“Let it go,” Luce snapped. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”

Of course that was exactly what Anais had been waiting for. Smiling her loveliest golden smile, she hoisted the larva slightly higher. Just high enough that a few inches of its stubby lilac fins protruded from the water, exposed to the soft breeze, the butter-colored sun. Even Samantha looked appalled. Her mouth hung open, but she didn’t say anything. The larva’s fins had started twitching.

“This way will be a lot faster, though. Hey, Samantha? How much of its tail has to dry out for this to work?”

The larva’s thin scream reverberated through the water. The vibrations shivered all over Luce’s fins, crawled over her like chilled fingers.

“Anais, please . . .” Samantha was whimpering. “Luce will do something crazy.” Anais just lifted the larva slightly higher. Droplets bright with sunshine flew from its writhing tail.

Luce dove. The gray-green water was shaky with the larva’s screams, but even so Luce could hear Anais’s distorted voice: “See, Samantha? Luce can’t actually do anything. All she ever does is run away.” Anais’s sky blue tail with its overlay of pink iridescence flicked in the water above Luce’s head, and Luce tensed herself. Those awful pulsating screams made it hard to concentrate. For a moment Luce couldn’t find her voice, couldn’t gather power behind it. The first note she tried came out broken, scared, and the two blond mermaids heard it. Samantha’s shrill, relieved laughter mixed with the larva’s shrieks.

Luce closed her eyes, water all around her like cool, rippling space, and felt the deep hum of the darkness. The sea had its own voice, even far in the depths where the crash of waves became no more than a web of echoes. She had to listen to that voice and not the clamor of that poor little larva’s suffering. Luce felt something pulling into her body, a fathomless tide of whispers, a smooth upwelling harmony. And then she felt it begin to rise, right through the center of her chest.

It didn’t even feel like she was singing. Instead the sea sang through her. Why had she wanted to fight the water before? It was a new music, different, older and deeper than any song that had poured from her before, and as Luce surrendered to it the sound began to spin like a hurricane. Notes rose and whipped through space, gliding up and down the scale.

Dimly Luce heard the scream rolling on through the water. It didn’t sound the same as before, though. Luce looked up, still caught in the trance of that astonishing music, and saw the red-haired larva’s tiny silhouette as it threw itself across a glowing stretch of water. If the larva was free, though, where was the scream coming from?