“It is your cave, where Luce stole the knife?” Nausicaa said at last. “You think this is a cause for an argument?” Luce was glad to notice that Anais was visibly flustered. There was something about Nausicaa that she simply didn’t know how to deal with.

“Like anything around here is any of your business!” Anais tried sneering, but it sounded false and whiny. “I don’t think I owe you an explanation. Just get out of our way now, okay?”

“She stole the knife so that she could save me from the net. She has only done what you should have done. She has timay.” It took Luce a moment to understand that this was Nausicaa’s way of saying that Luce had only been obeying the timahk; three seconds later Anais seemed to realize the same thing.

“Oh my God! Did everybody hear that? She can’t even say timahk right, and she thinks she can tell us what to do!” Anais’s sneer sounded more genuine now, and a few mermaids laughed.

Nausicaa wasn’t fazed at all. “To say timahk is a corruption. A change that has come over the word from many hundreds of years. The Greek word is said ‘timay.’”

“Like you know Greek!” Anais almost squealed it. Luce saw Nausicaa’s slow, unending smile, a smile that seemed to cross whole oceans, and suddenly felt sure that Nausicaa knew Greek as well as she knew the sea itself.

Everyone seemed to be waiting, with inexplicable anxiety, for Nausicaa to answer back. She didn’t bother, just gazed at them all with the same merciless calm, the slightly ironic smile.

“Anyway, retard,” Anais snapped at last in a tone that suggested she was desperately trying to cover the silence, “I’m queen here! And I say you’ve got to get lost, like you and Luce had better get out of Alaska right now and never come back, or I’ll make sure you’re both sorry!”

“You are queen?” Nausicaa didn’t even sound sarcastic, just coolly disbelieving. “If you can outrank Luce, you must be a singer such as our world has never heard before.” Anais opened her mouth, then shut it again, and to Luce’s surprise a handful of mermaids laughed openly. Luce wanted to warn them to stop. Anais would definitely find a way to get back at them later. “Luce? You will come with me?” Luce saw Nausicaa’s outstretched hand, and took it. No one tried to stop them as they swam away.

∗ ∗ ∗