‘Maybe I do remember you,’ Nicks said, his face suddenly close. A sway of the water from where his legs moved underneath him. ‘Did something happen?’

‘I kissed you and then you went away.’ Matty’s voice was as small as a pebble.

That tiny sound in his throat again. Totally unbothered. ‘Well, I’m back now. Come on.’ He let himself curl back round onto his front, before slinking into the shadow-water. A supple sound, swallowed by the night.

A few moments more. The stars, their soft fire. The dark fingers of the trees.

Matty let the urn drop, watched it roll, fill with water, and begin to sink.

Followed it under.

Author’s Note

Various water myths and folklore swim in and out of this novel, and are drawn on, hinted at, twisted and thwarted. Several only rose up to the surface after the writing had been done.

The nix, nixie, neck or nokken is a shape-shifting water spirit in Germanic mythology, with variations in Scandinavian tales. They try and lure people into the water and are portrayed as malevolent in some stories, and kind and harmless in others. In one Scandinavian version, the Fossegrim agrees to live with the human who has fallen in love with him.

There are several tales with poisoned or enchanted kisses; in the English folk song ‘George Collins’, the protagonist is the lover of a water-sprite, but then leaves her; she rewards him with a fatally poisonous kiss.

Traditional murder ballads where a man attacks and kills his lover by water include ‘The Oxford Girl’, ‘The Wexford Girl’ and the Appalachian song, ‘Down in the Willow Garden’.

Selkies are beings in Scottish folklore that change from seal form to human form on land, shedding their seal-skin. Their stories are especially found on Orkney and Shetland, where they may be referred to simply as merfolk. The Irish merrow is sometimes referred to as a half-seal, half-person.

The classic selkie story features a fisherman who finds a naked woman on the shore, falls in love with her and so steals her sealskin and marries her. She often bears children with him, but never loses her yearning for the sea and her true self. Usually she eventually finds her skin and returns, either leaving her children or taking them with her. It has possible origins in, or at least parallels with, the swan maiden myth. There are similar stories found in mermaid and merrow folklore.

Male selkies are also described as very attractive, and tend to seek out those dissatisfied with their lives and marriages.

Melusine is a woman of European folklore who is serpent or fish from the waist down. She marries a nobleman on the proviso that he never looks at her in the bath, and she leaves him when he does.

Sheanna’s story of an evil lough-dog is based on the legend of the Dobhar-chú (‘water-hound’) at Glenade, County Leitrim.