Sea Witch(17)

She scrubs her face with her hands, nails clean and shaped. Her eyes blink open and then she takes my hands. “I’m terrible. Here I am, barging in on your breakfast, stealing your food, dumping my problems in your lap, and yet I haven’t even asked your name.”

“It’s Evie,” I reply.

“Evie,” she repeats, testing my name out on her tongue. “British?”

“Evelyn, yes. My mother fell in love with the name in Brighton.”

“I can see why.” Annemette smiles, her teeth clean and straight, like that of a princess or a dairymaid.

I tell myself again that she’s not Anna. She’s not even the girl from the porthole or the beach or anywhere else. She’s a farm girl from the other side of the pass. My cheeks grow hot. Annemette squeezes my hands. “Thank you for your generosity, Evie—it’s a gift. Truly.” Her eyes sting red again and her lip trembles. “I doubt I’ll be so lucky again.”

I don’t know what to do with this openness. This odd feeling blooming in my stomach. “You really have nothing and nowhere to go?”

Annemette waves her hands across her body. “Only my clothes and my pride.”

I can’t explain this girl or my feelings or why I have the need to believe her, but I do. And I want to help. “Come with me.”





9


THE LITTLE HOUSE THAT MY FATHER BUILT ISN’T THAT far from Havnestad Cove—it’s practically waterside itself, the cottage at the end of a lane in the shadow of ?ldenburg Castle. It backs up to a thatch of trees that buffer it from a rocky cliff jutting out into the sea.

“It’s so quaint,” Annemette says.

“It’s home,” I answer, and push through the front door. It’s been a long time since I’ve introduced someone to our tiny cottage. When I was little, we’d often take in children while their parents were away at sea. But that stopped after Mother died.

At the hearth, Tante Hansa is stirring something—by the smell of it, most likely the ham-and-pea concoction she brings to every Lithasblot to place beside the roast hog we have on the second day of the festival. Because “there can never be enough swine in this sodden fish market.” Hansa’s back is turned, and I feel the need to announce that we have company—it’s never safe for a witch to have no warning.

“Tante Hansa, I’d like you to meet my new friend.”

Hansa wipes her hands, and I know by the set of her shoulders she was stirring the soup without a spoon. Domestic spells aren’t spectacular, but they’re her favorites because she’d never planned on having a family of her own—and Father and I are more work than she’d like to admit.

When she turns, her face is pulled up in a smile, clear blue eyes flashing with the delight of catching me at something remotely unusual. Hansa is my mother’s older sister by almost two decades, the time between them filled with brothers who lost their lives to the sea’s moods much too young. She is as old as the grief of burying all her siblings suggests. But I have never been able to put anything past her.

Which means her reaction to Annemette is the same as mine. Only she actually says what she’s thinking.

“Why, Anna, returned from the deep, have we?”

Annemette’s mouth drops open as if she’s lost her tongue, her jovial attitude gone as well.

“Annemette, Tante,” I correct. “She’s from the valley. A farm.”

Hansa takes a step forward and raises a brow—quite the feat given the blood-drawing tightness of her hairdo.

“Is that so?” Hansa looks her up and down. “Those hands haven’t seen a day of hard work in all your years. That fair face hasn’t seen the sun. And that dress is worth more than the best cow in the valley.” She takes a step forward and grabs Annemette’s smooth hand. “Who are you really?”

“Tante, please, leave her be, she’s had a rough trip—”

“Hush. You only see what you want to see.” She turns back to Annemette, staring at the girl as if she could bend her will as easily as she tamed the soup. “So, again I ask—who are you really?”

Annemette’s eyes have gone red around the rims again, but she doesn’t cry. If anything, there’s an edge of defiance in the cut of them. Like she’s accepted Hansa’s dare for what it is. But when she speaks, she says the last thing I’d expect.

“Your soup is boiling.”

But the soup is more than boiling. The pea-green liquid hisses as it rolls in violent, unnatural waves over the iron pot’s rim.

“Ah!” Hansa cackles. “I’ve seen your type before.”

I’m stunned. Her type? Is Annemette a witch?

I stare at her.

Another witch. My age. Next to me.

Of all the things I can’t believe about Annemette, this might be the most unfathomable.

Something cracks open in my chest as the secret we’ve held so tightly as a family flies into the soupy air. I stare at this face so familiar and yet so strange, and my mind whirls. Anna was not a witch, but Annemette certainly is.

Annemette nods, and the liquid returns to a gentle simmer.

My aunt’s spotted hands grasp Annemette’s again, but this time there’s a funny light in her eyes, all her skepticism gone. “Evie, child, you’ve made quite an interesting friend indeed.”