Sea Witch(23)

At the next table, Annemette grabs my hand and leans into my ear. “Why do you kill all the sea life if the other options are so vast?”

I shrug. “It’s our way of life. Havnestad lives and dies by its nets and harpoons.” I suppose I should be sympathetic, but it’s hot, and all this stopping and going has made me even sourer.

Her brow furrows. “But there is so much else to eat.”

She leans in, her whisper growing softer as Nik tries to shake off yet another local culinary wizard. “My father always tells us to stay far from the surface, scares us with tales of our kind being split in two by harpoons, talks about humans as the scourge of the seas, always hunting and killing. But this . . .”

“It’s the way it is, Annemette,” I say as gently as I would to a child. In some ways that is what she is, even if she’s my age. The time she’s been in my world can easily be measured in hours. “We are all surviving as best we can. We don’t mean harm to the sea life, or the pig, or anything else.”

“I was unprepared.”

“I was unprepared to meet a mermaid today,” I whisper, my words just an inch from her ear. “But I did.”

She laughs into the falling night. Nik glances over at us, and I raise a brow at him and purse my lips. He grins at Annemette but then catches my eye again and I know he suspects I’m feeding her girl talk. And I’ll just let him go ahead and think that.

Nik tears himself away from the latest onslaught, a plate thrust into his hand, fried torsk dripping with fresh fat, heat rising from its body, head still on, beady little fish eyes staring vacantly into space.

“Fru Ulla insists this is the best torsk in all of Havnestad—possibly all of Denmark, to hear her tell it. If you seek a true Lithasblot experience, Annemette, this is where to start.”

I touch the plate and press it toward his chest, where it is safely out of the way. “She doesn’t eat fish.”

Nik laughs. “Who doesn’t eat fish? We’re Danes—”

“Allergy,” I say. “If she has fish, she’ll blow up like one of those French flying balloons.”

“It is terrible,” Annemette says, coming to life and puffing out her cheeks.

The questions die on Nik’s lips. Without hesitation, he drops the plate into the open hands of a chubby little boy, who grins wide-eyed and then hurries after his family. “Then it will be my sworn duty to protect you from Havnestad’s affinity for sea life.”

Annemette’s eyes skip to mine and then back to Nik’s in one swift motion. “The brave crown prince you are, indeed.”

Long after the fire has died down and the largest bull from Aleksander Jessen’s farm has been crowned this year’s winner, Nik, Annemette, and I sit on the end of the royal dock, eyes on the ocean and music in the air.

Nik plays a basic rhythm on the guitaren and Annemette chooses the words—picking old sailors’ songs that they apparently know under the sea as well as we do on land. This one is their play on “Come, All Ye Sailors Bold.”

“The king trusts to his sailors bold, and we shall find them as of old—for father, mother, sisters, wives, we’re ready now to risk our lives . . .”

I sit beside them with my eyes on the waves, surprisingly enjoying the clear quality of Annemette’s voice. It’s as beautiful as Anna’s ever was, rich and high, with a lovely air of innocence built into the base of each note.

“For Danish girls with eyes so blue, we’ll do all that sailors do. And Dannébrog upon our masts, shall float as long as this world lasts . . .”

They are sitting so close together that the fold of her skirt is touching his trousers. Neither seems to mind, and if anything, they drift closer as the minutes pass. I am on Nik’s other side, and with each song, laugh, and snippet of conversation, the gap of roughhewn dock grows between us.

While I’m glad that Nik is happy and that Annemette seems to have found what she was looking for, I can’t shake this gray cloud of self-pity, engulfing me like a fog descending on the harbor. It was so easy for Annemette to make that connection with Nik, and no one thought anything of it. There were smiles all around as they walked arm in arm, each townsperson remarking on her beauty, how nice they looked together. I stalked beside them. The chaperone.

I know in this moment that I will never find what they have if I stay in Havnestad. I merely speak to anyone outside my station and there are calls to lock me up in the brig. I wish Iker were here, but it’s clear that even if he is by my side, it’ll always just be a childhood fantasy. He may not care what the others think when he’s with me, but when it comes down to it, he’ll marry a highborn daughter, and that will be that. I will be alone again.

If only Anna were here. The true Anna. Maybe things would be different.

The tune comes to a natural end, Nik and Annemette falling into each other in a fit of laughter.

“You have the most lovely voice, Mette,” he says, using a shortened version of her name I didn’t know she preferred. I wonder when she told him to call her that. Or maybe he just did it, feeling an instant familiarity with her that I don’t have.

“Much obliged, Nik.” She bends at the waist. A sitting curtsy. That’s a new one.

“We must do this again tomorrow, Mette. Please tell me you will be here tomorrow.”