Page 8

Chapter eight

“ H ello?”

Thessa braced her shoulders, staring around her at the massive basalt cavern polished from the sea’s deep currents into a dark mirror. Ethereal blue-green algae pulsed its glow in slow, hypnotic rhythms. Thessa’s hair drifted around her face like living coral, each strand casting writhing shadows against ridged ancient formations.

This is where the most powerful witch of the sea resided? The walls bristled with shelves laden with glass vials that glowed with sickly light and contained too many twitching eyes or teeth. There were no comforts, no trinkets or treasures like the stories told, only strands of kelp hanging from the ceiling, heavy with bottles that clinked together in the currents. Their contents cast strange, shifting colors across the stone.

“Scylla?” Her voice wavered, though she tried to stop it.

Could such a powerful being really live amidst such trappings? To be quite honest, if Thessa embraced the life of an evil witch, she’d surround herself with fractured rainbows and gardens of rare deep sea-flowers.

And her sisters would condemn such talk. Thessa’s heart clenched as she thought of them. She hadn’t bothered to tell them that she’d come to visit the Sea Witch—if they knew, Thessa wouldn’t have been able to swim away from the palace walls—Nephele would’ve locked her up to stop her… which was too bad because if something tragic happened, they’d never know. The thought sent a chill through her.

“Why have you asked for me?” Thessa’s voice echoed through the silent cavern.

That’s when she noticed that the walls pulsated… the cavern was alive. The corroded surface cracked to reveal one flicking bulbous eye that immediately found her in the dim light. Then another eye opened, and another—dozens of them, glowing with a sickly yellow phosphorescence. Thessa let out a scream and twisted around, ramming straight into a soft body. Gasping, this time in embarrassment, she scrambled backward and sought out the eyes of the smiling lady before her. “Scylla?”

“Yes, my dear…” The voice was nauseatingly sweet, unbelievable in a way that made Thessa’s back prickle with unease. The Sea Witch emerged fully into the strange flickering lights. Where she’d expected a monster, Thessa beheld a bright vision. Scylla’s upper body was that of a woman with skin that shimmered like mother-of-pearl in sunlight, each movement sending ripples of iridescence across her form. But below her waist, eight massive tentacles spread out in a billowing array of midnight purple and deep emerald, each one adorned with gold rings and bangles that chimed softly as she moved.

“I had been hoping to see you!” Scylla’s hair floated around her like a living crown of sea silk, each strand refracting the lights in rainbow patterns. A headdress of living coral grew directly from her temples, small creatures darting in and out of its branches. “You are dearer than your good mother described.” She clapped merrily, making the earrings fashioned from an abundance of black pearls swing around a heart-shaped face.

With difficulty, Thessa tried not to react. Either Scylla was putting on the performance of a lifetime, or the rumors about her were dead wrong.

There were laugh lines on the woman’s face. Hadn’t Nerissa said that she was a horrible writhing beast? But then, Nerissa always embellished her juicy tales. Laugh lines couldn’t be faked.

Thessa swallowed, trying to steady her racing heart. “My sister said that—that…”

“I’d bring your father to his full health in return for your help?” Scylla’s tentacles propelled her gracefully across the cavern as she turned, setting down a net woven from silver kelp strands. The net held an assortment of strange, pulsing objects that Thessa tried not to look at too closely—some of the grotesque forms seemed to be looking back. “Ah! I trusted the court gossip would meet your ears—you can’t keep back a good story!” The Sea Witch placed her net next to a desk carved from a massive abalone shell, its surface shifting with rainbow hues in the dim light. “I really don’t understand the fuss anyway—I’d help your father in a heartbeat, but there are customs to be met, and besides… I can’t do it by myself. I need your help. I’ve heard of you, my dear—you have a healing touch.”

How had she heard that? The question stuck in Thessa’s throat. “But I’ve told no one.”

“The sea has ears, my love.” Scylla’s tentacles curled and uncurled as she spoke, like the languid movements of anemone tendrils. “Nothing gets past me. You have great powers with that siren voice of yours.” One tentacle gestured dismissively. “The waves tell me such tales… and I’ve heard the mischief you’ve been up to as of late.” The Sea Witch tittered, the sound echoing strangely in the living cavern. “But I expect nothing less from my goddaughter.”

“Goddaughter?” The word echoed against the walls, and several bottles trembled in response. All Thessa could do was repeat the strange woman’s words—Scylla’s every revelation was so completely unexpected from everything she’d heard. And now the Sea Witch had some strange connection to her? Her eyes darted to a shelf where a bottle containing silvery wisps formed and reformed into faces she almost recognized. “Are—are you sure you’re my godmother?”

Scylla threw her arms against her hips with a bright laugh that set the bangles on her tentacles chiming. “I can’t say I’m surprised you never knew. Your mother and I were the best of friends, but well…” A tentacle reached up to stroke one of her dangling earrings thoughtfully. “Amphitrite couldn’t go about boasting of our adventures, especially since she was married to your father, not after the rumors thrown around about me. I’m sure you’ve heard the worst of them.”

Thessa couldn’t lie—at least her reddened cheeks couldn’t. This was the last conversation she’d expected to have with the Sea Witch, and in such a cheerful tone… but she also didn’t have the brains of a guppy. Father had said Scylla was a trickster. Two could play at that game. “You came to our father to offer your help. Can you really heal him?”

“No, you really need to listen better, my dear.” Scylla glided to an apparatus that looked like it had been grown rather than crafted—a twisted spire of living coral sprouting glass chambers and crystalline tubes. Dark liquid pulsed through the vials like black blood in veins. Scylla began to adjust knobs polished bright as shark teeth. “It is you who must help him, but only if you find what is lost.”

Father had said something similar. In an instant, Thessa put it together. “Undine’s Blade?”

The Sea Witch let out a triumphant cackle that sent ripples through every potion in the room. “You are my goddaughter through and through. How can any deny it?” She gestured Thessa over to see what she was creating in a sphere of dark crystal that absorbed light rather than reflecting it. Figures flickered inside a foggy green luminescence that reminded Thessa of algae-choked waters. She jumped, then peered closer.

Within the sphere, a mermaid with a tail of mother-of-pearl writhed in a cocoon of magic that sparked like captured lightning. Thessa watched, horrified and fascinated, as the magic tightened around the mermaid’s tail until it split painfully into two human legs.

“Undine’s prince never deserved her, poor thing,” Scylla murmured, then broke that sober thought with a giggle that didn’t quite mask the predatory gleam in her eyes, “But well… what do I know about love? A lot of bother if you ask me.”

The vision of Undine flickered with a wave of Scylla’s fingers, sending oily ripples through the dark water. In its place appeared a dagger that made Thessa’s breath catch. The blade was forged from silver found only in the darkest trenches where ancient magic still lingered.

Yes, the blade was definitely a part of Father’s triton. The hilt, however, was wrapped in intricate patterns of woven sea-silk in colors that shifted like the aurora borealis seen through water—that was the mermaid hair belonging to Poseidon’s sisters. They’d sacrificed so much of their power to save the youngest of them.

Scylla clicked her tongue. “And then Undine wouldn’t use the blade against that viper? Such a waste. This is why your father is dying, of course. The weapon must be returned to him before his strength fades away… to nothing.”

Thessa’s heart raced in sudden excitement. “I can bring it to him!”

“Can you?” Scylla asked, in a tone that immediately made Thessa’s back bristle with suspicion. One tentacle idly stroked a vial where a fish thrashed weakly, its scales turned to crystal. “The dagger lies in the heart of the Isles on Undine Island, and those with the divine blood of the Sea Sovereignty aren’t about to be walking around on an island on their fins… unfortunately, and so the Undine Blade remains where it is. You understand the difficulty now, of course. It’s impossible to get at it. The curse of that mermaid hair will destroy any who touch it… except, someone like you.” With a wave of bejeweled fingers, Scylla wiped away the vision. The sphere turned black and still. “Enough of that, tell me how life is at the palace.”

“I need legs…” Thessa hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but seeing Scylla’s sharp look on her, she knew the woman had been pushing her to that conclusion.

“Well, perhaps, it is so,” Scylla said in a reserved tone that contradicted the hungry gleam in her eyes. Her tentacles curled and uncurled with barely contained excitement. “But I don’t see how.”

Thessa moved her hair behind her shoulder, refusing to give in to Scylla’s schemes and beg to be the next Undine. There had to be a way around this. “How hard can this be? All I must do is to return the dagger to my father.”

“No, dear, it’s really not that simple.” Scylla’s tentacles reached for different bottles as she spoke, almost absently. One held what looked like frozen lightning, another contained a swirling darkness that ate the light around it. “You must use the dagger for what it was meant for—to pierce the heart of your enemy.” The bright smile didn’t once dim from her face, but her teeth seemed sharper now, gleaming like polished pearls in the dim light. She truly was heartless.

“I’m supposed to stab someone with it?” Thessa almost choked on the words.

“Believe me… you’ll be happy to do it.” Scylla acted like it was a perfectly natural thing to do, her tentacles dancing through the water in an almost playful way that made the suggestion even more disturbing. “That is the only way to break the curse and return Undine’s Blade to its rightful place on your father’s trident. It hungers for the blood of the merfolk enemy since its creation.”

The living walls of the cavern pulsed faster, the embedded eyes watching with increased interest. Thessa felt their gazes like physical touches on her skin. “I don’t have any enemies.”

“Of course you do.” Scylla patted her arm consolingly with a cold hand. “ I’m your enemy.”

Blunt, and slightly messed up. “I’m not stabbing… you.” As tempting as it was becoming.

“Of course not,” Scylla’s voice turned hard, “… because you need me to give you legs, or you’re not stepping one foot on that island. You want your father to live or not?”

“And what do you get in return?” Thessa snapped. “My voice?”

“Oh, come now!” Scylla swooped through the water in a swirl of tentacles and jingling jewelry. “Must you always think the worst of me? Well… here it comes, the pleading, the shaming, the accusations. I’m no angel, of course, but you can’t expect me to get nothing from this bargain, surely?”

Thessa laughed with no humor, the sound making several potions glow brighter in response. She’d wasted her time coming here. She turned to leave. “I’m sorry, we have nothing more to say to each other… godmother.”

In a flash, Scylla moved in front of her, tentacles spreading to block her escape from the cavern’s entrance. “Oh, my dear… just your pretty little powers—that’s all I want—who wants your voice?” One tentacle reached toward a bottle humming with captured music, and she swirled it like liquid silver. “What would I do with a voice, pray tell?”

And Thessa would say goodbye to her power of healing like it was nothing? All her hopes and dreams drained from her at the thought. She’d always hoped that one day her father would see the good in it. And how? How if he died? Her gaze strayed to the witch “You’d take my powers, but I could still speak?”

“What kind of monster do you take me for?” Scylla’s laughter echoed off the walls, and in their depths, the watching eyes narrowed.

“And the legs you give me will be as any female human’s,” she charged. “They won’t prickle and stab me through with pain as I walk or—or dance?” She remembered too well the stories of Undine’s suffering.

Scylla snorted, sending ripples through the water that made her collection of bottled horrors gyrate. “I’m not so careless as all that.”

“Then you punished Undine with that pain to be cruel!” The realization made the water around them feel heavy. What trick would the witch pull on her? “Will you stop me from getting to that blade?”

A loud huff was her answer. “Oh! I can’t work under these conditions. You are more suspicious than your father!” The Sea Witch stormed a ways off… but not too far. Her tentacles pulsed with irritation, but Thessa noticed how they kept between her and the exit. The harpy wanted the princess to jump blindly at the chance of giving all her gifts away, but should she?

Thessa’s siren voice could freeze the sons of men—could Scylla turn that same power against the merfolk? Of course, she could. That was far too much power to give their enemy, especially if her father wasn’t there to defend them… but if he was there? “You can’t use my siren’s voice until I’ve rescued the blade,” she said.

Scylla wrapped her arms around her middle—annoyance seeping through her perfect facade. “You have two days before I wield your powers. That’s all I can allow.”

And if Thessa wasn’t successful? Well, she had to be… everything rested on getting Undine’s Blade. With her father gone, the Sea Witch would come after them anyway. Steadying herself, Thessa made a choice that made her tremble with fear, because even if she saved her father, she could never show her face to him again. “I will give you my powers, but in return you will give me everything I’ve asked for, plus one last thing.”

Scylla’s brow rose. She was no longer amused, no longer playing. The walls of the cavern contracted, and several bottles began to beat with an ominous light. “And what would that be, little maid?”

Thessa knew more about human customs than Undine did. “You’re providing a dress with those legs.”

The Sea Witch’s laugh made the very water shiver, and in the depths of her bottles, captured horrors stirred at the sound. Thessa would be a fool not to know that the witch might try to capture her in much the same way.