by Sarah Porter
Almost all the mermaids were wearing plundered clothes and jewelry now, in vivid colors that clashed with their shimmering tails and with the greenish silver of the water. Even Luce was still wearing the long pearl necklace, since she couldn't think of a way to get rid of it without hurting Dana's feelings. Only Catarina was still sleekly naked. She looked marvelously free beside the other mermaids, their arms now tangled in sodden spangled blouses that dragged haphazardly back and forth with the currents. The cave was getting so cluttered, too. Anais had finally talked a pack of girls into towing a large flat-screen TV back to the cave; it leaned forlornly against the craggy wall, its cord slopping around like the tail of a dead rat in the water.
"I think I'd rather go off for a swim by myself,” Catarina finally announced in such an exaggeratedly lazy, dreamy way that Luce was sure she was really going hunting for a young man canoeing or sailing on his own.
“Wow, Cat!” Anais chirped; Luce flinched at the impudence in her voice. “You’ve been spending so much time alone! Are you sure it’s, you know, healthy? I mean, you wouldn’t want to turn into one of these weird loners, would you? Not like...” She darted a look at Luce—fast, but not so fast that everyone wouldn’t notice.
Samantha giggled in the toadying way that she used now whenever Anais insulted Luce. That was happening more often, too. If only she were queen, Luce thought, she’d find a reason to banish Anais, orcas or no. The girl was poison; she was ruining the whole tribe.
No, Luce realized. It wouldn’t work. The rest of the girls were too taken in by Anais; the frequent attacks on ships seemed to affect them all like a drug. They didn’t care at all how reckless it was. Luce was beginning to appreciate just how effectively Catarina had kept the tribe disciplined; she’d held their wildest, most destructive urges in check, but now...
If they were ever going to get rid of Anais, she and Catarina would definitely have to work together. And with the way things were between them now, Luce didn’t see how that could ever happen.
Catarina didn’t respond. She just leaned out on top of the water in a drowsy way, her eyes half closed, then after a moment skimmed deeper, heading out to sea.
Luce hadn’t been eating enough for days, and now her hunger was catching up with her. She sat methodically smacking mussels on the rocks. She’d made a terrible mistake, singing that way in front of Catarina, but she still couldn’t understand why Catarina was refusing to get over it. Why couldn’t they just forget it had ever happened?
"You know, I feel like I could use a little stretch, too,” Anais said after a minute. "That cruise ship isn't going to be moving for a while. It's too boring just waiting around all the time.”
"Can I come with you?” It seemed like Samantha couldn't stand to be away from Anais, not even for a few minutes. She followed her everywhere, clinging to her elbow, laughing at everything she said, and Anais seemed to take her adoration as the most natural thing in the world. Luce was surprised when Anais shook her head.
"God, Samantha, can't you ever let me have some private time? You just want to talk and talk all day. Maybe I want to go for a swim by myself!” Samantha's face fell, and Luce felt a fleeting chill, a kind of dark cloud slipping through her. Anais's body sliced like a blood-red shadow under the waves, the hem of her dress a pulsing silk jellyfish around her azure tail.
There was one good thing about Catarina being so furious with her: Luce could practice singing again, since it didn't seem like Cat could get any angrier. "I'm going back to my cave, if anyone wants to find me,” Luce announced coolly. "I'm going to work on some new singing tricks I've discovered.” Half the tribe stared at her with disoriented expressions, but, Luce thought, if the idea of practicing was so strange to them, wasn't that their problem?
And there was no point anymore in trying to suppress her new ability to call the waves either, not now that Catarina knew. She might as well try to get really good at it.
***
In the early evening she swam back to the main cave. Now the sunset came late, and the light would turn a milky twilight blue, but the sky never became completely dark. Instead the sunset would slowly roll around the edge of the horizon until it merged into dawn. Luce told herself that she shouldn’t let it bother her that Catarina had called her a coward—hadn’t she been braver than anyone in the tribe that time she’d crawled on shore and saved Violet? But the comment still rankled, and it would be unbearable to let Catarina think Luce was avoiding her out of fear.
The voices in the cave were loud, uproarious, like a human party. Luce wasn’t particularly surprised to see that they’d stolen a few bottles of liquor from the cruise ship; girls were passing bottles of scotch and vodka from hand to hand, pitching drunkenly in the water, their tails swinging haphazardly and sending up salt spray everywhere. The slurred voices sent prickles of anxiety down her back. They reminded her too much of her uncle. Miriam lay alone in a dark corner, and Catarina was reclining with regal disinterest and a sleepy, satisfied look on her face, but everyone else was in tumult, squealing over the enormous heaps of clothes and trinkets on the beach, trying them on, sometimes ripping the tight dresses and tops as they thrashed into them with limbs sloppy from alcohol...
“No way!” Anais screamed, snatching something away from Violet. “No way! Those are so completely mine! I saw them first! God, who ever would have thought that those cheap losers on that ship would have had something this great!” Luce’s eyes went wide; Anais was waving a pair of strappy, spike-heeled sandals around her head. The straps were dense with colored rhinestones glittering maniacally in the dimness. “Manolos! Real Manolos out in this crappy place! Oh, and I think they’re even my size!”
Luce was flabbergasted. Why didn't anyone say anything?
"Can I just hold them for a minute, though?” Violet asked shyly. Anais just pouted and jerked the sandals farther back.
"Nobody is touching my Manolos! Everybody heard that, right? If I catch any of you putting even one sneaky finger on these...”
Luce couldn't restrain herself anymore. "Anais!” she yelled, almost before she'd realized what she was doing.
The ruckus in the cave collapsed into sudden quiet. Everyone was staring at her as if she were a stranger intruding on them. They obviously hadn't noticed her arrival.
"Yes, Luce?” Anais sneered after a moment. "That goes for you, too, naturally. If you even breathe on my Manolos—”
"Anais,” Luce said quietly. "You have a tail.” The silence only got thicker, and suddenly Luce was laughing bitterly. "Are you planning to wear those on your head?” A few mermaids laughed with her, but only a few. Anais shot a contemptuous glance around at them.
"What part of 'Manolo Blahnik' don't you understand, Luce? My God, anybody would think you'd been living in a cave your whole life!” More girls laughed at this: Jenna and Samantha. But even they sounded a bit halfhearted. Luce could feel something unexpected swelling in her chest: a kind of dark, biting strength, a serene fury. The sneers didn't bother her at all, and she smiled.
"Actually,” Luce said, "I grew up in a van.” Her voice was still fairly quiet but very distinct. She knew everyone in the cave could hear her. There was a kind of flutter of consternation, and the silence grew like something alive. Even Catarina had raised her drowsy eyes to stare at Luce, and Miriam rolled over and sat up.
But as usual there was no silence so deep that Anais wouldn’t break it. “Oh my God! You mean your parents were homeless, Luce?” She let out a piercing shriek of laughter. “You grew up as a bum? Well, I guess that explains some things.”
Luce shook her head. “My mom died when I was four. I was mostly just with my father. And sometimes we got an apartment for a while, or we stayed in motels. But there were a lot of nights when we slept in the van. I didn’t mind, though. I liked traveling. We almost always had fun.” As Luce spoke, she could see it. The inside of the red van filled her eyes, bringing with it the odd flitting lights cast by the mobile made from tiny round mirrors t
hat hung in the back. She breathed in the slightly musty scent of their sleeping bags spread out on the floor ... There was the sound of her father’s warm laughter as he taught her to cook chili and fried cornbread on a camping stove. All at once it was realer to her than the dark cave, the circle of mermaids staring and listening to her so intently that she could almost hear the hum of their concentration. “If that makes someone a bum, then I guess you could call us that. But really my dad was a repairman. And a thief.”
Anais squealed with laughter again, but apart from that the cave was perfectly quiet. A single drop of water from a stalactite splashed down. The echoes persisted for a very long time.
“Well, Luce! Well, I guess this really shows the difference between you and me now, doesn’t it?” Anais was sneering broadly, trying to make everyone crack up, but it didn’t work. When Luce glanced around, the dimness of the cave shone with widened eyes.
"You're right, Anais,” Luce agreed. She couldn't believe how powerful she sounded. Her speaking voice was never this strong; she had this kind of cutting force only when she sang! "It shows exactly the difference between us. You see, I cared when my father died.” A few low gasps escaped in the shadows; of course everyone remembered what Anais had said when she'd first changed. Who could forget something like that? "I cared a lot. I still miss him every day.” For the briefest of moments Luce saw Anais's face buckle, but then she mastered herself again. Her sneer became shriller.
"Poor little baby-waby misses her scumbag, crook, loser father! See, Luce, you're just the kind of girl who loves nobodies like that. Because you're a nobody yourself!” No one seemed to be paying much attention to Anais now, though. Violet let out an abrupt sob.
"Is that why you had to live with your uncle, Luce?” Violet didn't sound nearly as meek as usual. She was almost howling. "Your father died, so you had to live with that uncle who—who beat you and who tried ... Like they did to my brother...”
"Yes,” Luce agreed; she still felt bizarrely calm, even as Violet began rasping in hysteria. "That's why I was with my uncle.” Dana splashed drunkenly over to Violet and pulled her into a hug. Violet struggled free. She was stretching her arms toward Luce, but not as if she wanted to embrace her; Luce was reminded more of the way a rock climber might reach, urgently trying to grasp a handhold just a little too far above.
"How did he die!” Violet yelled. "How did your father die? Luce, what happened?”
Luce’s profound calm almost failed her now. Could she really say this? Violet’s eyes were wild with need, Catarina’s mouth was set in a hard line, and Luce saw the shining stripe of a tear on Miriam’s cheek.
“He died in a shipwreck,” Luce said at last. “He was working on a fishing boat, and they went down. Probably somewhere near here.”
Not even Anais could speak in the silence that followed. They were all looking around at one another, except for Violet, whose face was hidden in her hands. Everyone was absorbing the implications, and all at once Luce’s head ached as if it were about to split open. It was simply too much truth, too much...
A terrible sound wrenched the silence. It got louder, higher, tore at all of them, and Luce gaped around in confusion. Miriam was screaming at the top of her lungs. She threw herself across the water, her fists flying out, her tail slashing in all directions. Mermaids jerked out of her way, but Catarina and Dana lunged in the opposite direction, seizing Miriam by her arms. The midnight blue tail still swung and heaved, and blobs of sea foam flew through the dimness.
“Bring me some of those clothes!” Catarina commanded; suddenly all her intensity seemed to be back, her strength. “Miriam, I won’t let you dishonor yourself. We need to tie her up before she hurts someone.” There was a stunned pause, then a few girls rushed to obey her, binding Miriam’s arms behind her with silk scarves and pantyhose. Soon she was immobilized, her writhing tail wrapped in three pairs of arms, but she was still screaming.
"DON'T YOU SEE!” Miriam shrieked. "DON'T YOU SEE!” Violet was hyperventilating again, clinging to a crag, but everyone else was squeezed in around Miriam now, trying to calm her down. Luce swam closer, too. "Oh!” Miriam wailed. "Don't you see? All this time we've kept blaming the humans. But it's us! We're the ones who are responsible for what happened to Luce! If we hadn't killed her father, she would have been safe, she would have been happy, she could have grown up ...”
Luce was embarrassed by this; it seemed so dramatic. But of course what Miriam was saying might be true. She couldn't honestly deny it.
"Oh, Luce!” Miriam had found her in the crowd, and she was fighting to free her arms. "Oh, Luce! I'm so sorry ...”
"I don't blame you, Miriam,” Luce said. But there was something cold in her heart as she spoke the words, and they didn't sound right. Miriam sobbed.
"But I suppose you blame me, Luce?” The voice was Catarina's; it was silky, patient, and ferocious. "Or should I call you Lucette? Lucette Gray Korchak, I believe you said? You blame me, and that's why you...” Catarina couldn't finish the sentence. The gray eyes flashed inside Luce's. It was like the moon gazing into her, swelling the pain in her head. An image of Catarina hungrily kissing her father's mouth in a rush of bubbles filled Luce's mind; she couldn't keep it out.
"Should I blame you, Cat?” Luce asked very softly. Everyone gaped, and in the corner of her eye Luce saw Anais again grinning viciously to herself.
Luce knew she shouldn't leave things this way. Anything that made Anais so happy must be terrible; it must be something she should try to stop at once. But the pain seared her mind with blasts of white heat, and Miriam was screaming again, making the ache leap in time with her voice. There were too many eyes all staring at Luce, driving into her like some kind of nightmarish rain...
Luce turned and swam away through the pale gray waters.
16. A Song for Miriam
It was at some point in that indeterminate, endless dawn when she heard it. It carried with immaculate clarity over the echoing surface of the water, rebounding from every wave. Luce wasn't really asleep, just in a kind of feverish daze, but that particular sound would have recalled her even from perfect unconsciousness.
A scream, but it was louder, and somehow paler, than a normal scream. Luce knew what it meant at once. She'd heard it before; it had even ripped from her own throat. The scream broke into strange pulsations of noise, a kind of gagging "HA, HA, HA,” and then faltered, but an instant later it came back again at full force: a long, high note of purest agony. Luce was already out of the cave, her tail spiraling violently behind her; she was nothing but the movement of indigo waters. Unidentifiable shapes veered suddenly away from her head, but there was no time to worry about colliding with something. She had only moments left, moments ... That scream was the sound of a mermaid out of the water. And as she raced closer Luce became sure of what she’d suspected from the first moment. It was Miriam.
As long as Luce could hear her, there might still be time.
Soon some of the shapes had reaching arms and corkscrewing tails like hers, all of them converging on the voice. They ruptured the waves with their speed, and a harbor seal zigzagged in confusion at the onslaught of bodies. For a few seconds the scream fell away, and then there was only the blue-glowing water stirred into streaks of white by dozens of tails, the gush of racing foam in Luce’s ears and the roar of her blood. Where was Miriam’svoic e?
It came back but more faintly now: she was on a different beach, one they never used because it was too broad and open, too easy to spot from passing boats. Had she deliberately chosen a beach where they wouldn’t immediately think to look for her? There was no air in Luce’s lungs, and no time to swing up to the surface for a breath. Instead she slashed out, driving herself faster, until the water blurred in her eyes and she was barely in control of her direction. It was all one vague onward thrust, a formless press for speed into the sudden, uncanny silence. Pebbles scraped across her belly before she even knew where she was, and then she saw the curls of amber morni
ng dancing on top of the waves. Air poured into her lungs.
Miriam was there but at least twenty feet back. It was incredible that she’d managed to drag herself so far from the water. Luce bit her lip as she thought of the pain Miriam must have endured during that long crawl up the beach. She still had her tail, she was still trembling and exhaling a raspy, rattling hiss, but her scales were no longer their usual glossy blue-black. They looked disagreeably ashy, flaky: almost like dandruff or the shells of desiccated seeds. A dozen girls were around Luce now, all leaning on the shore, all reaching, but Miriam was far above them, almost at the line of black clotted seaweed that marked the highest tide. Even if someone miraculously managed to reach her, Luce thought, they'd never make it back to the sea in time. A quickly strobing vision possessed Luce's mind, just for a moment: now it wasn't Miriam lying there but her own mother. Alyssa was shaking from pain in the back of the red van, fighting to suppress her screams; she was dying all over again, while her small daughter clung to her chest. Then Luce's eyes cleared, and she realized that, while it would be impossible to pull Miriam back into the waves, she might still find a way to save her.
She could make the sea go to Miriam.
It would take a much bigger wave than she'd ever conjured before, but still she could try. Luce closed her eyes and concentrated on gathering every last bit of strength so she could pour it all into her voice. The note began to form, to spread...
"Miriam!” It was Violet shouting near her. “Miriam!” And then Luce heard a final, sharp groan like tearing flesh way up on the shore. The song she'd barely begun crumpled in her chest, and she looked up. It was already too late.
Miriam was silent, unmoving. Her scales were peeling off so quickly that it was hard to really see what was happening; they seemed to become like tissue paper, then like something even frailer, spider webs, old crumbled flecks of seashell, wandering smoke...
All at once Miriam had two long, bluish, naked human legs where her tail had been. Her toes were curled tight, like a new baby’s. The skin on her legs looked raw and unused, traced by oddly dark purple veins, and her black hair lay in ropes along the tide line.