Fabulous fiction: Sea Hearts by Margo Lanagan
‘The old witch is there,’ said Raditch, peering over the top to Six-Mile Beach. ‘Well settled with her knitting.’
‘It’s all right. We’re plenty,’ said Grinny.
‘We’re plenty and we have business,’ James said with some bluster - he was as scared of her as anyone. He shook his empty sack. ‘We have been sent by our mams. We’re to provide for our families.’
‘Yes, we’ve come all this way,’ said Oswald Cawdron.
‘We have.’
And down the cliff we went. It was a poisonous day. Every now and again the wind would take a rest from pressing us to the wall, and try to pull us off it instead. We would grab together and sit, then, making a bigger person’s weight that it could not remove. The sea was grey with white dabs of temper all over it; the sky hung full of ragged strips of cloud.
We spilled out onto the sand. You can fetch sea-hearts two ways. You can go up the tide-wrack; you will find more there, but they will be harder, drier for lying there, and many of them dead. You can still eat them, but they will take more cooking and, unless your mam boils them through the night, more chewing. They are altogether more difficult.
A HAUNTINGLY BEAUTIFUL NOVEL FROM THE WINNER OF FOUR WORLD FANTASY AWARDS.
‘Why would I? People are uneasy enough with me - if I start bringing up sea-wives, they’ll take against me good and proper.’
‘It could be secret.’
‘Could it?’
On remote Rollrock Island, the sea-witch Misskaella discovers she can draw a girl from the heart of a seal. So, for a price, any man might buy himself a bride; an irresistibly enchanting sea-wife. But what cost will be borne by the people of Rollrock - the men, the women, the children - once Misskaella sets her heart on doing such a thing?
Margo Lanagan weaves an extraordinary tale of desire and revenge, of loyalty, heartache and human weakness, and of the unforeseen consequences of all-consuming love.
