Arianna's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

The full moon was three nights away. Arianna sat by the trapped pool and turned the spirit's words over in her mind. A test. But a test of what? The fish fairy floated on his back near the stones, blowing slow bubbles. "You'll fail cold if you walk in blind," he said. "She doesn't ask what you expect." He would not tell her more. He only knew the tide, not the spirit's riddles. So Arianna made a choice she had feared for years. She would ask the one person who traded in answers. The sea witch lived in a cave where the walls dripped and no light reached. Arianna had gone to her once before, crying, and left changed. Now she stepped inside again. The witch sat at a white vanity with an oval mirror, brushing her long black hair. Small crabs and starfish moved through the strands. She did not turn. "Back so soon," she said, her voice calm and kind. In her hand she held a glass globe. Arianna saw her own face floating inside it. "The spirit will test me," Arianna said. "I need to know what she wants." The witch set down her brush. She smiled, and the smile did not reach her eyes. "Most who come to her bring gifts," she said. "Shells. Songs. Pretty things." She tilted the globe. Arianna's trapped face slid sideways. "She has seen a thousand gifts. She is tired of them." "Then what does she want?" The witch let the silence stretch. A tiny fish darted from her hair and back again. "She wants to know why you dance," she said at last. "Not the story of the ocean. Yours." She lifted the globe higher. "The test is one question. If your answer is borrowed, she will feel it. If it is true, she may listen." Arianna's chest tightened. "That's all?" "That is everything." The witch turned back to the mirror. "Now. What will you give me for it?" Arianna froze. She had brought nothing. The witch watched her in the glass, patient, waiting. Then Arianna understood. The witch already held her price. Her face, sealed in the globe. Something she had given long ago without knowing its worth. "You have already paid," the witch said softly. "Consider this a gift between old friends." She smiled at Arianna's reflection. "You may thank me at the pool." Arianna left the cave with the answer she came for and a cold weight in her stomach. She knew now what the spirit would ask. She thought of her grandmother dancing at the shore, the tide answering her hands. That was the truth. That was hers. But the witch's kindness had cost her something she could not name yet, and the globe still held her face. Three nights, and she would face the spirit ready. She only wished she knew what she still owed.