The Twice Lost

by Sarah Porter

  Luce thought of her father. Before what that reporter had told her, she definitely would have expected him to be standing there too. Now everything was different. “I wish we could do something for them,” Luce sighed. “I just don’t know what. Unless we recognize one of those faces.”

  Nausicaa was oddly silent, looking back at the row of humans watching her.

  “So, um, general?” Cala asked after a moment. “We need to know the rules. I know you said the timahk has to be different now, but—well, are we allowed to talk to them? I know you talked to that reporter and everything, and Seb, but that was all official stuff, and I wasn’t sure if everybody . . .”

  Luce thought about that. It seemed a little risky. And, ready as she was to overturn the old timahk, the idea of unrestricted socializing with humans still made her uncomfortable.

  On the other hand, it would be way too hypocritical to say that it was okay for her to talk to humans—but not okay for the rest of the Twice Lost Army. After all, her relationship with Dorian had hardly counted as official business.

  “The mermaids can talk to anyone they want,” Luce announced. “Let all the lieutenants know that. They can tell the girls in their divisions.”

  Cala’s hazel eyes went wide. “Really?”

  “Really. Just ask everybody to please remember that we all represent the Twice Lost Army, and we shouldn’t say anything that’s not true or that could make humans hate us any worse. Okay?”

  “Luce,” Nausicaa interrupted sharply. “This is a dangerous decision. Many of those humans are not to be trusted.”

  “We need to start trusting them, though,” Luce told her. “Because we need them to trust us.”

  “You, as well as anyone, Queen Luce—you know the grief that comes of this. Allow them to draw close to humans, and soon enough a great number of your followers will be disordered by love for human males. It cannot end well!”

  “I don’t see why that shouldn’t work out!” Cala interjected. “Just because we’re in the water!”

  Nausicaa flashed her a dark look.

  “We’ll . . . have to risk it,” Luce decided. Cala’s comment made it all too clear that Nausicaa was right, but . . . “I just don’t think we can avoid talking to humans anymore. No matter what happens. Just—ask everybody to be really careful, Cala, okay?”

  Cala leaped impulsively, her dark turquoise tail breaching and flashing in the somber gray light, provoking a flurry of shouts from the onlookers. Then she darted away to tell everyone the news. Nausicaa looked worried. Behind her, the mermaids of the morning shift were streaking below the surface to take their places in the line, while those who had been singing through the night began to break away, one by one, and head home to rest.

  “Do you want to go with them, Nausicaa? You could probably use some sleep.”

  “I prefer to remain with you, Luce. Today I will listen and learn what I can of your singing in that way.”

  Luce didn’t want to admit it, but she was relieved to have Nausicaa’s company. The frantic cries of the people on the shore clanged through her mind, and she had to force herself to look away.

  Not all the off-duty mermaids were heading back to their encampments, Luce realized. Word of the new rules had already spread, and a few mermaids were swimming directly under Luce’s tail.

  Heading straight for the human crowds.

  25

  Facing the Water

  She was too far away for him to be completely sure. But as he squeezed through the mob near the water’s edge Andrew Korchak caught a distant glimpse of a mermaid with short dark hair turning away and then vanishing. “Luce!”

  “Yeah!” a teenage boy standing near him called, and burst into shrill, ecstatic laughter. “Go, General Luce!”

  Andrew glared at him but the boy had his eyes closed, his voice humming faintly in a drowsy counterpoint to the piercingly sweet thrum of hundreds of mermaid voices. Those voices washed through Andrew’s mind. They curled around each thought and shocked him with a kind of electrical tenderness. It was impossible to stay entirely clear-headed. Instead he seemed to sweep through a heart as large as the sea, and everyone else in the crowd drifted with him. It was glorious, intoxicating; no wonder all these people couldn’t stay away.

  He’d spent a couple of days curled up in the toolshed of an empty, rickety house with a faded For Sale sign listing in the front lawn, dreaming of Kathleen and crying. Then he’d come to the decision that, even if he hated the mermaid who had killed Kathleen and even if he wasn’t so sure now that the rest of them weren’t worth hating too, still, he couldn’t blame Luce for that. Luce hadn’t personally murdered Kathleen. That much was almost certain. And if he did have a few lingering doubts, well, the only way to deal with them was to talk to Luce face to face.

  He’d staggered out of his toolshed—only to find Luce’s picture splashed across every newspaper he saw.

  General Luce. He couldn’t get used to the idea that anyone actually called her that. His bookish, gentle, painfully shy little girl had become a mermaid general leading a naval blockade and giving defiant speeches on television?

  Did he even know who she was anymore?

  His confusion only lasted until he sat down with a crumpled newspaper he’d found lying in the street and read what Luce had actually said. Those words did sound like they belonged to his Lucette, just to the side of her that she’d usually been too shy to show to anyone but him. She was still honest and deep-hearted and strong, still doing the best she could in terrible circumstances.

  And then, what that reporter had said to her—that woman almost made it sound like he’d started some kind of anti-mermaid campaign, when in reality he and Kathleen had been doing the only thing they could think of to help.

  And Luce went and stood up for him anyway and told the world to believe whatever he said . . .

  Yeah, he still knew exactly who Luce was. That was his girl, all right, and he never should have let himself doubt her. And he urgently needed to find her, no matter what it took, and explain how that reporter had distorted what he’d said in his video. He’d hitchhiked the rest of the way to San Francisco, and now—well, he still had a little bit farther to go.

  “Hey!” The teenage boy’s eyes had flown open, carried on some tremulous gust in the music. “Hey, aren’t you—from that video? The guy who came out and told everyone about them? General Luce’s father? You are!”

  Great. Somehow this wasn’t a possibility that had occurred to him—and attracting attention was hardly going to help him get past the line of scowling cops he could make out now between the close-pressed bodies ahead. His first irritated impulse to deny his identity, though, almost instantly shifted into the idea that he might be able to turn it to his advantage.

  “Shhh,” Andrew hissed. He made his tone confiding, conspiratorial. “I’ve got to get to her.”

  As he’d hoped, the boy nodded, but then he kept on nodding as if he were too entranced to stop. “That won’t be easy. They’re stopping everyone. Boats, anyone who tries to swim. I’ve seen like five people get arrested since midnight. I don’t know how you can.”

  “How ’bout you distract the cops so I can get a head start?”

  “There are police boats patrolling too, though. And then I think the mermaids have their own guards, and they might think you were trying to attack them or something.”

  “If I can just make it as far as the mermaid guards, they’ll bring me to Luce,” Andrew whispered with far more assurance than he actually felt. “They’re not about to piss their general off by drowning her dad.”

  Well, maybe they wouldn’t. But he’d worry about that once he got to them.

  “Okay,” the boy said dreamily. “Okay. But hey, will you tell her I helped you?”

  So there it was. The kid would do a better job if he was feeling really motivated. “Yeah, I absolutely will. What’s your name?”

  “Josh Byrd. Tell her—I really believe in what she’s doing? I know peop
le are complaining that it’s bad for the economy, but I think she’s right to try to protect the mermaids? Tell her—”

  There was a sudden clamor of jabbering voices, moaning half-musical cries, and screams from the edge of the water. Andrew tipped his head, and he and Josh elbowed their way through bodies that were now so compressed that they seemed more like some squirming inhuman substance than like actual people. Once they fought their way through to the front, they saw what was causing this fresh disturbance: five mermaids were floating only twenty feet away, looking at the crowd with what appeared to be a kind of stage fright. They were so beautiful that the sight of their faces seemed to burn Andrew’s eyes.

  “Um, hi?” one of the mermaids ventured, her shyness contrasting strangely with her ferocious loveliness. “General Luce says it’s okay for us to talk to you.”

  The crowd yowled, several people who were carrying signs swung them recklessly, and the mermaid glanced around at her friends and started backing away.

  “Don’t scare them!” Josh yelled. “Everybody act calm! Don’t scare them!”

  One brown-skinned mermaid flicked her way just a little closer, gazing with obvious pity at someone Andrew couldn’t see. Someone on the shore to his left, probably standing right at the front of the crowd. “I, uh, God, there’s something I have to tell you. About Melinda. We were friends, and she—”

  The mermaid broke off in alarm, but this time what had spooked her wasn’t the crowd’s uproar but an even more abrupt and disturbing silence. She visibly gathered her courage and kept speaking.

  “I’m sorry I have to tell you this! Melinda’s dead. I saw her get killed—by those divers with the helmets. They got her in the throat with a spear. I saw it, and I couldn’t do anything to help her! I couldn’t—I barely got away! But Melinda . . .”

  Horror pitched sharply through the mermaid’s voice, and Andrew suddenly noticed the long, imperfectly healed, crimson slash that began at her left shoulder and disappeared where the water covered her chest. It must have been the distracting power of her beauty that had stopped him from seeing sooner that she was hurt. He had the funny feeling that everyone watching the mermaid had noticed her wound at the same moment he did. People around him gasped, sobbed . . .

  And then a woman pitched headlong into the water, bobbing limply face-down as if she’d fainted.

  Beside her floated the sign she’d been carrying, emblazoned with the name Melinda Crawford above an enormous photo of a beaming honey-haired teenager. Water sloshed across the girl’s smiling face, dragging it under . . .

  Police were in the water, grappling with that unconscious body; around Andrew people screamed and tried to surge toward the spot; someone else dived and was instantly caught and flung back toward the shore. In the corner of his eye, he saw Josh leap forward shouting, crashing into three of the cops and toppling one of them.

  As distractions went, it was all pretty prime—and then those mermaids were so close. What with how crazy everyone was acting, they’d probably never come this close again.

  The only thing still separating him from the water was a low embankment of heaped rocks. Andrew stepped up onto it, seeing Melinda Crawford’s face half erased by green darkness, seeing the single police officer who turned to stare at him with a look of furious realization—and hurled himself over the edge.

  Gray and salt and cold. The violent rhythmic thrashing of his arms as he propelled himself forward, beating the low waves. Up ahead he caught a glimpse of blue frightened eyes as a mermaid turned to gape at him. He spat out salt water and called, “Luce! General Luce! I need to talk to her!”

  The rush and whorl of mermaid song was much louder inside the water than it had been onshore. His brain seemed to tremble and melt into strange new shapes, rippling wave forms. His vision was divided between the gray of the sky above and the slopping green confusion of the water. He lurched high enough to peer across the water’s surface, trying to catch sight of those brilliant blue eyes, of the flash of fins.

  They didn’t seem to be there anymore. Maybe just a little farther ahead? He kicked harder, his jeans and sneakers dragging at the water.

  Then he felt a pair of hands closing on his calf, hard, and shoved his heel back in the direction where he guessed the face must be. He didn’t have much time left. “Hey! Mermaids! I’m General Luce’s dad! I need to see her!”

  A black boat zoomed in, almost colliding with Andrew’s head. He tried to dive under it, but those hands were still jerking him backwards, and now someone else was leaning in from above and twisting his right arm sharply up behind his back. His body rocked crazily from side to side as he tried to pull free. But more hands kept closing on him, and the mermaids were singing indifferently in the distance. Had they even heard him? He was already hauled halfway out of the water, the boat’s edge digging into his stomach, when he felt a horrible staticky buzzing at his temple. He heard his own sharp scream as his limbs spasmed, and for a while the world was smeared black and senseless.

  He came to face-down on the boat’s curved bottom, his wrists shackled behind him and his legs somehow immobilized. Water sloshed against his cheek and his sodden clothes encased him in stiffness and cold. Someone was rummaging through his pockets.

  “No ID on this guy, then?” a man asked behind him. The voice was all wrong, prickly and distorted. Like it was coming through some kind of speaker.

  Someone else laughed, a little nastily. Somehow laughter sounded even worse than speech did through that veil of electrical noise. “Didn’t you hear? We don’t need ID. Guy already said who he is—and he wasn’t talking to us, either.”

  “I heard him shouting something about General Luce. He isn’t the first of these berserkers who’s—”

  “He said he’s her dad. And I’d say he looks right too.”

  There was a stunned pause, and then the first man whooped. “We got Andrew Korchak? About time. God, we’ve been hearing enough about it.”

  “I figured he’d turn up here eventually. What do you think they’ll charge him with? You think aiding and abetting the enemy will stick?”

  Great job there, pal, Andrew thought. Great job on the getting to Luce. Great job explaining everything.

  The curved shell of the boat vibrated as the motor roared. Air rushed across Andrew’s back. With an effort, he just managed to crane his head far enough to catch a last glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge, falling into a wild gray sky. The last velvety resonance of the mermaids’ song faded away.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  It was mid-afternoon the next day when Moreland went to visit Anais, an even odder smile than usual on his face. “Hello there, tadpole.”

  Anais hesitated for only a second before swimming over, but she didn’t look up at him. Moreland stood with his hands spread on the glass, enjoying her lowered eyes and cowed expression. “What do you want me to do now?”

  Moreland couldn’t resist pushing his luck a little. “Aren’t you happy to see me, tadpole? All alone in this tank all day, nothing to do. But you know I always bring the fun. Don’t I?”

  “It’s not the same,” Anais barely muttered. She looked very pale, her golden hair matted in places. Maybe her sky blue tail was losing a bit of its iridescence as well.

  “What’s not the same, dear?”

  “Singing to people. It’s not as fun anymore, with you always telling me what to do, and I can’t even see them. And I just did the last one, like, yesterday!”

  “Perhaps I can address your concerns this time. I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be allowed to watch the effects of your singing . . . on our newest subject.”

  “What are you talking about?” Anais was looking up at him now, her eyes wide and her lids dark and puffy.

  “Tell me something. I’m very curious to know what would happen to someone who was obliged to listen to your death song for an extended period of time. That is, if there was no water available to . . . relieve the pressure. What do you think the results would be?�
��

  Anais gave her habitual bewildered glare while she tried to understand what he’d just said. Then she released a kind of astonished squeal. “You mean if I sang to somebody and they couldn’t drown themselves? They’d go crazy!”

  Moreland nodded. Mermaids’ voices slopped heavily in his brain, a wave made of cold, ringing metal. “Indeed. They’d go crazy. Permanently, do you suppose?”

  He’d listened to that recording of mermaid song for precisely twenty-eight seconds before he’d tried to drown himself, and each one of those seconds seemed to carry more weight than the entire rest of his life. He didn’t actually doubt that someone forced to listen to Anais’s death song for several minutes would sustain irreversible damage. He didn’t expect Anais to give him any information that he didn’t already know from personal experience.

  He asked instead for the peculiar pleasure of watching Anais try to think, of hearing how she’d reply. Her face contorted as she mulled the question.

  “I don’t know! How am I supposed to know that? It’s not like I ever let anybody live—when I was still with the tribe! Why do you always have to ask me these questions?”

  For the first time, Moreland wondered if she genuinely missed her slaughtered friends; if, perhaps, she even regretted surviving. “Let’s assume permanently, then. The victim would be left permanently utterly insane. A gibbering idiot. It would be apparent to anyone who observed him afterward that he was mad and that nothing he’d ever said should be believed. For example, his outlandish claims that mermaids are lost little girls who’ve been terribly hurt somehow.”

  Anais tipped her head. The strain of following his reasoning showed vividly on her face. “Mermaids—but girls do change because they get hurt! Except for, like, me.”

  “Oh, I know that. Tadpole, of course we know things—you and I do, I mean—that we’d prefer the American public didn’t know. And if someone goes around telling them those things, we’d much prefer if they didn’t take him seriously.”