WE ARE NOT EVEN OUT OF VIEW FROMANNA’S HOUSEwhen Annemette stops me short by grabbing both my hands, tugging me to a thatch of trees just outside the queen’s tulip garden.
“The first time you saw me, you called me Anna. And Tante Hansa mentioned an Anna too. Now this woman insists I’m her grandchild. Who is this girl? How do you know her?”
“Knew her. She’s dead.”
Annemette’s gaze softens.
I swallow but hold her eyes. The tug-of-war in my heart has ended—the little voice in my head has received a chance to be heard.
“She’s the person I think you were before you were a mermaid.”
She pitches a brow. “What do you mean before I was amermaid? Like my soul? What is it that they believe in the spice lands... reincarnation?”
“No, not reincarnation—thepersonyou were before, the person you were made from.”
“I was only made of my mother and father,” she says with certainty. “There’s no other way to make a mermaid.”
“But what if there is?” I flip our grip, and I’m now grasping her wrists. “I know it’s crazy, but my best friend, Anna Liesel Kamp, drowned four years ago. She resembled every inch of you but younger—blond hair, deep-blue eyes, freckles across the bridge of her nose. Beyond looks, she loved to sing. She was spirited, she was—”
“Evie, how many blondes have we seen here these past few days? A hundred? A thousand? I’m sure that Malvina has three blond sisters of her own. There are more blondes in Havnestad than under the entire sea. How many girls have blue eyes? Like to sing? Give cheeky answers?”
“I know, but—”
“That’s not evidence, it’s coincidence.” Annemette shakes out of my grasp and points in the direction of the hordes on the beach. “All these people must remember Anna, but except for that ancient woman, your old tante, and you, not a one has mistaken me for her this entire time.”
“Because they think you’redead!”
Annemette throws down her arms, clenching her fists. Frustration has gotten the best of me, too, and I feel as if I have no measure for how loud my words are. I don’t knowif I screamed them or whispered them. All I know is that Annemette’s face has shifted from annoyed to concerned. I open my mouth to say that Nik and Iker see the resemblance too, but she’s already speaking.
“You think I’m her—you have this whole time...”
“In the beginning yes, and then, no. It was you I became friends with, Annemette, but has a part of me hoped—believed—you were always Anna? Of course!”
The second the words are out, I realize how strongly that belief has been driving me. I haven’t just been imagining what an alternate future would have been like with Anna; I really believed it was happening. And is happening now.
I lower my voice and turn my back to the tulip garden. “Anna drowned. Her body was never recovered. And then, suddenly, you pop out of the same water, the spitting image of her. What am I supposed to think?”
Annemette’s face is completely buttoned up. Her lips are screwed shut, her eyes closed; a wall of hair shields her ears. I realize she’s preparing to answer me, but I can’t take the silence.
“How well do you remember your childhood?” I ask. “Do you remember it at all? What were you doing five years ago? Ten? Who is your oldest friend?”
Finally, when she opens her eyes, there is anger there, though her tone is subdued and her words completely ignore my questions.
“I am sorry for your loss, Evie, but I am not your friend. I am not her. I am Annemette.” She lowers her voice here, her voice cracking with pain. “Besides, your dream isn’t possible for almost the very reason why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?”
She’s now in my face, the set of her jaw is angry, her nose at a subtle flare. “Mermaids don’t have souls, Evie, not like you humans. I couldn’t be created from someone who did. Your friend Anna is in a better place, not in this body that will become nothing but sea foam.”
Her crushing words hit me one by one, diminishing nearly all my hope. Then one of Tante Hansa’s sayings floats across my mind:The only thing magic cannot do is know its bounds. Anything is possible. I open my mouth to say more, to argue this one more point, but Annemette puts up her hand.
“Stop, Evie. Just stop. You’re only hurting yourself.”
I look at her closely. Is she really Anna? And then I hear her words echo from a moment before:Your dream isn’t possible for almost the very reason why I’m here.My blood begins to rise.
“Why are you here?” I ask, my eyes squinting at her every inch.
“What do you mean? I love Nik,” she says.
