Daughter of the Deep

Ana dreams of the Fourth of July when she was ten years old. Her mother tells her that when she dies, she wants her ashes scattered in the San Alejandro Botanical Gardens. This horrifies Ana and Dev, but their parents explain that “dying is nothing to be embarrassed about. It happens to everyone” (129). When she wakes up, Ana is guilty that she was never able to scatter her parents’ ashes. She thinks, “we had no ashes to sprinkle in any lake. Now I have nothing but my mother’s pearl” (129). After she gets up, the challenge arrives, which turns out to be code she and her fellow Dolphins are eventually able to crack. The message they decode refers to Lincoln Base, which Gem realizes refers to Île Lincoln, the island from The Mysterious Island.

The students respond to the code, identifying the Varuna and Ana Dakkar. Using her name embarrasses Ana, but the others tell her, “they figure that if I’m really so valuable, my presence on board might keep anyone—friends or enemies—from torpedoing us with alt-tech death weapons” (137). They are all left waiting for so long that they believe Hewett deceived them and that there is no island, but eventually a woman’s