Luce almost felt provoked enough to say something, but before she could figure out the right retort he’d gone, scuffing off down the path where the trees blocked him from view. After a moment’s fury she was glad. Answering him would have been momentarily gratifying, but it would have also been a huge mistake.

Almost as big a mistake, she thought, as saving him in the first place.

3

The Paper Boat

He’d gone to the cliffs four nights in a row now, crying out his best imitation of that monstrously beautiful song. But the dark-haired mermaid hadn’t come back, or at least she’d been careful not to let him see her. For all he knew she might be somewhere out there every night, hidden behind rocks or sliding along below the water’s surface. Either way, she was still stubbornly refusing to let him confront her. Let her be like that, then. He’d find another way to make her deal with him.

He kept thinking back to the morning of the shipwreck. He’d been so consumed by remembering her song, he realized, by remembering the overwhelming presence of death, that he hadn’t paid enough attention to certain details. After the crash he’d pulled himself up onto the ship’s railing and dived overboard with the hazy determination of swimming for the rocks nearby. She’d caught him around his rib cage, pulling him away from the wreck, and surfaced with him maybe a hundred yards away. He’d replayed all that in his head at least a thousand times.

What he hadn’t given much thought to was the way she’d acted when they emerged into the air. She’d looked around nervously, staring toward the fractured ship, then toward the water where mermaids trilled in unearthly voices to the drowning crowds. Now that he was bothering to focus on that particular moment, he realized the way she’d glanced back was furtive, embarrassed. It was exactly the way a girl in high school would act if she was talking to someone seriously unpopular, worried that another girl in her clique might catch her at it.