They walked through the morning into a blistering noon. She did not speak to him again, but her breath against his neck was strangely cool, as though it still carried traces of underwater mountains and coral reefs.

I never once wanted to go to sea, he thought as her damp head lolled against his shoulder. He had never been afraid of hurricanes or monsters, only the endless expanse of blue on every side, with no clear marker to distinguish east from west. A sailor could find his way looking at the stars. But if he fell into the depths, there would be no telling up from down, or right from death. Men drowned by disorientation. There were no straight lines in the sea.

Her body was not exactly light, but still lighter than something so waterlogged should be. Her legs flopped limply but remained stubbornly fixed together. He admired their staunch refusal to accept that they were no longer fins.

The land rose and fell beneath his feet, though he could not remember seeing it slope. He paused for a moment to look around. The trees appeared the same on every side, a never-ending labyrinth of green and gold and brown. He realized with a slight jolt in his stomach that he had no idea which way they had come. As he shifted her in his arms and started walking again, an irrational thought began to take shape in his mind. We did not bring you to the land. We brought the land to you, and now you will turn everything into the sea.


They did not pause to rest until well into the afternoon. Under different circumstances Philip might have taken the grueling pace as a form of personal punishment from Blackbeard, but he knew the captain's thirst for immortality was stronger than any dislike he felt for Philip. In the end, it was his dark-eyed daughter who called out the order to stop. Kneeling, he deposited the mergirl on the ground, trying to avoid making her shirt fall open, though he suspected he cared more about this than she did. They sat with their backs against a giant fig tree, listening to the sound of milling footsteps for several unbroken minutes.

"Let me know if you get tired of carrying that thing," Blackbeard offered gallantly.

"She has a name." He had meant the words only for Blackbeard, but apparently he had said them loud enough for everyone's hearing. He looked over at the mergirl to see if she had anything to say about it, but she did not seem inclined to help.

Blackbeard chuckled. "Does she now? Do enlighten us."

He stared at her again, imploring. Tell them your name. Tell them you're human, that you have a soul. Say anything, damn it. She raised a dark eyebrow, as if to inform him that he had gotten himself into this position, and he could get himself out of it.

"Syrena." It was the first decent-sounding name that occurred to him. Though he hadn't had time to think about it before, he liked the double entendre, the quiet, serene beauty with the voice of a siren. But perhaps she thought it dull and uncreative, or even downright offensive. It was too late to worry about that now. "Her name is Syrena."

Blackbeard grunted thoughtfully, but what he was thinking was anyone's guess. "Enough rest," he announced. "We're moving out."


She felt lighter now that most of the water had evaporated from her skin and hair. But while that eased his muscles, it troubled his thoughts, as the skin on her feet was starting to crack and peel. "I'll make sure we rest somewhere close to water tonight," he told her, although how he could guarantee that promise would be kept he had not yet figured out. He hoped something would occur to him on the way. If Blackbeard had anything to say about it, he would probably have a lot of time to mull it over. "My name is Philip, by the way. In case you were wondering," he added. Or even if you weren't.

"You shouldn't say that," she said abruptly. "No need to know."

This philosophy baffled Philip. "What do you tell people who ask for your name?"

"They don't. And we don't tell. Names are for family," she replied, as though this was something that should have been obvious.

"Oh," he said, feeling a little deflated. For a few minutes he had hoped carrying her halfway across the jungle might be enough to warrant him a place in her inner circle, but apparently it was not. "What would you like me to call you?"

"Syrena is fine," she said indifferently. Well, that means she doesn't hate it, he thought. He was learning to value small victories. He noticed she enunciated each word slowly, as though the act of forming words required serious concentration. He wondered if this was the product of her de-mermification, or if English really wasn't her first language. The first mergirl he had seen had spoken English perfectly well, but that was no reason to assume Syrena did. If sharing names wasn't even a common practice among her people, that did not bode very well for intraspecies communication.

"And suppose I'd named you something awful?" he asked. She held herself a little straighter in his arms.

"Not my name," she replied smoothly. "And…perhaps…I find new name for you." Philip groaned, not sure he wanted to know what name she would dream up for him.


His earlier instincts turned out to be correct. They did not stop again until several hours after the first stars appeared, and night had sunk its teeth so deeply into the jungle that sunset was barely a memory of a half-forgotten whisper. It was the full moon that encouraged the captain to go on, its faint glow still lighting the way to his blasphemous dream.

The cracked and peeling skin had spread up her legs until it was almost scraping her knees. As the rest of the crew passed out on the grass, he made for a nearby stream, looking for a spot deep enough where she could wash the cracks away. But he deposited her into the water prematurely. She winced as it hit her legs, and he realized he had never bothered to ask if she was a saltwater or a freshwater mermaid. "Can you swim in this?" he asked belatedly.

"Not…long," she said through clenched teeth. "Long enough." Her fingers clutched the grass as she lowered herself deeper, letting the water up to her waist. She gasped softly as it bit her skin. Philip lingered uncertainly, concern warring with common decency in his head.

"I'll just be over there…" he offered. "I won't look." She closed her eyes and nodded, lock-jawed. He accepted that she did not want him around with some relief. Moving off to a far corner of the glade, he listened for sounds of approaching footsteps in the dark, but heard nothing besides her soft splashing. For a delirious moment, it occurred to him that he could leave with her right now, and no one would know. He tried to imagine himself acting as her guardian angel, carrying her down hidden pathways through secret caverns. They could explore the entire island together. Perhaps, if they took long enough, she would learn to walk, and they could elude pursuit climbing the papaya trees or hiding beneath the swollen mangrove roots. He let a few scenarios play out in his head, but somehow each one always ended with Blackbeard and his crew dragging them back into the sun, back onto the tortuous road to immortality.

The light splashing behind him stopped, followed by a faint sigh as she pulled herself out of the water. Philip counted to thirty, and when he reached thirty counted to ninety. He turned and saw her standing by the stream, one hand clutching the trunk of a banana tree for support, the other clutching his shirt. She stood with her back to him, staring at the moon. He approached cautiously, not wanting to startle her out of her accomplishment, but also wanting to catch her if she stumbled. "Is that painful?" he asked.

"Sorry." She shifted her grip on the tree uncomfortably, looking down. "Your box. Lost. I'm sorry I lost your box."

"My box," he echoed blankly, wishing he could come up with a more eloquent response. It was clear speaking was still awkward for her. But she obviously cared very much about what she was trying to say, and he had no clue what she was talking about.

She shook her head. "Your box. That you used to…let the air in. I meant to give it back, but I forgot."

He leaned his elbow against the tree and stared at her, mystified. "You were worried about that?"

"It seemed important to you." She pulled his shirt closer around her, her cheeks coloring slightly in the half-light. "What was inside?"

"Just stories," he answered. He shrugged, trying to diffuse whatever stress it had caused her. It struck him as ironic that the loss of the Bible bothered her much more than it bothered him. In truth he had forgotten it was gone until she brought it up. He smiled lightly. "It doesn't matter. It wasn't doing much good anywhere else."

She tilted her head and peered at him thoughtfully. "That…must be why you're sad. I did wonder."

Philip blinked. She continued to hold him with her golden-green gaze. He had a feeling if he stared into her eyes long enough, they would draw every secret from him one drop at a time, and she would remain just as unfathomable to him. He looked away. "It is difficult to see something you care about treated with contempt," he said, without knowing exactly what or who he was referring to.

"Tell me a story." He looked back at her in surprise. She sat down with her legs crossed in front of her, as native children sometimes did in a school he had taught at four months and a lifetime ago. Her expression had softened from piercing to one of mild interest. "A story from your box. I want to hear one."

He ran his fingers through his hair, a bit flummoxed by her request. This was what he had wanted, what he had intended from the start, but the moment caught him completely off guard. He racked his brains for an appropriate place to begin. Most of the stories opened with, In the days of King… or, And he said to them… He seriously doubted she would be able to relate to any of those, or that she would particularly care to. Sitting down and folding his fingers over his legs, he cleared his throat.

"In the beginning of…everything, the world was an ocean," he began. "It was very dark, and very cold. There was nothing except the water, and a soft wind over the waves. The third thing that came into being was light. God…loved the light, and said it was good. But he loved the water too," he added quickly, suddenly conscious of possibly offending her. "And the wind. He's a very loving God."

He glanced over to see if she was in fact offended. She looked at him quizically. "Go on," she said politely.

"Right," he said. "Well. On the next day God divided the waters with a giant dome. He called the water below the dome sea, and the water above the dome sky." She looked very thoughtful at this, but offered no remark. He carried the story on through the next five days, through the land and the sun and the stars. She seemed pleased that God had created fish before all other animals, as though she thought this order of things only proper. When he got to the creation of man and the naming of the animals, he could sense she was starting to lose interest. Of course most of the names meant little to her. She had no more experience with a giraffe that he had with an electric eel. He decided to skip over the part about man having dominion over the beasts and birds and fish and let the story rest on the seventh day, when God did.

She stretched out on the grass when he had finished, folding her hands across her waist. "He didn't really divide the water, though," she said. "His dome stopped. At the horizon."

"You're right," he admitted. "He didn't."

"Philip." She raised her arm towards the canopy and contemplated her fingers. "Do you think if I could touch the sky, I could swim to the horizon and go home?"

Philip hesitated for a beat, debating whether he should tell her that some stories in his box weren't meant to be taken literally. "Possibly," he replied slowly. "Yes. You could."

She smiled and rested her head against his shoulder. "Thank you," she told him. "That was a very good story."

That was not the lesson you were supposed to take from it, Philip thought. But she had curled up by his side, her waist was nestled in the crook of his arm, and he found it difficult to feel depressed about anything. Her breathing slowed and softened. As she fell asleep on his chest, he was surprised to discover he did not care what the story meant to her, so long as it had made her happy.