Nausicaa looked surprised. “You don’t know this, Luce? This tribe does not know? Have the mermaids truly forgotten so much? That would explain why they allow her to stay here, like a poisonous snake sleeping beside them. A wiser tribe would never permit it.”

“I thought you could only throw a mermaid out if she broke the timahk! Anais has broken it a bunch of times now, actually, but at first—”

“Not sika. No one should allow sika to remain. They will always cause terrible dangers. They will destroy any tribe that welcomes them . . .”

“But I don’t understand . . .” Luce fell silent, wondering. Nausicaa looked deep into her eyes. Her gaze had a green and black brilliance that reminded Luce of a field of fireflies.

“You must remember this feeling, Luce? Of your time of changing? You lay on the cliff, just as the Unnamed Twins once did, and you felt . . .” Luce didn’t know what twins Nausicaa was talking about, but she remembered the feeling perfectly.

“I felt like I was turning cold. At first it was just my body, but then it was my heart and everything—My body changed into water. I could feel the moonlight shining through me.”

“Yes.” Nausicaa nodded, her snaky black hair surging with the wind. “You turned cold. All the way to the quick. And yet in such a cold sea as this you have recovered so much warmth of spirit.”

“But then . . .”

“A sika, like this Anais, she does not turn cold. She is cold to start with. Cold to the quick from birth. So there can be no vision to see of her turning cold. It is her essence, and her danger. She can care for nothing,” Nausicaa added with calm finality.

Luce was quiet for a minute, and Nausicaa went back to nibbling seaweed. Would it make any difference if Nausicaa explained this to the tribe? Luce had a depressing intuition that it wouldn’t.

“Nausicaa?” Luce asked suddenly. “Do you come from Greece?”

Nausicaa glanced up, smiling. There was such deep acceptance in that smile that Luce thrilled at the sight of it.

“I do. It was long ago.”

“How long ago?” Luce felt oddly embarrassed as she asked this, as if it was somehow a terribly personal question.

“Oh, Luce,” Nausicaa sighed. “How can I know? Why should I look for numbers in the sky? Long ago. But if I guess for you, I will say, perhaps three thousand years.”

Luce had been prepared, though barely, to hear Nausicaa mention hundreds of years. This was almost too much for her.

“Three thousand?” It came out high and frantic.