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’sas 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” façade. 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 Tørhed 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.
But I don’t understand. Why is Annemette so upset? Why must she suddenly leave?
“Youcanstay,” I insist. “You’re safe here from your father, and we have more than enough room. And you’ll be with us. With a family that cares for you andunderstandsyou. You don’t have to run away to find that. To be yourself.”
Annemette meets my eyes with a look I know, and with every force of a Viking spell, she says it again.
“I can’t.”
She bends down and runs her hands through the sand, letting it fall between her fingers. “I can’t stay here.”
It’s her. I can’t deny it now. She’s not trying to deny it either. The look she gave me is the one I saw on the beach. The one that I saw on the girl’s face as she loomed over Nik. Before diving into the water and disappearing, only a tail fin popping up from the waves.
“You can’t stay,” I say.
She nods, her eyes nervous.
“You’re not a witch, are you?”
She shakes her head no.
“You’re a mermaid.”
