“But you didn’t—” Violet didn’t want to be rude, but she didn’t want Dana to give up either. “I think Luce sounds a little different than that when she does it. Like, she gets this weird, smooth kind of tone . . .” Violet concentrated on remembering, and Dana stared at her. Violet gestured, a mussel shell still in one hand. “It sounds almost like she’s feeling the water with her voice. Like . . . I don’t know how to describe it, but . . .”

Dana tried again. Her voice was full of rippling magic. It was a living miracle that poured through Violet’s skin, though her mind, dancing with delirious surprise. It just wasn’t the right magic. Too bumpy, Violet thought. Pushing too hard. Luce didn’t push; instead she joined her voice to the water, sympathized with the water, then coaxed the water to follow the notes as they ran up the scale or leaped skyward. Violet could hear it in her mind so precisely that she almost felt like Luce was there with her after all.

Dana fell silent and flopped back onto the floor, despair plain on her face. “Oh my God, Violet. What if . . .” Dana didn’t let herself finish the sentence, but still Violet knew what she’d been about to say: “What if we die here?”

“I think . . . I know you’re so much better at singing than I am, and I don’t want to try to tell you, but . . . doesn’t Luce sound more like . . .” Violet let out a tentative note. The timbre was odd and smooth, and Violet could actually feel her voice reaching out to the water, as if her song held the ocean’s hand and they were racing together to a place where no one could ever hurt them again.

Violet wasn’t gripping the mussel shell anymore.

Instead the blue-purple shell was bouncing in place a foot in front of her eyes, supported by a current that definitely hadn’t been there a moment before. The white glow of its mother-of-pearl winked joyfully, and then Dana looked up and saw it, and screamed.

16

Departures

The sea looked very dark around the floating block of milk white ice. The block bobbed and spun with each pulse of the waves, a slick of meltwater gleaming bright blue on its sides. Nausicaa and Luce both stopped to look at it, neither of them speaking. Nausicaa had her usual look of detached curiosity, but Luce felt sick at the sight of the ice, her body buckling at the waist as if she’d just received a blow to the stomach.