They stared at each other. Both their tails had been swishing involuntarily as they talked, stirring up a froth. The water was cloudy with bubbles, dabbed here and there with foam. Luce couldn’t answer.

“Luce, do you think—I mean—if some human finds out about us, do you really believe it’s okay to let them live?” Dana couldn’t maintain her forced calm anymore. Her voice was getting shrill, rising with outrage. “Even though if any of us did something that stupid, it would guarantee that we would all get killed? Not just the mermaid who broke the timahk but everybody. It’s one thing if you want to throw your own life away. Crawl onshore, then. But how could you do something like this to the rest of us?” Dana’s face was streaked with tears. “You hate us all that much because of Catarina? Is that it? You want to see me with my head blown off?”

Luce knew she should lie. She should play dumb, get indignant, say she had no idea what Dana was talking about. But seeing Dana’s huge brown eyes staring at her in wounded disbelief, tears flooding down her cheeks, Luce couldn’t do it.

“I would never want you to get hurt, Dana. I promise. Even if I did break the timahk somehow . . .”

“If you broke it?” Dana was yelling between fierce sobs, leaning over. She was reaching behind her back where it was pressed to the wall, pulling something out. “Luce, if you did? You know what you did! You know, and even if I don’t know exactly what went on, I do know you’re even worse than Anais!”

The shape in Dana’s hand was a white triangle. Paper, wet and floppy in places. She started unfolding it.

Luce was shocked into speechlessness by the savagery of what Dana had just said. Her face felt hot and thick, and her heart was pounding. Then as the paper began to spread out and reveal an image, she thought she might faint, and pressed back hard against the rocks to steady herself.

It was a drawing done in heavy lines of black ink, like a very skillful panel from a comic book. A giant, sharply peaked wave blocked out most of the sky, and centered in the wave there was a girl’s face. Hers. Obviously it was meant to be hers. Her tail was curled behind her as she swooped downward, so that her fins fanned out of the water above her head. And it looked like there was some writing up near the paper’s top edge.

Wordlessly Luce stretched out her hand for the drawing, but Dana jerked it out of reach.