Chapter 11 #2
Hyacinth floated on the other side, waiting for us. She pressed her finger to her lips, indicating quiet, and waited for us to swim closer.
My senses screamed at me. Quickly, I looked around, checking out all angles. To the left and right, the walls of the trench stretched upwards as far as I could see. Behind us, the whale skeleton seemed to block our exit.
Up ahead, the trench narrowed to almost a point, ending in another weed-covered rock wall. I narrowed my eyes, peering through the gloom, and saw an enormous round shape etched into the wall. It looked a little like scales.
No, not scales. They were shells arranged in a large rosette pattern in the wall, bone-white and shining with an odd, preternatural pearl-like luster. It should have looked pretty, but it didn’t. It looked terrifying, like a door made of shining human teeth.
Hyacinth waited until we were next to her and pointed. “There you go.” Her voice was a hushed whisper.
“That’s the sea witch’s lair?”
“Yep.”
I frowned. “So… it’s a cave?”
She beamed. “That’s right.”
“No other doors? No emergency exit out the back? No side windows to let in a little sunshine?”
Hyacinth shook her head. “Uh uh.”
Cress and Donovan began muttering to each other behind me, while I studied the creepy door. Whatever their plan had been, it didn’t involve a frontal assault.
“Hey.” Hyacinth suddenly spun around to face us and spread her hands expansively. “Do you guys want to play a game?”
I caught the wicked spark in her eyes and held up my finger in a warning. “Hyacinth—”
“Let’s play…” Her coral-pink lips split into a huge smile.
“Ding dong ditch!” She flicked her powerful tail and darted away from us, heading straight for the door, then smacked it with both fists, causing it to clatter loudly like a snake’s rattle.
Without hesitating, she turned around and sped past us at a lightning pace, cackling in glee and spinning effortlessly through the bones of the whale, and disappeared into the distance.
A sickening pulse thudded through the water around us, and my heart sank. The door cracked, then swung open, smacking against the rock wall with a terrifyingly loud clang.
Before I could move, before I could even breathe, enormous silver-blue tentacles erupted from the hole, slithering like snakes, peeling up the sides of the trench. I froze.
A woman’s voice—deep, thrumming with an alien power—echoed out from the darkness within the cave as the tentacles kept coming and coming, long and thick and absolutely horrifying. “Who dares disturb me?”
Donovan was suddenly in front of me, a shining dagger in each fist. A tentacle shot towards him, lightning fast, and wrapped around his arms, squeezing them to his sides.
The voice cackled. “Got you!”
He swore, threw his head back and shouted a word in a foreign tongue; a flash of green light sparked in the water. The tentacles unraveled and slithered away.
“Ouch! What the—ooh, you just wait until I get there, you little bastard.” The voice echoed, getting louder.
Those enormous tentacles snaked closer again.
Donovan, now with his hands free, swiped at them with his daggers, and they flinched back.
“You want to use magic on me?” The sea witch’s voice rose through several octaves. “On me?”
A tentacle reared back and shot forward, wrapping around Cress’s leg and tugging at her.
Another circled her arm, holding it tight.
Quickly, she whispered a spell under her breath and slipped out of the creature’s grip like she was boneless.
Still, the silvery-white tentacles kept coming, getting thicker and thicker.
Donovan whipped around, facing the door and brandishing his daggers. He roared a challenge. “Come, monster! Face me!”
Cress dropped down and planted her feet on the sea floor in front of me, one leg stretched out, in a classic predator crouch.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m coming, you little shit,” the sea witch spat out from the depths of the cave. “Just you wait.” The enormous tentacles kept spilling out of the hole. “Just wait.” There was a pause. “I really should get this entrance widened one day.”
“Come, sea hag!” Donovan roared again. “I will have your head!”
This was stupid. I heaved a sigh. “Stop.”
“What?” The sea witch’s voice echoed out from deep within the cave.
“Not you,” I called out. “I’m talking to my companions.”
Donovan turned his head and glared at me furiously. Cress didn’t move. Her huge eyes were fixed on the open doorway, watching the enormous monster’s tentacles spill out and unfurl like intestines falling out of a stomach wound.
“Just... just stop,” I told Donovan. I kicked my feet, swimming past him. “You’re being terribly rude.”
His emerald eyes flashed with fury. “It’s the sea witch,” he hissed. “She is a vicious monster.”
“Donovan!” I spun around in the water to face him. “That’s also very rude. You don’t know her personally, do you?”
“She’s a predator, Chosen! Of course I know all about her. The legend of the evil sea witch of the mer has reached every single corner of our Upper World.”
I pursed my lips. “I’ll take that as a no. You don’t know her personally.”
“Everyone knows of her! Her dark magic powers are—”
“Ah.” I nodded smugly. “Now I get it. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? This is what this little episode is all about. I’ve never really let myself be comfortable being a powerful woman, have I?”
“Chosen…” Donovan shook his head, exasperated. “What are you talking about? She’s literally a monster, and she will kill us and eat us.”
“No, Donovan,” I said patiently. “She’s a woman with power, and you’re going to insult her and bring her down and call her a witch and a monster.
Well, I’ve got news for you, buddy.” I wagged my finger at him.
“You can’t silence us anymore. Gone are the days where you can take an intelligent, powerful woman and burn her at the stake.
Powerful women are not evil. We are not monsters. ”
Cress twitched. “Donovan…”
His eyes flicked behind me and widened.
Now that I realized what this delusion was about, I was determined to not to be distracted.
“Focus, please,” I said. “We’re having this little talk now, Donovan.
A woman with power isn’t a witch. She’s not a hag, and she’s definitely not a monster,” I added, swishing my hands so I could turn around to see what he was staring at.
“A powerful woman can still be soft; she can still be gentle. We can command respect. We don’t have to be unyielding or hard, or masculine-presenting to get ahead. For too long, the patriarchy—”
The words died in my throat.
There, outside the sinister shining shell door, the silver-blue tentacles stretched out in all directions, thick and dexterous as boa constrictors. Right in the middle was the most terrifying-looking woman I’d ever seen in my life.
Huge, at least four times my size, and humanoid apart from her terrifying tentacles that branched out from her thick waist. She had a human-looking face, except for her mouth—too wide, stretching out from one ear to another.
The huge maw dropped open in a big wide O, displaying a full circle of razor-sharp triangular teeth.
Her enormous round eyes were coal-black, with no trace of whites on either side of her iris.
Long, tangled stringy-green hair drifted around her head.
To complete the picture, two huge bare breasts floated out from her chest, waving gently from side to side in the drift of the tide.
Her skin shined silver-blue, with an odd preternatural luminescence that raised goosebumps all over my skin.
I swallowed roughly.
The sea witch closed her mouth, blinked, then opened it again. “Go on,” she finally said. “What were you saying about the patriarchy?”
I chewed on my lip for a second. This is me, facing my demons.
“Uh, where was I? Oh right.” I took a deep breath and felt my gills tickle.
Just go with it, Susan. “For too long, the patriarchy has been demonizing strong women, trying to bring them down, because they fear our power. We are not evil just because we are smart and strong and brave.”
The terrifying woman nodded slowly. “You’re right,” she mumbled. “I’m not evil. I’m just powerful.”
I nodded stiffly. “Exactly. You are a beautiful, magical creature.”
Her enormous mouth split open again in a horrifying grin. “You think I’m beautiful?”
I swallowed again. “Beauty is subjective, of course. But that’s beside the point. Even if you weren’t beautiful, that doesn’t mean you are evil.”
“That’s right. Well, maybe I can occasionally be a little evil. When there’s a ship to sink, or a bratty mermaid kid to curse to an endless, agonizing existence as a screaming sea-wraith,” she added, hitching her bony shoulders in a shrug. “But I can be soft. I can be gentle.”
“You can,” I told her. “You can be anything you want. You are a strong, powerful, beautiful woman, and it’s unfair to demonize you.”
She nodded to herself thoughtfully for a moment.
“I crochet,” she said, raising her thin eyebrows.
“Did you know? No, no one knows that. I make handbags out of kelp and decorate them with shells. They’re so pretty.
” She pouted. “But no one ever says, oh, look, there’s that talented, wonderful sea witch who makes those pretty kelp handbags, do they?
They just swim away screaming, oh shit, it’s the sea witch! Run away, she’s going to eat us!”
“I can commiserate,” I told her, trying not to look at her enormous tits as they bobbed along sideways in the current, then back again. “When people fear your power, they can be awfully mean, can’t they?”
Her chin wobbled. “Yes. And the other merpeople can be so mean to me.”
I kicked my feet, moving closer to her. Face your demon…
A hand grabbed my leg and yanked me back. “You are insane. She’s literally going to eat us,” he growled. “Get behind me, woman.”