Luce gazed around the cave. It was as dark as midnight, and the air pulsed and reverberated with the intensity of the waves slamming just outside. For a moment she didn’t even care that Nausicaa was back safe. With the storm this powerful it would probably be impossible for her and Dorian to see each other, and the memory of their fight lingered on inside her like a chill. She thought for the first time of him walking through the halls of his school, joking with other kids his age. He’d told her that part of his life didn’t seem real to him, but he obviously didn’t mean it. Not if he was starting a band.

“Luce? Has something disturbed you? Would you prefer if I was gone?” Luce looked back at Nausicaa’s gold-green glow; she looked serene but a little concerned.

“Oh—no. Of course I’m glad you’re here, Nausicaa.” Luce knew she didn’t sound glad and cast around for an excuse. “I just had a really bad dream.”

Nausicaa didn’t ask what that dream had been. Instead she cracked an oyster on the wall, still gazing speculatively into Luce’s eyes. “Eat something. It will help you leave your dream behind.” Luce moved closer to take the oyster Nausicaa held out to her.

Nausicaa had told her to defy whatever she chose; Luce wondered if that included the timahk’s prohibition on contact with humans. Maybe, just maybe, Nausicaa wouldn’t think badly of her for loving someone on land. And there was still so much Nausicaa could teach her. “Nausicaa? Instead of me telling you stories—” Luce stopped, suddenly overcome by shyness, and Nausicaa waited. “I mean, maybe you could tell me about your life instead. And what you said yesterday, about Proteus being our father . . .”

Nausicaa looked disgusted. “No one has told you this?”

“I’d never heard anything like that before. About Proteus, or what you said about twins,” Luce said.

Nausicaa was shaking her head as if she wanted to make Luce’s words go away.

“I wish I could say that I have never before met mermaids so forgetful of our history. I have met many. It is like the mind erasing itself. If the mind becomes erased, where can the world live?” Luce thought she almost understood. “You have never heard the story of the first mermaids? The Unnamed Twins?”

The first mermaids, Luce thought. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to her before, but of course someone must have been the first to experience the change, to feel her body becoming a cold spill of liquid flowing into the unknown. “Who were they?”