Suddenly there was a loud ripping noise, and the piece of net Luce was clutching swung far back, almost throwing her. An avalanche of shining fish tumbled out, pummeling Luce’s arms and head. The knife flew from her right hand, and she managed to reach through the beating silver forms and lace her fingers through the net’s holes while her body pitched wildly back and forth among the scrape of scales and round black eyes. All she could see was the constant flash of fish, disgorged so thickly that they became a desperate, living flood. Then came other creatures: a family of drowned porpoises, pulped jellyfish, a small shark, all crushed together. Clinging like this there was the risk that she would be pounded into unconsciousness and drown before she came to. But if she let go, the torrent would sweep her far away. Luce pictured the strange mermaid sinking deeper all alone. Where was she?

Then, in the endless repetition of silver shapes, Luce caught a glimpse of something hopeful. It was a single elegant hand, its skin the somber green-gold-brown of a bronze statue left for centuries in the ocean. The hand hung limp, its owner still wedged between fish close-packed into a bowed wall. Luce tried to reach it, but the rushing animals beat her back. Then something gave, and a girl’s form swept toward her in the middle of a tumbling mass of scales and fins and fur. A mermaid, dark-skinned and with a deep emerald tail. Luce barely managed to catch her in one outstretched arm. The fish were thinning out now, and with an involuntary groan Luce lashed her tail, tugging the strange mermaid toward the surface. Her greenish eyelids were closed and she didn’t move, but somehow Luce thought she could feel an almost imperceptible flutter of life deep inside her.

They came up just below the hard, rust-colored wall of the ship. There was an outcry of voices above as angry sailors noticed the ruptured net, the escaping haul of fish. Under normal conditions Luce would have never taken the risk of surfacing where humans might see her, but the situation was too urgent for her to worry about that. She embraced the strange mermaid from behind and leaned steeply so that the unconscious face dangled out over the rocking sea. Then Luce squeezed under her ribs to bring the water up from the girl’s lungs. It spattered out, and Luce squeezed again, then turned the girl and caught her face, blowing air between her still lips. Again, and then again. The girl didn’t move, and Luce thought of Miriam. Once again she’d come too late to save a mermaid from death, and Luce thrashed in fury, ready to fling the dragging body away from her.