movement at the mouth of the cave, and behind me, my sisters stiffen.
But I’m not scared of the old squid.
My sisters may grow tense as she wakes, but I grow stronger, arms crossed—not protectively but with malice—my body one unwavering line, jaw cut.
The witch appears, slinking from her cave, tentacles a giant plume of liquid onyx. Her face is placid, and I know my sisters are immediately fascinated by her appearance—Eydis, her bare-moon complexion; Ola, her dramatic curls; Signy, the whole steely spectrum of her—because it’s true: she’s striking.
“Little Runa, where are your flowers?” the witch asks.
I hold up the bag. “Where would you like them?”
I don’t have to explain. The sea witch is a sharp one and understands instantly. “Will they grow anywhere, or must you have light?”
I glance around her home—it’s just as dark now as it was in the halo of morning. “Considering what we have to work with, it may not matter.”
To my surprise the witch cackles. “I didn’t choose the darkness, child, it chose me.”
She waves me over a scarred shoulder and leads me to her cave, built into the base of an enormous black rock, that must jut out and into the thick of the Havnestad night. Behind me, my sisters waver where they’re planted, deciding if they should get closer to keep an eye on me. I wave Eydis back. I can hold my own.
The witch points to a spot near the cave mouth and settles back onto her tentacles, again treating the eight of them as her throne. I reach into the bag, count out thirty seeds, and then shove the rest into my bodice, hoping she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that some seeds remain.
She asked for thirty, and I won’t give her a seed more.
Like the flowers themselves, the seeds are milky white and so luminous that they practically create their own light in this hollow place. I sprinkle them in a half circle before sinking down to the sea floor, where I use both hands to sweep a blanket of sand over the seeds.
Next comes the magic. Mine is a spell commonly used to spark life into most anything, but there’s something about the way I say it that works wonders with these finicky plants. As if they’ll only take direction from me, the charge in my blood the frequency they need to behave, grow, thrive.
“Líf. Líf. Líf,” I say, over and over—thirty times in all. The witch watches me quietly, a smile settling into the corners of her face. She was beautiful once and still is in her own way.
As the magic warms the sands beneath my hands, I think of how it’s romantic that she allegedly gave her own life to save the future king’s, except for the fact that his life led to the grandson now holding my sister’s heart captive.
Nothing about these boys should make them worth saving. Not a title. Not a handsome face. Not all the pretty words in the world.
None of that should’ve taken my sister from me.
My anger rises all over again, along with the heat from the plants. Something about it seems to make them grow faster than I’d expected, the entire lifetime—from seed to seedling to bud to bloom—elapsing in mere seconds. Behind me, the sea witch gasps, and it almost makes me smile despite my anger.
I can do something she can’t.
“You are talented, Runa,” the witch says, her chin tilted upward, but this time in admiration. She sweeps in behind me and plucks up ten of the flowers—one in each tentacle and one in each hand. Then it’s over to her cauldron, where she tosses them in, stems and all. The pot immediately starts to boil as I return to where my sisters are waiting and watching. The steam rises, and the witch inhales big belly breaths as the flowers’ sweet perfume wraps around the lair.
It’s several moments before the heat peters out, the steam dying, the boil calming. The witch dares to touch what’s inside the cauldron—pure, concentrated ríkifjor nectar—with her bare hands, cupping it into her palms and bringing it to her lips. She sips it down as we watch. After she swallows, a smile slips across her face. And though she’s a study in shades of gray, something warm seems to touch her—life and strength renewed in the darkness. When she opens her eyes, she’s staring straight at me.
“Now we may deal.”
Sensing her moment, Eydis swims forward and presents her loot. But she doesn’t cut in, allowing me to continue to be our voice. “As payment for the antidote, we have brought you jewels—rubies of Rigeby Bay, sapphires of Havnestad, emeralds and diamonds of the western countries. Some free to sell or admire on their own, others ready to wear in settings of gold, silver, pewter, and the like.”
At my pause, Eydis opens the bag just enough to reveal the glittering contents, bright even in this gray place.
The witch looks but doesn’t seem to see the beauty flashed before her. Her tone is level and matter-of-fact, her voice stronger than any time I’ve heard it. “Jewels are not what I require.”
“Pearls, then,” I say, gesturing to the one hung by golden thread at my throat. All of us—including our mother and half sisters—have them, a favorite gift from Oma Ragn. “We can easily obtain a large number of pearls in a matter of hours.”
A flicker of disgust moves across the sea witch’s face. “Definitely not pearls.”
My confidence begins to slip. Inside the safety of my rib cage, my heart stutters and teeters. “I returned with the ríkifjor. We refuse to make the same deal our sister did—you shall not make our entire generation voiceless. We’ve brought you items of great value that could buy you freedoms you haven’t seen in decades,” I say, frustration and exhaustion making my voice thick, yet higher than I’d like. I can’t sob in front of this woman. In front of my sisters. I look her dead in the eye. “What will be enough for you?”
The sea witch’s answer is immediate. And I wonder if she always knew I would return with my sisters, just like she knew I would come in the first place.
“It’s not much that I require, and it means more to me than it does to you.” She could say the same thing about our voices, so I do not find comfort in this statement, clamping my lips shut, waiting impatiently for her to go on. “All I want is the same thing from each of you: your hair.”
At this, Eydis’s breath catches. “Our hair? But why our hair—it’s not precious; it’ll grow back. You could magic it back.”
The sea witch’s face remains placid—no reaction. Simply a tilt of her head. She’s nearly the definition of bored, settling on a throne of writhing black.
“That’s exactly right; it is of no consequence to you. Hair grows. But that is what I request for what you want me to do.”
This can’t be right. It can’t be. From all of us? Something that isn’t precious, endangered, or rare?
This has to be a trap. A trick. Wrong.
The sea witch just watches us, no concern crossing her face or posture, as she waits to be paid.
Unease growing in my belly and in my teetering heart, I nod, telling myself it’s not what she wants; it’s
