by Sarah Porter
But how could she just stand by while the girl was drowned?
“Only if you hold her under this time, Samantha.” Catarina moaned. Samantha started to stammer some objection, but Catarina glowered until she fell silent. “I’ll only try again if you hold the girl underwater while we sing. It’s her last chance.”
There’s been enough death, Luce thought. Enough death to last until the world rolls away and leaves the sun forever. Sick as she felt, she nodded at Samantha and drew a deep breath.
In the next moment the circle of mermaids around them broke—mermaids were diving under the water and racing away, desperate to escape from the nightmare music Luce and Catarina made together. Only Samantha stayed, the human girl’s immersed golden head cradled in her shaking hands. Luce felt so drained that she didn’t think she could sing well at all. She was astonished to hear the alien power of her voice. She was singing her own grief but also Tessa’s death and Miriam’s longing as she wandered the rooms of her silent house waiting for the mother who never came back again ... Luce even sang Samantha’s broken bones. For a moment she even wondered if she should make an effort not to sing so well—would Catarina think Luce was trying to outdo her?—but the song had her tight in its grip, in its living darkness. Even as they sang together, Luce noticed Catarina suddenly looking up at her, her eyes wide with pained comprehension. But the song itself was a laceration, a deep wound; surely that was reason enough for Catarina to stare that way.
The face in Samantha's hands trembled, turned into transparent jelly, then vanished, leaving only a pair of blue human eyes. A wave rocked the girl's clothes away. Luce was too consumed by the terrors of her song to feel even faintly surprised, but she could hear Samantha shriek. Then the wavering came back, the water frothed...
And the golden-haired girl reappeared. She was even more beautiful than before, and her brilliant azure eyes opened and gazed up at them dreamily through a veil of rippling waves. Her tail was the same sweet, hazy blue as her eyes, her skin was like porcelain, and her golden tresses swished through the shining water. Even in that first moment something about her made Luce uncomfortable. She looked like something off the prow of an old sailing ship, like somebody's fantasy of a mermaid or like a plastic mermaid doll. The iridescence on her sky blue tail was actually pink.
Luce and Catarina both stopped singing and watched her. Now that it was quiet the other mermaids started gliding back toward them. Samantha was sobbing with relief.
The blue-tailed metaskaza caught Samantha's shoulder and pulled herself upright, water streaming from her luxuriant hair. Most of the tribe was floating close by now, but no one spoke. Catarina's lids were half closed and she was leaning heavily on Jenna's shoulder. The sky blue eyes gazed carefully at each of them; again Luce felt the same cold unease.
“You killed my daddy!” the metaskaza said, and burst into tears.
***
It took everyone a moment to recover from the jolt produced by these words. What could they possibly say? Luce was particularly disturbed; her first impulse was to cry out that they'd killed her father, too; that they had to stop ...Then Luce had the sickening realization that, even as the new mermaid howled melodramatically, she was sneaking glimpses through her fingers, watching how they all reacted. Were her tears even real?
“But we—but you—oh, you need to understand, we had to save you from him!” Samantha was stammering. Catarina was still too depleted to react at all, and the new mermaid seemed to decide that Samantha must be in charge. She threw her graceful hands around Samantha's throat, though she didn't seem to be making any real effort to squeeze.
“YOU—KILLED—MY—DADDY! It was you, wasn't it? Wasn't it?” Samantha was wide-eyed, sputtering garbled attempts at excuses. The new mermaid watched her for a moment with fury that Luce was suddenly perfectly sure was faked. “Admit it!”
“I had to!” Samantha wailed. “I couldn't help it!”
The metaskaza's wails stopped as suddenly as they had started, and her stunning face suddenly composed itself into a sly, halfway smile.
“Well,” said the metaskaza shrilly, “I guess it's a good thing I don't care!” And she let out a high, tinkling laugh.
Luce felt like she might vomit. Catarina stared up from Jenna's shoulder, her mouth open, and a look of what Luce hoped was aversion in her eyes. Samantha was also gaping, but her expression was very different, a blend of astonishment and fervent admiration. Jenna and Kayley seemed to be impressed as well. Mermaids might be used to killing, but even for them it was breathtaking to hear someone be so callous about the death of her own family.
The metaskaza seemed to be bored with laughing now. She was inspecting her own tail as if she were trying to calculate how much it had cost.
“Mermaids!” she said. “Now, that's going to blow Sasha Jennings's mind when I get back to school!”
This was Catarina's cue, of course, and she tried to launch into an explanation of the situation, that from now on the girl would be living with the tribe. But she was still exhausted, and she sounded strangely feeble. The metaskaza barely listened for a few moments before waving Catarina's explanation away.
“These things don't come off? That's a serious drag. Oh, no, you mean I'm stuck here?” She looked around at them with obvious distaste; no one but Luce seemed to realize they were all being insulted. “Can't you take me back to Miami?”
No one even tried to answer this. Luce was starting to feel desperately sorry that they hadn't drowned this girl. Was it really too late?
“What's your name?” Samantha asked nervously. The metaskaza looked sharply at her, and seemed to note her expression of rapt adoration with approval.
“Anais,” the metaskaza said, flipping back her golden locks. Shepronounc ed it“ ann-eye-EEESS.”
“I'm Samantha...” It came out in a murmur, and Anais fixed her azure eyes on the other blonde's face, assessing something. Luce thought she was deciding how useful Samantha might be.
“Yes?” Anais’s voice was suddenly much sweeter. “Well, Samantha, could you please have these...” She cocked her head at the watching mermaids. “Your followers, I mean. Could you please have them take me back to Miami?”
“Catarina’s our queen,” Luce snapped before Samantha had time to respond. Anais appeared to notice her for the first time, and she didn’t look at all impressed. “Miami’s farther than we normally go, but we’d be happy to point you in the right direction.” Luce gestured vaguely southward, hoping urgently that Anais would simply swim off before anyone mentioned orcas.
“Luce!” Catarina had snapped out of her stupor to glare reproachfully at Luce; she calmed herself before she spoke again, at least. “I don’t think that would be the best idea, do you? Let’s show her to the cave...”
This was too much for Anais; she let out a sudden whinny of derisive laughter. “Oh, you can’t be serious!” The mermaids stared at her, and while Luce felt nothing but the purest loathing, she could see that some of the others were suddenly selfconscious, even ashamed. “I mean, you guys don’t seriously live in a cave! Wow, not even our servants are that poor.”
“Anais?” Luce said. She was trying to be a bit more careful now, since no one else seemed to share her profound dislike of this brassy girl. “You don’t have any servants. Not anymore.”
Anais faked bursting into tears again, and Samantha rushed to comfort her.
***
All evening Luce waited in vain for someone to tell Anais that mermaids simply didn’t talk much about their human lives; it was bad manners. Luce floated on her back in the dim waters of the cave, gazing up at the handful of stars she could see through the holes in the roof and the soft green glow of the luminous crystals, thinking of Tessa. If she swam off to her own little cave, Luce knew, she wouldn't be able to stop crying, and so she turned in drowsy circles here instead. Everyone else was listening raptly to Anais as she prattled on about her father's huge mansion back in Miami, her shopping trips to New York, all t
he amazing things her cell phone could do. Why didn't anyone tell her to shut up?
"Oh, I love those jeans, too!” Samantha exclaimed eagerly. "I think I had about eight pairs.”
Luce put a hand over her mouth to stifle the cough of sick laughter she could feel coming. Of course, Luce didn't know anything about Samantha's human life, apart from what her mother had done to her. But it didn't take a genius to figure out that almost everyone in the tribe had grown up in one of the nearby towns; they were the daughters of fishermen, cannery workers, maybe truck drivers. Their jeans almost certainly had been the cheapest available, and they'd worn hand-me-down sweaters and jackets with the sleeves too short. Luce had a sudden wistful memory of the silvery down jacket her father had given her when they moved up to Alaska.
But the great thing about being a mermaid, Luce thought bitterly, was that none of that stuff mattered. What counted was who you were and how well you could sing ... And suddenly Luce understood why Samantha was so excited by Anais's bragging. Samantha couldn't fake her singing, after all, but she could pretend she'd grown up rich. How would anyone know if it was a lie?
Anais had launched into a feverish description of her sixteenth birthday party. “We had like two hundred people come, and of course it was all catered. Four huge pink cakes! It was on our lawn, and there were hundreds of lanterns everywhere, like this fairyland, and they hired this awesome band! Such hot guys. The keyboard player was just adorable. And at ten these, like, Chinese acrobats came out and performed. This girl could juggle a table with her feet! But really, I thought that part was kind of dumb. Like, who really cares about stupid tricks like that? Like trained animals or something.”
Luce started to think of heading back to her own cave. Crying by herself would be better than listening to this.
“Oh, yeah,” Anais trilled. “I keep forgetting to ask you. Where are all the guys?”
In spite of herself, Luce started paying more attention. She’d wondered about this too, and might have asked if she hadn’t been afraid of upsetting Catarina. She’d had a feeling this might be another of those subjects Cat found hard to discuss.
“Oh,” Catarina said, and Luce was glad to hear that her tone was slightly curt, if still weary. “Boys can’t be mermaids. There aren’t any.”
Anais was so surprised she shut up for a second, though Luce thought grimly that the quiet probably wouldn’t last for long.
“But, I mean...” It was Violet’s shy, hesitant voice speaking now. “I mean, boys get hit and stuff, too. Like horrible things happen to them sometimes. My brother—”
“Yes,” Catarina agreed shortly. “Humans don’t just stop with their daughters.”
“So—I mean—that sparkling, what you called the indication ...” Violet seemed so intimidated that her voice was slipping into silence, and Luce could barely make out what she was saying. "I mean, have you ever seen the indication around a boy? If you did, then couldn't you change him, Cat?”
Luce glanced over at Catarina; she couldn't help feeling worried about her. The beautiful red-gold head was leaning back against an outcropping of rock. Her skin looked deathly white, and her eyelids kept sinking. She was so drained by the effort it had taken to change Anais that it was as if she were just emerging from a long and severe illness. Luce was more than a little unwell, too. Her head felt airy, feverish.
"I've seen it,” Catarina said, and there was such sadness in her voice that everyone went silent. Even Anais seemed to be listening intently. Luce was suddenly positive that Catarina had tried to change at least one human boy into a merman, and that she had failed. "I've seen it, but only a few times. But they just drowned, Violet. I don't know why, but they can't be like us. No one can help them...”
"Maybe you just didn't try hard enough,” Anais complained. "It's going to be pretty boring if we don't get some guys here soon.” Luce was more disgusted than ever. How could Anais accuse Catarina of not really trying when it was only Catarina's excruciating efforts that had saved Anais's rotten life?
Luce was glad to see that Catarina was finally getting angry. It brought some color back to her cheeks, some of the fire back to her voice.
"Queen Manna couldn't do it, Anais,” Catarina snarled. "And she was far and away the greatest singer I've ever heard. She almost hilled herself trying to change the boy she l—” Suddenly Catarina seemed to realize she'd said too much. The silence in the cave became so overpowering that only Anais had the gall to violate it.
“The boy she what, Cat?” Anais’s voice was sickly sweet but venomous at the same time. “You mean, the boy she loved?” Anais seemed to be considering this. Catarina glared, refusing to answer. “But, wow, think about it. I mean, how would your Queen Marina have had time to fall in love with a boy unless she was breaking that—what do you call it? Those silly rules you were telling me about.”
Only Samantha and Jenna laughed at this, and even they sounded a bit too shrill. Everyone else seemed shocked. When Samantha stopped tittering, the quiet lasted for a disturbingly long time.
“If you think the timahk is so silly, Anais,” Catarina finally said in a silky, deadly, regal voice, “then by all means. Try breaking it.”
***
Anais was finally quiet, and the mermaids went back to talking about other things, especially the singing Dana and Rachel had done. Luce was still drifting on her back at a distance from the beach, but now and then she glanced over at Anais—who seemed to realize she’d miscalculated. She looked sulky, but her blue eyes were hard and focused on her own hands, as if she was concentrating on working something out. Luce had the idea that the next time Anais spoke she’d be taking a very different tone.
Luce kept peering sideways at the shimmering around Anais. What was it that had brought her here, especially if her human life was so ridiculously perfect that she couldn't stop bragging about it? But somehow Luce couldn't get the sparkling to cohere into images. At most she could see rare, blurry winks of what seemed like perfectly ordinary events: Anais sitting in a hairdresser's, Anais on the phone to someone ... Luce was perplexed. How could getting a haircut be so heartbreaking that it would turn you into a mermaid? It made no sense.
And most of the time Luce couldn't even manage to see that much. It worried her. If anything, the dark glimmering was even thicker around Anais than it was around the other mermaids, but it was empty. It was like a vacant house. It didn't seem to hold a story.
Luce felt a powerful urge to be alone and think, even if that meant remembering Tessa's death. She swished over to the beach to tell Catarina she was going back to her own small cave, half expecting an argument.
Catarina just nodded, though. "You must need some peace after everything today, Luce.” She stopped and gazed at Luce searchingly; there was something tense in her expression. "You shouldn't have had to go through that. I should have managed it alone, or else...” Catarina barely glanced at Anais.
"It's okay, Cat,” Luce said; she suddenly felt nervous. "You couldn't help it.” She wanted to ask Catarina why the indication sparkling around Anais was so different, so void, but it seemed like a bad idea to bring that up where someone else might hear. She settled for glancing as pointedly as she could at Anais, hoping that would encourage Catarina to look for herself. "Maybe she wasn't quite ready?” Luce suggested in a low voice. "And that's why changing her was so hard?” Catarina didn't seem interested in pursuing the question, though. Instead her gaze was so intently focused on Luce that they might have been all alone in the cave.
“Luce...” Catarina seemed to be searching for words, but she was so exhausted that her eyes began to scan the rocky walls helplessly, looking for something that wasn’t there. “Luce, the way you sang today...’ Luce didn’t know what it was in Catarina’s tone that made her feel so shy all of a sudden.
“I was just ... trying to help you, Cat. I mean, of course you didn’t actually need my help...” Luce noticed how dishonest this sounded; they both knew perfectly well that Catarina couldn�
��t have managed Anais’s transformation without her. Luce scrambled to make it sound more convincing. “It seemed like you were getting so tired out.” Catarina shook her head slowly and a wounded look came into her eyes.
“Oh.” Her gaze flitted restlessly around the cave; she might have been tracking a vision that winked through the dark corners above them. Then abruptly she was completely fixed on Luce again, actually glaring, her gray eyes much too bright. “That’s not what I mean, Luce. I think you know that! Do you think I can’t see when you’re lying to me?” Now Catarina was definitely angry; her voice was somewhere between a hiss and a growl. “Why do you want to control me, Luce? Is it so satisfying for you to force me to remember these things? If you can’t be loved you can at least have power? But Luce, really, that’s a terrible choice to make...”
Luce felt even more alarmed than hurt by this; Catarina’s gaze was wandering dizzily again, and her voice flared up in sudden fits and then collapsed back into a weakened murmur. The only explanation Luce could think up for Catarina’s aggression was that she was still half deranged from the terrible singing they'd done that day. Had changing Anais damaged her irreparably?
"Cat!” Luce stared into those blankly shining gray eyes, and her words came out jumbled and urgent. "You're still feeling sick from all that or you wouldn't.. You'd know I would never want to do anything that could hurt you! Or control you.”
They watched each other for a while. Only moments before Catarina had actually seemed to hate her, but now she reached out and caressed Luce's hair with slow, airy strokes. The hardness in her face was replaced by longing; her mouth was pursed. This inexplicable tenderness disturbed Luce as much as her rage had; either way, Catarina seemed more than a touch unbalanced.
"Of course.” Catarina shook herself and smiled; Luce still thought she looked unwell, though. "Of course you wouldn't, Luce. Forgive me. I'm not...” She gave another quick twisting movement, and squeezed her eyes closed for an instant. "I'm not myself. Samantha kept begging me to go on singing for much too long, and the strain of it...”