Sea Witch Rising. Sarah Henning

within, “the queen mother has requested your presence in her chambers.”

      Niklas squeezes Alia’s fingers. My sister’s hand drops from his arm, obliging, as if she hasn’t just weathered the biggest blow in all her life. The boy she’s in love with, the one she rescued, the one she gambled her life on, cannot love her because his heart is wrapped up in a contract signed by his father.

      “I will see you soon, my sweet foundling.”

      And then he’s gone.

      My sister’s form slumps on the balcony, her head resting on the cross of her forearms against the railing, her shoulders heaving beneath her tumbling hair. I slip my fingers up through the slats in the balcony floor, thin ribbons of marble crosshatched beneath my sister’s feet. I touch the toe of her slipper, as light as rain. Alia’s eyes flash open, meeting mine. She immediately glances over her shoulder to the room off the balcony, clearing out from the breakfast entertainment. The guests are gone, and a few servants run about shutting the open doors.

      When all the doors are closed, Alia sinks to sit on the woven floor pretending she’s just looking out past the cove into the tip of the sea.

      My voice is low and rushed. I swing around the pole so that she can see the entirety of my face as I bark at her all the questions I can’t hold inside anymore.

      “How? Did Father keep the books we thought were destroyed? The ones Annemette used? Or did you ask them—Mette’s daughters? Why didn’t you tell me? And what happened to your voice?”

      Alia takes a deep breath and holds up her hands—watch this, her fingers spell. When we were younger, our oldest sister, Eydis, taught us hand signals she’d devised to communicate across the room during our daily lessons while our instructors’ tails were turned.

      Alia signs a single word. Witch. We used this to describe our voice instructor, who had a habit of burying us up to our necks in the sand so that we’d learn to properly project without the crutch of movement.

      But there’s only one real witch I know. Alia didn’t find the magic herself through books or rumors. She went straight to the creature who doesn’t need to know the old ways—the only one under the sea dangerous enough to try something like this.

      “You went to the sea witch?” My tone is appalled and disgusted at once—if there’s a single being beyond humans that we’ve been consistently taught to fear, it’s her. I take a deep breath and I ask, though I know what she will tell me. “And she took your voice?”

      She nods.

      My disgust squirms and twists into blatant outrage. I’d never sacrifice a life, but this. It’s all I can do to keep my voice down. “So you really can’t tell him that you love him? Who you are? What you did?”

      She shakes her head slowly, sadly.

      “What about writing? Can you do that? Tell him the story that way?”

      With another shake, she confirms it. She’s utterly defenseless. Able only to use her smile, her shining eyes, her graceful dancing, to get what she needs. She’s done well for herself to get this far, but it’s … so superficial. Not to mention, he’s about to be married.

      “That kiss didn’t do it? Didn’t appease the deal? You must earn his love,” I confirm. Alia nods and I continue. “It’s not the kiss that does it; it’s the love behind it.”

      Alia squeezes my fingers and then makes our sign for human—two fingers walking. Human love.

      “Or Øldenburg blood?” I whisper. Alia’s face blanches, and she shakes her head violently.

       No. No. No, Runa, NO.

      It’s the only other way to satisfy the spell. We know this from Annemette’s story too.

      A kiss of true love or Øldenburg blood.

      But this path isn’t one she’s entertained—not yet. In fact, given the look she gave Niklas, it’s the last thing she’ll entertain at all.

      “Alia, listen to me. You may not have a choice. His brothers and father died in the storm where you saved him. Everyone in the sea knows that.” I think of that other boy, Phillip, but his relation to Niklas is on his mother’s side. His blood will not satisfy Urda. “His might be the only Øldenburg blood available. And if that’s what it’ll take—”

      Alia shakes her head violently again, pointing at me, then her ear, then toward the door where the king made his exit. She points to herself, and through the force of her hands, the signs she’s using, the fury on her face, I understand her.

       You heard him. He knows down deep I rescued him. He loves the mermaid who rescued him. That’s me. He loves me.

      “Alia,” I say, hooking the pole with one arm and swirling my tail around the bottom so I don’t slide. I grab her trembling hands, trying to still them. I’ve always been the one to tell her the truth when her dreams push the boundaries of reality. “He loves the idea of you—this girl he plucked from the same sea he survived. He hasn’t said he believes in mermaids, has he? Or that he believes one rescued him? Or that you look just like her? No, he hasn’t.”

      I reset my grip, harder, stronger, as she shakes her head. “You can’t hang your hopes—your life—on a boy like that. The only person he’s in love with is himself. He loves the idea that Urda swept him up and saved him while his inferior brothers sank to the deep. You were just the courier.” The words feel like darts pouring from my lips, but I have to make her see.

      Alia’s shaking head gains speed, and she grits her teeth hard, a red flush gathering under her eyes.

      She points to me, and I know what she’s going to say before she signs it. I know her nearly better than I know myself.

       You don’t know him, Runa. You don’t. You’re wrong. That’s not true.

      It’s then that Alia surprises me, breaking my grip on her with such strength that I teeter back, holding on by only my tail, curled around the balcony base.

      Then she signs a single word.

       Leave.

      “No, I won’t leave you. Are you crazy? You have, what, three days? And he’ll be married by then. Alia, won’t you—”

       Leave!

      She stands, red in the face, so angry she mouths the words.

       I don’t want to see you again. If I am to die, let me die in peace.

      Then Alia turns, because if I won’t leave her, she’ll leave me.

      And she does, not even looking back, disappearing through the nearest set of French doors and into the castle.

      I slip beneath the water. All the panic I’ve pushed down rises, galvanizing within my chest, setting my heart a-skitter and my fingers trembling. The sudden need to do something holds tight to my skin, bones, heart, and tail.

      I have to stop this. This can’t happen. It can’t. There has to be a way to undo this. To save Alia from herself. I can’t have Alia fail. I can’t lose her twice.

      I must visit the sea witch.

4

       Evie

      THE LIGHT FILTERS IN SLOWLY, MY WORLD GOING FROM a sky with no stars to one with a rising sliver of moon. Beneath that weak glow, my body is a pile of lead, the casing of a ship sunk to this place, rusting and rotting as the urchins gut it out. The only energy I have left goes to trying to open my eyes further to see what, if anything,