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water, escaping into its prison in the Fountain of Apollo.
    Marie-Josèphe caught Yves’ arm. A ripple broke against his foot and flowed around the soles of his boots, as if he walked on water. Water soaked the hem of his cassock.
    My brother walks on water, Marie-Josèphe thought with a smile. He ought to be able to keep his clothing dry!
    The fountains spurted high, then gushed half as high, then bubbled in their nozzles.
    The fleur-de-lys wilted. The creaking of the pumps abruptly ceased. No ripple, not even bubbles, marked the surface of the pool.
    Yves wiped his sleeve across his face. Marie-Josèphe, standing two steps above him, almost reached his height. She laid her hand on her brother’s shoulder.
    “You’ve succeeded,” she said.
    “I hope so.”
    Marie-Josèphe leaned forward and peered into the water. A dark shape lay beneath the surface, obscured by the reflections of candlelight.
    “It’s alive now,” Yves said. “How long it will survive...” His worried voice trailed off.
    “It need not live long,” Marie-Josèphe said. “I want to see it — Call it to you!”
    “It won’t come to me. It’s a beast, it doesn’t understand me.”
    “My cat understands,” Marie-Josèphe said. “Didn’t you train it, all those weeks at sea?”
    “I had no time to train it.” Yves scowled. “It wouldn’t eat — I had to force-feed it.”
    He folded his arms, glaring at the bright water. The sea monster drifted, silent and still.
    “But I fulfilled His Majesty’s wishes. I’ve done what no one has done in four hundred years. I’ve brought a living sea monster to land.”
    Marie-Josèphe leaned closer to the water, straining to see. The creature was long, and sleek, longer and more slender than the dolphins that cavorted off the beach in Martinique. Its tangled hair swirled around its head.
    “Whoever heard of a fish with hair?” she exclaimed.
    “It’s no fish,” Yves said. “It breathes air. If it doesn’t breathe soon —”
    He crossed the rim of the fountain and stepped to the ground. Marie-Josèphe stayed where she was, gazing at the monster.
    It gazed back at her, its eyes eerily reflecting the light. It extended its arms, its webbed hands.
    Yves’ shadow fell across the sea monster. The creature retreated, closing its golden eyes. Yves clenched his fingers around a goad.
    “I won’t let it drown.”
    He poked the goad at the sea monster, trying to chivvy the creature into motion.
    “Swim, damn you! Surface!”
    Its hair drifted about its face. Its tail flukes quivered. The creature trembled.
    “Stop, you’re scaring it, you’ll hurt it!” Marie-Josèphe knelt on the platform and plunged her hands into the water. “Come to me, you’re safe here.”
    The creature’s webbed fingers clutched her wrists and pressed heat against her skin.
    The sea monster’s claws touched her like the tips of knives, but never cut.
    The sea monster dragged her into the pool.
    Yves shouted and jabbed with the goad. The monster floated, just out of reach.
    Marie-Josèphe struggled to her feet, coughing, soaked. The cold water lifted her full petticoats like the petals of a water lily. She pushed them down. Her underskirt collapsed against her legs, scratchy and ungainly.
    “Hurry, take my hand —”
    “No, wait,” she said. The creature slipped past her, fleeing, then turning back, its voice touching her through the water. “Don’t frighten it again.” She stretched one hand toward the sea monster. “Come here, come here...”
    “Be careful. It’s strong, it’s cruel —”
    “It’s terrified!”
    The creature’s voice brushed against her fingertips. Its song spun from the surface like mist. Barely moving, creeping, floating, the sea monster neared Marie-Josèphe.
    “Good sea monster. Fine sea monster.”
    “His Majesty approaches,” Count Lucien said.
    Startled, Marie-Josèphe glanced over her shoulder. Count Lucien stood on the fountain’s rim. He had come into the tent, crossed