When he’s gone and all is quiet except for the stormhe’s created above, I answer him.
“No, it isn’t.”
I swim to my cauldron, still toppled flat on its side. I return it to its base and inspect the contents. Most of my serum spilled into the sea, but some clung to the pot’s curves.
Dear Urda, please let it be enough.
I get the fire going below, and the contents begin to boil, steam lifting to my face.
When it’s good and hot, I again pierce the skin of my breast, this time right above my heart. The blood drips into the cauldron in fat rivulets. After a dozen good drops, I reach down with my left hand, Nik’s ring shining on my finger.
The contents should burn but they don’t. Instead, the warmth of a summer afternoon streams up my arm, swaddling my heart in the sweet, luscious memory of true freedom. Of stick princesses and sand castles, and days defined by the tide rather than titles, duty, and secrets.
There’s no blinding light. Shock of smoke. Searing, freeing, just-get-through-it pain. No. It’s more like the turn of a key. I’m not changed. My tentacles still coil beneath me. My lungs still find enough oxygen in the water to sustain me. My heart beats and buckles for what has happened and what is to come.
But I am free.
I sprint for the limits of my lair, no hesitation. Thistime it won’t be as if I’ve smashed into an unbreakable wall of glass when I reach where the gray of my home bleeds into the azure of open waters. For the first time in half a century, I can leave.
Into the open sea and moving fast, seeking the sea king and his generals before it’s too late.
The sea is choppy, the winds above ravaging more than the surface. The water is clogged with black-eyed fish, stunned belly-up by whatever magic the sea king has already used. He may not only send his people on a suicide mission, he may kill all the creatures below in his quest for power as well.
I swim faster until the taste of blood settles in the back of my throat. My heart pounds and lungs clench. My muscles burn, but the path ahead is clear. I follow their magic building, like it’s the strongest current in the ocean.
Up ahead, the noon-sky iridescence of the sea kingdom shimmers in the distance. The castle rises in spires and strokes of coral and sand, every glittering thing under the sea affixed to its walls. Homes cluster at the foot of the castle, separated from nobility by acres of gardens, pinned together in plots by orderly paths of sandstone and pearls. At midnight on the sundial layout is a fat swath of vines, shriveled and black.
Runa’s garden—the ríkifjor. All dead.
And that is where the polypi generals have congregated. Above them, a string of mines. Long enough to takeout a good portion of the castle, the rubble barreling full-force onto the dwellings below.
He’s mad. Completely mad.
I swim faster.
“Don’t do it, Your Highness!” I yell, as much for him as for his generals, and for the people sleeping below. They need to know the truth apart from what he’s sold them. I will scream at the top of my lungs until he is revealed for the urchin he is.
His golden head whips around; true surprise again rings his features. Below, windows spark with light, the citizens waking. Yes, please wake. Please see your king.
“Don’t set off those mines! Your people will suffer!”
Groggy faces begin to appear in each window and balcony, eyes trained on us above.
I won’t just let them see. I’ll tell them. Loudly.
“Your king—”
An explosion rips through my words and the sea, water shooting in every direction.
“Tjald!”I scream. A leaf-green light shoots from my fingertips, running straight toward the massive cloud of debris. In a blink, a canopy of light stretches and curves with the weight of the explosion, catching the massive disturbance and holding the weight until the force of the bomb dissipates.
I assume one of the polypi generals not only armed the thing as told but also accidentally set it off by brushing upagainst it. No matter how it happened, the sea king has realized two can play at my game.
“The sea witch’s magic set off the mine! Look at it! The traces are still there!” he yells, as if he’s not wearing his golden armor and his crown, as if he rolled out of bed and heroically ran to save the day. “I’m disarming them!”
It’s a feeble string of lies, but when you’re as practiced as he, it sticks. I won’t answer to it. Instead, I make sure there’s no way he can hurt his people for real this time.
“Gœ∂alauss!”I shout, stripping each mine of its explosive power. Making them barren.
