56 pages • 1 hour read
A Song Below Water
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Chapters 17-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “Tavia”
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.
Tavia plans to Compel everyone to leave, but Effie argues that it’s dangerous to reveal she’s a siren. She pleads for Tavia to change her back, but Tavia can’t reverse Awaken, which triggered Effie’s true form. Effie accepts her gorgon identity, but then runs away from Gargy’s wings.
Classmates scream as Effie turns them into stone. She’s in a trance, stoning people with her gaze and hair. Though everyone else is running, Naema is recording Effie on her phone. Tavia Compels Effie to come to her, breaking her gorgon trance, as Naema laughs that she’s livestreaming and everyone knows their secrets now. Tavia Compels Effie to stone Naema. After Naema turns to stone, Gargy flies them away.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Effie”
Effie wakes up in Gargy’s wings, after blacking out from stoning her classmates. Her legs are back, her gorgon form hidden. While flying, Tavia argues that Gargy/Wallace must bring them to his maker. Effie processes her identity: “Gorgon. I keep rolling that word around in my mouth. It’s like learning my own name. My real name” (219). She feels terrible for hurting people without realizing it.
At the Hidden Scales fairground tent, Wallace, back to his human form, says his maker lives inside. Effie is confused. Wallace tells her that everything will make sense inside, adding that his maker will be mad at him, as he was never supposed to transform into a real boy, but he fell in love with Effie. Effie says she won’t let his maker hurt him, and he kisses her passionately.
In the tent, where Effie performs each year, a water mirage appears and transports the group to a new place—a marshy wetland with floating orbs of light and a deep river. Effie sees the water mirage, and Tavia uses Awaken. Effie turns back into a gorgon as the mirage shifts into the form of another gorgon with dark, moving dreadlocks. The gorgon says he’s Effie’s father, Jacoby, though he has Mama Theo in a tank in the river to further convince Effie. He brings Mama Theo up from her underwater air tank. She argues with Effie’s father that he wasn’t supposed to keep coming to their world; he was supposed to stay away and watch over Effie through Wallace. Effie checks on Mama Theo. Jacoby explains Effie’s history, her mother’s decision not to reveal her identity until she was ready to make the decision as to which world she wished to live in. He hugs Effie and says he’s missed her, having only seen her at the Renaissance Faire. Effie must choose between her father and living with Tavia and her family.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Tavia”
Tavia watches as Effie and her father share a moment, their gorgon tails entwined. Jacoby tells Effie that her real name is Euphemia. Effie/Euphemia hugs Mama Theo, then Tavia asks to speak to her privately. She checks that Effie feels comfortable with her father, envying their immediate closeness, and that she’s making the right choice. Tavia points out that Effie and Jacoby just met, and that she’ll miss her if she leaves. Effie says, “You know what I’ve done. You know they won’t forgive me” (230). Tavia argues that the statues she didn’t make were her father’s doing. Effie is aware her father isn’t perfect and used strange means to reach her, but chooses to stay with him and learn how to be a gorgon. Jacoby also kidnapped Isabella to try to make Effie find him, whom he releases from another underwater tank.
Effie assures Tavia that she’s safe with her father, and that they’re still sisters. Tavia feels guilty for Awakening and Compelling her without her consent, but Effie isn’t angry. While Effie and her father reunite, Gramma appears in the water. Tavia is transported to the indigo place, where Gramma tells her to use Awaken in a different way, explaining that she didn’t specifically say to Awaken Effie. Tavia knows how to fix the stoning.
Tavia and Effie head for Triton Park, where those who’ve been stone statues for years are located. They invite the stoned children’s families and a news crew, and Tavia uses Awaken to free them. She’s labeled a “hero,” her sirenness seen positively at last. Effie apologizes for her mistake, since she didn’t mean to stone anyone, and her friends hug her. The sprites at the park sing that Effie’s tricks are over.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Effie” and “Tavia”
Effie and Isabella are given a perfect score on their “lived” sprite project, since everyone saw Effie and Tavia save the stoned children and satisfy the invisible sprites. Isabella, whom Effie’s father kidnapped, still texts her to check in. Effie decides not to return to high school. Her father was supposed to wait and see if Effie ever transformed (if his gorgon genes were active), but wanted to have his daughter in his life. Every time Jacoby got too close to Effie, her “inner gorgon spiked” and caused her blackouts (238). Tavia understands Effie’s decision to join her father; although Jacoby proved controlling and manipulative in his methods, she jokes that her father is too. Effie thanks her for setting her free with Awaken and promises they’ll still see each other, especially in the fairgrounds tent.
Tavia returns home, expecting her parents to be upset. Surprisingly, her father approves of her “heroic” actions and her starting a YouTube channel for siren education. Rodney tells her that someone called about doing a documentary about Effie and the stoned children. He tells Tavia that she has a real presence on her channel, instead of chastising her, and admits that sirens deserve better than how they’ve been treated.
Chapters 17-20 Analysis
The theme of Identity continues to present in Effie’s journey, finally concluding with the reveal of her as a gorgon. Bethany Morrow uses Effie’s love of water, shedding, dry skin, moving hair, and the stone statues to connect her to gorgon lore. Foreshadowing through the use of words like “shedding” for her dry skin and Mama Theo screaming that “it” was her, not sprites (with “it” being the park incident) all pointed to Effie’s true form. In their lore, gorgons are half-snake, half-human beings with a Medusa-like head of snakes and serpentine eyes that can stone or hypnotize victims if they choose. Mythos is key to the novel’s worldbuilding again, as Effie portrays the myth well when she falls into a trance and starts stoning innocent people at prom. Only Tavia, another mythological creature, can stop her by using Compel. With Tavia’s help, Effie’s true form is not only revealed, but her accidental rage and stoning stop. As Mama Theo always thought, the girls are good for each other, bringing out the best in each other—such as Tavia’s courage and powerful, transformative siren songs and Effie’s true form and softer side (shown most through her relationship with Gargy/Wallace). Though Tavia thinks Effie is “wonderful” as a gorgon, Effie isn’t certain at first: “Gorgon. I keep rolling that word around in my mouth. It’s like learning my own name. My real name” (219). She eventually learns to approve of her form, admiring her tail, whipping hair, and serpentine eyes like Tavia does. Effie even learns to forgive herself for stoning her friends, as she never knew her real form or abilities.
During the final conflict at prom, Tavia demonstrates the power of speaking up, completing her character growth. She actively chooses to use Awaken, empowering Effie to reveal her real form, and uses Compel to make Effie stop hurting others (except Naema, the novel’s antagonist in many ways). By using her songs, Tavia embraces and steps into her power, rather than away, with courage she’s never felt before. She makes the decision to use Awaken based on Gramma’s teachings, and is amazed at Effie’s gorgon identity. Though she apologizes for influencing Effie without her consent, the latter isn’t mad. Neither of them thinks siren songs like Compel should be used without consent, since they’re both empathetic people who understand the right to one’s own agency, but Tavia made the right decision in the moment. Tavia has become stronger emotionally and mentally, braver and wiser by owning her power, and honors her identity, just like Effie does by choosing to stay with her father Jacoby and learn about being a gorgon. Furthermore, Tavia becomes passionate about siren activism and reframing people’s perspectives of sirens and other creatures of mythos. With Effie by her side as a gorgon, she makes a powerful speech at Triton Park, then saves all the stoned children with Awaken. Her heroic actions at the park and YouTube channel trigger a new movement for social justice, building a world where sirens can be seen and heard, rather than suppressed into silence and nonexistence. At the start, Tavia would have never been brave enough to use her voice for educating the public, but now she’s a different, determined person who will do all in her power to make a positive difference.
While Effie’s decision to join her father Jacoby could be seen as running away from her problems, it actually stands in contrast with her earlier idealism. Effie had long confused reality and fantasy in envisioning herself as a mermaid (i.e., linking her gorgon traits to those of a mermaid, mistaking her love for Elric/Rick as real) in an attempt to know and own her identity, but now, she accepts fantasy (her being a gorgon by her father) as her reality—even if the truth didn’t turn out to be what she suspected (especially with her true name being Euphemia, her Renaissance Faire name). Despite Jacoby’s questionable methods to reach his daughter, Effie decides to recognize these methods as stemming from love rather than malice. She recognizes her father’s loneliness and pride in their shared identity, and thus chooses to pursue a life with him. This decision makes sense, considering how much Effie continues to miss the parent she did share a life with, Minerva—whose name appropriately references the Roman goddess Minerva, also known as the Greek goddess Athena, who cursed Medusa to have snakes for hair (making her a gorgon). Despite having good intentions, Minerva “cursed” Effie, denying her the chance to know her father, so Effie makes the decision to make up for lost time.
Unlike Tavia’s father Rodney, Jacoby immediately voices love for and pride in his daughter. However, by the end of the novel, Rodney finally exhibits character growth, encouraging and praising Tavia’s efforts to frame sirens in a positive light. Effie and Tavia’s relationship shows no signs of wavering despite their separation (reflected in Chapter 20 featuring a shared perspective), and as for romance-related matters, their futures show promise. Effie and Wallace are likely to pursue a romantic relationship, with the gargoyle voicing his affection and kissing his ward, and Tavia at least attempted to gain closure from her ex-boyfriend Priam at prom (even if this encounter isn’t meant to result in anything but closure).
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