head. “I can’t say I saw it all that clearly, not from so far back, and with the rain so heavy. But I did hear you singing. Surely your magic helped?”
I shook my head. “We’d have been lost without Nat’s dagger.” I was thankful beyond words that Nat had been there, and I wanted to give credit where it was due. But in the back of my mind, I felt chagrin, too—and worry. I was used to being the one who saved myself, and the one who saved others. Yet against that strange, impossibly strong magic, I’d been all but powerless.
I couldn’t bring myself to say it in so many words, however. Not even to Norrie.
“The dear boy,” said Norrie. Then, looking more closely at me, she added, “I hope I’m not speaking out of turn—”
“Let’s not talk about it now.” My face, already pink from the bath, grew pinker. I stirred a bit of rosemary with my hand. “Tell me about these herbs instead. Do you really think they work?”
Norrie hesitated. “Well, my own mother set great store by them, and people have been using them for time out of mind to keep themselves safe. Though I can’t say they did much to protect you, back when you went singing us off our island. But who can tell? Maybe it would’ve gone worse for us if I’d done nothing.”
“Lady Helaine said they weren’t part of Chantress lore.”
“Your godmother didn’t have much time for them, it’s true, but I don’t see why Chantresses should scorn to use them. Especially now that we’re coming up to Allhallows’ Eve. Only a few days now till it’s here.”
Norrie had always been anxious about Allhallows’ Eve, believing it to be a time when spirits walked and magical threats abounded. Her worries seemed to be based more on old traditions than anything else. According to Lady Helaine, however, Allhallows’ Eve was indeed a dangerous time of year, at least for Chantresses, because that was when Wild Magic was at its strongest.
This warning hadn’t affected me as Lady Helaine had intended. She’d taught me that everything in this world had its own Wild Magic, its own music—which could mislead or even kill a Chantress who opened herself up to it. Like most Chantresses, my godmother wore a stone that deafened her to Wild Magic—a stone that instead allowed her to work Proven Magic, a collection of safe song-spells that Chantresses learned by rote.
I had once had such a stone myself, but it was cracked and useless now. Wild Magic was the only way open to me. Fortunately, I gloried in it, finding it far more powerful and flexible than Proven Magic, and far less dangerous than my godmother had claimed. For a long time now, I hadn’t given Allhallows’ Eve a second thought, except to appreciate the greater intensity and clarity I heard in the music all around me at this time of year.
But perhaps I had been naïve. Perhaps Norrie’s vague anxiety and Lady Helaine’s solemn warnings contained more truth than I’d realized.
I thought of the furious singing I’d heard—so much like a Chantress, and yet so different. “Norrie, you don’t happen to know of any connections between sea monsters and Chantresses, do you?”
Norrie looked at me over the towel. “What a question!”
I pressed her again. “Do you?”
“I’m the wrong one to ask,” Norrie said. “You know that.”
It was true. Norrie wasn’t a Chantress herself, and she wasn’t privy to Chantress secrets. Which suited her just fine, as magic had always made her uneasy. By preference, she had as little to do with it as possible.
“All I know is the Melusine story,” Norrie said, “and you know that already.”
So I did, though I hadn’t thought to connect it with the monster I’d just battled. It was one of Lady Helaine’s favorite stories—a lesson, as she saw it, in the importance of respecting one’s elders and the awful consequences that came of not obeying their rules.
According to Lady Helaine, Melusine had been a first-generation Chantress, meaning that she’d been the daughter of a faerie mother and a human father. As a small child, Melusine went to live in the faerie realms with her mother, Pressina, but at fifteen she returned to the mortal world, where she tried to use her magic against her father. Pressina herself punished Melusine for this terrible act by cursing her. From then on, Melusine turned into a sea serpent from the waist down every Saturday, without fail.