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horrible long toes. I never thought much of them since. Well, let me see your beads. I imagine you’ll want to trade something for a ride into town.”
    The servant boy took Esmerine into town. Esmerine sat next to him on the wooden seat, but the sides of her bonnet concealed him from her view unless she made a point to turn her head toward him. She could see his hands holding the reins. Large, tanned hands with a cut along the back of the left. She’d never been so close to a human man, and she could feel him looking at her and could smell his sweat. The sun beat on her arms and the back of her neck, exposed between bonnet and collar, and she felt her own sweat trickling between her breasts.
    The cart bumped along, rattling and jarring over the road and in Esmerine’s ears. Except for the lovely sharp sounds of porpoises and the bark of seals, sounds underwater were softer and fluid. Everything here seemed loud and sped up. Esmerine gripped the side of the cart, but pulled back at the way it vibrated under her hand. She reminded herself not to be afraid. This was the human world she’d always longed to see. These were the horses—certainly larger than she envisioned—that she swore she wouldn’t be frightened of.
    The cart jolted suddenly, and the boy grabbed her shoulder. She looked at him, and he took his hand back. “All right, miss?” His dark brows furrowed with concern.
    “Of—of course.”
    He kept looking at her, and he grinned just a little, and then he seemed shy again. “Tell me if you need anything.”
    “All right.” She turned her head away again. The clothes made her feel very fragile, like some human-made thing that would break apart and dissolve underwater, and now this human boy was looking at her like mermen never did. It was like a curious kind of game.
    Along the path to Sormesen, the sea glittered between buildings of two and three stories that were topped with red tile roofs. The breezes blew a fresh scent across the city, but even so, the aromas of dung and urine crept into Esmerine’s nose. They had to stop as a leathery old woman herded sheep across the road. Men, women, children, dogs, horses, and chickens all contributed to the traffic that grew thicker in the city. She heard someone shout over the din, “Spare a coin! Spare a coin!” She turned to see a man, so grimy that she couldn’t guess at his age, waving stumps of arms in the air. “Spare a coin!”
    She gasped and looked away, meeting the eyes of the boy driving the carriage again. He patted her arm. “Beggars, miss. You don’t have beggars below seas?”
    “Not in my village. The elders take care of people who are sick or maimed if their families can’t, but I’ve—I’ve never seen anyone so … hurt.”
    “Poor thing,” he said. Esmerine thought he meant the beggar until he said, “Your world must be wonderful to produce such a kind and beautiful creature.”
    She didn’t know what to say to that. What would Dosia have said? Would she flirt, or scold him for such a comment? Or would even Dosia be tongue-tied here?
    The moment to respond came and went, but he didn’t seem to mind. He began to whistle over the clamor of people shouting the merits of their hot rolls or dried fish or pamphlets, the woman standing in her doorway pounding the dust from a rug, the grunts and whines of animals. Esmerine had never realized just how many humans lived in Sormesen. There seemed as many people in view as lived in her entire village, and the spires and towers she had seen distantly from the water loomed impossibly high in person. Her mind scrambled through her memories, trying to connect the things before her eyes with the pictures and stories in Alander’s books. Could she ever find Alander or Dosia among so many people?
    “Um … excuse me.”
    She had thought the boy wasn’t paying attention to her anymore, but the moment she spoke, he turned alert eyes her way. “Yes?”
    “Do you know where the winged folk