved as she turned over onto her back again, like a dozing seal “—it is no concern of mine if you do.”
“What—what price?”
“Hmm?”
“What do I have to pay for this potion?”
The Witch turned back over. Her eyes were black hollows in her head, and nothing more. Awful, yet Calla could not look away.
“After you change back,” she said, “you will come straight here. You will not go home. You will come straight to me. That is the price. If you do not—if you steal that potion from me—”
She curled her fingers into a fist. Something crackled in the water, and a great whiteness began to form over the slime and seaweed. Ice. Calla’s stomach turned as the cold crept up the great pillars and froze the very gardens beyond the courtyard in their places.
“—then I will come for your entire nest and eradicate every last scaled creature there.”
Calla’s voice shook. “I—I won’t steal it. I promise.”
And then—
There it was. Just like that, the ice vanished. The gardens waved, fluid and free once more. And a gourd sank from the great white roof, purple and stoppered with sponge like any drink from home. Calla cupped it carefully in both hands and felt the gentle slosh of liquid inside.
“Drink at dawn, and see your first day. And at sunset on the third, you will be turn back.” The Witch turned back over, her hair streaming down the pillar as though tied to a great weight. “I would wish you well and hope the pain does not drive you out of your mind, but—if you claim to love a man who held your hand just once, there is clearly not a mind to drive you from in the first place.”
Calla frowned. Was—that an insult? She peered down at the little bottle.
“Do I drink all of it, or—”
She looked up. The plinth was empty. The Witch had gone. And the gardens were waving, just waving, in the shadows beyond the pillars.
She had to leave.
Driven out by the stony silence and still waters, Calla clutched the bottle tight to her breast long after the Whalelands had faded away behind her, and long after the light of the sky was warming her back as she swam just shy of the surface. She searched for sounds, and just as the light above was growing brighter, found the bellies of great clouds to the south. Beyond them, when she held her breath and peeked above the sky, lay those dark, sharp rocks upon which the skyman had kissed her.
Soon, she would learn his name.
But the rocks would be dangerous. She circled them, staying low in the shallows, until around the side of the steep, sheer rock that bracketed the bay, she found a little sandy bank upon which the sky breached and great foam fingers ran up the yellow surface. Sand. When she dared to reach out of the water and touch it—thick and powdery beyond the sky’s reach—it clung to her skin, heavy and rough.
Land. Land-sand.
Here, in the shallow waters where she could just about breathe, but quickly drag herself to air once a skymaid, she uncorked the potion. Stared at the dark liquid, like squid-ink and poison, which lay still inside.
Her fingers tingled from the kiss of a myth.
She drank.
And it burned.
Chapter Ten
THAT EVENING, JANEZ dined alone.
The Winter Palace was more relaxed, with fewer guards and giving less of an impression of a fanciful gaol. Here, his every move was watched. Yet here, too, lay a little more freedom than was immediately visible to the naked eye. For the castle was old, and its history came with benefits that boys discovered one generation after the next, and forgot as age and duty slowly consumed their bodies.
But age had only just begun to dampen Janez’s enthusiasm for life into a sense of duty, and duty itself had been temporarily released upon the birth of his nephew.
So he ate alone in his rooms, and when the sun sank below the lip of the horizon, calmly walked from them and down the passage to the nursery, as though to kiss little Ingrid goodnight. Instead, in the crook of the passageway where neither his own sentries nor those at the nursery door could quite see, he ducked aside, into the tiny passage concealed behind the tapestry, and down the stone steps beyond. Halfway down, he pressed against the ledge, and opened the hidden door—and was away.
The palace was a great labyrinth of such passages, and Janez held no illusions that he’d ever found them all. But he’d found enough, and enough served his purpose. He had no desire to run from his life for long, merely long enough to clear his head, exercise his body, and then return.
He’d made the offer in seriousness. With three daughters, one was bound to make a tolerable wife. Janez found it easy to get along with most people, commoner and crown alike, and surely, at least one of the eligible princesses would make a fine companion. Love need not be part of the equation.
But…
He had always hoped not to need to. He’d resigned himself to the duty as crown prince, even steeled himself to its inevitably when the much-anticipated first child had been a girl, but with the birth of his nephew, a certain hope had flowered. Despite his station, despite his duty, Janez rather wanted love. He’d loved before. He would likely do so again. And he’d hoped, when the mantle of crown prince had passed from him to his nephew, that he might be permitted to find love, and marry that, rather than marry and hope love arrived on the scene somewhere in the rest of his days and somewhat focused upon the woman on his arm.
Alarik would scoff and call him a romantic, and Doktor Hauser would likely prescribe something foul for the notion, but there it was. Janez had hoped to marry the one he loved, rather than the one with the best birthing hips and a decent claim to a foreign throne.
Still, Sigurd was hardly a viciously ugly man, and his queen was famed for beauty. His daughters would likely all be pretty, and certainly would be well educated. If she could play a little music with Janez from time to time, or liked to dance, then perhaps they could at least brew a friendship, a companionship, and be happy with one another.
But the sense of a dashed dreamed dogged him, and he drew up his cloak to
cover his head as he emerged from the passage into the base of the western guard tower, and passed from the great oak door to cross the grass. There was a sharp breeze, west-north-west in origin, and the sounds of the high tide licking at the harbour walls rose gently off the bay. He marched, giving the impression of a soldier to anyone who might have seen him, and was soon swallowed by the shadows of the gatehouse. He stepped out without being challenged—but who cared who left? Only those who approached were of importance. And then he disappeared into the town.
It was quiet and late, the ships on guard out in the water. The little red door, found halfway down the tiny alley that ran two streets back and parallel to the harbour wall, was closed but yielded to his hand. It was dim inside, and he left his hood up against the idly curious looks cast his way. A pub, to the unsuspecting. Not, to those who picked it out on purpose. He didn’t wait downstairs, instead paying a coin to the woman at the bar, and going straight up creaky stairs to the next floor. The second door on the left was closed. He opened it anyway, and a young lady at a dressing table jumped violently, and then beamed.
“Karl, my darling! Where you be!”
The assumed name brought a smile to his face as he locked the door and hung his cloak on the hook. In a moment, the dove was on him, plucking the ribbon from his hair and taking it for herself, before working the buttons on his shirt. She loved him—if only for his money—but she did, in her own sweet way. She would embrace him later, and croon in her own tongue, and…well, she was generous for Janez, and there had been many a free turn in this little room. He often paid her double, and had asked time and again to allow him to secure her a position in the palace, with only one customer. She had only laughed though, called it a boring time, and said if he were to provide some other job, she would simply continue in her little room for free.
“Too long,” she murmured in her thick accent. “Too long, too long. Your ship, she has been away?”
“Yes,” Janez said, “and I find myself in need of distraction. Distract me, dear Rosa?”
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