And now, old Ulric has joined Magda in our yard. He too is missing a daughter and, like Magda, is extremely put out by the inconvenience. The mystery is solved when Hagar, passing by with an armload of mustard stalks, overhears us.

“They’ve all gone down to the water,” Hagar says, chucking a thumb in the direction of the sea. “Have you not seen them? The whole lot of them.”

Magda, Ulric, and myself look out over the rooftops and down to the shoreline. Hagar speaks the truth. The pier is crowded by what appears to be every girl in the village, their backs to us, looking out at the sea.

I bark at Pip not to touch the ax, which he is trying to extract from the stump, and then I follow my companions down to the water. Old Ulric has taken to carrying his ancient cutlass with him wherever he goes. Tucked under his belt with his hand resting on the pommel, he says aloud what we are all thinking.

“What new trouble is this?” he grumbles. “Have we not had our fill of mischief?”

“Look at them all,” huffs Magda, gathering her skirts as she marches. “Every lass in town, idling the day away when there’s work that needs doing.”

Ulric makes a laughable display of half drawing the cutlass. “A damn mutiny is what it is.”

The sun is strong and the water in the bay ripples gently. Overhead, the terns call to one another.

Magda and Ulric both spot their errant daughters among the idle girls lining the pier. Bryndis is here, too, as is Agnet. None respond when called, their attention fixed on something out in the bay.

The mermaid is there, slipping through the surface of the water so gently that she leaves no wake. She moves gracefully, almost luridly, like a bather out for a midday dip. The girls on the pier are mesmerized with the same glassy look in their eyes as when they formed a ring around the fountain.

“Shameful,” spits Ulric.

“Outrageous,” agrees Magda.

More fathers and mothers are here, pulling and tugging their daughters away. They scold the girls for shirking their duties, they shame them for their idleness. They smack cheeks and twist their hair for being so weak-willed, for letting themselves become bewitched by the creature in the water.

“Tainted by the devil’s mistress,” grumbles the blacksmith.

“A good lashing will remedy this,” hisses a fishmonger’s wife.

I take my sister by the arm. “Come away, Bryndis. It’s not safe.” But she will not budge.

Then something happens, something that I have never witnessed before. The girls revolt. They slip free of their parent’s grip to go back to the water’s edge. Some even violently shove their fathers and mothers away. A bright and wild look flashes hot in their collective eyes. It is frightening.