“Wouldn’t matter. You’re a monster either way,” said Yemi. She knew it was a foolish thing to say, even if it was true. An opportunity to expel some of her simmering rage, though. Anything to get a rise out of her. An angry enemy was preferable to one who clearly didn’t take her seriously.
Ursla stopped swimming in circles, and Yemi was almost salivatingat the thought of a fight on her hands. “How blunt of you. How bold,” the witch deadpanned. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry for your suffering. You shouldn’t be enduring it, because you shouldn’t be here.”
“Excuse me?” Yemi blinked.
Ursla sighed and traced a finger over the rocks. “Your grandmother is the one who played me, not the other way around. She offered me her firstborn in exchange for her chance atlove.” She chuckled slightly, as if it were the most ridiculous thing. “Her future, her progeny. Without the piece of your grandmother that I was given—freely, I might add—your mother, and by extensionyou, could not exist. And now here we both are, ruining each other’s mornings.”
“You took her ability to conceive?” Yemi said. “Sloppy work.”
“Well, we both know what it’s like to be betrayed, don’t we?” Ursla shrugged.
“Betrayed by whom?”
“So sorry, but you and I are not friends enough for that conversation.”
“Why don’t I believe anything you say?” Yemi scoffed.
“That’s your business. But I hope you’re equally skeptical of anything the Kept tell you. It wasn’t true love that brought you into the world, dear girl; it was bastard magic. What I took, I took to protect her. To protect you from the future you now enjoy. I know better than anyone the whims of Men. I knew no creature born of Arielle’s blood would satisfy Man’s own need to deify itself. You, her, your mother are all reminders of an ancient order into whichtheydo not fit. Every horror of your young life was inevitable, so long as her ambitions did not remain contained within herself. It was your grandmother’s greed that cursed you. She wantedeverythingwithout having to give upanything. The rules of our world demand balance.Sheis why you suffer, not me.”
Yemi lowered herself back into the water, her stomach rumbling violently. “I think the rest of our time together would be…healthierif you didn’t talk about my grandmother anymore.” She started off without her guide, gliding past her to see what she could of Chairre.
“Healthier,” Ursla mused. “How much longer do you intend to starve before you admit that you are, in fact, starving?”
“Unless you’re hiding a soggy chicken dinner in those tentacles, I will make do until our excursion is over.”
“The less nourished you are, the longer this will take. And while you may make it there, you certainly won’t make it back. Come. Do you hunt, or is that spear of yours more of a ceremonial toy?”
“Hunt… what?”
“Anything you want!” The witch beamed. “In this body, you are more powerful; you have more autonomy than you ever did on land, even as royalty. You are ashark. You are descended of elder gods and so forth.”
Yemi ignored her and turned around in all directions. “I haven’t seen anything to hunt since last night.” It was true. From the northern to the eastern coast, there were rocks and weeds, but all else was a lifeless void. “The fish are gone from the north. We’ve been dealing with it for years.”
“Gone for Men, maybe.”
“And there’s the matter of what’s caught needing to be cooked—”
“A limitation of your other body.” The witch shrugged. “I hear your mother had a certain… streak in her. A taste for thefinerthings?” She seemed excited, curious in a fevered sort of way. Perhaps it was the family bloodlust she was interested in the most.
But Yemi was not one for parlor tricks.
“Have any fruit?” she asked.
“You’re joking.”
“You were summoned with an orange.”
Visibly annoyed, the sea witch returned to the land’s edge and snatched entire clutches of plants from the sand and from low-hanging branches of short, scraggly trees. She presented Yemi with what appeared in one hand to be a bunch of immature white grapes, and in the other, a garden-variety weed.
“Coccoloba. Purslane.”
Skeptical but quietly ravenous, Yemi plucked a nub of the coccoloba from its stem and popped it into her mouth. It was gone in two chews—a blessing, because it tasted terrible.
“This is salt.”
“They are out of season, and you have the palate of a carnivore.” Ursla rolled her eyes and dangled the purslane in front of her. “Would you like to complete your shameful salad so we can get on with it?”
Yemi snatched the bushel from her and bit into its leafy bits, serrated teeth snapping them clean from their stems.
