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To walk on land is to have your body cleft in two, split into something other.
Ulla saw that Signy and Roffe were looking at her strangely, but there was little time to think on it, for the coaches had arrived,
His gaze lingered upon Ulla too.
she had the strange sensation that she’d met him before.
she looked back and saw the boy in black still watching.
Not for love but for magic, for what they might help Roffe accomplish onshore.
Was she doomed to sit at the edge of the world here as she had below the waves?
“I remember you,” he said when at last he reached her. His eyes were gray agate.
“Why do you say you remember me? And why do you watch me like a black-backed gull seeking prey?”
“Come to the Prophetic’s Tower tomorrow,” he said, voice cool as glass. “Come, and I’ll tell you all you wish to know.”
It was like having a little sun to keep all for herself.
Only then did she realize why she’d drawn so many stares from the sildroher—and from the humans as well. Away from the blue depths of the sea, the sallow gray-green tinge of her skin was gone and she glowed burnished bronze as if she had tucked sunlight beneath her tongue.
Ulla realized there were mirrors everywhere—as if humans were afraid they might forget what they looked like—and in them she saw her new self reflected, tall and lithe,
Books had a scent, she realized, as they passed level after level of libraries and laboratories,
The sildroher had no pen and paper; no parchment survived beneath the waves, and they had no need of it. Their histories and knowledge were held in song.
Ulla drew in a breath when she glimpsed a sykurn knife, wondering who it had belonged to and what possible reason its owner could have for relinquishing it.
“Look at that,” he said, and his reflection lifted a brow. “We might almost be blood relations.” He was right, Ulla realized. It was not just the hair, or the slender-reed build that they shared. There was something in the shape of their faces,
“No,” said the apprentice. The gray eyes of his reflection narrowed. His voice was like the cold pull of a glacier. “I came here to hunt.”
Ulla when she came to land earned her gifts of jewels and poetry, posies left outside her door, even a proposal. Nothing could tempt her, and this only strengthened her allure.
But as the days passed, Roffe’s temper changed, and Ulla saw his brothers become watchful and secretive too. They dallied less with mortal girls and spent long hours in the Prophetic’s Tower. Ulla knew they were all searching the pages of human books for mortal magic, for a gift they might bring back to their father—the thing that might change their fortunes forever.
Her mind had already begun to build a song that might transform a corner of the undersea garden she and Signy had raised for the royal family into a maze like this with a whirling pool at its center.
Hungry Ulla. Maybe she did. A song had made two lonely girls friends. A prince’s favor had made them worthy of notice. What might a crown do for that prince?
“I would raise you so high, Ulla. No one would gossip about your birth or your wayward mother ever again.”
“You know I do.” Signy tossed back her head and threw her arms wide, her face framed by curls like living flame. Ulla nodded. “Then bring him fire.”
Because he made me dream of things I cannot have, she thought,
In one corner she spied what looked like the antlers of a stag.
“One to the question you asked, and one to the question you should have asked.”
“Not entirely mortal. The people of this country would call her drüsje, witch. They would call me one, too. They play at magic, read the stars, throw bones. But it’s best not to show them real power. Your people know this well.”
You have never been like the others and you never will be. Her black hair. Her black eyes. The strength of her song. It cannot be true. But if
Was that why she had made a cradle for some unnatural thing, fed her, tried to love her?
roams these waters. I want to see the ice dragon for myself. Knowledge. Magic. A chance to forge the world anew. I
“We were not made to please princes.” You were born on land…. You took your first breath above the surface and bawled your first infant cry here.
She did not want the apprentice’s knowledge, not of her birth, not of the ways of blood magic.
“I wouldn’t care if you were part human or part frog. You would still be my fierce Ulla. You always will be.”
The want in her was an animal, scratching at her resolve, fretting its claws and saying, Why not? Why not?
He looked like a petulant dandelion, gathering breath to throw a tantrum.
Charming Roffe. More clever than Ulla had ever imagined.
And nothing I will not do to protect you, Ulla vowed. The bargain is made.
Now she knew she was not just sildroher but something else too. She had witch’s blood in her veins.
For all its wonders, she’d grown weary of the human world and the constant press of mortal desire.
When Ulla pushed open the door, she could already feel the wrongness that had settled there.
He had pushed her to this moment, but now that they were here, some shameful part of her thrilled to the challenge.
Murderer, she told herself again, but she did not know if she meant the boy or herself.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Are there any words so cursed?
Oh, Signy, Ulla thought as her eyes filled with fresh tears. My loyalty never wavered, and it was never his.
She saw then what she had been to Signy all along—a shelter, a defense.
Ulla felt hate bloom in her heart.
We cannot know for sure. That contrary thing inside her? The hard stone of rage that all lonely girls possess?
Roffe had made her a murderer. Maybe she would prove to have a talent for the act.
all these broken, betrayed girls were with her, and what a terrible sound they made.
