Sea Witch

FOUR YEARS BEFORE

The sun was out, as fierce and as hot as possible in Havnestad. It wasn’t as fierce or hot as it is in other places, but memorable to those in the mild-mannered Øresund Kingdoms, much more accustomed to Mother Nature’s cold shoulder than her steamy smile, though it was the height of summer.

Two girls, one with waves of blond, one with curls of black, pranced along the shoreline. Their voices lifted toward the naked June sun, carried aloft by a deep wind from within the strait.

A boy, already as tall as a man, trailed them, piccolo to his lips, writing a tune for the girls’ merry lyrics.

Despite the sun, the main beach was clear, the majority of Havnestad hauling fish and hunting whales at sea, the bustle of a modern economy weathering a boom. They would flood the shores with catch and tales soon enough, returning that night for the days-long Lithasblot festival and the midsummer full moon. For now, the whole stretch of sand belonged to the two girls and their boy.

The waves, heavy and exuberant, churned in the strong wind, tossing themselves at the girls’ ankles—bare without anyone there to correct them. The boy’s boots were on—his feet were gangly and hairy in a way they hadn’t been last summer, and he didn’t want the girls to see. He stayed on dry sand, just beyond the waves’ reach, coal-dark eyes pinned on the girls’ delicate toes, which also seemed to have changed in a year, but only maybe in the way he couldn’t look away from the flash of skin beneath their skirts.

They went on like that until the girls suddenly stopped—singing, prancing, everything—so suddenly that the boy bumped into the raven-curled girl’s back. She laughed it off, but both girls’ eyes were locked on the sea. Watching the whitecaps with wonder, adventure flashing in their eyes.

The one with the blond waves and ocean-blue eyes spoke first. “She’s angry—foaming at the mouth.”

“Are you calling the sea a rabid dog?” asked the raven-haired one. “She wouldn’t like that much.”

“I suppose not.”

A black brow pitched above eyes blue like midnight. “Touch the sandbar and return to shore?” She smiled, lips pinned in a slight twist. “Dare you.”

The blond girl considered it, chewing on her lip, reading the waves. Finally, in answer, she began unlacing her dress’s bodice.

The boy sat on the sand behind the girls, playing the piccolo so they’d think he was distracted, not paying an inch of attention to them as they stripped to their petticoats. Even in surreptitious glances, their shoulders and arms were things of beauty, smooth as the marble statues his mother had commissioned for the tulip garden. So beautiful they made his cheeks hot. He knew he should not look—it wasn’t right, not at the age they were getting to be—but still, he watched.

The blond girl watched back, her eyes finding him, cheeks pinking as her clothes fell to the sand. The raven-curled girl thwacked her on the shoulder, dark eyes big and knowing. No secrets between friends, except those in plain sight.

When the girls were ready, they stood, dresses neatly folded, and pointed slim fingers toward the sea.

On the count of three, they were gone.

5

I DON’T BELIEVE IN MERMAIDS. I DON’T. THEY ARE JUST an abomination ancients like Tante Hansa dream up to keep children from doing especially dim-witted things. If you touch that hot pot . . . if you eat that whole cake . . . if you take that candy . . . the mermaids will steal you away. We’re superstitious, children of the sea, but we’re not gullible.

Mermaids don’t exist.

But I know what I saw. I know who I saw.

Nik, for his part, doesn’t seem to remember much. He thinks I rescued him. He thinks I sang to him.

It’s been more than a day, and I still haven’t told him that he’s lost his mind if he thinks that’s what happened. Mostly because I don’t have an answer to what really did. None of it makes any sense.

No, I don’t believe in mermaids.

But I do have a strong belief in friendship—more than anything in this world.

I believed it with Anna.

And I believe it with Nik.

Iker—I don’t know what to think of Iker, though he’s standing right before me on the royal dock, borrowed crew packing a borrowed ship behind him.

“Come—the sea calls.” Iker brushes away a few of my curls and cups his hand about my ear as if to amplify the sea’s ancient voice. He leans down, his cheek brushing right against mine, his lips warm next to my skin as he whispers, “Evelynnnnn.”

His enthusiasm makes my heart skip, and I wish I could go, but Father is leaving this morning as well, and he hates the idea of me being aboard a different ship while he is at sea too. He’s superstitious to a fault, even if it’s just for a quick trip up the Jutland and back before Sankt Hans Aften and the opening of the Lithasblot festival. Iker is enchanted by sightings of a large whale—one that would feed Rigeby Bay for weeks in both meals and trade. I hate it, but I know Iker must go—the seafaring season waits for no one, not even a prince.

“I’m so very sorry to disappoint,” I say. And I am. This time with him has been strangely magical, even if all we’ve done is sit with Nik, telling stories to make him smile as he recovers.

“Too late, the sea is already disappointed—your skills during the storm were top-notch. You’re a sailor she needs upon her waves.” His eyes flash, the curve of his mouth serious. Vulnerable, even, as strange as that is. But I don’t—I can’t—let myself think that it’s he who needs me and not the sea. Reality doesn’t work that way.

“The sea will have to wait.”

“And so will I.” He bends down to kiss me then, and though it’s the second time, it’s still a shock—a deep dive into ice-capped waters.

“You don’t have to go,” I say when we part, my voice small and slurred.

“What’s that?” he says, pretending not to have heard. “You don’t have to stay?”

He grabs my hand in both of his and begins to tug me toward the ship, full of crew waiting for his instruction. “Splendid, let’s get going—you steer; I’ll sip portvin and keep an eye out for the whale.”

I laugh and let him tug me a little farther up the gangplank than I should. In my heart, I don’t believe in Father’s superstitions. And yet I have superstitions of my own. Nik is still recovering. I can’t leave. What if he took a turn for the worse while I was gone?

No, I must stay.

Iker will come back. He says he will.

I know he will.

Something changed that night on the steamer. More during the storm than in the huddled moments before—we’d seen each other in our element. The salt of the sea, the both of us. And despite choosing to stay, it is the very last thing I want Nik to know about. Most especially the kissing. But it shouldn’t be too hard to keep a secret from my best friend—after all, I’ve been keeping my magic from Nik his whole life.

I step down from the gangplank and onto the dock. With a wave and a shout to his crew, Iker is off, taking our secret leagues away as I tuck it deep within me. I watch as he leaves the harbor, standing there just long enough to glimpse him turning back, my hand ready to wave. And then I set out for one more good-bye and my daily duties, Tante Hansa’s amethyst heavy in my pocket.

No, I don’t believe in mermaids. But I am willing to believe in whatever it is that happens when I kiss the amethyst to the bow of my father’s ship before an expedition. What happens when I cast the spell I created using centuries-old magical wisdom.

It’s only been a few weeks, but already it has worked, bringing in far more catch than by this time last year. I smile when I see the fishermen celebrating on the docks now. After four years of suffering through the Tørhed, a barrenness so severe the town’s fishing fleet decreased by half, these hearty cheers are welcome sounds. I haven’t heard them since before Anna’s death; the grumbles from tired fishermen coming ashore to restock on salted meat and limes have filled our ears instead.

After three years of the Tørhed, King Asger knew that praying to the gods was no longer enough. Havnestad had to find a new way to stay afloat. The royal steamship was ordered, and any man not at sea was put to work building the boat from late summer to first frost, shaping wood, and fitting sheets of metal to the smokestack.

But even that ship, hammered together by the strength of this fine town, was not enough to keep all of Havnestad’s bellies fed. The steamer was a one-time measure. Even the crown can’t afford a new ship every year.

I had to do something.

So, as I’ve done since the summer of Anna’s death, I stole into Tante Hansa’s room while she was off playing her weekly turn of whist down at Fru Agnata’s shack. Hansa’s bedroom is a stifling place, with the fire lit every night, even in the summer. Dried roses line the walls in a ring as high as she can reach—the hundreds of them a testament to her belief that their scent and beauty are superior to the tulips so popular throughout the Øresund Kingdoms.

Beneath the line of roses, in a corner opposite the flue, there’s a sea chest draped in shadow and an ancient moose hide. Inside is everything the Øldenburgs fear, all they have banished by law: gemstones, age-stained books, cobalt bottles sealed with pinches of cork and wax. The very same items Tante Hansa used on me when I resurfaced in Nik’s arms four years ago, Anna nowhere to be found. When I’d been in bed, nearly dead myself, watched over by Hansa and spoon-fed elixirs tasting of perfume and age. And aged they certainly are, passed down in shadow generations for centuries. Someday they will belong to me, I suppose.

That day I took a purple stone—one so small that I hoped it would escape Hansa’s notice, but big enough to have an impact. I snagged one of the tattered books with crumbling spines, too, fishing it out from where it was packed under a cake of beeswax and a marble mortar and pestle.

Hours after lights out, I crept down to the beach, but well beyond Havnestad Cove. As the shoreline thins, becoming one with the rocky mountain, sharp boulders jut out from the sea. The water is deeper there and the waves choppy, but in between the shadow of two large rocks is a swath of sand. Overhead, stone from the edge of Havnestad has formed into a perfect arch, the result of Urda coaxing the sea into this crevice for thousands of years.

This place doesn’t have a name, as far as I know. I’ve never seen anyone come here, and it’s hidden from view on the beach and by the boulders from the sea. I’ve taken to calling it Greta’s Lagoon, after my mother. She would have liked a place like this. Deep in the shadows of the lagoon is a small cave barely large enough to fit two, but it’s plenty big to store the few tinctures and inks Tante Hansa has entrusted to me.

I moved away the few small boulders I use to hide the entrance and lit a candle. With the amethyst stone cradled in one hand, I slid the book under the meager light. The words were ancient and yet familiar, recalling our great goddess, Urda, and the power she bestows on the land and sea. As the waves splashed against the rocks outside, I read the scrawl over and over, swirling the spells across my tongue. It took until nearly daylight, but finally I could feel the magic tingle in my blood.

After nearly three months of practice, I spelled Father’s boat for the first time.

Three days after that, he came home with his first whale in more than two years. It was thin, but fat enough for all the joy that came with it.

Now the spell is a must.

The need to keep Father safe and prosperous is thick in my veins each morning when I wake, jamming my heart with anxiety until I can do my job. My part.

Even when I’ve done my duty and he’s away for days, I come to the harbor and spell any ship docked and still. The fishermen are used to seeing me daily now. They don’t seem to find it strange that I’m always there, letting my closed palm trail along the salt-worn bodies of ships, old and trusty.

And today is the day I begin to do more. Along with what I cannot claim, I have been working away on something I can. Something all of Havnestad will recognize as helpful and not some fate of Urda.

“Evie, my girl!” Father is hauling a crate up to the deck of his whaler—Little Greta, also named for my mother. There isn’t a single crate of supplies left on the dock beside the ship. I’ve only just caught him. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

I laugh lightly, fingers tight over the gem in my palm. “Just because I want you to stay doesn’t mean I’ll miss you going.”

Father’s mouth settles into a tart line, the sun spots marring his forehead crinkling up to his black hair—he’s Italian by birth, though he’s Danish through and through.

We walk up the gangplank together. He drops the crate two feet from the innovation I know will make these desolate seas that much easier to fish—a permanent cure my magic cannot provide. Mounted proudly to the mainmast, half-harpoon, half-rifle, my darting gun looks as shiny and perfect as I’d hoped.

Father hugs me close. “My Evelyn, the inventor.”

“It was nothing,” I say, though we both know that’s not true. It took me the whole winter to create one from an old rifle and modified harpoon, but if my calculations are correct, the contraption will send out both a bomb lance and a tether harpoon, narrowing the chances of a whale escaping. If all goes well with Father’s maiden voyage, we might be able to transform the way Havnestad snags its whales.

“It’s not nothing. It’ll be a revolution.”

I tilt my face up to his, brow raised. “It’ll still be a revolution if you wait a week.”

Father bristles at the sore spot between us. He’s not the only fisherman headed out during the festival, though far more are staying than leaving, bolstered by their recent luck—my recent help. But he’s the only one I care about. And, as the royal fisherman, he’s the only one King Asger cares about as well.

“There will be other Lithasblot festivals, Evelyn. If you’ve been pelted with bread once, you’ve been pelted with bread a thousandfold.”

“But—”

He cuts me off with rough fingers on the point of my chin.

“But nothing. I have to seize my luck while it’s there.” Father’s grizzled old thumb settles on my bottom lip. “I’ll return for the close of the festival—the ball.”

Despite my disappointment at yet another good-bye, I form a tight smile after his words. “If you’ve seen me once in my only nice dress, you’ve seen me a thousandfold.”

He leans in and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, his beard both soft and rough against my skin.

“Take care of Hansa, my dear.”

I hug him to my chest, the cloying scent of pipe tobacco catching in my lungs.

“If only she’d allow such a thing, I would.”

He releases me with a single squeeze of my forearm. I turn for the gangplank, one last look at both him and my first stab at whaling innovation. When I’m back on the sun-ruined wood of the dock, Father yells for his men to hoist up the gangplank and anchor.

Before he’s gone, and with the sailors distracted by departure duties, I take my chance and press my little stone to the ship, right under my mother’s name, painted in block letters across the stern. My eyes flutter to a close, and I whisper my spell into the breeze coming in off the Øresund Strait.

6

IT’S A PERFECT NIGHT FOR BURNING WITCHES.

That’s what Sankt Hans Aften is, after all. A celebration in the name of ridding people like me from this earth through flames, drowning, banishment—whatever seemed right at the time.

Today, thankfully, witches are only burned in effigy. It’s the traditional opening of Havnestad’s version of Lithasblot. Ours is the earliest in the Øresund Strait, but we’re also the longest festival, five whole days, drawing people from all around to watch the games, sing songs in celebration of Urda, and taste plates of tvøst og spik: black whale meat, pink blubber, and sunny potatoes. Even through the Tørhed, the people of Havnestad have always been willing to sacrifice their limited food supply to honor the goddess.

As the bonfire grows hot, shooting tendrils of flames high into the salmon-toned sky, the festival is ready to begin. First is King Asger’s speech of love and gamesmanship.

Now Nik’s speech of love and gamesmanship.

For on the night of that treacherous storm, Nik, thankfully, still came of age. And as tradition demands, he must take the reins of the festival—near-drowning is not an excuse.

Thus, since regaining most of his strength, he’s been shut away, pacing the halls of the palace with his father’s words on his lips. I’ve heard him run through it twice—before his birthday and after, and both times he was excellent, if not a hair too fast. Still, that’s just because this is new to him. I know he’ll be amazing.

But Crown Prince Asger Niklas Bryniulf Øldenburg III, first in line to the throne of the sovereign kingdom of Havnestad, does not share my assessment.

Nik is nearly white with nerves. His long fingers shake as he tugs his hair flat. This day is already hard for the both of us—the fourth anniversary of Anna’s drowning—and with the pressure of the speech added atop that, Nik looks as if he might keel over.

I don’t hesitate to snag a hand and press my fingers around his. Somehow, seeing him so nervous calms my own reservations—about my innovation’s trial run with Father, about the fact Iker has yet to arrive. I squeeze Nik’s fingers. “You’ve done nothing but practice for the past week. You’ll be just fine.”

“But I’m not cut out for this, Evie.”

“Of course you are! You’re cut from the Øldenburg cloth. Kings for a thousand years.” I lean in, my face consuming his vision. “This speech is in your blood.”

Nik turns red and averts his gaze. “I think that particular blood spilled out of me when I bashed my leg on that rock at ten.”

I nearly laugh, thinking of Nik passing out at the sight of his own blood. Right in the middle of a trail leading up Lille Bjerg Pass. Anna and I stripped off our stockings and tied them tightly above the gash across his shin before bracing him between us and hobbling down the mountain.

“Think of your birthday. You didn’t seem at all nervous while you sang on a bench with lemons in your hair.”

“That wasn’t the whole kingdom. This is.”

“So? What’s a few more faces?”

He lets out a very royal snort. “Since when does a ‘few’ mean a hundred times more? And maybe my disastrous birthday is not the best image to calm my nerves.”

“Oh, don’t be dramatic.”

Nik cocks a brow. “Oh, but you’re not plenty dramatic when you make moon eyes at the harbor, scouting for a certain sailor from Rigeby Bay?”

I say nothing, my wit tied to a stone in the pit of my stomach. Despite myself, I squint out at the water, my heart willing Iker’s boat to appear. But the sea beyond the harbor is clear, all the visiting ships and off-duty whalers already in port.

Nik sighs, and I know he’s beating himself up for such a quip—and again I’m thankful he knows nothing of the kisses Iker and I shared. He squeezes me close again, the nervous tremble subdued. “He’ll be here. Iker makes his own rules, but he never breaks his word.”

That was the last thing he said to me before Queen Charlotte pulled him away for his final speech preparations. I sink to the sand and sit, a little doll in my lap dressed in black and white. Ready for the ashes. I can barely force myself to play along. And without Nik by my side, this year I play along alone.

I suppose I could join the castle workers—I’ve known them since I was a small child. But I’m not truly one of them. And the other girls my age? Well, they’re never really an option—they’ve made that much clear over the years.

Maybe banishment wouldn’t be such a bad thing—I could just break out my magic as we burn our little witch dolls and leave this place for good. But then I’d leave Nik for good too. And implicate my entire family.

So, I sit alone—the secret witch, the prince’s friend who doesn’t know her place.

I am well within eyeshot of Nik as he readies to speak—in the event that his courage has retreated up Lille Bjerg Pass—but far enough to the side that I have a clear view of the sea in my periphery.

He will come.

He said he would.

You shouldn’t care anyway.

I turn my attention back to the royal family. And to the flames I must face before Nik’s big moment.

There’s a traditional speech honoring this “celebration” too. And though the king may have ceded his duties to Nik, Queen Charlotte would never give up her chance to speak out against the horrors of witchcraft.

The queen is a beauty by any measure, all fine bone structure and swanlike grace. Her hair is curled and coiled atop her head, a deep blond halo around a crown of sapphires and diamonds. When she steps forward in the sand, she looks every bit a painting in the firelight.

In her hands is her ceremonial first doll—clothed in blood red.

As if the death of every Dane in the past six hundred years was the fault of a witch.

As if the Øldenburgs hadn’t burned hundreds of women with flimsy proof.

As if “the witch hunter king,” King Christian IV, hadn’t been proud of the name he earned and of the lives he ruined.

“Good evening, dear ones.” Queen Charlotte smiles to the crowd, and it’s like ice cracking under pressure. “On this night, we not only celebrate the beginning of Havnestad’s Lithasblot, but we remember the hardships endured by our ancestors.”

In the shadows, my knuckles turn white as I clench the doll in my lap. This part is almost worse than tossing a replica of myself into the fire.

“We live in safety and harmony in the Øresund Kingdoms because of the courage of King Christian IV. We live in safety and harmony because of the laws he put in place. Witchcraft has no place except in the depths of hell.”

The queen hoists the red doll above her head so hard its little witch’s hat falls, the fire sucking it into the flames. “Shall there be any devils on our shores, know you do not belong here nor in this world.” I swear her eyes find me in this moment. “The light will win, and you shall be swallowed deep into the flames and returned to your horned maker.”

The crowd erupts, and Queen Charlotte spins on the spot, tossing the witch into the bonfire—royally ousting us because our power is a threat to her own.

We are to form an orderly line circling the fire, but I can’t do that. I won’t do that. Instead, I stand and toss my doll over the heads of those charging forward, eager to murder little wooden models of me. My mother. My aunt. My father’s family.

I look for Nik then, who follows suit with a smile on his face. Somewhere Tante Hansa is laughing, her distinctive cackle hitting my ear. I know it’s a ruse to protect us, but I don’t know how she can pretend to enjoy it so much. She even goes so far as to have the most colorful doll, meddling with pastes and dyes until she can ensure its little outfit will be the brightest on the beach. This year, hers is a stunning orange, thanks to a customer who unknowingly added to her fun by paying her in turmeric.