and blue fish. A tiny light hovers over his face, and I realize it’s

part of him-like a shiny flashlight dangling out of his forehead. He

wears a traveling salesman kind of suit, and the slits on his nose

wiggle against the salty wind. When his shiny black eyes catch me

staring, I’m afraid he’ll flip me off, or worse. Instead he bows.

Here we go again with the bowing.

A boy runs past me; a woman with curling brown hair chases after

him. She picks him up, and he struggles against her until she

reprimands him in his ear. He looks like he’s wearing a turtle

backpack, but as we pass them I can see the hard shell is part of him.

She picks a spot with an excellent view of the shore. Then I notice

her arms. They have no bone in them. Where there should be fingers are

tiny suction cups that shift back and forth from fingers to tentacles.

And then there’s a guy. Just an average guy, a little older than

me with dark jeans, black leather boots with archaic crosses on the

shins, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and disheveled brown hair. He

wears a baseball cap to the side and chews on a coffee straw. He’s

leaning against the side of the boat, watching and holding a small

cardboard box with MTA stickers on it. He winks at me as we walk past,

which is weird, but finally someone who doesn’t bow.

“Let’s go meet the captain,” Thalia says. In her ballerina skirt,

she looks more like a regular girl than a sea creature. She leads us

to the mast of the ship. Out here is just the horizon. Kurt knocks on

the mast. There’s a series of squeaks, like rope and metal being

pulled. A deep voice comes out of the darkness and says,

“Kurtomathetis, I was wondering when you would make it.”

Thalia puts her hands on her hips and looks up at him. “But we’re

ahead of schedule!”

I follow their stare up and over the front of the ship. Where

there would be some carving, like a dragon on the Viking ships they

had at the Met, is a merman. From the waist up he has the V shape of a

football player. His hair seems to be alive in full black curls. His

shoulders have splotches of golden freckles where the sun hits the

most. He bows his head with a kind smile.

Arion grabs the conch strung over his chest and blows it. The

sails expand, and even though there is no strong wind just now, we

start moving. The ship is alive with excited whispers. I hold on to

the front of the ship, my legs feeling wobbly as we start moving. I’m

really doing this. Oh, god, I’m really doing this.

“Lord Sea-” the captain says to me.

“You don’t have to call me that,” I shout over the small wave that

crashes against us.

Arion looks taken aback. His dark eyebrows knit together, and his

black eyes look over his shoulder at me. “What shall I call you?”

“Tristan is fine.”

“Tristan.” He tastes my name on his tongue, pronouncing it a few

times before he’s confident about addressing me so informally. “Son

of?”

“David Hart?”

“Tristan Hart, son of David Hart. Welcome aboard.”

I’m too stunned. “What are you?”

“A merman like yourself.”

“But you’re, like, attached to the ship.”

We make a sudden turn to the left. “Whoa,” he says. He raises his

hand and makes a pulling motion. A sail drops. He uses his left hand

to slap at the air, like he’s trying to parallel park. Behind me the

ship’s steering wheel mimics his hand movement.

“How are you part of this ship?” I ask.

“I have carried my father’s debt to the king,” he says. No big

deal.

“What do you mean? What did he do?”

“I was a boy. It is so long ago I cannot remember. My father had

the choice of being executed or indentured to the king. He was to

serve millennia guiding the ship between Toliss and whatever coasts

the Sea Court happens to visit. But my father grew old, and his

sentence was carried over to me.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“That is the way it is, Tristan Hart.”

Arion’s baritone laugh sounds like the conch strapped to his

chest. He touches the tip of his bushy black beard. He finds something

in it, a tiny crab, and pops it into his mouth like a grape.

“Guess you never go hungry,” I go. “But how do you sleep?”

“The sails, they’re quite soft.”

“Way to look on the bright side.” I wonder what other kinds of

punishments my grandfather has given out, and if I were king, whether

I could ever do the same.

There’s another bang, and this time the rain breaks. It isn’t

cold, thunderstorm rain. It’s soft, like passing through a warm

curtain. “We’ve crossed the wall!” Arion calls out.

“Should we go below deck?” I instantly regret asking.

“We are of the sea, Tristan. No one objects to getting a little

wet.”

Thalia’s laughter is contagious. Here the clouds break up. This is

the first stretch of sky I’ve seen in weeks. Around me, the other

passengers lift their noses to the sky or reach their hands over the

side of the ship, where water will splash and lick their fingertips.

Or tentacles, whatever the case may be. The only one I don’t see in

the crowd is the human guy with the cardboard box. Surely he did

oppose getting a bit wet.

“Hang on tight, Lord Tristan!”

My stomach plummets with that tickling roller-coaster feel. I even

let myself scream. A small wave pushes us past the wall.

“There’s that,” Kurt says.

And yeah, there is that. Behind us, the wall of warm rain stands

still. It marks the last of the ugly rain clouds that have latched on

to the sky for the past few days. I can see the horizon ahead, and it

is grand. The sun has begun to rise on this side of the wall. It’s

been so long since I’ve seen the sky. I’m about to tell Thalia as

much, but then-

That’s when I hear her.

No. No, no, no, no.

“Let me go! Get your slimy hands off me.”

No.

The sound of feet hitting wood.

People shoving.

The pulling and pulling of limbs.

“Intruder!” someone yells.

“Get off me!”

It’s coming from the main deck. The crowd gathered there reminds

me of when fights break out in school. Everyone gathers around in a

circle watching the brawl. Layla is being dragged across the deck by

two guys who are stronger than they look. Their bodies are wire thin,

with mostly human faces, and the scalps of sea urchins. They hold her

wrists and ankles and sling her onto the center of the deck.

I’ve never seen Layla’s eyes this wide. One by one she stares at

the faces on the ship until she finds me in the crowd. Tiny gasps of

air leave her lips, like she’s trying to breathe and hiccup at the

same time.

A second set of footsteps rushes up to the deck. The guy and his

cardboard box.

“Arion,” one of the urchin guys says. “She is an intruder.”

The black ropes that bind Arion to the front of the ship stretch,

pushing him up so he can turn around and look down at the scene. He

glances back at the island. The speck of land is getting bigger by the

second. “State your name and how you managed to get on board.”

“Layla,” I blurt out. “Her name is Layla. She’s my friend.”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

She pushes herself up, standing with her hands down and out to

create a barrier between herself and us. When did I become the us?

The urchin boy stands with his hands at his sides. Now I can see

his face. His nose is like a button pushed down on his face, which

from the temples up to the top of his hair is dark blue. He points to

her without smiling. “It is against the king’s wishes that humans