Glimmers of Scales

by Emma Savant

  Glims seemed to have this idea that Humdrums were boring and obvious. But, I mused as I wandered past tanks of bug-eyed fish, the Humdrums were the ones who’d managed to survive the elements and build entire civilizations without a smidgen of magic to help them along. Didn’t that make them the extraordinary ones?

  I glanced at the JinxNet page I’d saved to my phone. The only available picture was a tiny thumbnail, but it was enough to guide my search. I walked through the aquarium, my gaze skimming every tank and pausing whenever I caught a flash of gold. The biggest flash made me stop.

  The tank held one of the fattest fish I’d ever seen. Its scales glinted in the tank’s mellow light, but I knew it wasn’t a koi or goldfish or anything else. It certainly wasn’t anything that could be found in Oregon’s coastal waters.

  The fat yellow-gold fish swam lazily back and forth. I leaned in toward the tank until the tip of my nose touched the smooth cool glass.

  “I wish to see the Sea Witch,” I whispered.

  One of the fish’s eyes turned sharply toward me. The fin on top of its body twitched.

  Do you have an appointment? the fish asked through the glass, in a voice so distant it might as well have been inside my own head. Bubbles rose from its mouth and streamed to the top of the tank.

  “No,” I whispered. “I’m a drop-in. The website said it was okay.”

  You’re in luck. The Witch has had a slow day. She’ll see you in ten minutes, the fish said. Its soft voice was polite. Please feel welcome to view the exhibits while you wait.

  It gestured around the room with one of its side fins, then returned to pacing the tank.

  For a Wish Fish, it seemed awfully like a receptionist. But then, for a faerie godmother, I looked a lot like a high schooler. Our appearances were just a couple of convenient lies that let us get by in this blended world.

  I wiggled my fingers in a discreet wave and went back to walking around the colorful room, jerking my head up whenever someone new entered the space.

  My phone buzzed.

  Amani: Anything new?

  Every time I saw her name on my phone, I jumped a little. It was still too weird.

  Olivia: No, things are quiet.

  In the tank next to me, a fat gray fish floated by. It made eye contact for a moment before moving along.

  I felt her arrive before I saw her. It was hard to pin down what exactly had changed, but the moment she entered the room, something was different. My head jerked up and my eyes met hers; they were dark and piercing and her gaze went straight through me.

  The witch walked across the room with purposeful steps, wiping her hands on a worn-out white towel hooked through her belt loop. She wore a boring dark blue polo shirt and equally boring khakis. Her dark ponytail frizzed out the back of her blue baseball cap. She looked like just some woman in her forties who kept fish alive for a living. But the air around her felt thick and liquid. When I glanced discreetly over my glasses, I saw translucent bluish-green eels and a single fat octopus floating around her like ghosts caught in a lazy green vortex.

  “Are you here for the volunteer orientation?” she said.

  I shook my head, and she frowned a little and said, “They’re late. But what did I expect? No water sprite has ever showed up on time.”

  Sprites were famously flaky. Either they declared allegiance to a leader like the Oracle and became almost mindlessly devoted allies, or they flitted around with the attention span of a butterfly. There was no in-between.

  “I’m a drop-in,” I said. “I need a wish granted and you seem like the only one who can help.”

  She put her hands on her hips and looked down at me, her thick, dark eyebrows turning her otherwise mild gaze thunderous.

  “What kind of wish?” she said.

  “I’m a faerie godmother at Wishes Fulfilled in Portland,” I said. “I’ve got a mermaid client who needs legs.”

  “Don’t you have enchantments for that?” she said.

  “We do,” I said. “Unfortunately, my supervisor can’t endorse one. She’s trying to keep a good relationship with King Neptune Pacifica, so this needs to be all on my authority. I don’t have the skills to work up a transformation spell on that scale.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why is King Neptune involved?” she asked.

  That was the big question, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t help me once she’d heard the answer.

  “He’s my client’s dad,” I said. “And he’s not okay with her becoming human. Like, really not okay.”

  “Nor should he be,” she said. “It’s not bad for a jaunt.” She gestured down at her own legs, which, I realized, were probably not always part of her body. “But I don’t know why anyone would choose land as a permanent residence. If the gravity doesn’t get you, you’ll choke to death on all the air.”

  She kept staring down at me, blinking slowly every few seconds like she had all the time in the world.

  “Say I give her legs,” she said. “What’s in it for me?”

  I held out my hand and flipped it so my palm was facing the ground, then flipped it back up, envisioning the bag of coins I’d carefully magicked into safe storage in my energy field this morning. The bag shimmered into my palm, small but heavy.

  “My client can offer gold,” I said. “It’s not much, but she can add to it after she’s been human long enough to get a job.”

  The corner of the Sea Witch’s mouth twitched. I fought to hold still under her gaze. Had I offered too little? Too much?

  “That’s an interesting offer,” she said. “But I don’t need gold.”

  My heart sank. It was all I had. Normally, I might try to barter magic skills—my green thumb to revive her garden, maybe, or a small charm to bring her luck. But she was the Sea Witch. Not a sea witch, but the Sea Witch, the ultimate authority on magic in this region of the Pacific Ocean.

  I had nothing else to offer.

  “I’ve heard King Neptune’s daughters have pretty voices,” she said.

  I shrugged. “I hear all mer-people do.”

  “Theirs especially,” she said. “Listen, I’ll make the girl a trade. I’ll give her legs if she’ll give me her voice.”

  I took a small step back. Lily wanted Evan, but I didn’t know how high a price she’d be willing to pay. I couldn’t agree to something of that magnitude without her permission, that was for sure.

  The Sea Witch reached up and tightened her ponytail.

  “I’m not going to take it,” she said. “Don’t look so worried. I just figure, what is this, a Little Mermaid trope?”

  I nodded, and she said, “That’s what I thought. It seems poetic that the Sea Witch should ask for the girl’s voice, and I just so happen to need a narrator for a new display on crustaceans we’re putting up. I’ll enchant a copy of her voice for safekeeping and narration, and she can keep the real thing. It’ll be a fair trade. What do you say?”

  “Yes,” I said, almost before she’d finished speaking. Hope rose up in me like a bubble out of the Wish Fish’s mouth. “Yes, I think she’ll agree to that.”

  “Fantastic,” the Witch said. “What do you say I meet you later this afternoon after I get off? There are some little islands off the coast of the state park up north. You’ll know them when you see them. Meet me there at six.”

  Chapter Twelve

  An enormous wave crashed against the ground a foot from where I stood. I threw out my arms for balance and stepped back, though it didn’t do much good. The island the Sea Witch had directed us to was hardly an island at all. At best, it was a large rock jutting out of the sea. A thick, briny haze of magic rose from it. This particular rock had been glamoured so we’d look like shifting mist if someone happened to glance where we stood, but it didn’t offer much by way of comfort.

  Daniel crouched at the water’s edge, in serious conversation with my client. I wasn’t sure whether it was her fascinating repartee or the fact that she had only the tiniest of seashells for clothing, but I wasn�
�t about to argue with him; he’d helped get me and the magic carpet here in one piece despite the strong breeze blowing in off the water. Lily had arrived at the island before us, no doubt eager to get her dreams quickly on their way to reality.

  My impression of the Sea Witch had been of someone who liked to make an appearance, but her head poked out of the water as silently as a sea lion’s. I only saw her because she happened to come up right beside Lily. Her wild curls were tamed by the water into sleek black coils that dripped down her bare shoulders.

  She raised an arm and beckoned me closer. I took a step down toward them, careful to crouch and brace myself with my free hand against the slick stone.

  “You must be the Sea King’s daughter,” the Witch said to Lily, not bothering to say hello.

  Lily bobbed in the water and bowed her head.

  “Princess Lily Pacifica, ma’am.”

  The Sea Witch didn’t return the aquatic curtsy.

  “I heard you have a voice,” she said.

  “So they tell me, Your Ladyship,” Lily said.

  It occurred to me that the Sea Witch might have been an even bigger deal than I thought, if Lily was calling her Your Ladyship. There were too many things I didn’t know about my own world. And if I was this clueless about my own community, how much was I missing about the Humdrum world? I couldn’t get there fast enough.

  The Sea Witch grabbed Lily’s chin and turned her face this way and that, analyzing her for Titania knew what.

  “The faerie gave you my price?” she demanded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lily said. “I’m happy to pay it.”

  “As well you should be,” the Witch said. “I’m a saint for letting you off so cheaply.”

  Daniel laughed, and the Sea Witch’s eyes darted to fix on his face. She stared at him for a moment, then gave him a sharp nod like she approved of whatever she saw.

  She reached into her thick hair and dug around for a moment as though trying to find an elusive itch. After a moment, her fingers reappeared, holding a tiny old-fashioned cassette recorder dotted with tiny barnacles.

  “You should teach Olivia that trick,” Daniel said. “Her hair’s frizzy enough.”

  I wanted to kick him to make him shut up, but I couldn’t without risking slipping off into the water. Another wave crashed behind us, sending frothy white foam around the rock to lap around the Witch’s and Lily’s shoulders.

  The Witch held the cassette recorder up to Lily’s mouth.

  “Speak,” she said.

  “What should I say?” Lily said.

  “Tell me why you want legs,” said the Witch. “That should matter enough to you for the spell to take.”

  A dreamy expression I was starting to recognize stole across Lily’s face.

  “I want legs so I can be with my one true love,” she said. “He is my soulmate and I’m ready to give up everything for the chance of a life in his arms.”

  Daniel whipped his head around to me and muttered, “Are you kidding me?”

  I couldn’t hear him over Lily’s voice and the waves crashing around us, but I could read his lips. I didn’t have a good answer. I thought the same thing every other time she opened her mouth.

  The Sea Witch didn’t seem perturbed. She watched the cassette tape spin in the recorder.

  “Evan is the man I was put on this earth to love,” Lily said. “He only needs a chance to be with me in order to realize our true potential together. And I need legs, because he’s a human and a Hum, and he can’t know about our world until we’re to be married.”

  That was the law. Glims and Hums lived in different worlds. Only a true commitment like marriage—or a pressing need to know, like becoming President and inheriting a relationship with the highest Glimmering Councils—was considered a good enough reason to let the worlds touch.

  I had always liked that law. I didn’t want my Humdrum friends to know I was magical. I wondered if I’d feel differently in Lily’s place, unable to tell my “true love” who I really was. I’d always been glad to keep that particular secret from Lucas.

  Not that he was my true love. It was obnoxious how often I had to remind myself.

  Marrying Evan, though, had seemed to be Lily’s plan from the beginning. From the way she talked, I got the feeling she thought they’d be on their honeymoon in a week.

  I’d be lucky if I had her walking a straight line by then.

  “Sing a scale for me,” the Witch said. “La-la-las.”

  Lily complied, trilling out a crystalline song that made the hair on my arms stand up. For the first time, I understood why there were legends of sailors jumping overboard to chase the mermaids’ music.

  The Witch clicked a button on her tape recorder and the wheels stopped spinning. She tucked it back in her hair, where it disappeared in the folds of her heavy curls.

  “That’s plenty,” she said. She touched Lily’s cheek and pursed her lips. “You sure about this?” she said. “Being human can be nasty business.”

  “I’m sure,” Lily said. Her eyes glowed with a fire that toed the line between fervor and mania. “Evan is my life. I would do anything for him.”

  “You might have to,” the Witch said.

  She reached back into her hair and produced a small crystal bottle filled with what looked like glittering blue sand.

  “Sprinkle this on your tail and tongue,” she said. “Make sure you’re somewhere private, because it’ll hurt like hell. Nothing to be done about that, but the pain’s gone as quickly as it comes. It used to stick around like you were walking on knives. Thank Poseidon magic’s progressed in the last few years.”

  She handed the bottle to Lily, who took it as though it were made of diamonds.

  “Thank you, Your Ladyship!” Lily said. “I hope you know what this means to me.”

  “It was a fair trade,” the Witch said.

  She patted her hair, where the tape recorder lay hidden.

  “You just make sure this is what you want,” she said. “You have to truly believe you’re meant to be human. You’ve got to rely on your belief or it will all go wrong and you’ll end up with scaly legs or a tail with toes or the Kraken knows what.”

  Concern crossed Lily’s features, but it was gone in a blink. She clutched the bottle to her heart.

  The Witch turned to me and added, “Good luck.”

  She offered Daniel a smile and a wink, and then she was gone without another word. Her eel’s tail slapped the water behind her as she dove into the Pacific’s steely depths.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Far above the trees and the city, past a glamour that hid us from the Hums, Daniel and I flew down one of the rainbow roads that stretched like a net of iridescent ribbons across the city. I leaned forward and gripped the corners of the carpet, focusing my thoughts on home, but my mind kept wandering.

  Ever since I’d been hit over the head with Imogen and Lucas, I’d been trying to stay busy. I’d focused on math tests, on Lily, on my garden, on ACT and SAT prep, on anything that would keep me from thinking about them and especially her.

  But now, with Lily’s legs taken care of and nothing to distract me besides the occasional pumpkin carriage or broomstick passing us, it was impossible to hide from my thoughts.

  Lily was in love with Evan. I was making all her dreams come true. She was risking everything to follow her heart.

  And what was I doing?

  Sitting around, moping about something I’d lost because I’d been too much of a good friend to rush Lucas.

  How could I be a good godmother to other people when I couldn’t even handle myself?

  We landed around the corner from the house. I tossed up an invisibility glamour that would throw my parents off for a few seconds if they saw me, then hid the carpet in the garage before we went in the front door.

  Even the pain of obsessing over my former best friend and my craptastic love life wasn’t enough to distract me entirely from the discomfort of being home. The strain settled
around my shoulders the second I walked in the door.

  My mom stood in the foyer, her wand out and pointed at the dim yellow chandelier above us.

  “I’m glad you’re back. We are going to eat together tonight,” she said the moment we were inside. “As a family.”

  She jabbed her wand in our direction to punctuate her words, and we both jumped to the side before a spell could fly out and hit us. You could never be too careful around an emotional faerie.

  Daniel raised his hands and edged away from her toward the stairs.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She whirled on him. “Don’t even think you’re in my good graces, mister.”

  Startled by the anger in her voice, I looked up at Daniel. He groaned and dropped his hands to his sides, where they dangled like a gorilla’s.

  “Seriously?” he said.

  “We will talk later,” she said. “After your father is home to be part of the discussion.”

  “Like he cares,” Daniel muttered, and stalked up the stairs.

  I waited until he was gone before turning to Mom, who was glaring at the chandelier like it had personally done her wrong.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  She turned back to the light and pointed her wand at it. A silver trail of dust rose off the dangling crystals and streamed through the air like a piece of thread before collecting in a gray pile in the middle of the floor.

  “Your brother has been skipping school,” she said. “Apparently, he thinks running off to Devyn’s house is a better use of his time than getting an education.”

  Her jaw tightened and her eyebrows went up. She was raring for an argument. I glanced at the stairs.

  “I need you to go help with dinner,” she said before I could escape. “Chicken’s in the oven. I want a side of spinach and onions.”

  Chopping vegetables and hovering over a hot stove sounded a lot less dangerous than standing here right now. I went to the kitchen before she could say anything else.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket while I was slicing onions, a small magic shield around my head to block the fumes.