Luce remembered that conversation exactly. The voice was hers, but hers from more than two years before. Even as Luce’s heart started thudding she still shook her head in disbelief that she had ever sounded so innocent, so cared-for. She couldn’t repress a spasm of envy and resentment directed at that younger girl, the one who’d felt so secure in her humanity, who’d been loved and safe . . .

She fought to clear her head, to keep herself from being sucked into a whirl of painful memories. The only thing that mattered was the present: the moment directly before her, now, and everything that might still be saved in this moment if only she could make herself be quick and wise enough. If the voices were on the beach, then her father probably wasn’t far behind. Luce tensed, ready to spring.

Footsteps. The slow crunch of pebbles, dragging and lifeless. He was there, walking closer, and the windy gibbering grew louder and more eager. It was awful to hear how vital and happy the voices sounded in contrast to her father’s weary, defeated shambling. Closer, still closer. Through the veil of the water Luce could just see two dark blots at the sea’s edge: his feet swaddled in dirty fur. Luce was almost choking, suddenly terrified to move. If she failed now her father might truly kill himself.

Luce gathered her determination and shot up out of the waves. But she was careful not to look at Andrew Korchak at all, keeping her eyes fixed instead on the murmuring disturbance all around him. “I need to talk to you!” Luce announced loudly, aggressively. “Now!”

Luce knew that her younger self had never once spoken to anyone that way. She had always been shy and gentle. That was the point.

She had to be as different as possible from her father’s memories of her.

He stumbled back from the water’s edge in shock, but to Luce’s infinite relief he didn’t take off running inland. Instead he sat down hard twenty feet from the water, his mouth open and his eyes bright with pain. But he was still there. Still watching, and still listening . . .

“You voices, whatever you call yourselves, lost hopes,” Luce snapped. “Get over here! You heard me.”

Up on the beach her father began to moan a long, low note, holding his head. The voices babbled, gusting back and forth in astonished outrage.

“You want me to leave, right?” Luce demanded. “Then you need to start doing what I tell you, or I’ll stay here on your island and mess up your memories forever. I’ll hurt the memories in every way I can! Answer me!”