Luce fought her way through the violently swaying currents. Black nets of water swept her far away from the coast, dragged her deeper, then rolled her through streaking foam. She would escape from one watery fist only to be seized by the next, slamming her away from the air, then just as suddenly find herself thrown free of the surface. Veils of snow spiraled above waves at least twenty feet high, but she could just make out the jags of the coast that sheltered her own small cave. Luce stared back that way, her view broken by each new wall of water, and realized that exhaustion might overwhelm her before she could reach the coast again.

Luce screamed a long note, bright and urgent with the will to live. Her song was no match for the ferocity of the storm, but as she called to the water she found she had enough power to create a slight countercurrent, an eddy immediately around her body. She tried to drive it with her voice and found that at least it was strong enough to keep her from being swept farther out to sea. She drove with her tail and her song at the same time, dodging ice floes that appeared as suddenly as ghosts, and slowly, painfully, saw the coast sliding nearer. It was at least two more hours before she grasped the stone walls of her small cave, her weary muscles relaxing in the sudden stillness of its sheltered water. Luce flopped to the shore and fell into a long, profound sleep.

∗ ∗ ∗

It had been impossible, of course, for her to stop and collect shellfish on her way back to her cave. She woke to darkness and cold, hungry and just as suddenly aware that she might not eat for days. The storm screamed and whistled, and even enclosed as she was in solid rock, Luce could hear the groan and snap of shattering trees. At least she had a pile of books Dorian had brought her, though there was something a little ironic about reading Jane Austen to distract herself from hunger as she lay on the stones in a cave as dark as soot. The women in the novel worried about their romances and about how many servants they could afford, and Luce read on and listened to the storm’s vast orchestra of crunching ice cellos and yowling brass. No matter how long she read, no trace of light seeped through the entrance, though she could still see the pages and the stone vault above her. The clouds must be thick enough to erase the few brief hours of bluish daylight whenever they came.