“I didn’t think anyone would believe him.” It was a pathetic excuse, Luce knew. “Dana, I’m sorry. Just—we’d drowned so many people, and then Miriam killed herself, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. There’d been so much death, and . . . I just wanted somebody to live.” She was only making things worse, Luce realized. Dana gaped at her with a kind of dull horror. “But really, I really, truly swear it, Dana. I’m never going to talk to him again. I’ll obey the timahk from now on!”

“Oh, you are so going to talk to him!” Luce stared at Dana in amazement; what was she saying? “You are absolutely, definitely going to go talk to him! And I mean today, Luce!”

“What are you talking about?” Even as Luce gasped out the question, she already had a miserable realization of what the answer would be. Dana laughed caustically.

“I’m talking about the fact that you’re going to go meet him, just like he wants you to. And this time,” Dana snapped, “this time you’re going to make sure he dies!”

5

The Rowboat

The day seemed bleak and endless. Luce was buffeted by waking nightmares, by memories that pressed in on her mind and wouldn’t stop. A black boat, then Miriam shuddering with agony as her tail dried out, then her father smiling at her the last time he’d said goodbye and sailed off on the High and Mighty, not imagining that it would never return to shore. Miriam’s voice whispered on and on in her mind, telling Luce about a dark recurring dream: human soldiers invading their cave, raising guns. If that ever happened in reality, though, couldn’t the mermaids simply overcome them by singing? Luce couldn’t remember why, but in Miriam’s nightmares the mermaids’ songs had been useless to defend them. It bothered Luce that she couldn’t reconstruct exactly what Miriam had said about that. But then, what Miriam had told her had been just a dream. It didn’t make any sense to wonder why their songs were rendered powerless: of course in a dream things wouldn’t work the same way they did in waking life.

Still, Luce couldn’t stop remembering that boat, the sleek black diver, those distorted voices.

She hadn’t mentioned the boat to Dana. And she’d kept quiet about that, Luce realized, because she’d known exactly what Dana would think. Those black-suited divers were no scientists. They’d come hunting for solid evidence of the reality of the mermaids. And if they wanted evidence it must be because they already had an idea.