Jasper asked Alaric Thorne one question after their meeting.

"Why Harper?"

Thorne did not know.

That should have been the end of it, but the question followed Jasper through the next week like a pebble stuck in his shoe.

Why Harper?

Students had slipped at the tide pools before. Waves had knocked people off balance. Harper herself had tripped often enough that Ava had once suggested keeping a separate count. None of those moments had made the sea rise beneath somebody as though it had been waiting for exactly that fall.

Ava made a list of possibilities because that was what Ava did when the world refused to explain itself.

She read them aloud in Room Fourteen while Harper lay upside down on Bag Bed.

"One: location. The north observation ledge may sit above a particular current or old magical channel. Two: timing. The presence may already have been active for a completely different reason. Three: Jasper. His being there may have mattered even if he did not cause anything. Four: Harper."

Harper sat upright. "Delete four."

"It is a possibility."

"I do not have sea powers."

"I did not write sea powers."

"You were thinking sea powers."

"I was thinking unknown variable."

"That is worse."

Ava left theory four where it was and added a fifth line.

UNKNOWN.

Jasper liked that one best.

Ocean Studies changed for several weeks after the fall. Professor Elowen moved first-years away from the outer ledges and into enclosed observation rooms, where they worked with tide charts, model channels and long glass wave tanks. Some students complained about losing the view.

Harper did not.

That was how Jasper knew the fall had frightened her more than she wanted to say.

One afternoon Elowen placed a stone block in the middle of the wave tank and asked what would happen when the current reached it.

Ava's hand went up. "The flow splits around the block, pressure rises on the upstream side, and turbulence forms behind it."

Harper raised hers after Ava had finished. "Water goes around."

Elowen nodded. "Also correct."

The class laughed, including Ava.

Jasper watched the little current divide around the stone. The water itself did not decide anything. It responded to shape, pressure and movement.

The thought stayed with him.

After class, he found Thorne in the western gallery with Professor Crowe. Jasper had not been looking for either of them, and for a moment he considered turning around.

Thorne saw him first.

"Jasper?"

Crowe collected her folder and left without making the moment feel like an appointment.

Jasper stood beside the open window. Far below, ordinary waves struck the cliff.

"I think I've been saying it wrong," he said.

Thorne waited.

"When Harper fell, I keep saying the sea chose to move. But water doesn't choose. If something chose, the water was just what it used."

Thorne's expression changed by a fraction.

"That is possible."

"You already thought that."

"I had considered it."

Jasper frowned. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Thorne leaned one shoulder against the stone window frame. "Because when an adult gives a seven-year-old a theory, it can become a fact very quickly. If I tell you there is a creature under the sea, you may begin making every strange feeling fit that story. If I tell you there is only old environmental magic, you may do exactly the same thing in the other direction."

"So you just say maybe."

"Often."

"That's annoying."

"Usually."

Jasper looked back at the water.

"Do you think something is thinking down there?"

Thorne was quiet for several seconds. "After Harper's fall, I think that is more possible than I did before."

That was not an answer, but it was more than Jasper had expected.

"Could it have saved her because I was there?"

"Possibly."

"Because Harper was there?"

"Possibly."

"Because it happened to be nearby?"

"Possibly."

Jasper groaned.

Thorne almost smiled. "Mysteries are rarely polite enough to choose one theory because it is easier for us."

A wave broke far below.

Then the pressure touched Jasper's chest.

He stopped.

Thorne noticed immediately. "Now?"

Jasper nodded.

The feeling was faint and cool, more like being noticed from a distance than being called. He did not reach toward it.

"Anything else?" Thorne asked.

"No."

"Then you are allowed to leave it there."

Jasper tried.

For almost a minute, he managed.

The pressure shifted.

An image touched him.

Harper falling.

Not her face. Not even the whole ledge. Motion, stone, open air, then water rising fast enough to erase the gap beneath her.

Jasper's breath caught.

The image changed.

He saw a small figure standing beside the broken edge.

Himself.

The angle was wrong.

Jasper was looking up at himself from below.

The impression vanished.

He stumbled backward and Thorne caught his arm.

"What happened?"

Jasper told him. The words came too quickly. Harper falling. Water rising. Jasper standing above. The strange viewpoint.

When he finished, Thorne had gone very still.

"It saw me," Jasper whispered.

"That is one explanation."

"It remembered."

"That is another."

"But you think it did."

Thorne did not answer immediately. "I think what you experienced is stronger evidence than anything you had yesterday."

Jasper looked through the window again.

The sea appeared perfectly ordinary.

No voice named itself. No creature broke the surface. Nothing announced that Jasper had solved the mystery.

He had not.

But one possibility had become harder to ignore.

Whatever existed in the water might not simply react.

It might have a point of view.