Kestrel remembered to hold her breath just before the water closed over her head, so cold it felt like she’d been encased in ice. The wolf-skin cloak floated up behind her, still clasped at the neck, twirling in the water as though it were alive.
Kestrel’s eyes were wide open as she plunged to the bottom. The moonlight shone through cracks and holes in the salt, illuminating the bog in astonishing detail.
It was full of animals who had wandered in and drowned, but they were perfectly preserved, their fur lifting and settling with the movement of the water. Thick, blubbery blue weeds curled between them like waving hands. At the bottom of the bog there was a rotting wooden table and a set of chairs, with weeds growing up the legs. There was one place set for the Briny Witch’s dinner.
The Briny Witch floated down beside her and laughed. He had no trouble opening his mouth underwater.
“I like this,” he said, gurgling again. “I don’t have to make deals with dead people. I’ll just wait for you to drown and take what I want.”
He reached out for Kestrel, and she kicked him away clumsily. He sniggered and stepped back to watch her struggle.
As Kestrel floundered for the surface red dots grew in front of her eyes, and she felt light-headed with the effort of kicking. Everything around her grew vague. In her dizziness it looked like the animals were laughing, shaking their heads as they watched. The Briny Witch settled into his waterlogged chair, waiting for her to drown and come floating down.
She faltered for a second and drifted back, barely fighting the terrible urge to take a deep breath. She should have known this would happen. Granmos always said she was a terrible swimmer, and that anything that wanted to kill her should just push her into a pond.
Kestrel started to kick. She was not going to prove her grandma right.
She struck for the surface with every last ounce of energy. The Briny Witch jumped up and came after her, but it was too late. Kestrel’s hands broke into the air, and then she was pulling herself out of the hole and onto the path. The Briny Witch tried to grab her ankles, but she withdrew them just in time.
Kestrel spat out a particularly unpleasant-looking waterbug and pulled herself to her feet. She waited for the Briny Witch to emerge, but nothing happened.
She growled and stamped over to the hole in the bog.
“Come out, you coward!” she yelled.
The Briny Witch politely cleared his throat behind her.
Kestrel turned and grabbed his hands just as he reached for her face. They thrashed around for a few seconds before falling over, then Kestrel’s right hand went through its chest, which, with him being a corpse, was wet and bloated. They both shouted in disgust as her hand touched his ribs.
“Get your hand out of my ribs,” the Briny Witch snarled.
“Let my hand go,” Kestrel snarled back, her fingers trapped between its bones.
“Not until I get your eyes.”
“I’m not leaving until you make me invisible, and you don’t get my eyes, because that’s gross.”
“Maybe I’ll just take them!” the Briny Witch hissed.
“Maybe I’ll knock your head off, and you won’t need eyes!” Kestrel hissed back.
They glared at each other. Kestrel could feel his waterlogged heart thumping under her fingers. Maybe if she squeezed it she could stop him altogether, but the thought of killing him with her bare hands made her shudder.
Kestrel moved her free hand to her pocket, looking for something sharp enough to hurt him with, but her fingers closed around the round, holey stone that Finn had given her.
“It won’t take a second,” the Briny Witch said, his hand pressing against her face. “I’ll just pluck them out and pop them in.”
“Wait,” she gasped, her fingers scrabbling on the stone, although it came out more like a muffled gasp. The Briny Witch hesitated, then parted his fingers so she could speak. “Wait. I have something better than my eyes.”
“So now you want to trade,” the Briny Witch said gloatingly. “You know exactly what I want.”
“You can have an eye,” she said. “Just not the one in my head.”
The Briny Witch peeled his hand away, probably so Kestrel could see his sneer all the better. Kestrel finally managed to pull her fingers free of his ribs.
“I have a special stone from the forest,” she said before he could move again. “If you look through it, you can see the future.”
The Briny Witch snorted and tried to grab the stone from her hand, but she closed her fist around it.
“I still want invisibility,” she said.
“I still want your eyes,” he replied quickly.
“What’s the point? You know they’ll rot,” she said, looking at his bloated, wet body. “You live in the water. You’d go blind again in days. But stones last forever.”
The Briny Witch scoffed, but she knew that she’d caught his attention. He grudgingly held his hand out, and she dropped the stone into his palm. He brought it to its mouth and licked it. Kestrel held her breath.
“You’re a tricky one,” he said.
Kestrel snatched it out of his hand.
“Do we have a deal?” she snapped.
The Briny Witch hesitated. The hole in his chest was leaking water, and he suddenly looked old and tired.
“Come with me,” the Briny Witch said shortly.
Kestrel extracted her spoon from the nearby badger, silently apologizing, and followed the Briny Witch to the edge of the bog. She stayed well back from him, but it didn’t seem like he was going to try any more tricks.
“What are you doing?” she asked suspiciously.
“Take your little victory and don’t push it, or I’ll change my mind,” the Briny Witch said sharply. He was clearly not happy with what he was about to do.
He plunged a hand into the bog and broke the salt crust, making a big hole through which Kestrel could see gray goop.
“Please excuse me,” said the Briny Witch. “This is . . . embarrassing.”
He turned to the hole.
“Hurble, hurble, toil and turble,” he said to the hole. He lowered his voice, as though he didn’t want Kestrel to hear any more. “Fire burn, and cauldron . . . burble.”
He waited a moment, then sighed. He seemed to know that Kestrel was laughing, even though she hadn’t made a sound.
“Is this a joke?” Kestrel asked, straightening her face and folding her arms.
“They won’t come unless you make a fool of yourself and sing,” the Briny Witch said. “Do you have any frog spawn?”
“Er . . . no?” said Kestrel, thrown.
“Very well.” He dug a stone out of the ground. “By the picking of these . . . plums,” he said, “something tasty this way comes.”
The bog continued to belch.
“Come out, you little idiots,” the Briny Witch snapped.
Three faces bobbed out of the gray bog, round and pudgy like babies, with blue eyes and rosy cheeks. They looked livid. The largest face spat at the Briny Witch.
“Whaddya want?” it demanded, swiveling so it could look directly at them. It had the voice of an old man who smoked thirty pipes a day. “We were having a nap!”
“Yeah!” said the second and third shrilly, spinning around. Kestrel gagged as some of the bog hit her.
“Give me invisibility,” the Briny Witch said. “Go on.”
“Just like that?” said the biggest head. “Just give it to you?”
“I command you,” the Briny Witch snapped, pushing the head under the water. “Just do it.”
The other two heads cackled and disappeared after the first.