Between the Sea and Sky by Jaclyn Dolamore

she finished singing, they applauded, and when she motioned them into the shop, they went. They came out some time later with parcels.
    Shade was nonexistent, and once she began to feel hot, she started noticing all the other little discomforts. She nudged her feet out of her shoes. Proper or not, no one would notice under her skirts.
    Before the sun rose too high, Belawyn brought her in and sent her upstairs for a drink of water and some bread and cheese. When Esmerine finished lunch, Belawyn said, “We’ve already sold as much in a morning as we usually do in a day.”
    “Do you think they like the books?”
    “When they hear your music, they seem to want something beautiful,” Belawyn said. “Make of that what you will.”
    Esmerine smiled.
    “If you’d care to rest your voice, I could use some help inside the shop. I’m sending Alan off with some deliveries.”
    “Of course.” Esmerine was glad to stay inside out of the hot sun. Belawyn was sitting at the counter, smoking her pipe. The one customer currently in the shop, a broad-chested man in a bright-green coat, seemed content to browse alone. Alan donned his hat, tipped it at Esmerine in an automatic way, and left with a parcel.
    “Sit with me, my pearl. I want to know a little more about you.”
    Esmerine sat, a bit apprehensively.
    “So, tell me. You came looking for your lost siren sister, is that right?”
    “Of course.” Belawyn already knew this.
    “And in a week’s time, Swift will return with news, and you will return to your family in reasonable contentment, besides, of course, some lingering regret over your sister.”
    “I’ll never be content …”
    “Do you know, most of the time when sirens leave the sea, their family doesn’t chase after them at all?”
    “I know. But most merfolk, of course, don’t know how to walk, so coming after a siren may not be an option. My sister and I used to play with Alan on the islands out in the bay. Alan couldn’t go underwater so we had to go to him. We walked a lot.”
    “I must say, I’m trying to imagine Alan playing with mermaids on an island, and I can’t, but of course I believe you. Still, I think you must have sacrificed a lot, and pushed aside all the stories of human cruelty you have ever heard, to come here looking for a sister you know you can’t save.”
    Esmerine shrugged one shoulder. “She’s my sister. I had to try. Why did you come here?”
    “I swallowed the lies I was told for a long time,” Belawyn said. “I was told how humans were dirty and stupid and cruel, down to the last teat-sucking babe. But I was secretly fascinated by human ships and buildings, though it was shameful to say so aloud. My mother thought I’d be chosen as a siren, but when they asked me, I refused.”
    “You refused becoming a siren?” Esmerine had never heard of anyone refusing such an exalted position.
    “I didn’t want to spend my life sitting on rocks, hoping some fisherman would steal me away when what I really wanted wasn’t a fisherman, or any man, but simply a different life. So I apprenticed to the village healer instead. I thought I might find that more fulfilling.”
    “Didn’t you?”
    “No. I saw my life narrowing around me, as much a prison as any stolen siren. I kept sneaking away to the surface, to watch the human village in the distance. My father caught me trying to walk, and he was so furious that he threatened to lock a ring around the base of my tail so I couldn’t change. But why do we have the ability to change into humans if none of us are ever meant to walk among them? I wondered that then, and I still do.”
    Esmerine had never wondered why. She had always simply accepted it, like she accepted the phases of the moon. It was fascinating to consider there might be a purpose. “Do you have any theories on why we can change?”
    “I’m no philosopher,” Belawyn said. “Don’t want to be one either. I don’t want to read theories about why people do this or