But even that ship, hammered together by the strength of this fine town, was not enough to keep all of Havnestad’s bellies fed. The steamer was a one-time measure. Even the crown can’t afford a new ship every year.
I had to do something.
So, as I’ve done since the summer of Anna’s death, I stole into Tante Hansa’s room while she was off playing her weekly turn of whist down at Fru Agnata’s shack. Hansa’s bedroom is a stifling place, with the fire lit every night, even in the summer. Dried roses line the walls in a ring as high as she can reach—the hundreds of them a testament to her belief that their scent and beauty are superior to the tulips so popular throughout the Øresund Kingdoms.
Beneath the line of roses, in a corner opposite the flue, there’s a sea chest draped in shadow and an ancient moose hide. Inside is everything the Øldenburgs fear, all they have banished by law: gemstones, age-stained books, cobalt bottles sealed with pinches of cork and wax. The very same items Tante Hansa used on me when I resurfaced in Nik’s arms four years ago, Anna nowhere to be found. When I’d been in bed, nearly dead myself, watched over by Hansa and spoon-fed elixirs tasting of perfume and age. And aged they certainly are, passed down in shadow generations for centuries. Someday they will belong to me, I suppose.
That day I took a purple stone—one so small that I hoped it would escape Hansa’s notice, but big enough to have an impact. I snagged one of the tattered books with crumbling spines, too, fishing it out from where it was packed under a cake of beeswax and a marble mortar and pestle.
Hours after lights out, I crept down to the beach, but well beyond Havnestad Cove. As the shoreline thins, becoming one with the rocky mountain, sharp boulders jut out from the sea. The water is deeper there and the waves choppy, but in between the shadow of two large rocks is a swath of sand. Overhead, stone from the edge of Havnestad has formed into a perfect arch, the result of Urda coaxing the sea into this crevice for thousands of years.
This place doesn’t have a name, as far as I know. I’ve never seen anyone come here, and it’s hidden from view on the beach and by the boulders from the sea. I’ve taken to calling it Greta’s Lagoon, after my mother. She would have liked a place like this. Deep in the shadows of the lagoon is a small cave barely large enough to fit two, but it’s plenty big to store the few tinctures and inks Tante Hansa has entrusted to me.
I moved away the few small boulders I use to hide the entrance and lit a candle. With the amethyst stone cradled in one hand, I slid the book under the meager light. The words were ancient and yet familiar, recalling our great goddess, Urda, and the power she bestows on the land and sea. As the waves splashed against the rocks outside, I read the scrawl over and over, swirling the spells across my tongue. It took until nearly daylight, but finally I could feel the magic tingle in my blood.
After nearly three months of practice, I spelled Father’s boat for the first time.
Three days after that, he came home with his first whale in more than two years. It was thin, but fat enough for all the joy that came with it.
Now the spell is a must.
The need to keep Father safe and prosperous is thick in my veins each morning when I wake, jamming my heart with anxiety until I can do my job. My part.
Even when I’ve done my duty and he’s away for days, I come to the harbor and spell any ship docked and still. The fishermen are used to seeing me daily now. They don’t seem to find it strange that I’m always there, letting my closed palm trail along the salt-worn bodies of ships, old and trusty.
And today is the day I begin to do more. Along with what I cannot claim, I have been working away on something I can. Something all of Havnestad will recognize as helpful and not some fate of Urda.
“Evie, my girl!” Father is hauling a crate up to the deck of his whaler—Little Greta, also named for my mother. There isn’t a single crate of supplies left on the dock beside the ship. I’ve only just caught him. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
I laugh lightly, fingers tight over the gem in my palm. “Just because I want you to stay doesn’t mean I’ll miss you going.”
Father’s mouth settles into a tart line, the sun spots marring his forehead crinkling up to his black hair—he’s Italian by birth, though he’s Danish through and through.
We walk up the gangplank together. He drops the crate two feet from the innovation I know will make these desolate seas that much easier to fish—a permanent cure my magic cannot provide. Mounted proudly to the mainmast, half-harpoon, half-rifle, my darting gun looks as shiny and perfect as I’d hoped.
Father hugs me close. “My Evelyn, the inventor.”
“It was nothing,” I say, though we both know that’s not true. It took me the whole winter to create one from an old rifle and modified harpoon, but if my calculations are correct, the contraption will send out both a bomb lance and a tether harpoon, narrowing the chances of a whale escaping. If all goes well with Father’s maiden voyage, we might be able to transform the way Havnestad snags its whales.
“It’s not nothing. It’ll be a revolution.”
I tilt my face up to his, brow raised. “It’ll still be a revolution if you wait a week.”
Father bristles at the sore spot between us. He’s not the only fisherman headed out during the festival, though far more are staying than leaving, bolstered by their recent luck—my recent help. But he’s the only one I care about. And, as the royal fisherman, he’s the only one King Asger cares about as well.
“There will be other Lithasblot festivals, Evelyn. If you’ve been pelted with bread once, you’ve been pelted with bread a thousandfold.”
“But—”
He cuts me off with rough fingers on the point of my chin.
“But nothing. I have to seize my luck while it’s there.” Father’s grizzled old thumb settles on my bottom lip. “I’ll return for the close of the festival—the ball.”
Despite my disappointment at yet another good-bye, I form a tight smile after his words. “If you’ve seen me once in my only nice dress, you’ve seen me a thousandfold.”
He leans in and gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, his beard both soft and rough against my skin.
“Take care of Hansa, my dear.”
I hug him to my chest, the cloying scent of pipe tobacco catching in my lungs.
“If only she’d allow such a thing, I would.”
He releases me with a single squeeze of my forearm. I turn for the gangplank, one last look at both him and my first stab at whaling innovation. When I’m back on the sun-ruined wood of the dock, Father yells for his men to hoist up the gangplank and anchor.
Before he’s gone, and with the sailors distracted by departure duties, I take my chance and press my little stone to the ship, right under my mother’s name, painted in block letters across the stern. My eyes flutter to a close, and I whisper my spell into the breeze coming in off the Øresund Strait.
6
IT’S A PERFECT NIGHT FOR BURNING WITCHES.
That’s what Sankt Hans Aften is, after all. A celebration in the name of ridding people like me from this earth through flames, drowning, banishment—whatever seemed right at the time.