In the days that followed things reverted to the way they’d been before, but with one important difference: Andrew Korchak still avoided his daughter, but now Luce did her best to keep out of his way, too. She hadn’t forgotten his threat to starve himself to death, and she didn’t want to do anything that might upset him before she figured out a plan. She slept in the most inaccessible crooks of the island and spent more of her time underwater.

A raft, Luce realized. They’d need a raft. The water would be much too cold for a human, especially once they were away from the volcanic vents that warmed certain areas around the island. A raft would help keep her father from getting hypothermia as long as he wasn’t swamped in a storm. Even with a solidly built raft their escape would be extremely risky. Luce wasn’t sure if she could swim all the way back to land, even by herself, without sinking from sheer exhaustion. Towing her father would just make it that much harder.

Still Luce began to collect likely-looking driftwood, especially planks, and heap them behind a rock on the beach where she’d first arrived. She was careful to do this work only at night. She didn’t want him to see her. As the sun arched higher in the sky each day, as the air warmed and the sustained dusk began to yield to occasional clear skies, Luce slowly managed to accumulate a fair amount of useful-looking wood, planks and strong straight logs. Some of the planks even had rusty nails sticking out of them, and Luce tugged the nails free and then carefully straightened them by banging with a rock. The mists were receding, and Luce stared into the distance in all directions, looking for that narrow ribbon of what she’d hoped was land. It seemed to have melted with the clouds.

Getting materials for the raft together helped to take her mind off her bigger problems. She still wasn’t sure how to persuade her father that she was the real Luce. And she couldn’t help noticing that there were fewer ice floes in the water now. Maybe back in her home territory the first cracks were appearing in the ice along the shore. Maybe Dorian was starting to walk down to their beach every evening and look for her . . .

It hurt her to think of how worried he would be, how long the days of waiting might become. But she just couldn’t help it.

∗ ∗ ∗

Luce was sleeping in her little cove when the dream came to her.