The women are told to wash, as they are to be inspected by the surgeon before they land. Mary and Eliza hide so their scaled skin and gills will not be discovered. The ship nears land, which Bridie jokes is full of monsters.

Friday, 15 February 2019

Jess is waiting to hear the women she heard singing in the cave before. Cameron is getting impatient. Jess speaks of the convict women who drowned and the men who have gone missing. When she tells Cameron he hurt her in the art studio, he tells her to stop rewriting history and reminds her that they didn’t have intercourse. Then he attacks her.

Mary wakes to find that the ship has run aground and rocks have torn a hole in the hull. She hears the women crying and screaming. Eliza reminds her that the water makes them strong. They dive into the water, and Mary feels herself transforming. She remembers swimming with her Mam and Mam asking if Mary would want to live in the sea. Mary had cried and called out for her father. Their mother carried the girls back to the cottage and told them “[t]he story of the merrow who longed for the sea” (298). Mary feels a “rightness in her body” (298), but concern for the others draws her back to the ship. Bridie, Sarah, and Annie are about to drown. Mary calls to Eliza.

Sunday, 17 February 2019

As Lucy climbs down the staircase, “she has the strange sense that she is being pulled by something, a fish with a hook through its gut” (303). Jess helps her into the cave, and Lucy feels a sense of recognition. They embrace. Jess says Hennessey drowned, that they struggled and he fell. 

Lucy asks if Hennessey is her father, and Jess shakes her head. Lucy realizes her father must be Max. Lucy thinks Jess has wounds on her neck, but Jess says they both can shed their skin like a snake. Jess describes how she wanted to give birth in the cave, saying, “I wanted to take you home, to the sea. I never wanted you to feel like I did, like you didn’t belong” (306). The social worker thought Jess meant to harm Lucy, but they wouldn’t have drowned.

Eliza comes to help Mary, and Mary sings the mermaid song to identify herself to the others. She and Eliza carry the three others away and make a raft to hold them. Mary swims through the debris of the ship, looking for supplies, and is amazed by the underwater world. Mary apologizes to Eliza, realizing that all these years, her sister has wanted to find Mam. Eliza reveals that Mary resisted going with Mam because she knew Eliza did not want to leave their Da. They both feel ready now.

Bridie, Sarah, and Annie want to return home, but Mary realizes she doesn’t want to go back to Da. Mary is angry to think how many men are not gentle like her father but are like Byrne, Aoife’s husband, and the captain. Mary still wants to be a mother, and she decides that she and Eliza can mother all the girls who need protection or justice.

Sunday, 17 February 2019

Jess is thrilled that she can finally look at Lucy as her daughter. In the water, Lucy feels herself bloom, and she feels this is her place. They hear a motor above them.

Jess, too, feels liberated. She remembers how Cameron attacked her and she waited for the siren song, but it did not come. She used the knife to stab Cameron and then pushed his body into the sea, singing. Jess could stay in the ocean with Lucy, but the man in the boat crashes and falls overboard, and Jess realizes it is her father.

April 2019

Lucy greets her mom and dad, who is recovering from his head injury, in the kitchen of Cliff House while they prepare for a visitor. She joins Jess on the balcony. Jess had told the police that Hennessey abducted her, attacked her, and then slipped and fell into the water, drowning. 

Lucy and Jess both swim often and speculate that they are no longer haunted by Mary and Eliza. Lucy wants to write about the women of the Naiad. She feels a new understanding of herself. Melody announces that Max has arrived.

Comber Bay, NSW

Thirty-seven years earlier

Robert Wilson wakes in his bedroom at Cliff House. His wife is still sleeping. She is beautiful to him, and Robert thinks she was made to be a mother. He puts on his fisherman’s gear and climbs down to the cave. He remembers how he’d been alone on his boat when he heard singing, saw a fin, and then a woman surfaced beside his boat. She says her name is Mare. She tells him her origins and of her purpose, and the fates of the men who have disappeared. When Robert asks if he will disappear, she tells him he is different. He is in love with her but cannot draw her properly, so he draws a lionfish to remind him of her, “[s]omething that was beautiful and vicious all at once” (329).

While Robert has an affair with Mare, Judith loses another pregnancy, which pains her deeply. One morning, Robert feels a pull toward the cave, and while he and his men are fishing, they hear a baby’s cry. Robert swims through the water to retrieve the infant, and when he looks at her, “Something burst open in his chest. She was perfect, and he knew then that he would never let her go” (331).