“How did you do that? The soup, I mean.”
Annemette just shrugs and hooks a hand on a tree, swinging around it like a maypole ribbon. “It was just an animation spell,” she says as if impressing Tante Hansa was nothing.
The ease, the comfort, the understanding she has about her magic makes my blood tingle with envy. It’s so much of what I want. It took me months of studying and toying to create the spell to combat the T?rhed and even then, I’m not sure it actually works. My evidence is only anecdotal, and Fru Seraphine has taught me better than to use anecdotes as true measures of success.
In a few more steps we reach the sliver of rocky beach blind to Havnestad Cove, my own shortcut to Greta’s Lagoon. I try to calm my heart from beating so loudly, but I’ve never gone to the lagoon in daylight and I’m nervous. I steal a glance up the beach. It’s deserted as far as I can see, everyone off preparing for tonight’s festivities.
“Careful,” I say as we reach the end of the beach and the two large rocks. “The water is deep here.”
I take off my stockings and shoes and wade in. As I reach the sand, I turn around, but she’s still standing by the rocks. “Here,” I say, wading back out and extending my arm. “Take my hand. I’ll help you.”
With tentative steps, she walks forward and grasps my hand tight. I smile at her. “Come on. It’s okay.”
Once we’re in the right spot, I push aside the small boulders that obscure the entrance and steer her inside. Although it’s daylight, the cave is still steeped in shadows. I light a candle. Various mundane tools hang from juts on the wall, and on the floor, oysters sweat in a bucket—my latest failure. On a ledge in the rock wall are my tinctures, bottles full of octopus and squid ink, jellyfish poison, and powdered crab shells.
“You’ve made a lair.”
I laugh. “‘Secret workshop’ might be a more accurate term.”
“Oh no, this is a lair.” Annemette’s hands move automatically to the ledge. She holds each bottle up to the light, admiring the slosh or swoosh of the contents.
Her boot nudges the oyster bucket. “And what are your plans for these little fellas?” She scoops one up and holds it in her hand as if it’s a baby bird and not an endless source of frustration for me.
“They’re barren, but I’d hoped to spell them into producing pearls to be crushed for—” Annemette stops me cold with a wave of her hand. She mumbles something I don’t understand under her breath, her eyes intent on the oyster in her palms.
Within moments, the oyster swells to a pink as vibrant as the sunset and springs open. Inside is the most gorgeous pearl, perfectly round with an opalescent shimmer.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, though the word doesn’t do it justice. It’s otherworldly, unnatural. I want to touch it, but I’m frightened of it all the same. It seems . . . alive.
Annemette’s grin grows mischievous. “Too beautiful to crush, I think.” With a simple Old Norse command—“Fljóta”—she sets the pearl afloat over her palm. Then, without saying a word, she commands a few lengths of thread—repurposed and therefore unspooled—from the nails on the wall. Next, she covers the thread and pearl with both hands, shielding from me the magic she’s clearly working with her mind, her eyes set on her work. Seconds later, her hands part to reveal a perfect pearl necklace.
“Turn around and pull up your hair,” she says.
I do as she says and she draws the thread around my neck, draping it so that the pearl lies at the base of my throat. I don’t own any real jewelry and have never even tried any on, save for my mother’s wedding band—Father keeps it tucked away in a little chest, along with letters and drawings and other tokens from their life together.
I touch the pearl and look up at her, but she is busy working on another oyster and more string. After a few moments, Annemette ties her own pearl necklace around her throat.
“And now we match,” she says.
My throat catches. I remember Anna saying those words to me that time we made necklaces from wooden beads the tailor was giving away. They were crude and childlike, yet still special. We promised to never take them off, but I couldn’t bear to look at mine once Anna was gone. It’s now in a small box underneath my bed.
I force a smile at Annemette. My pearl sits in cool repose against my neck, pulsing with vigor. It’s a curious feeling that is not altogether pleasant, and I wonder if the pearl will always beat like this. Oddly, I find myself hoping that it will.
“Can you teach me?” I ask, the words spilling from my lips.
“What is there to teach? You’re a witch, aren’t you?”
“I . . . Tante Hansa hasn’t taught me anything like that. Everything I know is like a recipe to make cheese—fail one segment and the whole thing falls to curd.”
Annemette scrunches her nose. “It shouldn’t be that hard.” She picks up an oyster. “Here. Try. Fljóta.”
Annemette sees the reluctance cross my face and tilts her head. “It’s just a command. Say it with confidence and you’ll have the magic do the work.”
With hesitant fingers, I take the oyster in my hand. It’s as gray and barren as ever, and stinky, too, a tinge of rot to it. “Fljóta.”
The oyster shakes in my fingers but doesn’t lift. I can’t seem to make that connection like I do when I spell Father’s ship. There’s something missing.
“You control the magic, Evie. It’s yours. Take it.”
There’s a note in her voice that’s like a jolt—like pushing me off the dock and into the water.
I square my shoulders and stare at the frustrating, rotting little thing. I feel my mother’s blood deep inside me. The blood of Maren Spliid. The blood of the stregha hiding within my father’s “common” fa?ade. I feel the spirit of Urda, outside, inside, all around me, creating the natural energy we draw from. I spin these feelings with all the want inside me—the want to have the sort of power that could’ve saved Anna and my mother. The kind that can truly end the T?rhed for good, not just mask it with a daily spell. The kind that Annemette seems to have.
“Fljóta,” I say with all that want. With the wound that lives deep in my belly from the day I lost Anna. The day I almost lost Nik too. When I wanted more than anything to use my magic to make it better.
The oyster hovers.
“Líf,” Annemette whispers. Life. I should give it life.
“Líf,” I command. The oyster begins to change colors, its gray shell warming to pink and then to the burnt orange of dawn.
The oyster grows hot. Hot enough to match its new lively color. Its warmth licks at my palm.
In a moment, the oyster pops open, the most perfect pearl at its center.
It’s beautiful. Again, it’s almost too beautiful to crush for the magical poultice I’d planned, but there’s so much magic I now want to make with it.
Annemette laughs. “And that, my friend, is how you command the magic.”
Although the spell is over, I can still feel the magic pulsing through my veins, a blue fire so hot, it’s cold. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. I don’t want it to stop, but I know there’s a danger in sipping from this feeling too long.
I set the oyster on the table I use for my inventions, fashioned from a piece of driftwood I found on the beach. It’s littered with more bottles and vials, but I clear some space and hold the pearl in my fingers. Unlike the pearl Annemette made, this one is still warm to the touch, not icy hot. The magic responds differently to the two of us, I suppose—I don’t know. But I want to learn.
It’s time I really embrace who I am. Tante Hansa has kept me in the dark for too long. My mother was an established healer by my age.
“Annemette, will you stay and teach me?” I ask.
“I can’t,” she replies quickly, her mouth drawn tight, but trembling. She turns and braces her arms against the cave’s opening, watching the tide come in and out.