The moment came to drop the urn overboard. Hæra stepped to the railings. She showed no sign of fear, no worries that an Each-uisge would rise up from the waves—a fear Madeleine had entertained a few times. Rather, she looked at the urn, and the ocean, and then the urn again.

“I told you,” she said. “He wanted to go back to the ocean. I don’t want that. I want him to stay on land, here with me.”

Tears ran down her face, and on the last word, she sobbed.

A lump, cold and solid, sat in Madeleine’s throat. It was so hard to watch your loved ones disappear for the last time. She remembered her own family’s coffins being slid into above-ground graves to keep them safe from New Orleans floods. She and David had held hands while they watched their parents being sealed away. When it was David’s turn, Madeleine had been alone. She’d joined the Daughters of Grace shortly thereafter and had told herself she’d never be alone again.

“We can bring him back if you want,” she said, with some difficulty. “You’re not legally obligated to scatter him here. But…”

“But it’s what he wanted.” Hæra bent her head until her chin touched the urn. “So I’ll do it. I just need a moment.”

Madeleine waited. So did the boat’s captain, who stood a decorous distance away with his hands behind his back.

“Put your hand on me again,” Hæra said hoarsely.

Madeleine could do better than that. She slid her arm around Hæra’s waist as Hæra leaned over the rails and dropped the urn into the water. Together, they watched it bob on the surface before it began to sink. Once submerged, it would dissolve, and the ashes would scatter into the ocean.

She hadn’t thought to, but Madeleine found herself quoting a psalm. “‘For He maketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still.’”

Hæra propped her elbows on the railing and lowered her head as if it weighed a thousand pounds. “He does a shite job, then. The storms always come back, and they wreck everything.”

“Then they go away again, and we rebuild.” Madeleine rested her head on Hæra’s shoulder. “It’s not the same as it was before, though.”

Hæra kept staring at the spot where she’d dropped the urn. “It’s not fair.”

“It rarely is,” Madeleine agreed.

“It wouldn’t be the same if I were still Each-uisge.” Hæra hunched her shoulders. “You heard Beathag. We—they—don’t love like humans. It wouldn’t hurt like this. It didn’t when my father died.”