The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Author:Maggie Tokuda-Hall [Tokuda-Hall, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536214536
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2020-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Flora pushed the wet rag across the stone floor of the witch’s kitchen, but she paid no mind to her work. The cost of her stay was to do chores as Xenobia assigned them, and it was a price Flora was more than willing to pay. She had nowhere else to go — she’d abandoned her brother and had in turn been abandoned by Evelyn. She was not capable of love, apparently, and so she could not receive it. So staying with Xenobia made as much sense as anything. She was no stranger to chores, and frankly, these ones were easy.

Grit from the floor caught in her fingernails, and she felt her fingers prune from the water. Still, it was the cleanest she’d been, maybe in her whole life. Xenobia had a wooden tub that she filled, improbably, from hot water delivered via the elevator outside her door. It was as luxurious a life as Flora had ever known. She was clean and warm and well fed.

She did not care.

For her part, Xenobia was content to cook at the hearth, and the smells she produced made Flora’s mouth water, despite her lack of appetite. She’d never been less hungry in her life, but the smell — of meat and lime and onion — was too enticing to be ignored.

“That’s some shoddy work,” Xenobia said. Flora looked about her. The floor was wet in the exact arc of her arm span around her, nowhere else. The witch was right.

Useless.

“I’m sorry,” Flora said. She made to scrub more diligently, but the witch motioned for her to sit at the table, which Flora did. Xenobia ladled out some stew from the hearth into a wooden bowl. Flora’s mouth watered. She was more hungry than she’d realized.

“Have you thought more on the story I told you?”

Flora did not respond. It had been, she thought, more like advice than a story, and she was in no mood to receive wisdom. Her heart ached. What did Xenobia know of her heart? Only that it was not unique. Only that pain was universal. It was not, Flora thought, advice she cared to hear at the moment.

She took a spoonful of the soup, which was too hot. It burned her tongue. But it was delicious, and it warmed her belly like a hug. She nodded her enjoyment to Xenobia, who stared back at her appraisingly.

“Powerful things, stories. If you care to listen to them.”

“I have no patience for stories,” Flora said. She had not meant to say it quite so bluntly, but she had not the fortitude for pretense, not anymore. When the walls of Florian had come crumbling down around her, she’d found she had little strength left in the rubble. She could not bear the thought of more lessons, more tales. Not after Evelyn.

Xenobia laughed her cutting laugh. “What a little shit you are,” she said. “Come into my house, tell me you have no time for my craft.” She lifted an eyebrow at Flora, all challenge and vinegar.

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