Deep Blue (Waterfire Saga, #1)(6)

“That is no vitrina,” the countess hissed. “If it got in, it can get out. Get away from the glass! Hurry!”

As the figure drew closer, Serfina saw that it was a river mermaid, her tail mottled in shades of brown and gray. She wore a cloak of black osprey feathers. Its collar, made of twining deer antlers, rose high at the back of her head. Her hair was gray, her eyes piercing. She was chanting.

The sands run out, our spell unwinds,

Inch by inch, our chant unbinds….

Serafina knew the voice. She’d heard it in her nightmare. It belonged to the river witch, Baba Vr?ja.

The countess had warned Serafina to move away, but she couldn’t. It was as if she was frozen in place, her face only inches from the glass.

Vr?ja beckoned to her. “Come, child,” she said.

Serafina raised her hand slowly, as if in a trance. She was about to touch the mirror when Vr?ja suddenly stopped chanting. She turned to look at something—something Serafina couldn’t see. Her eyes filled with fear. “No!” she cried. Her body twisted, then shattered. A hundred eels writhed where she had been, then they dove into the liquid silver.

Seconds later, a terragogg walked into the frame, sending ripples through the silver. He was dressed in a black suit. His hair, so blond it was almost white, was cut close to his head. He stood sideways, gazing at the last of the eels as they disappeared. One was slower than the rest. The man snatched it up and bit into it. The creature writhed in agony. Its blood dripped down his chin. He swallowed the eel, then turned to face the glass.

Serafina’s hands came to her mouth. The man’s eyes were completely black. There was no iris, no white, just darkness.

He walked up to the glass and thrust a hand through it. Sera screamed. She swam backward, crashed into a chair, and fell to the floor. The man’s arm emerged, then his shoulder. His head was pushing through when Tavia’s voice piped up.

“Serafina! What’s wrong?” she called through the doors. “I’m coming in!”

The man glared hatefully in her direction. A second later, he was gone.

“What happened, child? Are you all right?” Tavia asked.

Serafina, shaking, got up off the floor. “I—I saw something in the mirror. It frightened me and I fell,” she said.

Tavia, who had the legs and torso of a blue crab, scuttled over to the mirror. Serafina could see that it was empty now. There was no river witch inside it. No terragogg in black. All she saw was her nurse’s reflection.

“Pesky vitrina. You probably haven’t been paying them enough attention. They get peevish if you don’t fawn over them enough,” Tavia said.

“But these were different. They were…”

Tavia turned to her. “Yes, child?”

A scary witch from a nightmare and a terragogg with freaky black eyes, she was about to say. Until she realized it sounded insane.

“…um, different. I’ve never seen them before.”

“That happens sometimes. Most vitrina are right in your face, but occasionally you come across a shy one,” Tavia said. She rapped loudly on the glass. “You quiet down in there, you hear? Or I’ll put this glass in a closet!” She pulled a sea-silk throw off a chair and draped it over the mirror. “That will scare them. Vitrina hate closets. There’s no one in there to tell them how pretty they are.”

Tavia righted the chair Serafina had knocked over, then chided her for taking so long to join her court.

“Your breakfast is here. So is the dressmaker. You must come along now!” she said.

Serafina cast a last glance at her mirror, questioning herself already. Vr?ja wasn’t real. She was of the Iele, and the Iele lived only in stories. And that hand coming through the glass? That was simply a trick of the light, a hallucination caused by lack of sleep and nerves over her Dokimí. Hadn’t her mother said that nerves were her foe?

“Serafina, I am not calling you again!” Tavia scolded.

The princess lifted her head, swam through the doors to her antechamber, and joined her court.





“NO, NO, NO! Not the ruby hair combs, you tube worm, the emerald combs! Go get the right ones!” the hairdresser scolded. Her assistant scuttled off.

“I’m sorry, but you’re quite mistaken. Etiquette demands that the Duchessa di Tsarno precede the Contessa di Cerulea to the Kolisseo.” That was Lady Giovanna, chatelaine of the chamber, talking to Lady Ottavia, keeper of the wardrobe.

“These sea roses just arrived for the principessa from Principe Bastiaan. Where should I put them?” a maid asked.

A dozen voices could be heard, all talking at once. They spoke Mermish, the common language of the sea people.

Serafina tried to ignore the voices and concentrate on her songspell. “All those octave leaps,” she whispered to herself. “Five high Cs, the trills and arpeggios….Why did Merrow make it so hard?”

The songspell for the Dokimí had been composed specifically to test a future ruler’s mastery of magic. It was cast entirely in canta mirus, or special song. Canta mirus was a demanding type of magic that called for a powerful voice and a great deal of ability. It required long hours of practice to master, and Serafina had worked tirelessly to excel at it. Mirus casters could bid light, wind, water, and sound. The best could embellish existing songspells or create new ones.