Lost Voices

by Sarah Porter

  "It's okay.” Luce could barely get the words out; the awful things Catarina had said to her were still swirling through her mind. Could they be true? "I don't mind, Cat. Just as long as you're okay, and you don't still think—”

  "Oh!” Catarina seemed to start up out of a reverie. "No, Luce. I was being terribly unfair. You do forgive me?” She was still stroking Luce's head, and her hand lingered lightly against Luce's cheek. Luce thought for a second.

  "I mean, I don't want to say I forgive you, Cat. Because I wasn't mad. I just got worried, like maybe you were seriously hurt by—by what we did today.”

  Catarina’s smile was suddenly as warm and vibrant as it had ever been; Luce found herself beaming in response.

  “Oh, my strange little Luce...” The smile sharpened into a lopsided grin, odd on Catarina’s magnificent face. “Say it anyway.”

  Luce was almost too discomfited to say the words, but she forced them out. “Then I forgive you, Cat. Except I really wasn’t angry.”

  “I was being unfair.” Catarina’s tone had turned thoughtful, dreamy. “It’s not like you’ve been working to learn how to sing that way. It just came out spontaneously, out of who you really are. A gift...”

  Luce looked down, hoping Catarina didn’t notice the heat rising in her cheeks.

  “Go get some rest, Luce. You pushed yourself too hard today, too...”

  Anais started chattering again as Luce swam off. Luce could hear her lavishing compliments on Catarina and asking how she got her hair to be so shiny.

  ***

  That night Luce dreamed about her father again.

  She was swimming alone in a lead gray ocean, over high, chaotic waves. There was no land in sight, and even the sky was so low, so flat and dark that it didn’t seem to be a sky at all but rather a sheet of tarnished metal just a few feet above her head. She’d been swimming for a long, long time; she needed to find someplace to rest...

  Up ahead was a square of yellow light. Luce swam toward it, and found herself staring through a picture window with the curtains drawn back on either side. On the far side of the glass was a cheap motel room with mustard-colored walls. She recognized it at once, even before she noticed the girl propped on her elbows on the bed watching a dance contest on TV, the tall curly-haired man pacing and talking on his cell phone. Luce felt disoriented, annoyed. What was she doing out in the water? She belonged in that warm room, but there was no door. Nothing but the window, isolated like a ship on the sea, water slapping at its front. Luce rose and fell with the waves, her face inches from the glass.

  Then the girl on the bed shifted, rolling onto her side so that Luce could see more of her face, and Luce’s stomach lurched with a horrible realization. The girl wasn’t her. Someone else had taken her place! She watched as the girl knocked one long brown braid out of the way, revealing her hazel eyes and her funny, crooked, half-smiling mouth ... Luce knocked frantically on the glass, but Tessa ignored her.

  Her father snapped his phone shut. Even through the glass Luce could hear it perfectly. He looked upset, but as Luce watched he meticulously pulled his face into a smile, then sat down next to Tessa and started ruffling her hair.

  “That was Luce,” her father explained as he threw down his phone. “She just can’t understand why I’ve had to replace her.”

  Tessa sighed sympathetically and sat up, throwing her arms around his neck.

  “It’s none of Luce’s business!” Tessa exclaimed. “You tried and tried to persuade her to stop being so—so destructive, and she just wouldn’t listen. She couldn’t expect you to wait around forever, could she?”

  Luce screamed at them and banged on the glass, but they didn’t seem able to hear her. At least they were pretending not to hear. Her heart felt like it was about to split in her chest, and she could hardly breathe. The waves supporting her pitched faster, and the room in front of her veered and lunged in her eyes.

  "It's not even the destructiveness that gets me the worst,” her father said. "Maybe I could've lived with that. But she won't stop being self-destructive either. It's like she doesn't respect herself at all anymore, and I just can't stand to see it. Killing her own friends!” He gave Tessa a rueful smile. "But at least I have you instead, baby doll. And once your mother gets here we'll be a real family again. Settle down someplace, and get you going to school as a regular thing...”

  Luce's head was above the water line as she jarred up and down on the smoke-colored waves, but that didn't help. She was still suffocating, clawing the bright window with both hands. It wasn't real air around her here, and she would only breathe again inside that room...

  A woman in a white bandanna and a black sequined dress walked out of the shadows, and Luce felt a surge of hope when she saw how young and lovely her face was. It must be her own mother, not Tessa's! She'd be furious with her father, tell him once and for all that Luce was completely irreplaceable, then somehow gather Luce in her arms and pull her into warmth and safety. Luce waited anxiously to hear what she would say.

  Instead of speaking the woman caught her father's chin, leaned in, and started kissing him ravenously, pushing him back onto the bed and straddling him while Tessa watched. And then Luce realized why the woman was wearing that bandanna. It was to hide her fiery red-gold hair. Even Catarina, then ... Everyone had betrayed her...

  The waves rocked at her shoulders. They were waiting. Luce was the real queen of the mermaids, and the waves would obey her commands. At one word from her the glass would shatter, and all of the people in that room would drown. She could hear herself shriek the order, telling the waves to kill ...

  There was a terrible sound, and then a different darkness was around her, and a narrow, rocky space. It was a long time before Luce was able to understand that she was awake in her small cave, that it had all been a dream. And it was even longer before she could stop sobbing.

  13. The Mirror

  Over the next several days Luce started having more trouble being around the other mermaids. When she heard them talking cheerfully about anything, but especially about sinking ships, she had to fight down tears. And Anais chattered so much that hanging around the main cave or the dining beach meant being constantly bombarded by her hard, chirpy voice, her descriptions of diamond necklaces and pop stars. Being reminded of human things only made Luce feel sad. It didn’t help that Catarina hadn’t recovered from the frailty that had afflicted her ever since they’d changed Anais; she was moody and remote and didn’t talk much.

  Luce felt happiest alone in her own small cave, singing quietly to herself or making up the songs she would have sung for Tessa if only she had lived. She could lead her voice through soft, flowing formations as complex and airy as clouds, make it spread like feathers, divide it so that she was singing several interwoven melodies at once. Her voice was usually willing to obey her now, as if it also enjoyed the unexpected new songs Luce was inventing. Once in a while it still grabbed hold of her and dragged her into the death song, but that was happening less often now, and Luce had learned to be patient when it did. She'd let the death song exhaust itself, then lure her voice back into spirals like rising smoke, pleats of folded silk. Conjuring new sounds became a kind of game for her: she'd spread her voice out, shake it, make it into falling leaves or crackling ice ... She had the feeling that she simply must be getting closer to discovering the new and hidden power she'd been looking for; sometimes she could almost feel it, just waiting around the next curl of her song. She could just catch glimpses of it, and it had its own secret shimmering, not as dark as the shimmering around her body: something surprising, eloquent, blue-white and blue-gold.

  Luce was lying on her back with her eyes closed, twirling her fins, as she tried a new experiment. She spread her voice out in a single deep note as flat as a sheet of paper, then let it start to curl in on itself, wrapping into a slow aching chord at the edges. Something wet nudged at Luce's shoulder, and she opened her eyes enough to peer through the fringe of her lashes, still s
inging. It was probably just a larva; sometimes her singing attracted them, and this cave was easy for them to crawl into.

  It wasn't a larva at all. Instead a stiff, pointed wave was standing next to her, moving in small fidgety, eager leaps as if it couldn't wait for her to notice it. Luce stopped singing in surprise, and the enthusiastic little wave collapsed with a splash. For a while Luce just stared down at the gently lapping water where the wave had been. It seemed as if the wave had actually been responding to her voice, but of course that was impossible.

  At least she hoped it was impossible. It reminded her far too much of the hideous nightmare where she’d commanded the waves to murder her father. Luce didn’t want the ocean to start obeying her, not after that dream, and she told herself that the freakish little wave must have been some sort of aberrant result of water currents. That had to be it. Her voice might be magical, but there was no way it could control something that wasn’t even alive! Whatever the new magic was that she was looking for, it simply couldn’t be this.

  Luce repeated these thoughts over and over until she half believed them. Even so, she didn’t try bending her voice in quite that way again, and the solitary cave suddenly seemed too narrow, its dim walls pressing in on her. Before too long she couldn’t stand her isolation anymore, and squirmed out through the narrow passage into the widening green-gold sea. Luce wasn’t keeping track of the days, but she guessed it must be early June, and while the water would still be bitterly cold for a human, it felt luxuriously warm to her.

  She drifted toward the dining beach, thinking the whole time of turning and swimming back the other way. She stopped often, lingering to observe orange starfish whose long, tangled limbs were dense with bright spikes, then a yellow warty animal like a rotten banana that crept across a mass of barnacles. She wished she’d taken the time while she was still human to learn the names of the creatures she lived with now.

  As she came around the angled cliff that opened onto the dining beach, she could already hear Anais holding court. A cluster of larvae clung to one another, drawn forward by the sounds of laughter and nosing cautiously forward; Luce swam past them and into Anais's chirpy voice. "Yeah, I wasn't sure exactly where the yacht went down, but Samantha remembered. I don't get what you guys were thinking just leaving all that stuff. Like who wouldn't think that was the whole point? I mean, here's this, like, really classy yacht for once instead of all the crappy fishing boats and whatever that these losers up here sail around in. And you didn't even look to see what was in it!” She laughed; the sound of it was raspy, grating. "I mean, yeah, Jenna says, like, the TVs and things wouldn't work after they'd been underwater. She talked me out of bringing one back. But that one friend of my mom's had some great clothes...”

  As always when she heard Anais's voice Luce felt as if she'd swallowed some slime-covered, rusty lump of metal; it distracted her from paying much attention to what Anais was actually saying, so when she came around the corner it took her a moment to understand what was in front of her. Almost everyone was lounging around in a row at the edge of the beach: the dreamlike, nuanced colors of their tails gleaming through the shallow silver water, their beautiful faces framed by the pale sand behind them and then the steep gray of the stones. But there were other, more jarring colors intruding on the image in front of Luce: Samantha, Anais, and Jenna were all wearing brightly patterned bikini tops under filmy chiffon wraps in shocking shades of lime green, turquoise, magenta. Complicated diamond earrings swung against their necks and gold watches flashed on their wrists; Samantha was wearing a pair of huge sunglasses with baby pink frames, pouting in an exaggerated way and staring into something round and white, then passing it on to Jenna. They were laughing, posing. Jenna was busy applying lip gloss, but it seemed like salt water had seeped into the tube. It was too runny and kept dribbling in a candy pink tentacle down her chin.

  A mirror, Luce realized, and in the same moment she felt a stab of inexplicable anxiety at the idea of seeing what her own face looked like now. She hadn’t had a glimpse of herself since she’d changed.

  “So, the thing is, there’s still a bunch of stuff none of us really liked, if anybody wants to go back for it. Of course it’s only fair I got all the best things, since it was my daddy’s yacht!”

  It was just Anais being stupid, Luce thought. What would a mermaid want with a lot of human leftovers? She felt a kind of sick amusement at the thought of Anais trying to lug a television back through the waves. Vapid as Anais could be, hadn’t she realized that the cave didn’t exactly have electric outlets? Luce waited for someone to tell Anais how clueless she was being.

  Instead there was a patter of excited voices, and after a moment Luce realized that half a dozen mermaids were planning an expedition back to the site of the yacht’s wreck so they could search for plunder.

  “Want to come, Luce?” Dana called out as she swam up next to her. “Check out what’s left on the yacht? You know what would look great on you, would be if we could get some kind of sparkly barrettes for your hair. Get you styling harder.” Luce was staring around for Catarina when Dana popped the mirror right in front of her face. Reflexively she jerked back, but it was already too late.

  The face in the mirror was recognizably her own, Luce realized; she had the same long, charcoal brown eyes and very pale olive skin as ever, even if now that skin gave off a faint greenish radiance. She still had slightly sharp, slightly foxlike features and a broad, smooth forehead under spiky dark hair; her lips were still unusually red. But Luce had never thought of herself as particularly pretty, and the face hovering in front of her was uncomfortably, aggressively beautiful. The sight of her own face was like needles stabbing at her eyes, and Luce found herself thinking that the girl in the mirror had beauty in the same way that someone might have a consuming disease.

  She couldn't have explained why, but Luce knew her inhuman beauty had the color of endless loneliness. She lowered her eyes and wondered if her darkly splendid face had seemed horrifying to Tessa. Maybe that was why Tessa had preferred death to becoming what Luce was now?

  "I bet you just can't believe how hot you are now, can you?” Dana laughed. "I was always pretty hot and everything, but I was seriously blown away when I saw myself. Scoring the mirror was a great idea.” It was out of character, Luce thought, for Dana to be so oblivious to what someone was feeling, but in this case Luce was grateful that Dana didn't just see through her. Her feelings now were too awful and too private to ever share with anyone.

  "It's incredible,” Luce said; that much was true, at least. "I mean, I wondered sometimes if I was gorgeous now in the way you all are.” Dana smiled sweetly. She seemed gloriously happy, delighted by the soft, swirling breeze and by the newly discovered power of her own face; Dana's happiness made Luce only more aware of her own aching restlessness.

  "You totally are.”

  Luce shook her head. “You’re still a lot prettier than I am.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” Luce was sure that Dana was just saying it to be nice; Dana’s clear, dark face had a haunting glamour that even Luce’s transfigured appearance couldn’t approach. “You have those amazing eyes. And such great lashes. Maybe we could find you, I don’t know”—s he laughed, too brightly—“ some, like, waterproof mascara? You’re coming with us, right?”

  Luce looked for Catarina again, but she wasn’t on the beach. She couldn’t help thinking that Catarina would put a stop to this. It wasn’t exactly against the timahk, maybe, but it still seemed wrong. The clinging larvae had paddled closer now; they massed together like seaweed, except with a scattering of sorrowful human eyes. As they approached the beach a couple of the braver ones began to break away from the group, and Luce noticed that a lot of them were staring at Anais.

  “I don’t really want any human stuff,” Luce finally said; Dana just looked uncomprehending. “I mean, isn’t that kind of weird for a mermaid? If we want to be like them, then why do we go around killing them?” Luce knew instantly that s
he’d said too much. Dana was obviously offended.

  “God, Luce. Don’t you think you’re maybe being too uptight about this? We’re just having fun for once.” Dana’s tone suddenly shifted; the flippant irritation was gone, and she spoke in a sudden rush of wistful sorrow. “I mean, whatever, we all have to deal with ... with all the things we’re never going to have now. Like, I really wanted to go to college and be a pediatrician. I’ll never get to do any of that. And Rachel ... she just had this one necklace from her mom, and she lost it when we changed. So just because you don’t miss human things, Luce... I mean, it's easy to go around saying we shouldn't want anything that might, kind of, make up for all that...”

  Luce wasn't sure how to answer this, and stared off with her cheeks burning. Maybe Dana was right; if owning a few human objects helped the mermaids ease the ache they all felt, then why shouldn't they collect whatever they could find? After all, she could comfort herself with her singing, but that wouldn't work for everyone. She wondered if she should apologize, but Dana wasn't looking at her anymore, and she couldn't bring herself to try to break through the awkward silence that had come between them.

  She noticed that one fairly large bluish larva had gone nuzzling up to Anais's satiny cobalt tail, watching the brilliant scales with obvious fascination. Anais was busy chattering and seemed not to see it. As Luce watched, the larva reached out and barely touched Anais's fins, and when Anais didn't react the larva grew bolder, and closed its small lips softly on the waving, pink-shimmered tail.

  Still Anais didn't seem to register what was happening for a second. Then she let out a wrenching shriek and flung her tail up in an enormous cascade of water. The bluish larva jerked back and splashed down on its side, waving its stubby arms in fright. It seemed too disoriented to swim away and only gabbled, a bubble of saliva swelling on its pink lips. Everyone cracked up laughing, even Luce.