We saw HIM and heard HIM calling to us and

We wanted to fall—

Into the embrace of Ladder’s hands.

But we were overruled.

I did not know back then who Ladder was, but the language was familiar from Old Song’s story. He: a man from elsewhere. A nameway.

I want to travel, I said. Not only to flicker, but in the body. I want to know this world of the other eleven stars that fell and were embraced by their keepers.

There was a disturbance in the Shoal.

If you want to know about Ladder, an ancestor sang, then you must attend to his summoning song.

We heard it. We hear it still.

If you attend to it, he will call you, like he called us—and you will travel to him.

The whole of the Shoal began to swirl. Above and below, souls streaked past me, fishlike, agitated, dissolving their bonds and darting away. I’d never thought such a thing possible, but I felt it as deep pain, agitation. Fear. In a moment, it was as if the whole Shoal had separated into its constituent souls. They were silver sea-minnows rushing this way and that, dizzying me. In that moment, I perceived a cluster of people still clumped in the water, unmoving. These were the red-glowing ancestors.

They did not seem fishlike. Neither did they separate.

They were bonded—not just to each other—I squinted, to see—they were held by the bonds that extended toward them. Not lovingly, or even companionably were they held—no, this was made to constrain them, and—I perceived this—to punish.

Just as the Shoal separated, these bonds too began to weaken, to wink in and out, and the ancestors of red began to struggle, throwing themselves against the constraint of these flaring and fizzling bonds that held them in place.

All this took only a moment, a frantic and terrible moment.

The Shoal flared, blinding me as it reformed.

The Shoal.

The Shoal was still.

All was as silent and unmoving as before.

No, more than before—the ancestors of red neither sang nor spoke. They still had bodies of people, motionless now, their eyes flat and staring past me.

I wanted to call out to them, but could not find my voice. And something within the Shoal was still focused on me. The whole Star of the Shoal, its consciousness.

I tried to swim up and away from this attention, but now all the bonded but unconstrained souls in the Shoal were turning toward me, from above, from below, from the sides—pressing in. Suffocating—I did not know if I even breathed. A feeling of dread seized me, and I knew that if I stayed, I would be counted, accounted for, I would be judged by the collective which was the Star of the Shoal. I, too, would be bound and constrained with those who now hovered motionless, glowing a dull red—those deemed too dangerous to the collective.

In my fear, I tugged with all my might upon my living bond. The bond with Old Song. In a moment, I flickered out and upwards, toward her. To Song Isle.

It was raining, sweet drizzles upon the clammy skin of my face. Breath came in and out of my nostrils, filled my lungs with beautiful, cool surface-air. I opened my mouth, devouring the raindrops. I lay there, spread on the stones. Just breathing. Alive. Alive.

Somewhere above me, Old Song was yelling. I did not understand. Then I felt pain. She was kicking me with her feet. Away from her, into the water by Song Isle. I did not understand her words.

I do not remember how I got back to Stone Isle. Did I get there at all? There was a cave, perhaps my own. A shallow pool. My whole body felt as if aflame. I was delirious. I sank down into the water of the pool, opening and closing my gills. In my ears, Old Song’s yelling now coalesced into words. She said she loved me, but I betrayed her—endangered her. That she had transgressed enough. That she needed me to hold her.

I covered my ears with my hands and sank deeper. Behind my closed eyelids I saw the connections of light, remembering how the Shoal had separated for a brief, sharp moment.

Then it reformed. Around the prison.

I shudder with the vividness of memory. My gills open and close and I cough, half-suffocating in the dry, too-warm air of my room. Ulín makes a motion toward me, but I wave her off. I rise, dip my hands in the tepid water of my pool and rub my sides up to the gills, easing the pain just slightly. The water would need changing soon.

I expect Ulín to ogle, but she is looking aside, giving me privacy. The feeling of her kindness is strange, like a pinch on my arm. I did not expect it. I don’t know if I like it.

“She told you she loved you,” Ulín says at last.

I swallow, my mouth painfully dry, my gills barely better. “She said so, but I don’t know if she ever did.”

“Her fear outweighed her love.” Ulín’s face is still, as if she is holding back even more words. Perhaps she shouldn’t.

“Can you take over for a bit?” I ask her.

In the palace of nacre

Ulín did not see the sister again, but Laufkariar was wonderful. So attentive and tender. He even helped her learn the language of the serpents. He asked his people to help Ulín, and they would come to speak with her. Mostly these were women—noblewomen and servants. She learned the language from them. They were friendly, and Ulín wrote down many words.

She missed the library at Ranra’s Towers, and she wondered if the university would have an even larger library. But Laufkariar did not think she should go anywhere. The university in particular was a nameway place, he said, and Ulín was to live among the dreamway, by his side. He wanted them to be married.

When Ulín agreed to get married, she thought how much she wanted to be a part of his people’s ceremony. It would have splendid foods and poetry, musical instruments and underwater games. The serpent people’s weddings seemed much more elaborate and magical than what happened on the Coast, where people rarely married a single person. Her parents had that kind of union, but it was more common to simply live in houses, with many lovers and their lovers and their friends. Ulín knew that she did not want many lovers. It was more than enough to have one.