Runa
“You will have your voice for only a few more moments, my dear. Use the time wisely.”
The girl swallows again and then takes a heavy breath.
“I first saw Niklas on the day I turned fifteen. It could be called love at first sight—but I’d seen his face before. In a statue I’ve had in my castle garden since I turned ten. Those red flowers I brought you, they grow—”
“Yes, the Øldenburgs love their statues,” I say, sounding again very much like Hansa. “There is yet to be love in this story. Only coincidence and horticulture.”
The girl licks her lips and recasts. “I stayed beside the boat all night, watching this boy. Then, after midnight, a great storm came, waves crashing down so hard, the ship toppled onto its side. The sailors were in the water, but I didn’t see the boy.” Here, her voice hitches. “I dove down until I found him. His limbs were failing him, and his eyes were closed. I pulled him
Reflexively, my tentacle tightens around her waist as I’m reminded of Annemette, even though I’ve read enough to know this story by heart. A storm, a shipwreck, a savior.
“And?” I ask.
“I placed him beside a great building. I stayed to watch, hiding among some rocks, covered in sea foam. Soon, a beautiful girl found him and sounded the alarm. I knew then that he would live. He awoke, and was smiling at the girl.”
“No smile for you?”
“No.” The determination returns to her voice. “But I wanted that smile—I want it now. I want him to know that I saved him. That I love him. And I want him to love me.”
Ah. She’s lied to me.
“But you said he already does.”
The girl looks away, caught. Finally, she continues. “For the past year, I’ve watched him. And I know if I could just be human, he would love me. He thinks he’s in love with the girl from the beach, but I saved him. I saved Niklas.”
Like Anna, this girl believes she deserves something and she’s willing to risk her life and all she knows for it. But this girl doesn’t crave revenge.
She wants a happily ever after.
And for that, I cannot blame her. Even after all these
“It is very stupid of you,” I say finally, “but you shall have your way.”
—From the final pages of Sea Witch
THE SHARPEST OF THINGS KEEPS ITS EDGE EVEN IN THE dullest of settings.
And so, my coral knife shines through the shadows I call home. Rendered ghost white with magic, the serrated blade sharp is enough to cleave a single hair in two.
Beautiful. Deadly. Perfect.
I only hope it’s enough for when they arrive.
Because in the hours since the little mermaid left the sea for land, chasing her true love, I felt it. A tug. A thread pulled clear and released.
I felt it in my bones, rotting through the marrow, septic in my lungs, gut, and heart, and yet, this jolt of pain was bound to come. It needed to come. The sea’s monopoly is not sustainable.
In the time that I’ve lived below the surface, the magical balance has shifted, the power slowly tipping from land to sea, until the majority of the land’s magic had sunk to the depths of the sea king’s domain, destined to obey an unnatural master. Now the imbalance is so glaring it’s all I can see beyond the lair that is my cage, beyond my forest of polypi, the fissures in the earth bubbling with turfmoor, and the violent whirlpools spinning sirens in the deep. Past the eerie blue radiance of the sea king’s castle and its grounds, magic teems, heavy, overflowing.
After the little mermaid left, I began to think how impossible it is that the magic on land has all but died away, though it’s simple, really. There were so few of us witches. Hunted, killed, banished. We were eliminated one by one for centuries, until the land was nearly drained of its magic and those who knew how to control it. From Maren Spliid and her death at the hands of the witch-hunter king, all the way through the years to me, each of us cast into the afterlife. But I did not die, not in every way, and so my magic is still my own, a mix of land and sea.
I remember my time above, and the thaw inside me crystallizes, clear and blue. I was a witch turned underground by fear—I didn’t even know how to use my strength. It was how Tante Hansa tried to keep me safe. Hiding away my power, repressing it. As if it were something that could be shuttered away in a cupboard from prying