“I’ll go fetch the minister—”
“Not yet,” the mother said, determination ringing in her voice. The girl’s mother stood at the edge of the bed, her shoulders now pin straight, her voice calm and direct. “There is one more spell I can try.”
With gentle fingers, she painted octopus ink across the little girl’s cheeks, down her neck, and across her chest. Then her mother laid her hands gently over the girl’s chest.
“Don’t you worry, Evie.”
The words she said next were old and dark, and the little girl didn’t understand them. They made her blood crackle like the fire across the room. Stole the air from the cottage. Made her mother shake, violently, as she held her hands to her daughter’s skin.
The little girl couldn’t do anything but watch her mother,her veins singing. Soon, her mother’s palms on her skin became more than damp. They began to burn.
And then the pain stopped. Air rushed into the little girl’s lungs, and her chest rose. She exhaled, long and deep.
At that the girl’s mother smiled—just before her own body began to seize, her eyes rolling back in her head.
It was too much. The mother’s chest compressed, a long breath pushing out—but no inhale following.
“Greta! Greta!” The girl’s father placed his hands on his wife’s face, his palms burning and flying away, suddenly red.
The prickle in the little girl’s blood spiked with fear. She struggled to pull herself to sit, her mother’s hands sliding away as her form slumped over and her pale cheek smashed into the bedsheet. The little girl didn’t hesitate, reaching for her mother’s potions. She turned her mother’s head to face upward before smearing ink across those pale cheeks, her little fingers blistering with the touch. Her own skin was pink and warm and full of life as her mother’s skin turned as white as snow, as hot as ash.
The girl was smart, though. She’d watched her mother enough. She knew how these spells worked. Magic was barter—the right words, actions, potions for the right result.
She put her hands on her mother’s face and began repeating those strange words.
Words of life.
“Evelyn, no!” Her father didn’t move, just screamed, fear freezing him to his spot at the foot of the bed.
But the little girl had fumbled her way through the wordsenough that her own skin began to grow hot. The pain returned. Her breath became shallow. Then her mother’s eyes flew open, showing beautiful hazel instead of the whites.
It was working.
Her father looked from his wife to his daughter. Those words were dark. Old. Powerful. He knew this as much as he knew his native tongue.
Her mother’s lips began moving. She took a deep breath.“Gefa!”With this single command, she stole the words right from the little girl’s mouth. Dark words and dark magic and all sound gone from the girl’s powerful tongue.
Still, the child kept going, chest heaving—she was yelling but could not be heard. Tears as dark as night flowed down her little cheeks. Black coating her vision, the girl began to wail without sound, her whole body shaking.
And, with her last wisp of energy, the girl’s mother looked to her father.
“Bring Hansa home. Tell her. Promise.”
As he nodded, her mother whispered one last spell, and the little girl’s screams filled the air, black tears dripping onto her ruined dress.
“No, Mama, no!”
The little girl grabbed her mother’s hand, still burning to the touch, and saw the light flee from her hazel eyes.
1
THE SEA IS A FICKLE WITCH.
She is just as likely to bestow a kiss as to steal the breath from your lips. Beautiful and cruel, and every glimmering wrinkle in between. Filling our bellies and our coffers when she is generous. Coolly watching as we don black and add tears to her waters when she is wicked.
Only the tide follows her moods—giving and taking at the same salty rate.
Still, she is more than our witch—she’s our queen.
