by Sarah Porter
“Alyssa?” her uncle finally whimpered. He sounded babyish, weak. “Alyssa, I didn’t mean it.” He staggered up onto his feet and stood there for a minute staring down at Luce sprawled on the grass, his giant’s body wavering as if he wasn’t sure what to do.
“I’m not her,” Luce rasped. She barely registered her own voice, but her uncle obviously heard her; something shifted in the way he held himself. “I’m still—I’m just a kid.” She could almost feel the dream ripping away from him, leaving something dull and resentful behind.
"You don't need to be coming back to the house, then. Do you?” His voice squeezed out in a hostile croak. "Unless...”
Then he turned away from her and ran, veering crazily up the path.
As soon as he was gone Luce's voice came back in force. She shrieked and wailed, ripping up clumps of grass. No one heard her; no one came to help. She screamed until her throat was raw, and then the tears poured out. But they couldn't wash anything away.
3. Changing
For a long time Luce sprawled there sobbing, feeling the long sharp grass cutting at her cheeks, the icy wind pounding against her trembling back. She could still feel the sore places under her clothes where Peter's fingers had dug into her like hooks piercing a struggling fish. She didn't want to understand what had just happened to her. As long as she didn't let herself understand all the implications of it, maybe she wouldn't have to completely feel them either. But what she couldn't help understanding was that her uncle, the only family she had left, had tried to rape her and then had run off and left her there all alone in this desolate spot high on the cliffs. He'd run away home, but he didn't care that she had nowhere left to run to. The icy night rattled its long grass in her ears until it sounded like the air was full of bones. The cold sank into her body in a way it never had before, not even in the deepest snow. The cold took over her skin, her muscles, her brain, and then at last, with a tiny sigh like something breaking, it took over her heart.
It frightened her to feel the cold bite right through her center that way, but once it was over, and her heart had truly become as chilled and bitter as the night all around her, she knew it was easier that way. The freezing wind didn’t bother her anymore, and a peculiar looseness and freedom began to spread through all her limbs. She started to feel like a wild, shapeless thing: a stray piece of starlight curled up on the grass like a glowing snake or a puddle of rainwater with human eyes. She was liquid, unbound by skin. Suddenly it all seemed funny to her. Maybe she was going to die; maybe this feeling was death, but that didn’t matter so much. Why hadn’t she understood before? She didn’t have to be the strange girl no one wanted, trying to disappear into the corners of her schoolrooms, trying to keep from getting hit by her uncle at home. No one would miss her. She could be a free thing, and spill into places where nobody would ever find her again.
Just for a second Luce knew she did still have a choice. She could go back. Gum would miss her; he was almost as alone as she was. If she only chose it, she could pull her body back together, make it into arms and legs again, and go running home to huddle in her tiny bedroom with her heart pounding. Her uncle wouldn’t actually lock her out of the house, although he probably wouldn’t speak to her either. He was expecting her to come home, in fact, sooner or later. She could still be a regular girl. In a sudden flash she realized that he might even be just the smallest bit sorry.
She could be a girl, but then she'd spend the whole night, and the next night, and the next, sick with dread. Soon enough the time would come when greed or bitterness would overwhelm Peter's shame again. He'd practically told her so. Every night she'd wrap herself in her blankets and wait shuddering for the moment when her door would creak open and his rough hands would crawl all over her, crushing her face against the pillow.
No, Luce said. She didn't have a voice anymore to say it with, but she knew the night heard her anyway. NO! And with that cry she poured herself out on the darkness. She had a sensation of falling very rapidly, and for just a second she realized that she must have somehow slipped over the edge of the cliff. It was hundreds of feet, here, down to the knife-sharp rocks and then the sea. Nobody could survive a fall like that. It just wasn't possible.
So then it only made sense that the absolute violet blackness all around her must be death. It was cold and silky, and it went nowhere, and it lasted for a very long time.
***
After a while, though, she began to realize that the perfect darkness was moving. It was moving faster than she ever could have imagined possible, swirling past her at amazing speed. If it could rush past her that way, did that mean that she was somehow still alive? Whatever the movement was, she could feel that it was strong and rippling. The darkness wasn't quite so solid anymore either. Once or twice she saw specks of living light like twisting scarlet threads. The lights pirouetted closer and then, with a blink, they were far behind her. Behind her, Luce suddenly thought, and she was so astonished that she almost stopped. Then it wasn’t actually the darkness that was moving so quickly. She was the one who was moving through the darkness! She gave a kind of squirm, and found that she could control the direction of the movement. She could curve in long, dizzy swoops, shoot up, and even let herself roll over and over. Mostly, though, she kept moving forward. Nothing felt as good as knowing that she could send the darkness streaking out and away at her back, traveling faster than any car she’d ever been in.
One of the red lights swam close to her and opened its hollow mouth as if it wanted to blow her a kiss. Then it was gone. Just a shining little worm.
It wasn’t so dark here, really, or anyway the darkness didn’t stop her from seeing things in the way it used to. It was a living, leaping darkness, full of shapes that were just as free as she was. Luce knew at that moment that she’d never experienced anything nearly as beautiful as this power and this gracefulness. All of it was hers, a marvelous gift. And at this moment of deepest joy, Luce began to hear the sound.
The closest word for it was music, but it was better than any music. Every molecule shook with soft, sweet excitement. Every note washed around her and covered her in a bath of dancing silk. She thought that the beauty of it must be more than she could bear, but somehow she went racing on and on inside the sound.
People were looking at her, pointing. It was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. They were up above her somehow, waving their arms, but then the sound rose and spun around them, too. Of course so much beauty made them stop their ugly hubbub right away, which was what Luce wanted. She didn't like being pointed at. It was terribly rude. Instead they stared at her, and then, Luce could feel, the music began to take the shape of their secret hearts. It knew them, it forgave them for every bad thing they'd ever done, and they loved it more than they had ever loved anything in their lives.
Up above, the moon was golden and wide-eyed, and it watched Luce tenderly. Its light gleamed like floating coins all over the tops of the waves, and a slab of shining ice bobbed past. A misty glow covered the smooth side of the cliffs just behind her, and then Luce realized that all those dreaming people were on a ship, and that the ship was coming toward her, and toward the cliffs, as fast as a train driving out of a tunnel. Still the music throbbed on, coating the night with its bliss, while the ship's sharp metal prow sped straight at her forehead.
Luce dove just in time, pushing her way through the deep black water, and still the music that was somehow more than music shook around her, in her chest, in her throat. The only thing that almost drowned it out was the terrible metal shriek when the boat's steel hull sheared in two as it slammed into the rocks. The strange thing was that no one on board screamed. Actually it wasn't so strange, because Luce understood exactly why all those people stayed so calm and quiet. They were still listening to the music, listening so hard that they didn't even care if they drowned.
Luce thought she should be upset, but she found that she didn't quite care either. The deep invasive chill was still in her heart, and
it gave her the funny feeling that these were the same people who beat their daughters or left them alone to die on the tops of cliffs. She didn’t want to think too much about it, but she almost thought the people on that boat must deserve what was happening to them now. She was still far below the waves, and for some reason she didn’t feel any need to try to reach the air.
Huge slabs of ripped and twisted metal began to fall past her into the water. Luce saw things she recognized—hunks of pipes, deck chairs—as well as heavy machine-type things whose uses she didn’t know. Then she began to see the people. At first there were just one or two of them off in the distance, but soon the water was full of drifting, sinking bodies. They looked like enormous raindrops plummeting all around her, their arms slowly wheeling through tangles of seaweed. Some of them still seemed completely calm, and sank with drowsy smiles. One man Luce saw seemed actually to be trying to swim for the bottom of the sea. But others had been shocked out of their enchantment by the cold of the water, and they were flailing frantically, trying to fight their way back to the surface. Even though she thought that they must be bad people, even very bad, she still hated to see them so upset and scared.
She looked up. In the moonlight the surface of the water high above her looked like twisting golden foil, and against that gold there were dark frantic shapes splashing crazily away. Some of the people on the boat must have snapped out of their dreaming enough to try to swim for shore. The wonderful music began to fade, and around her more of the sinking people began to panic. An old man’s face sank inches away from her own, and she looked deep into his shocked, staring eyes and saw his mouth contort as he choked on seawater. He was struggling horribly to breathe, but water rushed into his lungs instead of air.
How long had it been since she'd taken a breath?
The music came back, but it was different now. It came from a few different directions at once this time, and though the music didn't sound like any normal voice Luce had ever heard in her life, she couldn't help thinking the shimmering sound was made of several different voices. Quick curving shapes, as lovely in their movements as living water, began to dart among the swimmers, and Luce suddenly understood that they were singing. They were all singing together in voices too beautiful for Earth, and the music began to swell again in her own chest. Above, she could see the desperate swimmers suddenly calming down, settling into the cold waves as if they were going to sleep in their own soft beds at home.
She must have gone deeper without realizing it, because she found herself face to face with the drowning old man again. He wasn't afraid anymore. Waves of satiny, vibrating music poured from Luce's mouth, and the old man was comforted. He gazed at her with his round blue eyes as if she were someone he had always wanted to see, his heart's only treasure, long lost but suddenly returned to him. Even her own father, Luce realized, had never once looked at her with such profound tenderness, such acceptance. Luce knew the old man must be dying, but he was so happy. Happy just to be with her, and to listen to her singing. He understood her so well, and the better he understood her, the more complete his love for her became. He was still smiling at her as the silver bubbles gushed up from his mouth and his eyelids sank over his blue eyes. Luce stayed with him, though, even as they drifted deeper and deeper into the smooth darkness. No one had ever looked at her that way before, and she wanted more than anything to see that gaze again. Down and down she went, watching the man’s quiet face, his wrinkles, and the faint gleam of his white hair.
Too far down. All at once she wasn’t sure if she could find her way back to the surface. The water began to constrict her chest and head, hundreds of tons of dark weight squeezing from above. It was too far down, because she did need to breathe. She knew that now. Her lungs were crying for air, but the air now seemed so impossibly far away, and she was still sinking deeper.
A violent sinuous shape ripped past her, catching her waist in a thin, strong arm as it went. She was moving again, faster than ever before, but now that was because the shape beside her was pulling her along. It was definitely a human arm holding her, but the shape didn’t seem to be a person, at least not in the usual way, though it did have a head that looked like it might belong on a girl. Luce couldn’t make out the face, though. It was hidden in a storm of fire-colored hair that seemed to have its own light. She tried to tell the shape that she needed air, but the words wouldn’t come to her. Parting water ripped around her face as if she were rupturing endless layers of silk curtains.
They were rushing so fast that shapes began to blur in Luce’s eyes, and the cry in her lungs became a long, aching scream. The darkness turned narrow and hard, with long stony sides. Where was she? She could feel the rising urge to thrash and fight, to claw at the shape holding her and the brutal rocks closing her in. Luce opened her mouth to shout, and at that moment the water broke around her head, and the sweet air flooded into her chest.
Luce heaved hungry lungfuls of air, lying in the cold water with her face on the rocks. She was in a cave with a tall, arching roof and brittle ruffs of crystal sparkling on the walls. Stalactites dripped from above and the rocks gave out a very faint green glow. It was almost totally dark, she knew, but she could still see. Her hearing seemed strangely sharp and vivid, too. She raised herself on her elbows and looked around.
Lying next to her was the most beautiful girl Luce had ever seen. She was about sixteen years old, and gleaming lights stroked like fire along her wet red-gold hair. She was staring straight at Luce, and she was furious.
"Maybe you're some kind of queen back where you came from,” the girl snarled at Luce. She was so angry she was trembling, and she spoke with an accent Luce didn't recognize. "But this is my territory, and as long as you're here you'll follow my rules!”
Luce was too confused to answer, and after glaring at her for a moment the girl continued talking. "So many of us die because of things no one can help! They get tangled in fishing nets and drown, or the orcas ... I'm fighting all the time to try and keep everyone safe. And one thing I don’t have time to deal with is one of us almost dying just out of pure stupidity! What were you thinking, going so deep like that?” Around them other heads were breaking through the water. All of them were girls, some very young and some about Luce's age. The red-haired girl seemed to be the oldest one there. She gazed harshly at Luce's blank expression, then thought of something. "Don't you speak English?”
"I do,” Luce said. "I just—I don't understand what I did wrong.” She also didn't understand where she was now, or even how she was still alive, but she decided it would be better to ask about those things another time. The red-haired girl was tense with rage, almost baring her teeth, and Luce was afraid to make her any angrier.
“You don’t understand what you did wrong! Swimming that deep, as if you couldn’t drown! I could have easily drowned saving you.. I should have just left you to die there! And bringing down a ship that big by yourself! Have you considered how lucky you are that we were close enough to hear you and rush over to help? You could have broken the timahk!” Luce couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It sounded like the redhaired girl thought that she, Luce, had somehow made that ship drive into the cliffs. It was an insane idea, impossible. Even if Luce had wanted to do something so evil, she was just a shy, skinny girl, barely strong enough to sink a canoe.
And did the beautiful girl think Luce had murdered all those people? The idea horrified her, and she stared around the cave, hoping someone would tell the redhead how ridiculous it was to imagine something like that. The faces of about twenty girls looked back at her from the dimness. All of them were silent, wondering. And, Luce realized, all of them were so beautiful it almost hurt to look at them for long. They had a dark, shimmering quality and a slight greenish tone to their pearly skin.
“I didn’t do anything to that ship,” Luce finally protested in bewilderment. “It just—it came right at me. I barely managed to get out of the way.” As she said it, Luce realized how wrong it all sounded
. How had she managed to get out of the way of the ship as it rushed at her head? Nobody could dive that fast or that deep. But as she thought it over, Luce realized that was just what she'd done: she'd dived at unbelievable speed straight down into the sea, and the ship had slashed safely above her. The water must be freezing, too. It must be cold enough to kill anyone who tried to swim in it for more than a few minutes.
For that matter, what were all these girls doing in the ocean? None of them seemed to want to pull themselves out of the water either. And, she realized, none of them were wearing any clothes. The water lapped around Luce's naked back, and the cold didn't bother her nearly as much as she would have expected.
Somewhere in the cave a girl laughed, in a bright, sweet voice. The redhead glared in that direction and the laughter stopped at once. Then she turned her marvelous face back toward Luce and puckered her lips critically. There was something in her expression Luce couldn't quite make out, though: a shift and slippage of emotions, something alternated with her anger; it might have been anxiety or longing ... It didn't make any sense and only heightened Luce's suspicions that the redhaired girl was somehow unhinged.
"We follow the timahk here,” the redhead said slowly. Her voice had a very hard, bitter music in it, like cracked diamonds. "We won't hurt you, no matter how offensive I find your behavior. But you've already given us enough reason to expel you, if it comes to that. So do you want to leave?” Leave for where? Luce thought. She shook her head in sudden anxiety. "In that case we need to get this much straight. All the mermaids in my territory obey my rules. No matter who they think they are. Do you understand me?”
"All the mermaids ...’ ’ Luce repeated. She felt completely baffled. Pale faces stared back at her, and Luce realized they were all just as mystified as she was. No wonder they were so confused. Their leader was an obvious lunatic.