Nari Blacktides needed a house of her own, and every black pearl brought her closer. She was a skeleton mermaid with a long black tail that glittered in the dark water. She hunted pearls in the deepest part of the black sea, where the sand shimmered with tiny flecks like fallen stars. Enough pearls would buy her a skeletal house boat. But the sea kept taking back what she took from it. Years ago she found her first black pearl near a cluster of jagged black rocks. She cupped it in her bones and swam for the surface. Before she reached shore, it slipped free and sank. She never found it again. Since then she guarded her pearls in her hands, and her hands failed her on every long climb up. Today she swam past the sharp rock cluster to a spread of glittering sand. She dug. Three oysters, three black pearls. She held them tight and rose. Halfway up, a current shoved her sideways. One pearl spun out and vanished into the dark below her. She snatched at it and lost a second. Only one reached the surface. Nari slammed the last pearl onto the sand near a palm strung with small lights and glowing stars. Two pearls gone. Again. Her hands would never be enough. She looked at the palm. Someone had draped it with string and hanging baubles that swayed in the wind. The string held. It did not drop its lights no matter how the branches shook. A net hung on driftwood nearby, gathered and knotted, lined with small round baubles caught in its weave. Nari touched it. The baubles sat snug in each square hole. They did not fall. The net held them the way her hands could not. She pulled the net down and worked it with her bone fingers. She tied the wide end shut. She knotted the cords into a rounded pouch with a drawstring throat and a loop to hang from her wrist. She dropped her one pearl inside and shook the pouch hard. The pearl rolled but stayed. Nothing slipped out. Nari dove again. She passed the rock cluster and reached the glittering sand. She pried open two oysters and found two more pearls, except these were white instead of black. Still worth its weight just not as rare. She pushed them through the drawstring throat and cinched it tight. Then she climbed, fast, and let the current shove her. The pouch swung against her ribs. It held. She broke the surface with three pearls, not one. She crawled onto the sand and opened the pouch. Three pearls, one black and two white, rolled into her palm. For the first time she had carried up everything she found. Nari looked back at the black water. She could dive as many times as she dared now. The only limit left was the blind creature below, and the exact depth where it turned back.