Lily is a 15-year-old deckhand on a trawler and the youngest daughter in a fishing family. She has two older sisters, and was raised by a single father who tells his daughters their mother was a mermaid. One day, Lily and her father go on a trawling trip down the Mekong to the ocean, catching pacu, carp, catfish, but no mermaids. When Lily, her father, and her father’s crew make it to the ocean aboard the _Pakpao_, they catch plenty of fish: tuna, bass, shark, but mostly mermaids. The mermaids common to this region are not beautiful maidens with fish tails—they are screeching, with lithe bodies, silvery tails, wide-set eyes, and whiskers. Their meat is a highly prized luxury export that Lily’s family and others in the fishing industry profit greatly from. However, one of the mermaids Lily and the crew catches is from the deep sea; it has a human face with huge white eyes, and its body is coated in slime and covered in spines, with skeletal pods hanging from its waist. Lily hears the mermaid hiss, “Luksaw”—“daughter” in Thai.
At night Lily witnesses one of the crew members raping a mermaid. Despite Lily’s disgust, her father tells her that this happens often on fishing trips. Lily begins to wonder if her father’s story of her mother being a mermaid might be true, and reflects on her older sister’s sexual assault during high school. Lily goes down to the ship’s hold and speaks to the deep sea mermaid who called out to her earlier that day. The mermaid licks Lily and determines that she is not her daughter, but nonetheless part-mermaid. The mermaid offers to grant Lily a wish in exchange for a bite of her shoulder flesh. Lily remembers her sisters and the people who have harmed them in their lifetimes. The mermaid grants Lily an unknown wish and disappears. Within a week of their return to land, every crew member of the _Pakpao_, including Lily’s father,_ _drowns—except for Lily. At the joint funeral, Lily’s sisters cry, although their futures are secure.