When they were half a mile from the trawler, Luce released a long, sustained note, lifting a smooth arch of water below them. They hovered together up above the beating of the wild waves, and the strange mermaid turned her head to examine Luce with calm interest. Luce ignored her. Instead she focused on the music that poured from her, expanding her voice to call the wave onward. The stone-colored twilight was rapidly deepening, and the clouds above them sagged like a dim blue tent. Now that she was singing Luce felt a sudden thrill of serenity, and the darkening world became bright and vital with music. The sea sang through her, and the low clouds cast down harmonies like shadows. They weren’t traveling as quickly as Luce had before, but they still sailed along much faster than they could have hoped to swim in their weakened state. Once an orca leaped at them, but the wave swirled them on and the huge jaws snapped on empty air.

The strange mermaid laughed again, then raised her own voice in an undercurrent below Luce’s. That voice, Luce thought, seemed to carry an impossible weight of dreams with it; it was foreign-sounding and mournful and so beautiful that even Luce could barely stand to hear it.

11

Nausicaa

“I thought this would be the time,” the strange mermaid said. She had an unrecognizable accent that seemed to flare up suddenly and then vanish again. They had stopped to rest on the shore of the same craggy island where Dorian’s family had met their deaths, and the night was thick and starless. “What are the Fates to do when there is one like you waiting to snap their thread?” Luce didn’t know what the dark girl was talking about, and the slow, unrelenting curiosity in those greenish eyes made her feel shy and uncertain. “And is it even right, I wonder? This thing you’ve done?”

Luce felt herself flush. But why should she feel ashamed of saving someone?

“I heard you calling. I couldn’t just leave you to die there!” Luce protested. The strange mermaid rolled back against the shore, stretching her back and twisting her emerald green tail. It gave off complicated lights, blue and amber mixed with flashes of deep purple.

“It doesn’t matter at all that I did not die today.” The dark girl’s voice was cold and lazy as she said this, and her words rang like heavy bells.

Luce was appalled. “Of course it matters!”

“What matters is that you made the choice to save me as you did. Who are you?”

Luce couldn’t understand why such a simple question had the power to embarrass her so much. “I’m Luce.”

“Queen Luce . . .”

“I’m not Queen anything!”

“My name is Nausicaa. But if you are not queen, then you must be alone here?”