Even the voices didn’t pay any more attention to her, though she sometimes heard them jostling and sighing in the trees or tumbling like a cluster of argumentative molecules along the beaches. Usually the noise of their chattering meant that her father was somewhere nearby, and Luce would dart along searching for him. If she saw his bundled shape through the snow-laced trees she’d call out to him. Each time he’d act as if he hadn’t heard her, and each time her hope would crack again. It wasn’t that her heart broke, exactly; Luce clung stubbornly to the idea that eventually she’d get her father back to the mainland, even if she had no idea how she’d manage it. But every time he ignored her call it was as if a fresh hairline fracture ran through her, a fine trace of pain, until her chest seemed to be webbed through and through by thin, cutting wires. And these moments of grief were all that relieved the tedium of her days.

Luce spent her time daydreaming, mulling over memories of her childhood with her father, of more recent times with Dorian and Nausicaa, Dana and Catarina. She couldn’t even soothe her frustration by singing. There was no way she could be sure her father wouldn’t hear her, and he was already a broken man, spirit-needled, ridden by the gasp and twitter of bodiless voices. Even a healthy human could easily go completely insane at the onslaught of mermaid song. Dorian could withstand it as long as Luce was careful, but he was exceptional. Luce couldn’t bear to think of what her song might do to her father in his damaged condition.

The days slowly brightened, and the approach of spring struck Luce as inexplicably threatening. But the waves were still dotted by pack ice, though not nearly as much of it as there had been back in her home territory, and the wind was still bitterly cold. Storms rolled through now and then, though in the comfort of the island’s sheltering coves Luce didn’t mind them at all. Spring might be coming but it was still far away, and Luce told herself that she’d definitely rescue her father in time to keep her promise to Dorian and be home as soon as the ice broke up. It might be late January now, or maybe it was already February. She had at least another month.

And if she had to be a little late, well, Dorian would wait for her. Wouldn’t he?

∗ ∗ ∗