by Sarah Porter
Before she knew it, a gentle hand came and shook her awake for her next shift. It was lucky, Luce realized, that their new way of singing together was so thrilling or the effort of continuing it for so many hours at a time would have proved overwhelming very quickly. Even with the exaltation of that music coursing through them, how long would the Twice Lost be able to keep going with such intensity?
There were more helicopters today. And a lot of them weren’t from the TV news.
Then it was noon, and she had six hours to rest and eat. But there was something else that she needed to do, Luce realized, before she let herself collapse into her hammock again.
A soft arm wrapped around her shoulders. Imani was there beside her, and in a moment Cala joined them too. “Luce? How are you holding up?”
“I’m doing okay,” Luce murmured. The truth was that, the longer she floated in the bay gazing up at that sparkling translucent barricade under the bridge, the more anxious she became. She couldn’t escape the feeling that she was asking too much from the Twice Lost mermaids. Something had to change and soon . . . and she’d promised the humans that there would be a letter stating the mermaids’ demands. “I think I have to go see Seb. If you want to, you could come with me.”
Imani shrugged. “I’ll come meet him, sure. What did you want to see him about?”
“There’s something I need to ask him to do for us,” Luce said. “He might be a little . . . I don’t know . . . unreliable? But we don’t know anyone else.”
***
Twenty minutes later they set off for the collapsing pier where Seb passed so much of his time. A day or two before, of course, Luce would have made a visit like this in the strictest secrecy, and she still had a sense that going to see a human friend was slightly disgraceful. There was a tinge of the forbidden to it, even now that she wasn’t going alone.
She was going with a whole mermaid delegation. Imani and Cala were with her, but also Graciela, Jo, and two other mermaids Luce had just met. It only seemed right that she include some of the others. After all, this was official business.
Luce had asked the other mermaids to keep out of sight, at least at first. When they reached the pier she surfaced alone, the others waiting below the water. Luce hadn’t been there in broad daylight before, and the shattered holes in the factory windows formed constellations of black vacancy against the shining glass.
Seb was there, sitting bolt upright and obviously expect- ing her.
“Hiya, General.” He grinned as she appeared. “Hey. Didn’t know my little fishy friend was so danged important. You’ve sure thrown a whole bunch of big shots for one hell of a loop! ‘Little Lucy just goosed the president,’ was what I said!”
Luce winced a little at the thought that the other mermaids were listening to this. She hadn’t considered the possibility that Seb would embarrass her—but apparently she should have. Was he drunk again?
“Seb,” Luce tried. “This is serious.”
“Serious is right, girl. For right now you’ve got them in such a knot that they don’t know what to do, but you’d better expect that pretty soon they’re going to hit you back, hard. Kablooey!”
“Seb, listen! I’m here to offer you a job.”
That helped. Seb was startled out of his giddiness. “A job, Miss Luce?”
“I mean,” Luce said, suddenly shy, “we couldn’t pay you or anything. But—”
“With all the sunken treasure and rubies and pearls you all are hoarding, you say you can’t pay me? You’ll pay me, girl, and plenty!”
Luce reeled back, her face flushing hot and her stomach tight. This was obviously a huge mistake—and it was humiliating that her friends were hearing a human speak to her with such impudence. But the fact was that they still needed help from someone on land. “I guess if we ever find anything like that, you could have it. We wouldn’t need it.”
Suddenly Seb’s manner changed completely. “I was just joking with you, General Luce. Don’t look at me like that!”
“But—” Luce started.
“I’d do anything you asked me, General. Tout de suite. I thought you knew that! Sure didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“We could offer you a title, Seb.”
Seb’s eyes widened as he gazed at the water just behind Luce, and he jerked back a little. Luce glanced over her shoulder and saw that the rest of the mermaid delegation had broken through the surface—and, with their crossed arms and annoyed expressions, they looked more than a little intimidating. Luce was especially surprised to notice Imani’s severe glare.
After a few moments Seb partly recovered. “Uh, what’s my title? I mean, general, I hope you understand, I didn’t intend any kind of disrespect . . .”
“Twice Lost Ambassador,” Luce informed him.
A flurry of expressions passed over Seb’s worn face: first shock, then wonder, and then tears came into his eyes. “Ambassador, Miss Luce? I got to say, I’m really . . . really honored.” After a moment, though, his customary impish smirk twisted his mouth again. “But I do feel obliged to inform you of something. I’ve been lost a whole lot more than just twice!”
Luce considered that. She recalled events that hadn’t occurred to her much during all the recent upheaval: watching her mother die when she was four, then her father’s disappearance. The awful loss of Nausicaa, Dana’s fury at her, Dorian’s shocking cruelty, and the massacre of her former tribe. “So have I. That doesn’t change anything. I’m still the Twice Lost General.”
Seb was nodding now, but he kept glancing nervously at the other mermaids. “So what’s my first assignment?”
Luce meant to smile at him, but she couldn’t. Their situation was already overwhelming, even desperate, and Luce knew that what she was planning to do was going to make it even harder for the mermaids to eke out any kind of victory. “We’ll come back late tonight. Can you get me a pen and paper by then?”
There was a brief pause. “Sure, Miss Luce,” Seb said gravely. “I can do that for you.”
***
When Luce flopped heavily into the hammock under the old factory, Catarina was already there. Luce flinched. She felt too drained to deal with a confrontation, but those moon gray eyes were watching her, steady and assessing. There didn’t seem to be much choice.
“Cat,” Luce started, “I’m sorry. I know I should have already told you—that I found my dad alive. And I know I owe you an apology for . . . for thinking you probably killed him . . .” Cat was still staring at her, and her expression didn’t change at all. Luce sighed. “I am really sorry. I know I wasn’t fair. I was completely sure he’d drowned, and since his boat vanished somewhere near your territory, it seemed like you must—”
“Oh, Luce,” Catarina interrupted. “That doesn’t matter much, does it? I certainly would have killed him, with great pleasure, if I’d come across his boat. He was lucky.” Cat gave an odd grin. “If it weren’t that I’ve accepted—for now—your perverse insistence on sparing human lives, I might still. Not if I knew it was your father, I suppose . . .”
Luce decided not to let Catarina provoke her. “Then are you mad at me about something else? I keep feeling like you are. I don’t know; it’s the way you look at me.”
“You’ve certainly been full of surprises, Lucette. I’m frightened by what you’re doing. I’ve told you that. And I’m extremely worried about you.”
Luce felt an unexpected flash of pride. “Do you still think everybody is going to turn against me?” The mermaids seemed so strong now, and in her heart Luce knew that strength resulted from the decisions she’d made. Even Yuan seemed to have let go of her obsession with the past, caught up as she was in the elation of their new challenges.
Catarina only shrugged dismissively. “Oh, for now, of course, you’re the hero. The great mermaid general, upsetting all the rules, bringing them the gift of a new way of singing, making everyone believe that they have a magnificent cause to live for.”
Luce flared up at thi
s. “They do! We’re finally doing something better than just thinking all the time about what humans did to us, and killing . . .”
“They’ll follow you, and they’ll trust absolutely in anything you decide, Lucette. Until you fail, that is; until you disappoint them. Then, of course, they’ll go back to their old ways with a vengeance. And their hero will become to them the lunatic who led them into hell.”
What makes you think I’ll fail? Luce wanted to ask. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t ask that because she knew with painful clarity how horribly unlikely it was that she would succeed. The Twice Lost were holding the human military at bay for now, and they were making what Luce believed was a truly valiant effort. But in the long run . . . she had to admit that their prospects were still grim.
“This is why you need me, Luce. Because I don’t see you as a hero, and I don’t even believe in your cause. If we’re going to fight we should fight the way we always have, and the way they do: with death. You must have noticed when you were trapped in that horrible net that the humans hardly share your qualms about murder!”
“They will, though. They’ll see . . .” Luce trailed off, unable to completely believe in her own assertion. Would they even care that the mermaids wanted peace?
“Your followers trust your judgment, Lucette. Foolishly, I think. But I don’t trust you at all, and that makes me more valuable to you than any of them”
Luce tipped her head, wondering what Catarina was trying to tell her.
“I don’t trust you, Luce,” Catarina repeated. “I love you. As the naïve mermaid I once rescued from drowning, and as my true sister. I’ve tried to see you as my queen, but I can’t, not when you violate every rule a queen should uphold! No: to me you are not our great leader, but only my strange little Lucette. And that means—unlike everyone else here—I can never lose faith in you.”
Luce looked at Catarina’s gray eyes, but they were gazing away into the blue rim of daylight beyond the pilings. Fiery hair sleeked around her pearl-colored shoulders. Luce wasn’t happy with everything Catarina was saying to her, but as she looked into her former queen’s face, she felt the almost infinite sadness there as if it were welling in her own heart.
And, Luce had to admit, it was a relief to think that there was somebody who didn’t see her as a leader. Luce hesitated, then reached out and hugged Cat tight. “I . . . love you too, Cat. Even though we don’t agree about a lot of stuff, and I’m going to keep doing things you think are totally crazy.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Catarina said again. “What matters is that I stay near you and keep you as safe as I can.”
“I . . . don’t actually need to be safe, Cat. If I can stop the war, then I don’t really care what happens to me.”
Catarina ignored that. Her attention had turned toward a mermaid Luce didn’t recognize: a too-skinny Asian girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen at most. Luce saw at once that this young mermaid was one of the hopelessly deranged ones. She kept writhing with a kind of exaggerated seductiveness, thrusting out her childish chest and licking one finger. Her behavior was sad and repulsive and almost impossible not to watch; it was a tic, Luce thought, like the way Jo was always gnawing on her own hands. “Like me,” Catarina said. Her voice was oddly flat.
“But she . . .” Luce didn’t want to say that the girl was clearly insane.
“She was sold. Like me.”
Luce understood—and at the same time she struggled not to understand. Could a girl that young really have been sold to be used in that way? When Luce stole a quick glance at the young girl from the corners of her eyes, what she saw in the haze of dark shimmer around that sleek head was too sickening to be borne. No wonder Catarina thought that Luce’s decision to protect humans was so indefensible.
“Luce?” Cat’s voice had turned thin and strange. “Try to sleep. I’ll wake you when . . . when it’s time.”
Luce obediently closed her eyes. Then through the dark fringe of her lashes she watched Catarina approach the young mermaid. Catarina whispered to the girl, her voice a steady, half-musical lull, and cradled her softly until her awful wriggling calmed.
23
The Letter
Just after midnight the little-girl mermaid who’d been appointed timekeeper came rushing up excitedly, saluting everyone she met as she told them their shift was over. One by one the mermaids under the bridge were replaced by fresh singers just returned from sleeping in odd corners of the bay. Then a few of the smaller girls returned from the south bay with their nets bulging with shellfish and promptly got into a squabble over whose turn it was to have the honor of giving the off-duty lieutenants their dinner. The little mermaids looked abashed and stopped bickering as soon as Luce smiled at them.
“So,” Yuan said, “got plans tonight? I heard about the new ambassador, Luce. I know we don’t have a ton of options, but the dude does sound like kind of a joke.”
Luce felt an unexpected impulse to defend Seb. “I think he’ll do fine, actually. At least you should give him a chance before you go around calling him—”
“Hey, general, I wasn’t trying to piss you off! Okay, he sounds outstanding. Better?”
“We do have plans,” Luce said shortly. “I need as many of the lieutenants as you think we can spare, Yuan. Because we have to write the humans a letter, and I want to make sure—that everybody basically agrees on what we should ask for.”
“I thought that was the easy part,” Yuan observed sardonically. “Like, oh, ‘We’d be ever so obliged if you gracious humans might consider, perhaps, refraining from making lethal holes in us with pointy objects? Thank you quite a lot, The Mermaids.’”
“I think . . . it shouldn’t be just about us. I mean the war.” Luce looked off at the skyline. Slices of their giant wave were reflected on the glassy sides of skyscrapers, creating the illusion that there were waterfalls frothing brightly in the center of downtown.
Yuan looked befuddled. “What else is it about?”
“I think . . . that’s why I need the lieutenants to come with us tonight. Because it’s a really big decision.”
Yuan flashed Luce a strange, skeptical smile. “You’re about to do something totally crazy and reckless, aren’t you?” She grinned, pausing for one long beat. “Well, you can count on me to help!”
Luce laughed gratefully; she was amazed to realize how much Yuan truly meant it. “Hey, Yuan? I’m sorry I snapped at you. About Seb.”
“Oh, ’sokay. I know you identify with rejects like that. Even though you’re so totally not that yourself!”
Luce opened her mouth and found she couldn’t answer. She wasn’t sure which part of Yuan’s observation surprised her most.
“Hey,” Yuan continued. “Do you want me to ask Catarina to come with us? It would be easy not to, like I could just make a big thing about leaving her in charge here. If you’d rather not deal with her.”
Luce was startled all over again. “Of course she should come with us! I mean, why wouldn’t I want her to?”
“I don’t know, because she seems like she’s always arguing with you? Like first she was so intense about you being in charge, but now it seems like she’s not a hundred percent on your team?” Yuan hesitated. “I hope I’m not making you mad again, Luce.”
“It’s okay.” Luce thought about it. “She does argue with me, Yuan. But I trust her a lot.” Catarina’s the one who doesn’t trust me, Luce thought. But she decided not to say that.
Yuan was staring at Luce with strange expectancy, her delicate mouth tensed as if it was crowded with words that she couldn’t quite bring herself to say. Her tail came up behind her in a single nervous flip. “Um, Luce? I’ve been thinking a lot about—about that thing you said.”
Luce tilted her head in perplexity. Had she offended Yuan somehow? “What thing?”
“That thing you said to me about the girl. The one I saved. Like, maybe you’re right that I don’t need to hate myself so much because I did that? And . . . I’ve been thinki
ng about the person you saved, too.” Even as she spoke Yuan was turning away from Luce. Only one golden cheek was still visible, and it was blushing. “Catch you soon, general-girl.”
At first Luce felt relieved that Yuan was too embarrassed to continue the conversation—and then she felt a trace of something else, a tiny squirm of disappointment. What would happen if she did tell Yuan about her disastrous romance with Dorian?
And had she really helped Yuan feel better about her violation of the timahk, her fall from mermaid society? The clock at the Embarcadero glowed, and Luce passed a peculiar sculpture that appeared to be a giant’s bow firing an arrow into the ground.
Above the surface there was the brilliant city: below it the wings of rays, the fins of sharks, carved sensuous swoops from the darkness. Luce reached Seb’s pier with her thoughts still flowing around Yuan and the uncharacteristic vulnerability that had moved in her voice.
Soon twenty heads were floating just above the surface, the water webbed with spreading hair. Pools of milk-pale blond, caramel brown, and inky black were punctuated by Catarina’s shocking fiery amber. Seb was there, wearing a reasonably presentable navy suit jacket and a much less presentable tie with a pattern of scarlet elephants on it; Luce was touched at the thought that he was making an effort to dress up for his new role. He seemed to have trouble looking at the assembled mermaids for long and kept staring down at the rotten planks.
“So, um, General Luce?” It was Lieutenant Eileen, freckled and much less assertive than she’d seemed earlier. “Yuan filled us in a little bit, but I’m confused. I thought the whole idea of the wave was to just get the humans to back off, and it’s working great for that. But Yuan said—maybe you had some kind of bigger idea?”
“I do,” Luce said. “But I feel like—we’re all in this together. And what I want to do is going to make it a lot harder for us to win. So I think it wouldn’t be fair for me to insist on doing things my way. I wanted to ask you all—I mean, maybe you’ll agree . . .” Luce broke off, suddenly shy. Everyone was already struggling so hard and accepting such enormous risks because of her. How could she ask them for more than that?