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I had, however, come to a decision. One that I knew would change my life forever. Tatianna might not tell our father, but she would tell someone. And word would get to the Sea King eventually. His anger would be great, for there was nothing he hated more than being disobeyed. I had already learned that lesson, and who could say what he would do to me next?
I knew one thing for certain: I wouldn’t be there to find out.
CHAPTER 4
There was nothing else for me to do but to go to the Sea Witch. I’d heard tales about her all my life—formidable fables told in hushed whispers of a creature cursed to be more dead than alive, but more powerful than almost any merman living.
She was probably also on my father’s list of forbidden things, except that he had never spoken of her. The only tales I’d heard of her were from my sisters, and when I’d run to my nurse crying and begging her to tell me they hadn’t been true, she’d sighed and taken me on her lap, wrapping her arms around my quaking body.
“Not all things that frighten us are true, and not all of those things are bad. The Sea Witch is both those things, child.”
Nothing else had ever been said about it. Nothing else needed to be said. I knew my nurse would never lie to me.
But as I swam toward the cove, the one at the very bottom and the farthest corner of the sea, I also knew there was no one else that could help me.
The ocean looks different here. I gazed out at wild, purplish vines and the nearly black seafloor. I was determined not to lose my nerve, but what I saw just outside the cove did cause me to pause. Yellow lights, like the ball in the sky, except with a glowing, sinister quality.
I’d thought they were lights, but the more I looked the more I became convinced they were eyes. Eyes watching me and my every move. I shuddered, but before I could lose my nerve, I heard a thin, reedy voice.
“Who dares come this way? Are you fool or foe that would seek the Sea Witch in her own home? Or both?”
The voice was soft, and yet, somehow, I heard it as though she was right next to me.
“Come in, if you dare. I promise not to eat you—at least, not until I hear what you want.”
I turned and looked behind me. Atlantis was not so very far away that I couldn’t see the dim lines of it in the distance. But now that I had come this far, it might as well have been in another world altogether.
Steeling myself, I turned toward the cave and began to swim inside. I kept my eyes on those ghoulish yellow things even once I was inside.
“Well, well. What have we here?”
And though I heard the thin, high-pitched voice, I still saw nothing but pitch darkness, save the eyes.
“What a pretty little thing you are, child.”
“Where… where are you?” I asked, hating the quaver in my voice.
The Sea Witch laughed, and it was a terrible sound without mirth. “Right here.” And then there was a sound that made me gasp and the cave was filled with light.
The things I’d thought were eyes had swam up and now I saw it was two things, eels twining together and illuminating the cave. It was a horrible, small, and cramped and dirty place.
And then I saw her. The Sea Witch was… a mermaid, like me.
A gasp lodged in my throat, and she began laughing again. It sounded like someone being choked to death.
“Dear child, dear child. Am I not what you expected?”
“I…” Words deserted me and my only answer was a shudder.
She was wearing something like a smile, except there were only blackened roots in her mouth and missing teeth. “I know what the stories say.” She was almost conversational, and that frightened me even more—the ease with which she spoke to me. “Mermen whisper all kinds of things about me, but no one seems to expect that I’m one of them.”
“But… how can that be?” My mind was whirling. “Mermen come to you, do they not?”
“They do.” She laughed that terrible laugh.
I jutted my chin out proudly, determined that she not see the way she made me quake inside.
The Sea Witch’s dark eyes missed nothing, and I felt her gaze rest on my fin. I moved to hide it, but it was too late. “Oh, I see.”
