Magic Three of Solatia Read Online Free

the night.
    A full moon was rising, and the strand sparkled with a thousand little lights. These were shells reflecting back the moon’s rays. And though it was night, the shingle was as bright as morn.
    A strange hush settled over the isle. All at once even the constant drumming of the waves on the shore seemed stilled. Sianna felt sleepy. She reached into her jacket pocket and drew out two sharp shells she had hidden there. These she placed on the floor and then stood upon them with her bare feet. The shells pricked her soles, and the pain would keep her awake.
    It was near midnight when a splash near the shore startled her. Something—someone—was approaching.
    In the moonlight everything appeared larger than in the day. It seemed to Sianna that a great monstrous fish was rising up out of the water. Yet it was no fish, she saw at last, but a mer-creature, part woman and part fish. The creature heaved itself onto the shore with its hands and wriggled farther up the beach.
    While Sianna watched from behind the seaweed curtains of the coral house, the mermaid’s tail sloughed off and two perfect legs appeared in its place. Then the seawitch, for it was indeed she, flexed and wriggled her feet slowly as if it hurt to move them. She bent her knees and moved cautiously at first. Then she came toward the hut.
    In the moonlight she gleamed white as the belly of a fish. Her hair covered her back and breasts as she moved. And the only things she wore were strands of anemones she had braided through her long black hair.

7. Sianna’s Trade
    D READ MARY DID NOT look so dreadful then, for her face was quite lovely and soft in the moonlight. She moved with the grace of a creature still in the sea, her motions slow and majestic. She seemed to float in the air as she would in a wave.
    The moment she saw the seawitch, Sianna knew what she would have to do. All thoughts of thanking her fled. The girl crawled out the window, though the shells scraped her legs. She ran down to the sea where the mermaid had shed her tail.
    Grabbing up the slippery, wet tail in her hands, Sianna called out to the startled witch in a voice that quivered with fear, “Dread Mary, I conjure you, take care. You shall not return to the sea till I have what is rightfully mine.”
    At the sound of the girl’s voice, Dread Mary turned. She came slowly over to where Sianna stood and held out her hand to the girl. In the moon’s light Sianna could see the delicate pulsing membranes stretched taut between each finger and on the witch’s neck, close up under each ear, were faint red gill lines that beat in her heart’s rhythm.
    “Give me my tail, child, and I will not harm you,” came Dread Mary’s voice. It was liquid and low and full of the sounds of the sea.
    “You shall not harm me anyhow, mother from the sea.” Sianna’s words were braver than her voice. “I am not afraid.”
    “Take care, child, for there is much to fear.”
    “Give me my buttons and you shall have your tail.”
    The seawitch kept her hand stretched toward the girl, but a smile formed on her face. It was perhaps the first time in almost three hundred years that she had smiled that kind of smile. It was a fond smile, a smile of liking, a smile of respect.
    “I will make you such a trade,” said the witch. “Give me my tail.”
    “First swear,” said Sianna, who could not read that smile in the moonlight and feared a trick. “Swear by all you hold sacred and true.”
    “I swear by the constant sea,” said Dread Mary. “I swear by the tides that turn again each day. By the infinite grains of salt in the ocean and the multitude of grains of sand on the strand. I swear by the scales on each fish in the water and by the seaweed rosaries that sway in the sea. By all these I swear that I shall return to you what is yours if you but give me back my tail.”
    Sianna smiled then. “It is yours. I cannot hold it.” And she gave the fishtail to the witch.
    Dread Mary moved closer then