Читать книгу Sea Witch Rising - Sarah Henning - Страница 13

“YOU CAME HERE alone?” EYDIS ASKS, A HEAVY NOTE OF big-sister protectiveness ringing out as the first strange trees surrounding the sea witch’s lair come into view.

I don’t blame her—it’s the last place any of us would ever willingly go.

“Yes,” I say, adjusting my grip on the bag in my hand—inside is Eydis’s stash of shipwreck jewels, and it’s heavy enough that both of us are carrying it. “Alia went in alone. I owed it to her to do the same.”

Actually, I was just so angry that I didn’t have the capacity to worry about swimming straight into an ancient Viking horror story.

“Is it just her in there?” Ola asks, nerves shaking her usually confident voice.

Signy rolls her eyes. “Of course it is. Didn’t you ever listen to Oma’s stories? Witches like that always live alone.”

“Ladies,” Eydis snaps, half whirling around, and my hold on the bag slips as she wrenches me with it. “It doesn’t matter if she’s lonely or popular; all that matters is that she gives us the antidote. For all the poundage in this thing”—she hoists up her end of the bag for a moment—“she can buy herself some friends.”

That shuts up everyone, all our energy focused on making it through the trees. As we draw closer, the anxiety that’s been swirling within me all day lessens and is replaced by a shifting tide of confidence. We’re here. We’re going to get what we want. We’re going to make this happen.

I speed up, swimming into the expanse of pewter sand that surrounds the witch’s lair. Gamely, Eydis increases her pace to match mine, determination set in her face. We haven’t worked it out, but I’m the one who will be doing the talking.

Despite my middle sisters’ loud jabber, the sea witch doesn’t greet us immediately when we arrive. My blood pressure spikes when I realize she’s not waiting on pins and needles, antidote in hand as she should be. This is her mess. This is our fight for the life she put at stake. She should at least have the heart to show up.

I hand Eydis my corner of the bounty and move in front of my sisters. Signy and Ola move in line with Eydis.

“Sea Witch,” I start, and my voice is clear of any trembling, that confidence that rose in my belly setting the tone. I am the baby of the family, but I’m not to be taken lightly. The sea witch will learn that too. “I’ve returned with the ríkifjor. I’ve brought my sisters as well. The antidote, please, and we’ll be on our way.”

There’s movement at the mouth of the cave, and behind me, my sisters stiffen.

But I’m not scared of the old squid.

My sisters may grow tense as she wakes, but I grow stronger, arms crossed—not protectively but with malice—my body one unwavering line, jaw cut.

The witch appears, slinking from her cave, tentacles a giant plume of liquid onyx. Her face is placid, and I know my sisters are immediately fascinated by her appearance—Eydis, her bare-moon complexion; Ola, her dramatic curls; Signy, the whole steely spectrum of her—because it’s true: she’s striking.

“Little Runa, where are your flowers?” the witch asks.

I hold up the bag. “Where would you like them?”

I don’t have to explain. The sea witch is a sharp one and understands instantly. “Will they grow anywhere, or must you have light?”

I glance around her home—it’s just as dark now as it was in the halo of morning. “Considering what we have to work with, it may not matter.”

To my surprise the witch cackles. “I didn’t choose the darkness, child, it chose me.”

She waves me over a scarred shoulder and leads me to her cave, built into the base of an enormous black rock, that must jut out and into the thick of the Havnestad night. Behind me, my sisters waver where they’re planted, deciding if they should get closer to keep an eye on me. I wave Eydis back. I can hold my own.

The witch points to a spot near the cave mouth and settles back onto her tentacles, again treating the eight of them as her throne. I reach into the bag, count out thirty seeds, and then shove the rest into my bodice, hoping she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that some seeds remain.

She asked for thirty, and I won’t give her a seed more.

Like the flowers themselves, the seeds are milky white and so luminous that they practically create their own light in this hollow place. I sprinkle them in a half circle before sinking down to the sea floor, where I use both hands to sweep a blanket of sand over the seeds.

Next comes the magic. Mine is a spell commonly used to spark life into most anything, but there’s something about the way I say it that works wonders with these finicky plants. As if they’ll only take direction from me, the charge in my blood the frequency they need to behave, grow, thrive.

“Líf. Líf. Líf,” I say, over and over—thirty times in all. The witch watches me quietly, a smile settling into the corners of her face. She was beautiful once and still is in her own way.

As the magic warms the sands beneath my hands, I think of how it’s romantic that she allegedly gave her own life to save the future king’s, except for the fact that his life led to the grandson now holding my sister’s heart captive.

Nothing about these boys should make them worth saving. Not a title. Not a handsome face. Not all the pretty words in the world.

None of that should’ve taken my sister from me.

My anger rises all over again, along with the heat from the plants. Something about it seems to make them grow faster than I’d expected, the entire lifetime—from seed to seedling to bud to bloom—elapsing in mere seconds. Behind me, the sea witch gasps, and it almost makes me smile despite my anger.

I can do something she can’t.

“You are talented, Runa,” the witch says, her chin tilted upward, but this time in admiration. She sweeps in behind me and plucks up ten of the flowers—one in each tentacle and one in each hand. Then it’s over to her cauldron, where she tosses them in, stems and all. The pot immediately starts to boil as I return to where my sisters are waiting and watching. The steam rises, and the witch inhales big belly breaths as the flowers’ sweet perfume wraps around the lair.

It’s several moments before the heat peters out, the steam dying, the boil calming. The witch dares to touch what’s inside the cauldron—pure, concentrated ríkifjor nectar—with her bare hands, cupping it into her palms and bringing it to her lips. She sips it down as we watch. After she swallows, a smile slips across her face. And though she’s a study in shades of gray, something warm seems to touch her—life and strength renewed in the darkness. When she opens her eyes, she’s staring straight at me.

“Now we may deal.”

Sensing her moment, Eydis swims forward and presents her loot. But she doesn’t cut in, allowing me to continue to be our voice. “As payment for the antidote, we have brought you jewels—rubies of Rigeby Bay, sapphires of Havnestad, emeralds and diamonds of the western countries. Some free to sell or admire on their own, others ready to wear in settings of gold, silver, pewter, and the like.”

At my pause, Eydis opens the bag just enough to reveal the glittering contents, bright even in this gray place.

The witch looks but doesn’t seem to see the beauty flashed before her. Her tone is level and matter-of-fact, her voice stronger than any time I’ve heard it. “Jewels are not what I require.”

“Pearls, then,” I say, gesturing to the one hung by golden thread at my throat. All of us—including our mother and half sisters—have them, a favorite gift from Oma Ragn. “We can easily obtain a large number of pearls in a matter of hours.”

A flicker of disgust moves across the sea witch’s face. “Definitely not pearls.”

My confidence begins to slip. Inside the safety of my rib cage, my heart stutters and teeters. “I returned with the ríkifjor. We refuse to make the same deal our sister did—you shall not make our entire generation voiceless. We’ve brought you items of great value that could buy you freedoms you haven’t seen in decades,” I say, frustration and exhaustion making my voice thick, yet higher than I’d like. I can’t sob in front of this woman. In front of my sisters. I look her dead in the eye. “What will be enough for you?”

The sea witch’s answer is immediate. And I wonder if she always knew I would return with my sisters, just like she knew I would come in the first place.

“It’s not much that I require, and it means more to me than it does to you.” She could say the same thing about our voices, so I do not find comfort in this statement, clamping my lips shut, waiting impatiently for her to go on. “All I want is the same thing from each of you: your hair.”

At this, Eydis’s breath catches. “Our hair? But why our hair—it’s not precious; it’ll grow back. You could magic it back.”

The sea witch’s face remains placid—no reaction. Simply a tilt of her head. She’s nearly the definition of bored, settling on a throne of writhing black.

“That’s exactly right; it is of no consequence to you. Hair grows. But that is what I request for what you want me to do.”

This can’t be right. It can’t be. From all of us? Something that isn’t precious, endangered, or rare?

This has to be a trap. A trick. Wrong.

The sea witch just watches us, no concern crossing her face or posture, as she waits to be paid.

Unease growing in my belly and in my teetering heart, I nod, telling myself it’s not what she wants; it’s what she needs for the antidote. Maybe she needs a piece of us to return our missing piece.

The witch seems to sense the tide turning her way. She extends a hand to me. “Come then, let us take your hair.”

One by one, the witch seats us on a sandstone block next to her cauldron and, using a plain knife fashioned of razor-thin coral, slices our hair up to our chins. Eydis sits first, and, without planning it, we go in birth order. Ola next. Then Signy. Then me. Every lock is tossed without a second glance into the cauldron.

When she’s finished, I straighten, nose to nose with the sea witch, awaiting our antidote. The murky water feels cool against my neck, and I tell myself it’s simply a new sensation and not my nerves settling in. We’ve done our part; now she will do hers and then we’ll save Alia from her quest.

“Very good then, my girls. You’ll have what you need, along with instructions as to what must be done.”

I expect the sea witch to return to her cave, rifle around, and come back to us with another little glass bottle filled with a shimmering liquid.

Instead, the witch hands me the knife she used to cut our hair. I stare at it, the words dying in my mouth. The witch brings a silky tentacle to my chin and tips my head up so that I can do nothing but stare into her dark blue eyes.

“Find your sister at the waterside and give her this knife. If she does not gain the boy’s love in return by the end of her fourth full day on land, she must plunge this knife into his heart, letting the blood drip upon her feet. When his life-force is gone and his blood has anointed her new body, she will be human for the remainder of her days.”

“She can’t come back to us?” Eydis asks. “She can no longer be a mermaid?”

The witch’s voice is level and clear. It’s a dagger to each of our hearts. “Oh no. Never. That isn’t how the magic works.”

No. That’s not right. The words tumble out as I try to grab a breath.

“But Queen Mette—”

“Queen Mette’s magic was something else altogether—the joining of this world’s magic with the magic above.”

She says it like it’s a fact. That Father’s first queen was able to achieve something we can’t. My guts sour and pucker. I glare at the knife in my palm, wondering whether, if I murder this witch right now, my sister will automatically sprout fins and be called home. The weapon is sharp enough to slice a finger straight through with barely any pressure. There’s definitely magic in it, but it isn’t what we asked for.

What’s more—it won’t work.

Alia’s face on the balcony when I suggested this as an option flashes through my mind. I know my sister, stubborn and romantic to the core. She won’t murder Niklas under any circumstance, even if it means she’ll rot from the inside out.

This was supposed to be an antidote—an alternative to get her home.

“But that describes your magic too,” I say, lobbing the sea witch’s logic back to her. Reminding her of who she was. I move from my seat to my full height, daring to bear down on this witch, reclined on her stupid tentacles. “Which means you have the antidote. You have what Mette had. We kept our end of the deal. This isn’t an antidote; it’s a murder weapon. We agreed on the antidote.”

The witch straightens herself to her full length, giving me a taste of my own medicine, staring down her nose at me. Her presence is more than her frame—the entire cove seems to join her in staring me down, the weight of it all pressing into me. On all sides, her strange trees seem to curve inward, their skeletal limbs reaching out for me, my sisters, our anger.

“You know nothing of my power. And it was you who said the word antidote, Runa. I did not,” the sea witch says. “I told you I’d give you what you need. And what you need is this knife.”