by Sarah Porter
“You broke my heart.” Close as she was, Dorian had to strain to hear the words. “You said my problems weren’t real. And then I found my old tribe massacred.” Again there was that quick flash of her eyes. “What’s not real about that?”
Dorian sighed. He deserved this. “I was being an asshole because I was trying to make you mad enough to kill me! God, Luce, you’ve been leading a war. I’m not so dumb that I think that’s not real!” He was caressing her cool, wet face with both hands now. “Look, I know I don’t deserve for you to forgive me. I’m asking you to anyway.”
“Forgive you,” Luce murmured. She sounded doubtful.
The chill under Dorian’s fingers was suddenly interrupted by a tiny splash of warmth: a tear against his thumb. “Please,” Dorian said. He heard his voice crack.
She leaned her cheek against his palm and took a long deep breath. What was she thinking?
“Do you forgive me?” Luce asked at last. Dorian didn’t know if he was more amazed by the question or by the fierce sweetness of the gaze that she suddenly fixed on him. “Even for helping to kill your family? Because I don’t think you ever really did before. No matter what you said. And I understand if you can’t, but if you can’t there’s no point in—” She broke off with a moan.
“That wasn’t the only thing I couldn’t forgive you for.” Somehow saying that sent a shock through him. Truth rose in his mind like bubbles and then popped horribly.
“How do you mean?” Luce’s voice was still very soft.
“I couldn’t forgive you for always getting to be the hero when I wasn’t one.”
They were looking at each other so intensely that the air seemed to ring. “So go work on being a hero,” Luce said. “If that’s what you want.”
“I did.” For the first time since he’d found her again he felt himself grinning at her. “I mean, not like you, Luce. But I really tried my best. That’s all I’ve been doing for weeks now. And I know everything we did at least helped.”
“The Twice Lost Humans, you mean?”
Dorian felt the thrill of seeing her responding smile. Possibly, just possibly, there was still hope for the two of them. “Yeah.”
“I was so mad about that. You using our name.”
“I know,” Dorian whispered. And before he was entirely conscious of what he was doing he’d leaned forward and kissed her.
The kiss was a bright banner unfurled and beating in the wind. It was an expanse of water suddenly waking with a surge of blinding ripples. It was his heart made manifest, and it felt like a triumph that comes unexpectedly when all hope has long been lost. He heard her gasp and pulled her closer still.
Then Dorian kicked his legs out of the kayak and landed on his side in the shallow water, his arms binding her fervently. For a time they tangled sweetly, Luce’s fins flicking and curling around his ankles. General or not, Dorian thought, Luce was still his. They still belonged together, and he told her that with a slow whirl of deepening kisses.
Then she pulled away—not far enough to leave his embrace but enough to break the kiss and rest her forehead on his chest. He gazed down at her, his hands still glossing gently around her faintly shining shoulders, her back, the nape of her neck. “Luce . . .”
“Everything’s changed,” Luce murmured. “Everything is different now! Dorian, I can’t even explain—”
Dorian felt his heart plummeting. The world became nothing but ice, falling stones, blackness. She couldn’t explain why she could never love him again? Was that what she meant? “What can’t you explain?” His voice rasped out of him.
“I mean . . . if everything is different now . . . why hasn’t this changed, too?” Luce looked up at him, her eyes shining and vulnerable, spangled with hints of desperation. “Why do I still love who I’ve always loved?”
“You mean me,” Dorian said proudly. He brushed his cheek against hers.
“You and my dad. Dorian, do you know—have you heard anything about him since—”
“Oh.” He was ashamed now that he’d been so consumed by his own longing that he’d forgotten to tell her the news immediately. “I saw your dad this morning. He had breakfast with me and Ben Ellison. Luce, he’s way, way better. He still seemed—kind of out of it, like, spacy?—but he’s not all insane and catatonic anymore. You did an amazing job. Ben’s so impressed that he can’t really talk about anything else. I don’t know why. I mean, I told him you could do that, but I guess he didn’t believe—”
“What did my dad say?”
Dorian hesitated. He wanted to have this conversation with her, but later, once her responsibilities to the Twice Lost were completely out of the way. But Luce’s look was so worried and tender that he couldn’t hold anything back from her. “We talked about you.” He paused again. “About what you’re going to do after the war is really over, like once there’s a treaty and everything. Your dad’s already thinking about—you know, where he should live, and what would be best for you.”
Dorian was still hedging, but Luce was quick enough to guess what he was really getting at. “You mean, you talked about turning me human again?”
Now he was afraid of bringing up all the fights they’d had back in Alaska: fights about exactly this question. “Well, maybe. It is—an option now. If you want. But maybe you’d rather keep being a mermaid general than go to high school or whatever.”
Luce leaned her forehead on his chest again. She held him tight, and, in the way of mermaids, there was a long, long silence between each of her breaths. He could feel the intensity of her thought as if it were a physical thing turning against his skin. “I can’t be a general anymore,” Luce whispered at last. “As soon as there’s a treaty, I’m going to . . . let go of all that.”
He didn’t want her to see how happy that made him. It might seem like he was gloating. “You can’t be general? Luce, why—”
“I let my friends die, Dorian. I’m—broken inside. The Twice Lost General should be—somebody whole.”
Why did those words send a spasm of cold panic through his heart? “You mean when those mermaids got netted? Luce, you didn’t have any choice!”
Luce’s gaze turned skeptical and even harsh. “Of course I had a choice.”
“You mean to try and save them by wiping out San Francisco?” Dorian’s laugh sounded rough, almost hysterical, even to him. “That isn’t much of a—”
“I didn’t say I had a good choice. And I’d do the same thing again. But Dorian, you . . .”
That distant look was back in her eyes. He could almost see ghosts slipping through her irises like trails of mist. “Whoever was in that helicopter wouldn’t have let the mermaids go, Luce. No matter what you did. Right? They were obviously lying to you. So you shouldn’t keep blaming yourself!”
She was looking away, watching the streamers of light that raveled and split on the bay. Then she smiled. It would have been better, Dorian thought, if she hadn’t smiled. “And do you think that’s what Catarina was telling herself? While she was dying?”
There was nothing he could say to that, really. He was almost relieved when Yuan came toward them, splashing much more than she needed to, to tell Luce that they’d received a message. President Leopold would be arriving the next day.
Dorian clambered back into the kayak he’d rented. Water streamed from his sopped clothes and puddled at his ankles. He tried not to show how upset he was that Luce was suddenly too distracted to even kiss him goodbye.
She had work to do.
∗ ∗ ∗
Luce rushed off. She had one last job for Seb. She found him in his usual spot and talked with him for a few minutes before heading on to the bridge. She’d slept through two of her shifts since no one wanted to wake her, and even after her long sleep she still felt peculiarly weary. The memory of Dorian’s kisses and of everything he’d said to her lingered in her thoughts, softly smoldering.
The Golden Gate Bridge swanned through the fading grandeur of a deeply golden afternoon.
Below it the water-wall was noticeably lower than it had been before. Of course now that the mermaids weren’t afraid of being slaughtered anymore they were singing more softly and in some cases not bothering to show up for their shifts. The pervasive sense of peace had washed away the urgency of the war. It wasn’t really time to lower the wave yet, not until they had a treaty signed. But Luce couldn’t completely blame her followers for relaxing their guard.
There was Yuan, leaning against the shore and talking to Gigi again. Luce was surprised and a bit embarrassed to notice that they were holding hands. Giddy mermaids pirouetted in the water, no longer shy at all in front of the human crowds. And there was the usual press of people with their signs, their blown-up photographs of lost daughters. Luce skimmed the images out of habit, not expecting to recognize anyone—and did a double take at the image of a girl with wavy ruby-dyed hair.
JOHANNE ARIANNA SPIELDOCH.
Luce swam a little closer. She knew the pale, anxious face that glowed between those red curls. The woman holding the sign was chubby and worn-looking, wearing an eccentric flowing robelike dress in an odd shade of murky purple and several huge necklaces that reminded Luce of the strands of clattering toys that Jo always wore. In fact, that woman’s aged and worried face was a lot like Jo’s if all Jo’s brilliant beauty and youth had been stripped from her.
Beside Luce, a few mermaids had stopped to see what she was staring at. Luce glanced around and saw that one of them was Cala, now just as wide-eyed as Luce was herself. “Cala! Do you know where Jo is?”
“She’s on shift,” Cala whispered. “I guess she didn’t notice? Or maybe—she might not want to see that woman. Maybe she’s trying to avoid her.”
Luce remembered Yuan’s explanation of why Jo had been kicked out of her former tribe: Jo was caught trying to call her mom with a cell phone she found on the beach.
“I think that’s Jo’s mom,” Luce said breathlessly. It occurred to her how poignant it would be for all the other humans onshore to see someone find a missing daughter when their own children were still lost, but she couldn’t help that. “Please go tell her.”
A few moments later Luce heard Jo squealing and watched her streak like an arrow toward the shore. The police had stopped keeping people out of the water. The woman in the purple robes was squealing too as she stooped and tripped her way over the rocks. “Mom!” Jo was shouting. “Mom!”
Luce couldn’t help crying as she watched them clutch at each other. Jo didn’t seem like a mermaid at all anymore, not with her mother’s arms around her. She could hear them laughing and sobbing, and now and then she caught a broken fragment of conversation. “But I thought you’d be fine with Aunt Janet!”
“Mom, Aunt Janet is a total psycho! You wouldn’t believe all the things she did! I thought you didn’t love me anymore. I thought—”
“No, baby, no. Never. I was confused, and—I couldn’t function very well for a long time. I had to stay—in the hospital. But I always loved you! Losing you was the worst thing that ever . . .”
Luce turned away, and found herself face to face with Imani. “I should be happy for her,” Imani whispered, watching the reunion onshore. “I want to be happy for her. But I can’t.”
Maybe seeing Luce with her father had been just as painful for Imani. Luce flinched and looked down, obscurely ashamed.
Assuming Dorian’s information was correct, then very soon mermaids all over the world would start leaving the water. It was strange to think of the mermaids who’d sung beside her standing up on human legs again, tugging on borrowed clothes, and walking off into unpredictable new lives—lives in which they’d grow old and maybe even have children of their own. Jo would go; even Yuan had said she’d go. But there were others who would choose to remain in the sea forever. Luce didn’t have to ask to know that Imani would stay a mermaid for as long as she lived.
Imani smiled wistfully, but a hint of bitterness still showed in her eyes. She nodded toward Jo. “Have you made a decision yet, Luce?”
Luce was startled. Imani seemed to have read her thoughts. “You mean—”
“I mean about leaving the sea. If it’s true that we can. You have—a lot more waiting for you on land—than some of us do. Your dad and your boyfriend. No one could blame you for choosing that.”
Luce searched her heart for an answer to Imani’s question. All she found was painful uncertainty, a bewilderment of fierce currents that pulled her this way and that. “I don’t know.”
For a long moment Imani looked at her with an expression of soft disbelief. “I think I know what you’ll decide. And I’ll really miss you.” Luce opened her mouth to object, but something dark and knowing in Imani’s gaze stopped her. “You don’t have to worry about me, Luce,” Imani added in a half-whisper. “I’ve found my calling.”
39
Negotiations
Luce waited by the shore, surrounded by a ring of all the Twice Lost lieutenants. The parking lot had been entirely cleared except for several dozen men and a few women in stiff black suits: the president’s security detail. Even the mermaids were wearing a kind of uniform, since one of their human friends who owned a clothing store had donated twenty-five identical burgundy velour tank tops for the occasion. “But you’re sure they know to let Seb and Dr. Perle through?” Luce asked anxiously. “Seb said she’d agreed to come.”
“Stop stressing, general-girl,” Yuan said sardonically. “Working out a treaty with the humans? That’s so insane it ought to come naturally to you.”
They could see the advance of black-lacquered cars on the road above. “We don’t know enough to know what we’re doing, though,” Luce murmured. “That’s why we need Dr. Perle. She seriously knows everything about the oceans, like about what will help . . .”
Yuan was grinning rakishly. “It’s funny to hear you going so fangirl.”
Luce bristled a little. “Her book was amazing. Dorian got it from the library, and I read it back in Alaska. She’s been doing deep-sea exploration for years, like going way deeper than we can! And—”
The limousines were turning into the parking lot, lining up one by one. Their windows sleeked across the pale day like wet black brushes; Luce half expected them to leave strokes of darkness on the air. She realized that she had no idea what the current U.S. president looked like. So many people were stepping formally from those cars; he could be almost anyone.
No: she knew him by the way people stood around him, their posture slightly curved and deferential. She knew him by the assertive way he met her eyes, just visible above the line of rocks. For all his coifed hair and severe tailoring he still looked rough and craggy to her, his face composed of complicated peaks and deep folds under his salt and pepper hair. His expression took on an aggressive archness as he watched Luce. Even from a distance, she realized, she made him uncomfortable.
Then, to Luce’s astonishment, a chauffeur opened yet another gleaming door, and Seb of the Ghosts stepped out looking extremely sheepish but also remarkably well-dressed and groomed. He offered his arm to an older woman who was emerging after him. She had neat, fluffy gray hair to her shoulders and wore a trim gray pantsuit with a bright silk scarf, and her expression was so wise and gracious that Luce immediately wanted to be like her someday.
She just had to be Audrey Perle. Luce was watching her so intently that she didn’t notice the president and his delegation approaching until they were ten feet away. “General Lucette Gray Korchak?”
Luce looked up. “Yes, Mr. President?”
“Just President of the Humans. Isn’t that what you call me? Even though you girls are living in U.S. territory. International waters don’t kick in until you’re a good few miles out that way.” He gestured toward the horizon. He sounded like he was kidding, or at least trying to make her think he was kidding. The snide, offended undercurrent in his voice was obvious enough.
A Secret Service man rushed over with a chair. President Leopold waved it away and sat down on the rock, leaning
toward Luce in a way she didn’t entirely like. There was a slightly misted look to his eyes, as if they were windows hit by a hot breath of enchantment.
Luce considered what he’d said anyway, tilting her head as she thought it over. “Did you even believe mermaids existed? Until a few months ago?”
“Of course not. I’m not about to believe in fairies or unicorns either.”
“Well, if you didn’t believe we existed, then how could you represent us?”
President Leopold nodded at that. “Touché, general. Touché. But if you all get your legs back and start trotting off to school you’ll be citizens again, won’t you, with the same rights and—pay attention now—responsibilities as everybody else?”
That made her start a little in spite of herself. “Is it true that we can change back now?”
“The Pentagon used to have a tank full of those baby mermaids you all call ‘larvae,’ general. And now they’re telling me we’ve got a bunch of babbling human infants to tend to instead. They still look a little greener and shinier than your average babies, so I hear, but apart from that they’re doing fine. So, yes, indeed you can. We’ll send down some doctors to help you all out with that soon.”
Luce wondered nauseously what the Pentagon had been doing with a collection of larval mermaids, but she couldn’t wonder for long. Leopold was still speaking.
“Now, I’m told you have a couple of—what should we call them?—interspecies advisors who aren’t exactly batting for their own kind today.” He gestured with his head toward Seb and Audrey Perle, who were now standing much closer with two of the suited men flanking them.