by Sarah Porter
Suddenly Rafe was there, listening and smiling to himself. Luce hadn’t noticed him approaching, but now he reached to lift Catarina to her feet. “In a few years,” Rafe said softly, “we might change that.”
Catarina paused to say hello to a few of the other mermaids, Rafe close beside her. Then she looked around: mermaids and humans were talking and laughing together under the hazy rust-colored glow of scattered streetlamps. Yuan slept in a lawn chair with her head on Gigi’s shoulder, her slippered feet sticking out from under a blanket, while well-wishers stopped by with gifts of clothes and books to help Yuan make the transition to her new life. Catarina glanced back at Luce. “It’s all your song, Luce. It’s your song come to life!”
“How do you mean?” Luce asked. Catarina looked magnificent and brave standing there, and also somehow much more grown-up than she’d ever seemed before. Her hair no longer shone with its own internal luminance, but it still flowed like fire in the lamplight.
“Your song always promised forgiveness, Luce, don’t you remember? It promised forgiveness and reconciliation so sweet that people would joyfully die for it.” Catarina smiled wryly at her. “Who would have thought that any mermaid’s promise would be so truly fulfilled?”
∗ ∗ ∗
The scene at the shore had turned into a party. Mermaids were singing to the water, not to raise a blockade but to create spiraling fountains, wobbling parapets, and floating liquid stars while the humans onshore laughed and applauded. The mermaids had turned into such showoffs, Luce thought, but the idea made her smile.
She hadn’t seen Nausicaa or Dorian all day. It wouldn’t be surprising if Nausicaa had simply gone exploring, but, especially now that she’d seen Catarina so deeply in love, Dorian’s absence triggered a low, painful vibration in her chest. Maybe he’d realized he didn’t want her back after all.
Luce skimmed out into the bay, floating on her back and watching the full yellow moon. Voices bubbled over the water. She swept slowly around the curve of the coast, under the bridge’s red complex spine, and then rolled over and over, stretching and feeling water curling like plumes around her scales. It still felt strange to see the surface here so flat and placid now that the water-wall was gone. Only a handful of people were perching on the bunkers. It still wasn’t exactly private, but Luce’s head felt clearer.
“I’m so worried about her,” a voice said quietly, and Luce’s heart stilled. “You know how Luce can sing to heal people? I feel like we need to find someone who can do that for her now. She’s just—she seems pretty messed up.”
“Luce is sorely hurt,” Nausicaa agreed, “but perhaps these are not the kind of wounds that should be healed, Dorian. Perhaps what wounds her now is wisdom.”
Much as Luce loved them both she wished they wouldn’t talk about her. She wished everyone would just stop talking about her once and for all. From the corner of her eye she spotted them now, huddled close together. Dorian was perched on a boulder, the soles of his high-tops just grazing the bay while Nausicaa’s feral black hair gusted across his knee.
“I don’t think that’s wisdom. I think it’s like posttraumatic shit from the war. She’s going to need serious therapy or something. I mean, it’s going to be hard enough for her to deal with going back to school, especially since everybody’s going to recognize her!” Dorian’s voice was sharp and plangent. It was strange to discover that he’d given so much thought to what her human life would be like. Luce hadn’t considered how she’d feel in a human school at all. “She’s always going to be—kind of greenish, right, even once she’s human? And there’s that triangle torn out of her ear. I guess she could grow out her hair and hide it that way, but . . .”
There was an awkward pause. “Truthfully I hope that Luce will make a different choice than this you envision, Dorian. She doesn’t belong to the land now.”
“Yes, she does. She can’t just stay in the sea forever! That’s not like a real life at all.”
The currents furled and licked at Luce’s fins and the moonlight sank into her eyes. What’s not real about this, again?
“I promise you that I will not try to influence Luce to remain in the sea with me, however. And I hope that you will show the same forbearance, Dorian. Luce must decide for herself.”
“I’m not showing any forbearance. Me and her dad both need her! She’ll be way happier with us, and she’ll be safer, and—there has to be some way to get her help. Somebody will help her dad pay for a great therapist. Luce has all these fans now. Some of them must be rich.”
Luce had heard enough. It was probably too late to find her father tonight, and somehow he was the only one whose opinion Luce cared about. She swam back to the mermaids near the shore: there were Cala, Opal, Graciela, all engaged in a kind of mad ballet where they leaped in synchrony with jets of rising water. It was a shame to interrupt them, Luce thought, but it was the last time she would. “Hey! Can I ask you guys a favor?”
“A favor? You mean it’s not an order?” Opal laughed. Her ivory hair fanned like an explosion as she deliberately crashed down right in front of Luce, dousing her with an immense pale cascade.
“It’s not an order,” Luce said seriously as water sheeted off her cheeks. “That’s all finished. But I do want to get everyone together for one last meeting back at the camp.” She hesitated. “I’m going to be leaving soon.”
“You mean you’re going human?” Opal demanded, wide-eyed. She looked dismayed but she didn’t wait for an answer. “Okay. We’ll go find everybody.”
Luce tried to smile reassuringly. “Can you please make sure Imani’s there? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“That’s because she’s busy practicing singing to heal people the way you can. She’s like completely obsessed, and she’s already working with some of the really crazy mermaids? I know where to find her, though.” Opal paused. “Just because the war’s over doesn’t mean we don’t still need a general, Luce. What if something goes wrong? Or you could just be queen instead. You don’t have to leave us.”
Luce found that she was too choked to answer. After a moment Opal nodded and swam away.
∗ ∗ ∗
Half an hour later Luce made her way past the creek and under the huge glowering factory. The planks at its base were tar-slick and dripping. It was dirty and decrepit, and Luce’s heart wrenched at the thought of leaving it behind.
The dimness among the pilings was packed with mermaids, more than she’d ever seen there. Faces like veiled moons bobbed in the water. The hammocks sagged under the weight of coiled tails, all flicking their soft colors through the dark. The chatter fell silent when Luce appeared. “Opal says you’re leaving,” someone called. “Just like Jo and Yuan.”
“I am leaving,” Luce confirmed. Now that she wasn’t general anymore her shyness came rushing back, and she struggled to suppress it. So many faces were turned toward her. “I can’t be a general anymore. And . . . I’ll miss you all so much. You’ve been amazing. You’ve all been so brave, and that’s why we won. But the main thing is that you need a new general now. That’s what I wanted to say.”
Luce glanced around to make sure. There was the new Twice Lost General, gazing down at the water. But what if she refused to take on the role? She was always so gentle, but Luce had caught glimpses of passion and ambition in her as well.
“Who?” Eileen asked, a bit curtly. “How are we supposed to decide that?”
“We’re mermaids,” Luce pointed out. Suddenly she found herself smiling. “That means we’ll know the one who’s meant to be general by her song. And . . . anyone who’s been listening to her knows who that has to be! Please give your allegiance to her now.”
There was a wild murmuring. The Twice Lost General looked up, somehow fervent and embarrassed at the same time—and, Luce suddenly saw, afraid that the name spoken next wouldn’t be hers. The blue gleam of her heart-shaped face was like neon reflecting on a rainy street.
Luce took a deep breath. She felt proud a
nd sad and exhilarated and wonderfully free. “General Imani . . . you’ll lead the Twice Lost?”
Imani was smiling so vibrantly that Luce ached to see it.
“Oh, you just know I will, Luce.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Luce couldn’t sleep. Instead she rocked in Catarina’s old hammock, watching the far dark hills. The space under the factory was low enough that she couldn’t see much of the bay, only a stripe of moon-banded water crossed occasionally by the container ships that were once again making their way out to sea—but she could feel the water stretching all the way to the horizon. Her thoughts pulsed with the breakers far beyond the bridge, crested with slow-rising whales. And if she concentrated she could feel something of the land as well: the college girls in spangled dresses tilting on their platform shoes as they emerged drunk from nightclubs, the candy wrappers gusting through the streets, Dorian asleep in a hotel bed. The night was just as beautiful on land as it was on the sea. A few nights from now she could be curled with Dorian on a sofa, watching a movie and talking about their plans for the future. She thought of his warm smell, his warmer hands stroking her cheeks.
Nausicaa hadn’t come home, and Luce wasn’t surprised. Her friend was staying away on purpose. Giving Luce room to decide on her own, but also unwilling to face the pain of losing her to the human world.
As dawn sent a spire of smoky amethyst light across the bay Luce felt something else: the certainty that her father was wide awake too. That he was sitting under those bunkers with a cup of takeout coffee in his hand, waiting patiently for her to appear. Luce slipped silently from her hammock and gazed at the sleeping mermaids around her, wishing them goodbye with her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later she found him just where she’d known he would be. It was the same spot where Ben Ellison had brought him when he was mad and vacant. He smiled calmly as he saw her head break through the surface. “Hi there, baby doll. Don’t know why, but I figured you’d be showing up soon.”
Apart from the two of them the shore was deserted. Without the continual allurement of mermaid song thrumming from under the bridge the crowds had finally gone home to sleep. “It’s a good time,” Luce whispered. “It’s finally quiet. How are you feeling now?”
She could see for herself that he was more or less fine, though. He brushed the question away. “We’ve gotta talk.” His cinnamon eyes had a troubled look.
“I know,” Luce said. “I saw you yesterday, and I know you saw me. But I guess . . .”
“I wasn’t ready to talk to you yet. I had to think it over. About this business of you girls turning human again. You know Dorian’s got it all figured out, right? He’s already calling people he knows from the Twice Lost Humans, trying to get me a job in Chicago. He’s a couple days late getting back to school, and he’s planning on you enrolling with him. I’ve been telling him to slow down.”
Luce felt a cold fluttering as she pulled in a long breath. “I’m ready to do it. He can go ahead and plan. I mean, as long as you don’t mind moving to Chicago.”
“Why?” His eyes were hard. It wasn’t like him, Luce thought. He almost seemed angry. “Why are you choosing this?”
Luce couldn’t lie to him. “I think . . . you might need me to take care of you. That’s a big enough reason.”
He stood up abruptly, his hands squeezing into fists, and twisted a little while he stared off at the hills. He was definitely angry, but Luce wasn’t sure why. The dawn had brightened now and thousands of gleaming copper shards jangled on the water. Then he gave a drawn-out sigh and bent over the rocks to ruffle her hair. “That’s just what I was afraid you were thinking, baby doll. Sweet of you and everything. But I don’t accept.”
“But—”
“I am the parent here, Lucette. It’s one thing if you wanna be human again because you’re in love with Dorian. He’s a good kid, smart enough for you, loves you like crazy. Okay, I’d be down with that. And it’s fine if you need me to take care of you. That’s what I’ve been hoping for, that I could finally do right by you and help you grow up. Then I started realizing: maybe you’ve already done that. I’ve been out of the picture too long, and you’ve gone and grown up without me.”
“You couldn’t help being out of the picture! Dad, so much happened . . .” Luce had never been able to stand hearing her father blame himself for anything. She still couldn’t.
“Got nothing to do with it, if I could help it or not. Lucette, I might not have been much of a dad, but I’m enough of one to want you to go beyond me. Go further in yourself than I ever could. You know there are people saying it’s got to be a lie about you being my daughter, because there’s no way the great mermaid hero could’ve come from a schmuck like me? How do you think that makes me feel?”
The idea of anyone saying that enraged her. “Horrible.”
“No.” His hand was still tangled in her short hair, but his gaze was confrontational and fierce. “It makes me feel so proud I want to scream.”
Luce felt as if her eyes were melting. Tears flooded her vision, crystalline and wild. “Maybe I could still make you proud. If I was human.”
“I don’t doubt you would, doll.” His voice was softening and he brushed the tears from her lashes with his thumbs. “Don’t do it for me, is all I’m saying. If you give up what you really want because of me it’ll hurt me worse than I can stand. But if you don’t know what you want, then, you know, there’s no reason why you have to decide yet.”
From here Luce could see the open ocean. Not too far in the distance there was a small patch where the light vaporized, blending into eternity; where the waves pitched to a rhythm that was somehow beyond the here and now.
He followed her gaze. “That’s kind of what I thought.” He paused. “So Dorian’s too late?”
“I still love him,” Luce said. “I love him a lot.” She was searching her own heart, trying to understand what she was feeling. “But it’s like he thinks turning me human again would fix me.”
She was surprised to hear the tone of complaint in her voice. Now she was the one who sounded angry.
“I can see that,” Andrew Korchak agreed. He grinned. “He does kind of talk that way. And why fix it when it ain’t broken?”
“Maybe I am broken, but it’s not because I’m a mermaid. It’s because of things I’ve done, and I can’t take them back by just having a different body!”
“You’ve done a lot more good than harm, Lucette.” He was still stroking her hair. “But I guess I can understand you feeling that way. I mean, God knows I’ve been there!” He nodded toward the deepening ocean. “You feel like this is where you belong now, don’t you?”
It’s not that I belong in the sea. I am the sea. My voice is the sea.
“What about Seb?” Luce asked. “Seb Grassley. Our ambassador.”
“Ben Ellison’s starting up a program for ex-mermaids. You know I got poor old Ben fired from the FBI, mouthing off the way I did? Anyhow Ben said he was giving Seb a job. Offered me one, too, but somehow—I don’t think that’s what I’m going to be doing next. Don’t you worry, though. We’ll be okay.” He paused. “I left Dorian a note to get down here as soon as he wakes up. I figured, one way or the other, you’d have something to say to him.”
“I do.”
Luce sang to her father for the last time, smoothing the remaining traces of damage from his mind. As it turned out they didn’t have to wait too long. The sun was just gleaming above the distant hills when they heard the rhythm of running steps and Dorian came darting through the bunker at her father’s back. Luce fell silent and stared at him, suddenly pierced by doubt. His bronze-blond hair flurried in the breeze, and his ochre eyes showed such passionate intelligence that Luce’s heart skipped to see it. She still adored him, in fact. More than she’d realized.
Andrew Korchak got up and climbed a nearby staircase, giving them some privacy. He stood half-concealed by the roof’s edge, facing the sea. He seemed to be watching the same patch of light Luce h
ad noticed earlier: a place where the waves seemed to beat beyond the confines of time, where the light glimmered all the way to always. The forever world.
“Luce!”
No matter how confidently Dorian had been explaining his plans to her father, Luce could see that he was actually worried. He knew the conversation might not go his way. “Hi, Dorian.” She caught his hand as he scrambled onto the rock above her. “I . . .” She didn’t know if she could say it; she didn’t even know if she would say it. “I wanted to say goodbye.”
“Don’t, Luce. Don’t say that.” Dorian paused. “You know how much I love you now, right? I’ve done everything I can think of to get you to forgive me. I really—”
“That’s not why. I forgive you and I . . . I love you more now than I ever have. I wish everything was different. But you need a human girlfriend.”
“You can be now. Luce, we can be together forever. We should.”
He was crying, and Luce knew that she would give anything to comfort him. Anything except for who she truly was.
“Dorian . . . it doesn’t matter if I could be human again. I’m not. I mean, that’s not who I really am.”
She glanced over her shoulder again. A figure emerged from that wavering blot of light. Luce knew it was Nausicaa. She turned to wave at someone Luce couldn’t see and then dived.
“What am I supposed to do, Luce?”
“Kiss me. Then get up and walk away.” She smiled at him through the tears that blurred her vision. “And tell Zoe I said hi.”
Dorian was in the water with her now. Tears merged where their cheeks touched, and Luce kissed his face and mouth again and again. How soft his lips were, how sweet each light touch of his hands . . .
Then she pulled away. She had to, now, before her heart shattered completely. “Go on, Dorian,” Luce whispered. “Go be a hero. I’ll remember.”
The gold of his eyes was so charged with grief and longing and exultation that it looked almost inhuman as he gazed at her for the last time. Then, like the hero Luce knew he was, he accepted it. He climbed over the rocks and half smiled at her before he straightened himself.