“You of all people, should know this.

“And if you did not do anything, and it was all Stone, then you know what to do.

“Tell us. Tell us if it was all Stone’s doing. Stone’s crime.”

Eventually, she did. She blamed me for everything.

Late at night, Old Song came. I did not know that at first; I was sleeping. My hands were still bound, and I could not find comfort. My gills opened and closed laboriously in the shallow, cold pool. She grasped me by the leg, and I came to the surface, shaking and sputtering.

I am so sorry, she said. Then she tore at our bond, and suddenly my head was splitting, and it felt like she was tearing out my whole mind, my tongue—

When I speak of this, Ulín cries out, and her hands grasp her cheeks, the sides of her head, bruising-tight. Her eyes are wild, frightened.

Oh. My story. Her nameloss—my words must have reminded her.

She rocks and says again and again, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I stretch out my hand, an offer, and she reaches to me as if drowning. Her fingers clench tight. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . .”

“Please,” I say. “No need to apologize. I can stop if you need me to.”

“Did you lose your magic?” she whispers.

“No, I kept both my deepnames. But the bond was gone.”

We clasp each other’s hands in the semidarkness of my room and breathe together until she is ready to listen again.

I’d gone without a living bond before, hoping for a companion who would also share their body with me, but then I met Old Song, and I did not want anyone else. I wanted—I wanted to keep that feeling of her, that warmth, curiosity, wonder, her stories most of all. She told me she loved me, and I felt it—but now she had severed our bond.

Then she touched me, and I recoiled, but she only unbound my hands.

“You did not speak against me in judgment,” she whispered, “even though I betrayed you. Even now, I betrayed you again. I’m so sorry. I am not brave or strong like you are, and I cannot abide to be severed. The collective will find me someone else to bond to, someone of their choosing. But I convinced them that there is hope for you, that you can be corrected. The collective will give you another chance. If you speak to them humbly, for you they too will find a new bond. It will be as it should be.”

“Nothing is as it should be.” I grasped her arm, and she all but recoiled, but I held her. I was strong.

Later, I wondered why she did not simply flicker away from me. Back then, in my exhaustion and hurt, I leaned into the power of my insignificant body. The stone strength of it.

Old Song had kicked me before, and hurt me, and shielded herself from judgment with a story which hid many truths. She had severed our bond, and hurt me so much; my head was reeling, and under my tongue was the bitterness of vomit. I thought I could strike back now. I could hurt her in the body, even kill her. What did I have to lose? I did not want to be corrected. To be bonded with a prison-bond, to live a dutiful quiet life, to die into the Shoal and be there motionless and bound forever, without even Old Song to speak to. Or to be severed, and die without a Shoal to take my soul, to perish without a trace like those who were torn away into the void. There were no good ways forward. All was despair.

Within me, the deep music of red surged and faded.

Old Song did not struggle. Did not flicker away.

I held her, and my eyes adjusted. She had already been hurt in the body, like I had been hurt, but I paid little attention to my wounds. She was cut and punched, and she was bleeding, but above all, I saw that she was deeply afraid. Afraid of the hurt in the body. Afraid of the people who hurt her. Afraid of being alone.

“Tell me a story,” I said. “One last time, Old Song.”

She shuddered and whimpered, but I held her, and she stayed.

“Tell me a story of something that matters to you. You owe me that much.”

She whispered, “The stag woman. She was the Kran-Valadar, the queen of the dreamway and nameway hunters I met in the south. She called me beautiful and beloved, and she held me. She called me the wisewoman of the fish people and the singer of their tales, and she taught me the word for woman in the tongue of her people.”

“Kälu.” Ulín’s eyes shine with something like joy as she speaks the word Old Song has given me back then. Woman.

I am shocked to hear it from Ulín’s mouth. “Have you studied the language of the stag people?” I say.

She looks oddly embarrassed, and pleased. “Not as such. A little bit.” She tells me how, in a strange little shop in the middle of nowhere, she bought a dictionary. She studied the stag people’s tongue to compare it to the tongue of the serpents. “I found many similar words in these languages,” Ulín says, her voice warm with pride. “In the tongue of the serpents, woman is kaloy.”

“How many languages did you learn?” Even two had been hard for me.

“There is always so much more to learn,” she says, evasive. Her eyes are bright, and I’m glad she is feeling better.

“Woman,” I say. “In my language, we do not have words like these. Perhaps we had them once, before the Shoal journeyed through the void. But we don’t anymore. There is a person who carries and births from their body, and there are those who do not. This is merely a difference of labor.” I did not birth anyone, so it was not my labor. But back in the prison-cave, Old Song had whispered to me, “I am a coward, Stone. But one day I could be brave. I could choose. To be who I want to be. To be a woman. And you . . . you could be a woman too.”

This thing she had to give. A blessing, a curse, a despair, a rebellion.

For years, I have cherished it.

Ulín breathes deep, her eyes on mine. “I think I am ready to tell you more, now.” Ulín speaks so prettily, I think, even in a language not her own. I struggle with it sometimes.

“Don’t rush,” I say. “You can tell me as much as you can.”