He dreamed he stood on the mast again. Dizzy, dehydrated and delirious, and the sun was a cruel mistress. The ropes binding him to the post had cut painfully into his muscles for an hour or two, but his arms had gone numb by the end of the first day. His head knocked against the overhang whenever the ship lurched to one side in the waves. He had gone so long without water, he was starting to forget how it felt not to have a constant burning in the back of his throat. He tried to look towards the sky, because whenever he looked down, the ship was so small and distant beneath him his heart sank to his stomach in a rush of vertigo.

"What did that poor soul do, and how do I not?" From the miles between the deck and the mast, Jack Sparrow's voice floated upwards – Jack before Philip had known his name, when he was just a strange, dreadlocked pirate. That poor soul tried to save a monster, and he will try again because he doesn't know what else his silent God wants him to do, Philip thought.

He was very far from home. He wasn't certain how far anymore, only that it was enough to make the distance irrelevant and that it was unlikely he would ever get back. Sometimes when his neck was tired, he glanced down and watched the crew below. From his angle they looked like gold and sunbrowned circles with feet, scurrying across the deck like anxious beetles. If one of them, even just one, were to look at him and see a faint reflection of Christ, he thought it would be worth it. It was beyond wishful to think Edward Teach would come to the faith so easily. Philip knew what god the pirate captain worshiped. He had heard whispers of their blasphemous quest from his hammock in the ship's hull, and its inevitable failure gave him some optimism. They might find a fountain, and they might even find the fabled chalices of Ponce de León, but there was no possible way Edward Teach would ever find a mermaid. During the most scorching afternoons that thought was his greatest comfort: that mermaids did not exist.

The ship rocked to the starboard side, and a shower of sea spray splattered the deck. Philip let his head roll onto his chest. Beneath the crashing of the bow against the waves and the buffeting of the wind on canvas, there was nothing to break the silence of the ocean. Men were made to love God and their fellow men, not chase after myths, he thought. In the chaotic storm his life had become, he was thankful to have at least one truth to anchor him.


Waking that morning hurt more than usual. Instead of fading gradually into consciousness, Syrena felt as if her body had been yanked from the dream world by an invisible force that turned her bones into splinters. Every joint in her body seared as though pierced by broken glass. For several interminable minutes she lay paralyzed in bed, afraid to move lest the pain explode under her skin. She shut her eyes. It will pass, it must pass, it always passes, she told herself. As the throbbing waxed and waned, she redirected her mind to what she would need to do once out of bed. She had prepared for this the previous evening, knowing that this morning would be different. This morning when she went downstairs for breakfast, they would all look at her knowing precisely who she was and what she was.

She breathed in slowly. Breathing, at least, was something her body could do without difficulty. She had selected the dress she would wear last night, a demure cotton dress with a modest neckline and tiny rosebuds embroidered along the sleeves and hem. It was pretty but simple, nothing elaborate like the purple-flowered muslin she had worn to church a few weeks ago. It would show respect and care for her appearance without making her seem vain. The sort of dress a missionary's wife would wear, she thought. Then, with some depression, she realized that was because a missionary's wife had worn it, or at least something very close to a missionary's wife. Every dress in the room except one had belonged to the late Mrs. John Lawrence. Anything she wore would only remind them of the woman who wore it before her. She let out a tired sigh. Nothing would do but to wear the dress she had arrived in, with the coarse linen bodice and pale green skirt. It was worn and frayed and probably inappropriate, but at least it was honest.

Syrena flexed her fingers experimentally. Short spasms of pain shot down her knuckles. Nothing excruciating, but attempting to pin up her hair was decidedly out of the question. She closed her eyes again and counted to one hundred. When the throbbing cycles had diminished to a level she found tolerable, she sat up. Her head spun for a few seconds. She did know how long she had lain in bed this time waiting for the arthritis to pass. Padding across the floor to the mirror, her reflection looked reassuringly familiar. Her skin was smooth, and her hair had returned to its natural brown, minus a few streaks of white that would probably fade within half an hour. Only the eyes…her eyes radiated exhaustion. I am becoming an old woman who sometimes inhabits the body of a young one, she thought. There was no longer any doubt in her mind; this swinging back and forth would sap the life out of her.

A light rap on the door broke her reverie. "One minute, please," she said. After some discussion, she and Philip had decided that if he knocked and she did not answer, he was free to assume something was wrong. Gingerly, she slid her dress over her head and used the ivory-tooth comb to pull the gnarls out of her hair. She did not attempt to braid it or tie it back. She would face the other priests exactly as she had arrived, with only the most basic trappings of terrestrial civilization.

Philip was waiting for her outside. They walked down the first three steps together when she felt her right leg suddenly go numb. She stumbled. Her foot slid down two more steps, but Philip's arms were around her waist before she could fall. "Easy. It's all right, I've got you," he said into her ear.

Syrena let out another exhale of relief. Knowing that he would carry her downstairs to the dining room if she asked, she contented herself with leaning against his arm. They made slow progress to the breakfast table, where the aroma of freshly-baked scones and grapefruits greeted them. The odor of pork sausage made her stomach turn, but she swallowed the impulse to gag. All three men stood when she arrived. In a gesture of gallantry, Julian pulled out the chair beside him to help her sit down.

As she picked apart a cranberry scone, she let Philip retell the true version of their meeting on Whitecap, their trek through the jungle and their escape. After he was finished, she found herself bombarded with a number of questions, ranging from the somewhat-relevant to the completely ridiculous: How did she breathe underwater? We have gills that open on our necks when we dive. Did merfolk have countries? Yes, but they are never in the same place twice. Was it true that some mermaids clawed out the hearts of marooned sailors and ate them wrapped in seaweed? No, the eyes are much tastier.

"And once you saw the chalices of Ponce de León, why on earth didn't you just let them sink?" Ephraim asked. He was sitting opposite her in his usual position next to Simon. Julian sat on her right, with Philip on her left. Having to face only two men across the table made the conversation feel less confrontational.

"Because I saw Jack Sparrow at the surface. I thought it unlikely he would value the Black Beard's life," she replied. She thought with some relief that at least that was one of the more intelligent questions.

"So that's why you left," Philip said. "You wanted to be certain Blackbeard died." A note of disquiet had crept into his voice. Syrena frowned. They'd had their disagreements over the better angels of human nature before, but she'd thought at least by that point Philip would have realized the soul of the pirate captain was beyond saving.

"Of course. Didn't you?"

Philip fingered the rim of his china teacup. "No," he said. "There were a few times I thought so, but…no."

"That's nice of you," Ephraim said dryly. "And this is rather awkward. It seems I owe you an apology now." He spread his hands on the tablecloth and leaned forward. "I apologize." He grimaced, as though the flavor of the words had left a strange aftertaste in his mouth. "Hunh. I really thought I would feel better after doing that."

"That's because you were cheating," Julian told him.

"Fine." Ephraim took a deep breath and drummed his fingers over the table. "Syrena. For whatever ordeals Blackbeard dreamed up for you in the jungles of Whitecap Bay, I am truly sorry. I'm fairly certain he only knew about your island because I told him about it." Leaning backwards, he began twisting the blunt end of his fork over the tablecloth. Aside from feeling completely confused, Syrena harbored doubts about his sincerity. He looked more embarrassed than remorseful.

"You don't remember, do you?" Philip remarked quietly.

Ephraim forced a dark smile. "I'm afraid not. But I think I managed to put most of the pieces together. It would seem about a year ago I did something very stupid. I overheard a conversation between Blackbeard and your old reverend. A conversation about angels and a certain cypress tree in our forest. Apparently I thought it would be entertaining to outlive all my peers and turn into some sort of Hebrew demigod – no, on second thought, that wasn't stupid at all. The stupid part was not stopping to ask the right questions first. I believe that was my job on Blackbeard's ship. Sitting down with people and…asking questions."

"In other words, he used to torture people for a living," Simon translated.

"That's enough," said Julian.

"Here." Ephraim rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tiny jet-black swirl on his forearm that vaguely resembled a snail shell. "I believe this is the price of a thousand years from the garden of angels just beyond our backyard. A bit of burnt soil and every memory of my former life as Blackbeard's pet researcher." He grimaced again. "My punishment is that now my earliest memory consists of waking up flat on my back with an excruciating headache surrounded by eight hygienically challenged numbskulls with swords. Naturally I didn't have a clue what I'd done to get there, but I distinctly remember thinking it wasn't worth it."

"How did you find out about your…" Philip cleared his throat, "real vocation?"

"In a dangerous situation, it's generally wise to pretend to know more than you actually do." Ephraim took a swallow of coffee and pulled a bitter face. "Fortunately my eight companions were all terrified of me – I can't imagine why—so that wasn't very hard. As far as I know, none of them suspected that I had no idea who I was or why they were calling me sir. Once I'd convinced them to sod off, I started crawling on the ground looking for footprints to retrace my steps. I'm sure I looked like a complete lunatic. And that's about where I was when your reverend discovered me, Philip."

A shadow darkened Philip's brow. This is the reason your reverend died, Syrena thought. Ephraim glanced at Philip and lowered his eyes in what might have been a subtle gesture of apology. "Go on," Philip said, which was not necessarily a gesture of forgiveness.

"It didn't take Reverend Anton very long to work out what had happened. He escorted me back to his rectory and explained how the garden of angels worked. I'm sorry to say I spent most of the interview staring at his neck thinking about exactly which pressure point would make him fall to his knees in total agony. It was a very odd feeling, since at the time I had no idea why I would even know something like that that." A moment of awkward shifting followed, during which Syrena suspected they were all suppressing the urge to move their chairs back from the table.

"I can't really account for what happened next," Ephraim said. "Somehow I got it into my head to go back to the Revenge. Fact is I'd enjoyed the feeling of terror I'd inspired in the other men. And as far as I could work out, my situation there wasn't that bad. I suppose I was laboring under the delusion that I could fool Blackbeard as easily as I'd fooled his deckhands. Needless to say, that part did not go as planned."

"Blackbeard found out his favorite interrogator had turned into a closet amnesiac. He wasn't thrilled," Simon said. "How did you work your way out of that one?"

"Long story involving a bottle of laudanum and a Chinese toothbrush. Reverend Anton, being a kind, forgiving and therefore stupid Christian, agreed to let me back in and sent me here to Reverend Lawrence, where he assumed Blackbeard wouldn't think to look." He raised his hand to the back of his mouth as though stifling a yawn. Blinking a few times, he shook his head. "But honestly, if I was the one who told him how to find Whitecap Bay—which of course I would have no recollection of doing—I am sorry."

Across the table, Philip folded his arms. Syrena could only imagine the thoughts that must be racing through his head. "You're despicable," he said finally.

"Philip-" Julian warned.

"You admitted it yourself," Philip shot back, ignoring Julian. He was leaning so far out of his chair he was practically on his feet. Syrena had rarely seen him so incensed, and it was a rather terrifying sight to behold. "You're not here because you've reformed, or because you want to atone for all the innocent lives you ruined. If you'd had the opportunity, you would have been right there slaughtering on the beach with the rest of them, you base, hypocritical coward."

Ephraim's eyes hardened. "Spare me your self-righteous sermonizing. You don't have the right to talk about ruining lives, considering the spectacular way you ruined the life of the girl sitting next to you."

"That isn't fair," Syrena interrupted. Her fists clenched around her napkin underneath the table. She could not say why, but it bothered her to hear someone else berating Philip on her behalf.

"Yes it is," Ephraim returned. "He just doesn't know why."

"Then please," Philip said coldly. "Enlighten us."

To his credit, Ephraim did not appear smug. "Strange thing about the garden of angels. It takes away memories, but not knowledge. In other words, when I woke up I could recite all sorts of useless trivia and had no idea how I'd learned any of it." He crossed his fingers around his coffee mug. "I can tell you, for example, what would make a five-hundred-year-old mergirl forget that her body is not supposed to age."

Philip leaned back, suspicion still flickering dangerously out of his eyes. Ephraim tilted his mug so the dark liquid kissed the rim. "It wasn't the tear. It was the name."

The corners of her mouth began to quiver. Syrena fought very hard to keep a straight face, but it turned out to be too hard; a soft snort escaped before she could help it. She cleared her throat in a useless but polite attempt to cover herself. "Ephraim, that's ridiculous. What Philip called me in the jungle was a joke—Philip, I'm sorry, it was. My name is-"

"Incomplete," Ephraim interrupted impatiently. "You explained that. You never learned the full version of your name. And did it honestly never occur to you to wonder why after five hundred years your scales never turned from coral to gold?"

She blinked, feeling the furrow in her eyebrows deepening. "That's not…that isn't relevant at all."

"You're wrong," Ephraim told her. "Don't bother asking how I know; it probably involves something messy and unethical with long, sharp objects. Bottom line is there are things they don't tell you until you're a century old and you receive your full name. One of them is this: Those of mermish blood cannot reach full maturity until their names are finished. Without a complete name, you will never grow up."

"But I am grown up," Syrena said. She was beginning to find this conversation exasperating. She looked at Philip for support, but to her surprise he was sitting up straighter and was staring at Ephraim with rapt attention. That he could switch allegiances so soon deeply irritated her. "This is absurd. I know I am grown up, and it is very rude of you to tell me I am not."

"You're grown up because you have a complete name now," Ephraim said, enunciating each word separately, as though speaking to an exceptionally slow-witted child. On some level he seemed to find laborious explanations like this one beneath him. "Before you met Philip, you had your unfinished name, and it kept your body whatever age it was the last time you learned it. You were frozen in a state of perpetual adolescence. That is why your scales remained coral for so long. Without someone who knew your entire name, you probably would have remained that way forever – immortal and immature." Syrena bristled, but either he didn't notice his words had offended her or he didn't care.

"Philip gave you a complete name. Short, yes, but it was enough to break your state of limbo and let you grow properly again." Ephraim favored Philip with a wry smile. "The moment you named her, you made her mortal."

Philip sat back in his chair. He looked stunned. Syrena clenched her fingers more tightly around her napkin. As endearing as she found Philip's deep sense of personal responsibility, at the moment she did not think she could bear hearing him apologize.

"Suppose you're right," Julian said slowly. "That doesn't explain why having a different name would provoke what she's going through now."

"Yes, there's the rub," Ephraim said grimly. "You gave her a new name, but she never lost the old one. She's stuck with two names, one trying to make her age like a normal woman and the other insisting she doesn't have to. Now – to put it in the simplest terms – they're fighting." He paused. "I would guess that during those times when your body jumps forward, your mortal name is trying to gain the upper hand and…overcompensates."

Syrena blanched. The idea of two invisible appellations turning her body into a battlefield did not sit well with her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Philip rolling the bottom edge of his china cup, now empty, across the tablecloth. His jawline had tightened, as though something unpleasant were stuck in his throat. "Once one name wins, what happens to her then?" he asked.

"Difficult to say. They could fight forever," Ephraim replied. "The only way to put a stop to it, aside from letting them battle it out, is to erase one. But you'll have a hard time finding something that can do that. To wipe out a name is considered evil and unnatural, so only something evil and unnatural could do it. I understand those words are more or less interchangeable where you're from," he said with a brief nod in her direction.

"Yes," Syrena answered.

"Then again, a creature who can age a thousand years in a day is also something unnatural—don't look at me like that, Philip. I'm stating a fact."

"I understand that," Philip said with what sounded like forced politeness. "All the same, I would prefer that you not refer to her as a creature."

"No, you'd prefer I call her a woman. I think we've all indulged that delusion long enough," Ephraim returned. "The fact is she's a coldblooded sea siren. She can't even drink fresh water, and you thought giving her an English name and teaching her to read and walk would somehow make that disappear. The result is that now, thanks to you, she's even more abnormal than she was before. That won't change until both of you open your eyes and stop playing dollhouse."


Philip and Ephraim maintained a cool silence for the rest of the morning. The fact that they were kept indoors by a torrential downpour, which promised to be the last of the rainy season, made this a much more awkward affair. The house, Syrena thought, was unfortunately not that big. Feeling restless and bored, she tried to occupy herself with a book of sonnets but gave up after ten minutes. Ephraim's acerbic remark about her reading had stung. It was small comfort to think it was a little hypocritical of him, considering that he had been the first person to offer to teach her to read at all. Still, even that was less disturbing than what he had said about her earlier. She had known her condition was bizarre, but unnatural and evil had not crossed her mind, and to hear Ephraim say it so bluntly was a harsh awakening.

Frustrated, she threw the book across the room and listened to the satisfying thud it made against the floor. Crossing her arms over her knees, she tried unsuccessfully to convince herself she was being oversensitive and stupid. She ought to be happy with the way the conversation had gone. These nauseating jerks across time did not have to last forever, and the solution was close, so very close. All she and Philip needed to do was step outdoors and go back to the wild where they belonged. Staying in this house had never been their intention. Kind and well-meaning as their hosts were, she was certain Philip also secretly ached to return to their isolated, unregulated lives. In a short time everything would return to the way it was before…She waited for the inevitable sense of relief to start coursing through her veins, but instead she felt an icy dread.

"Do you find Shakespeare that offensive?" Philip asked from under the library door, where he had stooped to retrieve the book.

"No. It was decent," she said. Philip contemplated her from the threshold. He looked puzzled, or amused. Syrena thought perhaps she should defend her choice of words. "A few phrases were quite beautiful. He made a good effort."

"That's very generous of you," Philip said, without irony. She waited for him to cross into the room, but he remained in the doorway. Apparently he did not know how to bring up the uncomfortable reality now hanging between them, and she could not think of another polite reply that did not sound inane. She was not good at small talk.

"Syrena, I would like to-" he began. He cut himself off with an exhausted shrug. "I suppose I should stop calling you that. It was thoughtless."

"It was kind," she corrected him.

"I was tired and angry, and not just on your account." He rotated the book a few times in his hands, appearing at a loss for anything else to do with them. "I assumed your feelings in the jungle were the same as mine. That was a mistake. I would like you to know that I won't blame you if you decide to erase the name I gave you."

Something tight and painful constricted in her throat. Philip almost seemed to expect her to erase her mortal name. Of course he would want someone young and pretty forever, she thought, though she knew this was unjust. Something told her this was not the reason she suddenly felt sad.

"You'll go with me?" she asked, before she could stop the words from escaping. The look of relief in his eyes was almost enough to make up for the embarrassment of the question. He stepped into the library and joined her by the windowsill.

"We're snails, you and I. We carry our home with us," he said. A warm glow settled in her chest, which did not erase her uncertainty, but it made it more bearable. They would leave the mission house together, a place both of them appreciated but neither felt truly at home.

"You know, you shouldn't believe everything Ephraim says," Philip told her. "Time and experience make adults, not words. A girl couldn't have endured what you did."

"Perhaps not," she replied, wondering why she did not feel entirely convinced. It occurred to her that of all the things she had yearned for during her centuries alone, she had never once yearned for a lover. In Whitecap she had occasionally caught glimpses of Tamara's caresses, something the older mermaid bestowed on mermen and mermaids alike. She heard their gasps and sighs—which were never nearly as quiet as they imagined—and they always left her feeling rather annoyed. The rush, the heat, the faint tingling on her collarbone and just below her stomach, those sensations had never entered her remotest daydreams, and then she understood the reason for her melancholy. For five hundred years she had been a girl with a girl's feelings…and should she lose the name Philip had given her, her body would return to being a girl. The entire situation seemed unfair, that she should be faced with such an impossible choice.

Impulsively, she sat up straighter and let her hand drift to Philip's face. Her fingers slowly began to trace the bridge of his nose, the line of his jaw, the rough curves around his mouth, pondering whether she could somehow capture the feelings they inspired and store them in some secret corner of her mind.

"Don't…Syrena, don't." He grasped her hand and lowered it away from him. It was perfectly fine for you last night, she thought, and it was difficult to bite back the retort.

"I am sorry," she said. Her face flushed, and she searched for a way to break the awkwardness. "We don't have to leave right away," she offered.

Philip chuckled softly. "I don't imagine we can. Not unless you know off the top of your head where to find something evil and unnatural, and how to convince it not to kill us once we do."

"I told you. Any of your species will do," she reminded him.

"Right," he said tiredly.

Syrena bit her lip thoughtfully, while her mind wandered somewhere else. She remembered the first time she had seen those tired eyes, staring listlessly over the side of a small boat adrift in a black sea. He had not made a distinct impression on her then. She had seen other men like him, unfortunate sailors come to their waters to court death, and she could not recall feeling sorry for any of them. Somewhere between that first indifferent glance and the moment he emerged, half-drowned, underneath an exploding lighthouse, something must have changed. Some force compelled her to pull him out of the way, something that transcended the fact that back then she was still a half-named girl unable to conceive of romance. She could not shake the feeling that if she could only remember what that was, she would not feel so horribly lost in time.