Marina Coralwise's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Marina Coralwise surfaced under the pier at low tide, her blue hair flat against her skull, her green and red tail hidden beneath dark water. She had not slept in three nights. In her hands she held a glass bottle stoppered with a shell crown. Inside it swirled a coil of her own magic, drawn from her chest with a bone needle the week before. The hoodwitch had named the price by letter: one piece of a mermaid's heart, carried in glass. Marina had paid it before she walked, because the spell to make her human had never worked for anyone, and she wanted to be the first. The hoodwitch's door sat above the tide line in a hut built from driftwood and tar. Marina dragged herself up the rocks on her elbows. She had practiced this crawl in the shallows for a month. Inside, the hoodwitch did not look up. She was an old woman with salt in the creases of her hands. A wide basin sat on the table between them, full of pale water that gave off a slow steam. Marina set the bottle beside the basin. "You know no mermaid has come back from this," the hoodwitch said. "I know." "Your people will say you were broken." "They already do." Marina pushed the bottle forward. The light inside it bent toward the witch's fingers. "I watched a human walk on the shore last spring. I have not slept right since. I want legs. I want to find out what he was walking toward." The hoodwitch took the bottle and held it to the lamp. She nodded once. She tipped the swirl of magic into the steaming basin, and the water turned the color of a bruise. Then she pressed Marina's head down into it. Marina did not fight. Her lungs filled with something that was not water and not air. Her tail seized. The pain ran from her hips to her jaw and stopped. When the witch let her up, Marina lay on the floor with two long, pale legs she did not know how to use. Her tail was gone. The bottle on the table was empty and clear. The hoodwitch dropped a folded purple dress on Marina's chest. "Someone left this for you. Paid in advance. She is waiting outside." Marina pulled the dress over her shaking shoulders and crawled to the door. A girl stood on the path in a crown Marina did not recognize, holding a thin rod tipped with a pink clock face. Dark curls. Steady eyes. "You can't walk yet," the girl said. "I'm Luna Fortier. I paid the witch to send you out alive. You owe me for that. Stand up. We have to be gone before the tide turns." Marina gripped the doorframe and tried to stand on legs that had been hers for one minute.