by Sarah Porter
“It always matters what we do!”
Luce looked up, surprised, and suddenly realized that the words had come from her own mouth.
“Not us,” Yuan insisted. “We’re twice lost. The humans lost us the first time, then we were lost to other mermaids, too. Now there’s nothing left to lose us, except life, and the way things are going, that shouldn’t take long either!”
“And the world, which is really in trouble now,” Luce said sharply. She still felt amazed at herself. “And each other, and all those mermaids out there who are getting murdered with no way to even defend themselves. We need to figure out a way to stop that.”
Everyone was staring at her, harder than ever. Luce felt embarrassed, but even more than that she felt possessed by an unexpected urgency.
“We don’t need the timahk anymore!” Luce added. “The timahk doesn’t even make sense now that the humans know about us. Maybe we’re dishonored, but that’s not the kind of honor that matters now! And we don’t need purity either. We just need to change what’s happening.”
For several seconds no one said anything. Catarina finally released Luce from her embrace and dipped quickly under the water before coming up again with streaming hair. Now that Luce was floating alone in the water dizziness rippled through her head.
Why didn’t anyone answer? They must all think she was insane, Luce decided. Even in this band of desperate outcasts she was simply too weird to fit in. There was no place for her anywhere in the world . . .
“We have a queen now,” Catarina announced. Her chin was raised proudly, and there was a calm glow in her eyes even though they were still swollen from crying.
Luce felt confused and suddenly unbearably tired. What was Catarina talking about? What were any of these crazy, damaged mermaids trying to say to her, really? They didn’t understand her, and in fact they made no sense to her, either.
“No queens,” Yuan snarled frantically, and Imani curled a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We don’t need one, and we don’t even deserve—”
“Yuan, Yuan, wait! We’re still mermaids. No matter how many times lost we are, we can’t lose that! You know what that means.” Imani smiled with sudden brilliance. She was so lovely, Luce thought, with her heart-shaped face and up-tilting eyes. But Luce still wasn’t sure what they were arguing about. The whole world was out of joint, so slippery and unbalanced that words couldn’t even hold on to their meanings anymore.
Yuan was gnawing her lip, but she didn’t answer. No one did.
Imani looked around, waiting for someone to contradict her. No sound disturbed the quiet except, very distantly, a chorus of car horns. Then she turned her eyes straight on Luce. “It means we’ll know the one who’s meant to be queen by her song.”
10
No One’s Queen
“Show them, Luce!” Catarina’s eyes flared with pride as Luce looked around, suddenly understanding what they expected from her. She’d fled from the divers and somehow wound up at an audition for a role she didn’t even want.
Luce felt a secret thrill at the thought of how amazed Catarina would be by what she could do with her voice now, and just as quickly stifled it.
“Not here, though,” Jo put in worriedly. She bit her hand again, jogging a plastic duckling at her throat. “We’ll have to swim far out, out where everything is completely empty.”
No one bothered to ask Luce if she wanted to be queen, of course, or if she had other plans. As the mermaids dipped below the surface of the bay, skimming in a long procession back toward the Golden Gate and the open sea beyond, Luce wondered what she should do. All around her mermaids streaked and rippled, dimly shining, until the dark water seemed banded by living light. Streetlamps like flocks of glowing birds crowded the hills on every side; whenever Luce surfaced the droplets on her lashes dazzled her with refracted stars. If they did want her to become their queen, then how could she look for Nausicaa?
She didn’t need to worry, Luce decided. Even if they were impressed by what she could do, they’d definitely change their minds once they found out what her rules would be. Like J’aime, they’d be furious that she didn’t want to use her voice as a weapon. But what if they did agree to follow her, even when her ideas went against everything mermaids had always believed?
They wouldn’t, of course. But if they did?
Remembered voices brushed through Luce’s head. That’s going to be a lot of dead mermaids who you did nothing for! J’aime snarled, and the words interwove with Nausicaa’s murmurs: Maybe someday someone will change our story. Maybe you will, Luce. Then the story will be new, even for me . . . Would Nausicaa want her to do this? Her father called her name just as Dana laughed in sudden delight, her laughter dancing with the midnight water.
Luce swished her head to clear it and swam on, coils of Catarina’s hair flickering in the corner of her vision. If they agreed, well—Luce glanced around again, and Imani smiled over at her — then with so many of them working together, maybe she could think of something? Maybe she didn’t have to fail these unknown mermaids in the way that she’d failed her old tribe.
They slipped below the bridge. Container ships piled high with stained metal boxes were still passing out to sea, even this late at night. The mermaids kept far below the surface, their bodies twisting against the sharply roughening water as they left the bay’s shelter. Then they kept on in silence, and Luce felt a brooding sense of ceremony as well as a growing tightness in her stomach. What if those black boats were prowling nearby; what if Luce had inadvertently led all these girls to their deaths?
Imani caught her wrist and tugged gently upward.
They came up in a surging sea, bright faces scattered like floating lanterns on the waves. On this side of the bridge the rising hills looked dark and wild, scrawled over by the pale writhing trunks of cypresses. Luce got the impression that there were even more mermaids now than there had been down under that warehouse. Two hundred? More?
No matter what she did it was probably just a matter of time before the divers discovered them and their refuge in the bay became a trap. After all, the Golden Gate was the bay’s only exit, and it was quite narrow: could the humans close it off somehow and take their time tracking down all the mermaids stuck behind it?
“Cat thinks you’re a big deal, but you have to understand—this isn’t how we do things here. It’s going to take a lot to convince us —” Yuan broke off. Luce was already humming very quietly. She closed her eyes to concentrate, to feel the smooth flow of her voice as it began dividing into multiple notes like a stream parting into a dozen bright rivulets. Her body rose and dipped with the waves, and Luce poured herself into the music. Each note became a half-forgotten dream from years before, or the memory of a beloved hand stroking back her hair. She was all alone inside a hundred weaving strands of song, each one free and sweet and liquid, each one calling to the water. Then she let the notes rise, twisting skyward. They mounted toward the clouds, leaped, wrapped themselves around spiral curves like the innards of a seashell . . .
Luce’s reverie was faintly disturbed by the cries of the mermaids around her. She half opened her eyes, still holding her song in the same complex, swirling suspense. She’d had a fair idea of the form the water would take in response to her song, but the reality was beyond anything she’d expected. Seeing it almost made her break off in astonishment.
The ocean around them had become a fountain. The crowd of mermaids was surrounded by rising streams, but the streams didn’t shoot straight up like the jets of a fountain in a park. Instead the water wrapped the midnight air in gleaming ribbons at least twenty feet tall, winding and writhing. Mermaids rotated to see, bright arms stretched like wings. Some laughed giddily or cried out; some were silent with wonder. Water rose in helixes that curled around one another high over their heads and then turned into looping archways or into sinuous, lethargically falling leaves.
It was too much for Luce to sustain for long. Her song collapsed, and the water jets
abruptly crashed down. The sea rocked faster with the impact. Splashes radiated in all directions, and the assembled faces were licked by flying blots of foam. Luce felt herself flushing under the heat of hundreds of stares. She’d hurt Catarina so terribly once before by showing off like this, and now she’d made an even bigger display of herself. She wouldn’t have blamed anyone there for thinking she was nothing but an embarrassing egomaniac.
Now the clatter of falling water was fading. The silence seemed so dense and pressing that Luce half imagined it would be impossible to move until someone spoke.
“Luce?” The voice was Catarina’s, very soft. “How did you . . . I know your gift, but that was . . .”
“It’s not a gift, Cat,” Luce murmured defensively. “It’s just something I taught myself how to do, and—and other mermaids can learn it, too.”
“That’s why the divers want to kill you even more than the rest of us?” Imani whispered. Her eyes were wide and starry, staring around at the drifting whorls of foam.
“They want to kill me because I smashed their boat,” Luce said. She barely registered her own voice. “After they murdered everyone in my old tribe, I called a wave that threw their boat into a cliff.”
There was another lull. Luce shifted uncomfortably, wishing she could leave.
“Well . . .” Catarina was pulling herself together now. “I don’t see how anyone could, but . . . is there anyone here who doesn’t agree? Luce has to be our queen from now on. Even if she did break the timahk.”
Something in Luce hardened; her chest knotted with the urge to resist. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but she was sure that what Cat was saying was wrong somehow.
“A twice lost queen for the twice lost mermaids,” Yuan mused morosely. “And at least she can fight. I guess I agree . . .”
That is no one’s queen, Dana had once said of Luce. Dana’d been in a rage at the time, but hadn’t she been right anyway?
“Cat?” Luce said suddenly. “I don’t agree.”
“LUCE!” Cat’s voice whiplashed through the cool night.
“No—I mean—I never wanted to be queen, Cat! I always told you that. We’ve had queens for thousands of years, and—and everything has to be different now! But if everyone really wants me to, I’ll be something else.”
Luce was quiet for a moment. She was thinking of her father, remembering something he’d said to her years before. Then she’d really been the person Catarina imagined: clean and innocent and honorable—all those things she couldn’t possibly be any longer. But still . . .
Catarina moaned impatiently. “Then what are you, Luce?”
He’d said, You’re my secret weapon, honey. You’ve got the mind of a great—
“General,” Luce announced, looking up. Her mouth suddenly curved into an irrepressible smile, and she didn’t feel nearly as embarrassed anymore. “I am the mermaids’ general.”
Murmuring spread like a wave through the assembled mermaids. Imani looked dismayed, but Yuan’s tail flicked with excitement. “Because this is war!”
“Yes,” Luce said softly. “This is war. They’re trying to kill all of us.”
She inhaled hard, doing her best to gather her strength. In a minute she’d have to start explaining how she wanted to do things. Even if they were impressed by her now, very soon they would regard her as a traitor. The sky above was suffocated by clouds and darkness dragged at the waves.
“And maybe they will, but we’ll take millions of them with us!” Yuan trilled. Her eyes were shining, her movements quickening like fire.
“Luce, is this really . . .” Imani started, and broke off.
“If I’m going to be general, though,” Luce went on, trying not to think about what would happen next, “we need new rules. We need a new timahk, and we’re not going to do things the same way we used to. I’m only staying if everyone will follow my—” Luce couldn’t quite make herself say the next word, but Yuan did it for her.
“War is war! We have to be strict about it! Of course we’ll follow orders!”
“Okay, then.” Luce braced herself. “No killing humans.”
A wild clamor of voices broke out, just as Luce had known it would. Catarina’s eyebrows shot up, Yuan’s mouth gaped as if she was choking, and someone Luce didn’t know was shouting, “She’s crazy! She’s totally crazy!” But Imani was smiling to herself in a way that let Luce know this was exactly what she’d wished for. Not everyone was rushing to condemn her. Some of the faces around Luce were enraged, but others looked confused, or curious, or even hopeful.
“No killing? Just when we’re starting a war?” Yuan shrieked indignantly. “But how?”
“How many thousands of humans have mermaids drowned?” Luce demanded. To her surprise the pandemonium quieted a little. Was everyone actually prepared to listen to her? “We’ve been sinking their ships for centuries now, doing the same thing over and over again, and it hasn’t helped anything, or changed anything, or even made us feel any better! It’s not like we’ve protected other girls from being hurt the way we were, because there are new mermaids all the time! All we’ve done is convince the humans that they have to wipe us out.”
“War, Luce . . .” It was Catarina. “I know you’ve said before that you think we shouldn’t . . . humans . . . I really couldn’t take you seriously . . . But even if you do believe humans deserve to live, well, war is no time to be insisting on this . . . this wild idealism!”
Luce wondered if Catarina was right, but she didn’t care. If leading the twice lost mermaids meant committing more reckless murders, she knew she wouldn’t be able to stand it. “A new kind of war, Cat! We need a way to protect ourselves, and—and I can teach everyone to control the water the same way I do.” Luce desperately hoped she was telling the truth about this, but after all, Dana and Violet had learned. It must be possible. “But if I do that, I have to know no one will use their power to kill unless they absolutely have to, in self-defense, or if it’s the only way to save another mermaid. There can’t be any more killing for fun, or for revenge.”
“This is ridiculous,” Yuan snarled.
“You said you’d follow orders,” Luce snapped back, then had to fight to keep from grinning in surprise at herself. Where had this sudden confidence come from? “You saw what I can do. I’ve proved I have the right to be in charge, and if you can’t accept that”—Luce looked around— “then I’m going. I won’t lead this war in any other way.”
The silence stiffened as Luce waited for Yuan to turn away in contempt, for a clamor of voices to tell her that they didn’t need a pathetic freak like her as their leader and she should just get lost and never come back.
It didn’t happen.
She kept waiting, half-eager for the blasting anger that would free her from responsibility for these strangers. But it just didn’t come.
The crowd of mermaids stayed quiet. Dozens of faces glowed softly, lofting up and down on the foam-streaked waves, and while some of them were biting their lips or grimacing, no one said a word. Luce could hardly believe it.
“Well, generalissima,” Catarina purred sarcastically, “then doing things your way is the only choice we really have, isn’t it?”
Luce’s first impulse was to feel wounded by the edge in Cat’s voice until she saw how proudly her former queen was looking at her. But there was something else in Cat’s gaze as well: a tension, a coiling darkness.
“Cat . . .” Luce suddenly felt horribly shy again. “But . . . I mean, I need to know . . . Does everyone here agree? No more killing people?” She didn’t sound anything like a general, Luce thought. She sounded like a nervous child. Luce made an effort to sharpen her tone. “Is there anyone here who isn’t willing to follow me on my terms? Um, raise your hands.”
A few mermaids fidgeted, their elbows shifting up slightly. Then they glanced around and lowered them.
“We need her,” a pale stranger said. “She’s right: until she teaches us how to do what she can, it�
��ll be a total disaster if they find us! Right now we’re all basically waiting to die.”
Of course; that was the only reason most of them were prepared to go along with her bizarre ideas. Luce wondered if she was effectively blackmailing everyone into giving up killing. But she didn’t see what else she could do.
“Okay,” Luce breathed out. “Okay.” She couldn’t leave now. Nausicaa? Am I finally doing the right thing? Will you find me, since I can’t search for you? “Then we’re starting training tonight.”
11
Tadpole
“Good morning, tadpole.” Sudden light blazed through the tank and its anteroom, until the air appeared brass yellow and solid. As Secretary Moreland had expected, there was no answering flick of her blue tail, not yet at least. “Good morning.” He was bellowing into the speaker until feedback throbbed against the glass; she wouldn’t sleep through that.
Anais’s voice was among the voices on that recording he’d listened to on an afternoon he chose not to remember—except that he remembered it all the time. They’d piped the same music into her tank a few days ago, for the occasion switching off the mechanism set to shock her in response to those particular frequencies, and she’d casually identified all the singers later. Most of them were among those Anais had seen die, but the other possible survivors—Catarina and Dana were the names he recalled—would also be of tremendous personal interest to him if they could ever be captured alive.
This creature in the tank was a source of the musical infestation that persisted in his mind. The limpid trill of mermaid song reverberated through his thoughts as insistently as his own identity, as ineradicably as the word “I.” And even though Anais wasn’t about to risk singing, he could still feel the presence of her voice, her compressed song, whenever he visited her. Blocked and bottled in her throat, it still whined and jarred, fighting to get free. Moreland could practically see it, a kind of mouthy pulse chewing away at nothing just above her clavicle.