“Oh, Luce!” Another voice broke in on them. “Oh, I knew you’d get her! I tried to follow, but you were going too fast.” Luce turned in the direction of this new voice to see Violet’s sweet, gray-green eyes staring at them. Violet was so excited that she seemed to forget her usual shyness. “I bet Luce would never tell you this,” Violet went on breathlessly, beaming at Nausicaa, “but she saved my life, too! My very first day as a mermaid I was so dumb I tried to leave the water, and Luce came after me. She almost died! And she is so the greatest singer.”

Nausicaa gave Violet one of her oddly peaceful smiles. “I have heard your queen sing. Though she denies her rule here. But none of what you tell me now surprises me.”

“She’s supposed to be our queen,” Violet explained with an audible note of resentment. “She just won’t do it. Maybe she’ll listen to you, if you tell her? I mean they did try to kill Luce just now, when she raided our cave to get the knife, so now she probably hates us even more than she did already . . .”

Nausicaa was glancing back and forth between them, a quizzical smile on her face. Luce thought she should say something. “It’s a really long story, Nausicaa. You’re probably way too exhausted to want to hear it now.”

“All the stories are long,” Nausicaa observed dryly.

“Once you’ve had a rest I’ll take you back to my cave, and if you want I’ll tell you about it tomorrow . . .” Luce went on.

“All the stories are so long that they”—Nausicaa paused, and her hand drew a circle on the air—“that in the end, they become the same story. So I may already know yours, Queen Luce.”

Luce didn’t quite know what to say to that.

“Just Luce. Okay? And this is Violet.” Luce suddenly noticed other shining heads popping up in the water around them. “Um, Nausicaa? We should probably get out of here.”

Nausicaa shook her head and held up one hand with a casually majestic gesture. “We will wait, please. I will speak to them.” Anais’s golden head emerged directly face to face with Nausicaa, her expression savage. They were no more than five feet apart, and Luce thought how bizarre they looked together; this close to Nausicaa’s dark patina, Anais’s brash blond beauty seemed phony and brittle, like something made of tinsel and plastic. After a moment Anais registered Nausicaa’s devastating calm, and something wavered in her eyes. She glanced around for her followers; Luce noticed then that Jenna was missing and that Samantha was cowering pitifully behind a rock. Nausicaa waited in silence for so long that Luce could hear the blood surging in her veins.