A Song Below Water

Seeing Naema and Effie fight, Tavia instinctually uses Awaken. Naema and others record the fight on their phones. Awaken transforms Wallace into Gargy the gargoyle, turning his flesh to stone with wings that safeguard Effie. Tavia hears Effie moaning, and Gargy lets her inside the shelter of his wings. Effie’s true form is a gorgon:

Her legs are gone. Re­placed by a tail [...] My sis­ter’s a gor­gon, I’m sure of it. For one, her tail doesn’t ta­per the way a mer­maid’s does. In­stead it’s thick and long, coil­ing around it­self so it looks end­less. For two, her big eyes have changed. Their shape isn’t im­me­di­ate­ly no­tice­a­ble (ex­cept to some­one who sees her close up eve­ry sin­gle day) but the scales at the cor­ners are. Everything in­side is dif­fer­ent, too. Her pu­pil is a long ver­ti­cal slit through what looks like gold­en sand. [...] Her twists aren’t twists an­y­more; now they’ve got scales of their own. They writhe and curl in the air around her head (211).

Tavia tells Effie that she’s something wonderful, an extreme rarity. She’s in awe of Effie, but remembers her own discovery and wishing she wasn’t a siren every day. Effie pleads to not let people see her, as they snap pictures and record videos.