by Sarah Porter
“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?
“You said you thought it shouldn’t be just about us,” Yuan said. She was floating very close to Luce, and her gaze was oddly searching. “Like, of course you want the humans to stop killing us, but . . .”
“I do want them to stop killing mermaids,” Luce said. “But I also want them to stop killing the ocean.” A stunned silence followed her words, so Luce tried to explain. “I think the way humans treated us before we changed and the way they’re treating the world—they’re really not that different! When I was swimming down here I passed through this dead area where almost all the animals were just suffocated and rotting . . .” Luce heard that her voice was getting higher, sharp and fervent.
“And that’s why you don’t want to kill humans, Luce?” Catarina purred sardonically. “Because you’ve seen firsthand how much they destroy?”
“That is why!” Luce snapped. She saw the way everyone was staring at her. Of course it sounded like she was contradicting herself. “I mean,” Luce struggled to clarify, “if we kill them, then they’ll never get a chance to change.”
“So you’re saying you want them to stop global warming and stuff? Ice melting at the North Pole and the sea levels rising?” Yuan laughed. “I thought that was a problem when I was human, all right. Then after I hit the water I just thought, oh, hells yeah! More for us!”
“It’s worse than that,” Luce said seriously. She remembered everything she’d read and talked about with Dorian back when he’d been researching the ocean’s problems. “The ocean’s warming up a lot faster than the animals can adapt, and it’s getting way more acidic, too, from absorbing all the carbon. That has to stop or it’ll kill all the coral, and plankton, and—” Luce strained to recall the details—“I think a lot of the shellfish. And then everything that needs those things to live. It’s completely horrible.”
“And you don’t think saving the mermaids is a big enough problem?” Eileen asked. “I’m not saying you’re wrong, but this—it really sounds like a lot for us to try to do. You know? Like maybe we have enough to deal with?”
“We do,” Luce agreed. “It’s already incredibly hard—just trying to stop the war. I mean, I know, realistically, there’s already a good chance we’ll lose and then the humans will do whatever it takes to wipe us out.” It was the first time she’d admitted this out loud, and she saw the shocked looks on her lieutenants’ faces. They had more faith in the mermaids’ ultimate victory than she did, Luce realized. “But I think—we might die anyway. And mermaids have always been—kind of stuck. Like all we’ve cared about is what the humans did to us, and how hurt we all are, and how much they deserve to die. But if everything’s going to be different now, well, shouldn’t we start caring about more than that?”
There was another strained silence. Luce looked from face to face, trying to see the thoughts shifting inside their expressions. Seb looked oddly downcast, his mouth pinched and his eyes lowered. Yuan was biting her lip, but a half-smile was very gradually lifting the corners of her mouth and there was a distinct spark in her eyes. Imani was watching Luce but as if she was observing something far behind her. Eileen looked flummoxed and possibly angry, and Cala had started laughing with what seemed to be wicked delight. Catarina wore a contorted smirk. Luce couldn’t guess how it would all turn out.
Yuan went first. “I don’t care if she’s crazy. I’m with Luce.” She saw Luce’s flash of surprise and grinned at her, though there was something a little ragged in it. “What’s up with that look, Luce? I told you that.”
Luce couldn’t smile back. The choice they were facing weighed on her too much for that. “Imani?”
“Honestly? I think we’ll die if we push the humans that far,” Imani whispered. She still had that faraway look. The glow of streetlamps turned the droplets in her dark hair into clinging pearls. “But Luce? I think we should do it anyway. We need to—go beyond ourselves. It’s like we’ve been living in a sea that’s too small for our hearts.”
“Cat?”
“You know how I feel, Lucette. We’ve had this discussion.”
Luce felt vaguely annoyed. “Does that mean yes?”
“It means I don’t care. Not—” Catarina shrugged. “Not about this. Really, Luce, plankton? Write whatever you like.”
“Cala?”
“Yes. It’s seriously about time we changed everything up! I’m into it.”
They went around the circle. There were some halfhearted objections, and some answers that weren’t exactly agreement. But most of the mermaids there seemed ready to share in Luce’s goal of protecting the ocean. And, while a handful of girls seemed uncertain, nobody actually told her no.
Nobody except . . . “Don’t do it, Miss Luce!”
Seb had been so quiet that she’d almost forgotten he was standing there. Luce turned on him with a look that made him twitch back a little. “Why not?”
“Well, because . . .” Seb hesitated, his gaze flicking to Luce’s face and then down again. “If you’re just telling the power out there that they’ve gotta stop blasting your kind, it’s not going to cost them much more than their pride if they back down. And their pride—whatever kind of front they put up, their pride ain’t actually worth more than—” Seb brushed his fingers across the air, batting away invisible gnats. “But what you’re talking about now, Miss—I mean General Luce? That’ll cost them money. Money to change the way they do things. And as soon as you go messing with their finances, well, they won’t rest until they’ve made sure that you’re the one who pays for that. I just—”
Seb fell into a nervous silence as Catarina suddenly laughed, shrill and harsh. “I can vouch for the truth of what this human is saying, Lucette. Money is what drives those human creatures to distraction. Dearer to them than—”
Luce understood, horribly, what Catarina had stopped herself from saying. Dearer to them than their own daughters. Dearer to them than I was . . . Impulsively Luce caught Cat’s hand and squeezed it.
Seb flicked his eyes, very briefly, toward Catarina, and then broke out nodding. “So that’s all I’m trying to say, general. I want to see you live through this, and I’ll do whatever I can to help make sure that happens.”
“What does that matter?” Luce asked. The words burst out of her almost before she knew what she was saying. “If I can do—what I have to do—who cares if I live through it? I mean, you were watching us on TV. You heard what that reporter said. Even my dad is out there telling people mermaids are just killers, making everyone hate us, when we’re right in the middle of a war!”
Luce’s voice was suddenly veering out of her control, spiking into odd sharp notes of song as she spoke. Luce’s lieutenants looked stunned, and there were a few random cries of concern. Imani swirled rapidly over and flung her arms around Luce, holding her tight and humming softly into her ear, soothing the dreadful, violent music out of Luce’s voice.
For an instant Luce was angry. In the next heartbeat she was grateful. Her voice had almost ripped away from her. In another moment it might have leaped into the death song and then she could have killed Seb without even wanting to.
Luce quickly hugged Imani back. Her voice was still fighting a little inside her, and a mournful thickness gathered in her throat where she held it suppressed.
“Aw, Miss Luce,” Seb said after a moment. “It’s not like you’ve had a chance to check up on what that woman said, right? Maybe your dad didn’t mean anything as bad as she made it out.”
Luce tensed. “I don’t want to hear about it, Seb.” At least the song inside her had quieted; she could speak again without risking its release.
“Maybe if you heard the whole context of what he said, it would seem a little different than—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Luce felt taut, focused, and still a little angry, although she wasn’t sure at what. “We’ve got work to do. Can I please have that paper now?”
They spread it out in a spot where the planks were relatively level. Luce was surprised to see that it was heavy, obviously expensive ivory stationery emblazoned with the logo of what must be a fancy downtown hotel. “How’d you get this, Seb?” Luce’s emotions were still running high, but now she felt close to laughter.
“Oh, you know,” Seb said almost demurely. “I was fast. I figured, writing to the president or whoever, you should have something nice.”
Luce thought about that. There’d been an election coming up when she’d transformed, and it suddenly occurred to her that she had no idea who’d won. “Who is the president now?”
The mermaids around Luce looked blank. “Leopold,” Seb said.
Luce shook the droplets off her hand. Her fingers still left wet prints on the paper. She took up one of Seb’s pens and started writing in her best script, reading aloud as she went: “Dear President Leopold . . .”
“He’s not our president,” Catarina snarled.
Luce looked at her and nodded. “You’re right. Okay, ‘Dear President Leopold of the United States Humans, and All Humans of the World. The mermaids of the Twice Lost Army don’t want to be at war. We want peace with humans as soon as possible, but there are some things we need you to do first.’”
Luce glanced around at the faces pressing in around her. No one said anything, so she kept going. “Um, all right. ‘We already promise not to kill humans unless you force us to defend ourselves. If you agree to our demands, we’ll lower the wave blockading the Golden Gate, and we’ll do it very carefully so we don’t damage anything. We’ll also send messengers out to any mermaid tribes that still attack humans and do our best to persuade them to stop. In exchange, we want you to completely stop attacking mermaids. And we want you to stop killing the ocean. Global warming and the water becoming acidic and all the sea animals getting killed off are going to cause terrible problems for humans, too, so what we’re asking is really for your own good.’”
Luce looked around again. Seb was grimacing, and Catarina had her head tipped back and an aloof, sarcastic look on her face. But Yuan nodded carefully. “I think that sounds pretty good. Just something to finish up. Like they taught me in school, you want to end with something that sticks in the reader’s mind.”
Luce thought again then continued the letter. “‘We’re all kids. The oldest mermaids I know were only seventeen or eighteen years old when they changed form. I was in eighth grade. Why do we have to be the adults here?’”
“Will they take us seriously,” Eileen asked, “if we tell them that?”
Yuan grinned. “How are we giving them the option of not taking us seriously? Like, ‘Guys? Hey, you’ve noticed there’s this little issue with your ships getting out to sea these days, right?’”
Luce shook herself a little. “Does everybody agree? We should sign this?”
Another brief silence followed. “Go ahead,” Eileen said at last. “We’re in it; we might as well be really in.”
Luce lifted the pen again, ready to sign General Luce. But—shouldn’t she remind everyone, her father especially, who she really was? The pen whipped into motion, and Luce’s heart surged with some strange mixture of pride and bitterness. “‘Sincerely, General Lucette Gray Korchak, The Twice Lost Army.’”
That brought on a wave of agitated murmurs. “Your human name, Luce?” Imani whispered.
“It’s not my human name,” Luce said, a little stiffly. “It’s just my name.”
Catarina’s tail swung up above the surface and slapped back down hard, spattering salt water across everyone and leaving tiny rounds of blurred ink on the letter. “Luce! You must remember. When you first changed, you must remember how I told you—”
“I remember that you told me I didn’t need my whole name anymore, Cat,” Luce announced. “I also remember that you never asked me how I felt about that.”
Catarina’s mouth went round with a mixture of surprise and anger; she seemed to be on the verge of some outburst. Then after a moment she closed it again.
“Luce?” Imani said gently. “Can I see that pen?”
Luce gave it to her. Imani slid over in front of the letter and stared for just an instant. Then she wrote, Lieutenant Imani Michaela Portman.
“Oh my God.” Yuan exhaled the words. “I can’t do that, Luce! I mean, my old last name—that was my father’s name. I was so, so glad to ditch that and—”
“It’s okay,” Luce said. “Everybody should sign with whatever name they feel is right.”
Soon the bottom of the paper was covered in a dark lace of signatures. Most of the mermaids stuck to their first names, but there were a few who followed Luce’s and Imani’s example. “It’s so weird to even think of my old name again,” a slender blonde murmured as she inscribed the name Lieutenant Natasha Elizabeth Lindberger. “Like one of those dogs you read about that finds their owner three thousand miles away.”
Natasha was the last mermaid to sign. Seb sighed. “Should I scribble that up too?”
Luce looked at him. “Will you?”
Seb knelt on the planks. His coarse hand lifted the pen from Natasha’s dimly luminous fingers. Twice Lost Ambassador Sebastian Grassley.
“Okay,” Luce said. Even more than meeting Dorian, than becoming general, than raising a standing tsunami under the Golden Gate Bridge—this moment felt new, volatile, radiating unpredictable consequences. A thousand possible hideous endings, and as many astonishing beginnings, might unravel from this moment at this broken-down pier under the dark-eyed night. “Seb, you have a new job to do.”
He nodded, then folded the letter and tucked it carefully in a pocket inside his jacket. “Get this out there, right? Copies got to go to TV networks, newspapers, the White House . . .”
“Send it out,” Luce agreed. She felt breathless. “Send it everywhere you can. Soon everyone is going to know what we’re fighting for.”
Seb nodded and walked off abruptly. Luce watched him go, his hunched figure illuminated at intervals by the pooled glow of the streetlamps, sorry at the thought that she hadn’t really thanked him. Cala was farther out at the end of the pier, watching something that Luce couldn’t see because of the pilings in the way. “Hey,” Cala called, a bit suspiciously. “I don’t know you. Are you with the Twice Lost?”
“Not yet,” a voice replied. Luce felt something opening deep inside her, a longing so profound that it felt like an incurable wound. “I would ask to join with you. I have heard reports of your great general, the one whose voice the water answers and who shares her skill with all unstintingly, the one who will not be called queen, who leads us in defiance of humans and gods alike, and who will change from the quick the very meaning of being a mermaid . . .”
Luce let out a half-sung shriek. The water followed her voice in an explosive fountain, and foam spattered down like heavy snow.
She tried to speak, and failed. Instead she screamed again, her voice carrying all the love and joy and frantic gratitude that she could not yet make herself shape into a name.
A dark bronze figure with massy coils of black hair swam into view and smiled at her.
Nausicaa.
24
Reunion
Nausicaa had never been particularly inclined to show affection through hugging or touch, but that didn’t stop Luce. She leaped from the water, her tail breaching and thras
hing in midair, and knocked Nausicaa several feet backwards as she crashed down and embraced her. They spoke fast but softly, their voices rushing over and through each other. “Nausicaa! Nausicaa, I didn’t know if you would ever . . .”
“Dearest Luce, I promised I would find you again . . .”
“I wanted to keep looking for you, so much, but then . . . I needed to try to change things here, and . . .”
“You have done exactly as you ought to, Luce. Exactly as I always dreamed you would. I knew what I saw in you, and I was not mistaken . . .”
“But if it hadn’t been for you, I never could have done any of it. There were so many times . . . while you were away from me, Nausicaa, you . . .”
“Yes, Luce?”
“While you were away, you saved me so many times!” Luce was suddenly, giddily aware that that might sound like another contradiction. How could she explain that Nausicaa’s remembered voice had come for her again and again, always just when she needed it most?
Nausicaa was beaming, her green-black eyes starry with tears. “You should allow yourself more credit, Luce. But I’m thankful if I’ve helped you.”
“No, you don’t know how much, Nausicaa! There was this ice floe and I would have let go and drowned if . . . if I hadn’t been thinking of you. And I would have killed Dorian, except I remembered what you said to me. And—”
Luce broke off, appalled by the bitter tang of Dorian’s name on her lips—and just as abruptly realized that all her lieutenants were listening. Catarina’s face looked greenish, her eyes narrowed and her mouth misshapen. Even Yuan was scowling. Luce realized with a jolt that not everyone there would be delighted by the arrival of this darkly powerful newcomer. “Everybody—this is Nausicaa. She came to Alaska after you left, Cat. We—got to be friends. She’s a really great singer, and she’ll be a big help.”
Nausicaa tilted her head and smiled politely at Catarina’s glowering face. “Hello, Catarina. Luce spoke of you often.”