by Sarah Porter
“Teaching everyone to do what you can do . . . Luce, have you thought about what that could mean?”
Catarina’s cool shoulder pressed against Luce’s cheek. It was so much like the way things had been over a year before when Cat was Luce’s queen, and her friend—and when Luce had still believed that Catarina had murdered her father. “It’ll just mean we’ll all stand a chance if the humans ever find us here,” Luce said. She felt sleep brushing up inside her mind again, coaxing her to fall.
“Oh, Luce,” Catarina whispered. Her voice was a low, airy moan. “You’re so trusting, even after everything you’ve gone through. You can’t imagine how much darkness and treachery there is in . . . in almost everyone. If everyone can control the water, if everyone can fight, they won’t need you anymore. And if someone ever manages to surpass you . . .”
Drowsily Luce began to realize what Cat was getting at. “I don’t care if somebody else takes over as general, though,” Luce murmured back. “I just had to do something, so everyone here doesn’t end up . . .” She didn’t need to finish the sentence: like the girls from our tribe. Like dozens of other mermaids we don’t even know. “I’ve ruined so many things, Cat. Yuan . . . I don’t think she’s right that the rest of us are soiled, but I know I am! If I’d only listened . . .”—to Nausicaa, Luce thought—“to you, Cat, I probably could have saved at least some of them. I can’t let that happen again.”
“Even though if someone else takes control, that will be the end of your little prohibition on killing humans, Lucette?” Catarina snipped. Luce was suddenly much more awake; of course Catarina must be right about that. Luce felt the hammock starting to sway and only then realized that her tail was flicking. “Though that isn’t really what worries me. Even for you, Luce, it seems absurdly naïve to insist on defending those creatures now.”
“We . . . The humans need to see that they don’t have to kill us, Cat!” Luce knew what she felt, but her feeling seemed too big and too awkward to fit into words. “I think maybe if we prove to them that we can change . . . then we can persuade them to change too?” That was part of what she wanted to say, Luce thought, but there was more to it.
It was about more than just mermaids and humans and how they just couldn’t seem to stop hating each other. The whole world was in danger; the sea was stained with death.
Catarina’s mouth twisted as if what Luce was saying was too ludicrous even to deserve a response. “Luce, you’ve announced to everyone that you won’t let humans be killed, that you won’t even show anyone how to protect herself if that means humans will be endangered! And you’ve said it just when the evil of those, those . . . Oh, I don’t even want to call them animals! When their vileness is clearer than it’s ever been!” Cat’s voice was rising and her gleaming hair swirled against Luce’s face. Luce glanced around anxiously, sure that other mermaids would overhear. “If the mermaids here don’t need you anymore . . .”
Then I can look for Nausicaa, Luce thought, but she decided not to say that. She couldn’t have explained why she felt so strange all of a sudden: thinned out into tissue, as if her muscles were airy scraps on the verge of shredding. “I . . . don’t think we should worry about that, Cat.”
“Luce!”
Now Luce struggled to keep her voice down. “Cat, it’s so hard already! We have to get everyone trained before the humans find us, but really they could find us anytime! There’s no way to know. Those boats could be here tonight! And there has to be some way to stop the war, but I don’t know how to do it!”
If she started crying now, Luce thought, the tears would take over. They’d break through her skin like watery bullets and she would drown in something deeper than any sea.
“Luce, my Lucette . . . please.” Catarina’s fingers smoothed through Luce’s hair. “Just do one thing for me.”
Luce just stared at her, trying to get her feelings under control again. Cat’s moon gray eyes were very close.
Cat bent until her mouth was almost touching Luce’s ear. “Just don’t teach them everything you know, Lucette. Hold enough back so that you’re always the strongest one. Don’t let yourself be outnumbered by mermaids with the same powers you have! That way—”
“Cat,” Luce said breathlessly. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Luce, would you listen to me for once!”
“I can’t! We need everyone to be as powerful as they possibly can. We need to do something.”
Hiding from the humans was only a temporary measure at best, Luce knew. Wearily she gazed across the dawn-streaked bay. In the distance cars were already beetling steadily along the Bay Bridge, carrying early-morning commuters to their jobs.
Luce realized now why she felt so tired and so close to shattering: there was an answer to the problem, but it kept slipping away just below the surface of her mind and eluding her. She was maddened by frustration and also simply exhausted.
“Luce,” Catarina whispered. “We can’t stop them from destroying us. Not if they find out we’re here. They’ll send thousands of their soldiers, or they’ll drop bombs in the water.”
“I . . . We’ll find a way. I promise we will.”
“Have you ever seen humans fishing with dynamite, Luce? The men in my town did that when I was a child.”
Luce groaned with weariness and threw her hands over her face. She knew Catarina was still staring at her from only inches away.
“Then I’ll have to . . . think in all the ways you refuse to, I suppose,” Catarina whispered. “I’ll have to protect you from anyone here who might not be as loyal to you as I am. And I wonder if I’ll also have to protect them from you.”
* * *
Luce woke sometime in the afternoon. Catarina was still fast asleep, her gleaming copper hair fanning across Luce’s shoulder, soft as the rising breeze. Luce slipped very gradually from the hammock, holding it steady as she dropped into the bay. Not far away, Imani lay asleep in a net made entirely of finely knotted scraps of white plastic decorated with dozens of milk white shells, bits of lace, and broken teacups where pink roses glowed. Her storm blue tail swayed just below the surface, winking with neon shimmer, and that white lace scarf she’d found somewhere was slipping off her short afro. Most of the hammocks seemed to be empty, though, and Luce wondered where everyone had gone.
Here and there among the trunks Luce glimpsed a silhouette. Mermaids hovered quietly, staring across the sunlit water. White mist filmed the bay and the hills were so faded they looked like clouds. At the very edge of their refuge Luce saw a sweep of glossy dark hair then a golden face turned in profile. Luce skimmed over to her. “Hey, Yuan.”
“Oh.” Yuan glanced over at her, tense and sad. She was leaning against a piling, one arm and her tail curled around it. “Hey, Luce.”
All Yuan’s cynicism and prickliness seemed to have melted in the afternoon’s pearly light. Luce almost decided to swim away; it seemed like Yuan might prefer to be alone with her thoughts. Instead she lingered, watching that golden face and wondering what was behind it. “Are you okay?”
Yuan hesitated. “Same as ever.” She didn’t smile. “Okay and not okay. Whenever I stop moving, there’s exactly one thing I can think about. Always.”
Luce thought Yuan must be talking about her father again. The memory of that dreadful story still rattled painfully in Luce’s mind, and she didn’t really feel like hearing more of it. But somehow she waited quietly, and Yuan kept watching her.
“You must too, right?” Yuan asked at last. “When you wind up thrashing around in the water you think, well, that’s the biggest change you’re ever going to go through in your life. You think you’re finished with changes, and it’s all going to be cool from then on. But then when the real change hits, it’s so much bigger than just—than getting stuck with some stupid tail. The real change . . . no one can see it, but after that you’re destroyed on the inside. You don’t deserve to be a mermaid anymore, and you can’t go back to being human either. I keep wishing I cou
ld have just not done it.” Yuan’s words came like quick, despairing jabs.
Luce wasn’t sure what to think. “The real change? You mean . . .”
“I mean when I saved that girl.” Oddly, Yuan lifted her hand and stared into the palm as if it were a mirror. “I didn’t even try to hide it, Luce. Can you believe that? I saved her right in front of my tribe, like ‘hell with all of you’! They were too shocked to try to stop me or anything. But the whole time I was dragging that lousy human through the water I hated what I was doing, I hated that I couldn’t stop myself . . .”
Luce didn’t know what surprised her the most: that it was a girl Yuan had saved or that rescuing someone had wounded her so terribly. “Do you know why you did it?” Luce asked softly. “There must have been—or, well, was there a reason why you chose her?”
“A completely pathetic reason.” Yuan shook her head in impatience. “She looked like my best friend from when I was—from before. I knew it couldn’t be her, like this girl wasn’t even old enough, but I couldn’t stop myself from acting like it was her anyway.”
Luce thought she was about to say the wrong thing, but somehow she’d stopped being able to keep her feelings secret. “Yuan? It was her.”
Yuan smiled ruefully. “I knew you were crazy.”
“No—I mean, that girl you saved, she probably meant as much to someone else as your friend meant to you, right? So it was the same as if you’d saved your friend, only for—for whoever cared about that girl. You kept somebody’s heart from getting broken.” Luce stopped, surprised by the thoughts racing through her mind. That girl was starred by love, just like your friend. The love is the same, so it doesn’t matter who’s feeling it.
Maybe she could have said something that weird to Nausicaa but not to anyone else.
Yuan made a face. “You almost sound like you think humans are the same as us. Like what they feel counts the same way.”
Luce didn’t answer that. Her thoughts were still with the girl Yuan had saved; she could almost see her hair trailing through the water, her face thrown back toward the sky. “Did you see her again? The girl?”
Yuan looked shocked. “Of course not! Making friends with some human—what do you take me for?” Luce didn’t say anything but her expression gave her away, and Yuan’s cheeks flushed. “Uh, sorry. If you did—after everything I’ve done in my life, I guess I couldn’t blame you for . . .”
Luce’s face was blazing and she looked away. “Can we please not talk about it?”
Yuan hesitated. “You said it was a boy, right? The human you broke the timahk for?”
“It was a boy,” Luce agreed stiffly. “Yuan, I actually—I really need to talk to you about something else, okay? I wanted to ask you a favor.”
From the corner of her eye Luce couldn’t help noticing how fixed and curious Yuan’s gaze looked. She wasn’t going to stop wondering about Luce’s past. “What favor?”
“Well—you said there are a lot of other mermaids. Living around the bay? It’s not just the girls here, right?” Luce made herself look back at Yuan, though hot veils of shame still seemed to press on her face.
“Tons. A few actually came out last night when you were singing, didn’t you notice? And somebody was telling me that a whole new tribe just turned up this morning, like somebody came and warned them but they didn’t know where else to go.”
Luce felt a surge of gratitude at the thought that they’d been warned by J’aime, still struggling to save as many mermaids as she could. “I wanted to ask if you would go talk to them. To the other mermaids around the bay.” Luce hesitated; it seemed so presumptuous. “Ask them if they’d like to join us for training tonight.”
“You mean—if they’ll promise not to kill humans in exchange for learning what you can do?” Yuan thought about it. “You even want me to ask the crazy ones?”
“If . . . if that’s okay with you. I mean . . .” Luce tried to shake off her embarrassment. “I think we’re going to need as many mermaids working with us as we can get. If we’re really going to stop the humans.”
“So you’re not just talking about teaching everyone? You’re talking about . . .”
“About asking them to really join us. Yeah.” Luce considered the question then straightened herself. “Please tell them that General Luce is inviting them to join the Twice Lost Army.”
13 Kathleen
“Hi,” Andrew Korchak said as the door swung open. He’d arrived at a small, white, extremely pretty house, its yard a jumble of vivid flowers and its windows set with panes of stained glass. He couldn’t help feeling out of place there. “Um, I’m Andrew. We talked on the phone?”
“Of course. Very glad to meet you.” The woman stepping back to welcome him in was also small and pretty, with light brown hair in a ponytail and soft blue eyes. “I’m Kathleen, and this is Nick.”
Andrew shook hands with her and then, a bit less comfortably, with her angular, balding husband. “I really appreciate you both agreeing to see me about this. I don’t mean to impose.”
“Of course not! After what you told us, we wanted this meeting just as—well, I’m sure not as much as you, I don’t mean—but it feels very important to us also.” Kathleen was leading the way down a broad hall lined in books, with small twisty tables displaying collections of seashells. Andrew couldn’t help thinking how the sight of all those books would thrill Luce if she were here with him. “You can imagine, we’ve received some pretty peculiar messages since we posted that video, but yours— I knew right away that it was something different.”
“I know I must sound like a nut,” Andrew said defensively. “I’ve got the photos right here. I’m sure you want to see for yourselves—that this is for real.” They walked into a kitchen where, to Andrew’s surprise, a large wooden table was set with plates and glasses, a salad and cheese and fruit. The warm, yeasty smell of fresh bread mixed with the scent of roses gusting through the window. Heavy lilacs swooped from a vase. “Oh—I didn’t mean for you to go to all this trouble! I’m . . .” He wasn’t sure what to say. He’d been hitchhiking for days, not eating much, and it was all he could do not to lunge for the food. “I’m real grateful.”
“Our pleasure,” Nick said behind him; a little primly, maybe, but it didn’t sound hostile. “But I would like to see those photos, Andrew, when you get a chance.”
He was already pulling the pictures out of an inside pocket, spreading them out to show his hosts. What would he do if they decided it was all a lie? “This one—you maybe can’t see so good that it’s the same girl. She was only three there, with her mother. But this one right here . . .”
Kathleen had turned greenish white and she teetered a little. Nick moved to put his arm around her. “Oh, Nick. Oh my God, it’s her!” The words came out in a long moan.
“It certainly—if that’s not the same face we saw, there’s an impressive resemblance at least.”
“It’s her. It’s even the same expression that she had when she looked at me! You could see in her eyes that she’d been through things that, that no one should ever have to . . .” Kathleen’s voice was breaking, and she bit her lower lip.
“It’s my Lucette. It’s the same girl who you all filmed out in the water. And—there’s some terrible things happening, and—I didn’t do enough to protect her before, but now . . .” He broke off when his view of the sunny room started rippling in the tears filling his eyes. He was longing to tell Kathleen everything, but he didn’t feel as confident about trusting her husband.
Wordlessly Nick pulled out a chair for him, and he slumped down. Kathleen dealt with her emotion by swinging into energetic movement, bustling to fetch a bread knife and ice and a pitcher of lemonade. Andrew watched her dart around the kitchen in her jeans and pale blouse, her ponytail lashing. This was how he should have brought Luce up, in a house just like this one. He pictured Alyssa’s dark hair tumbling as she bent to lift bread from the oven.
“So,” Nick said, and Andrew jumped at
the sound of his voice, “assuming you’re both correct about the identity of the mermaid we saw—and I have to say I think that’s a huge assumption for all of us to make—there’s still a question I’d like answered, if you could.”
Kathleen smacked the cutting board down hard enough to make the silverware rattle, and thumped the bread on top. “Would you please not condescend to me! It’s not an assumption!”
Nick smiled over at him in a way Andrew found vaguely irritating, as if he’d be sure to agree that Kathleen was just one of those high-strung women who have to be humored. “All right, darling. Let’s say that the mermaid’s identity is an irrefutable fact: she is Lucette, and the earth orbits the sun. It still leaves us with one unavoidable question, doesn’t it?” Kathleen was slicing bread more vigorously than seemed strictly necessary. “Why was it a mermaid we saw and not a teenage girl in a swimsuit? Do you think that’s something you could resolve for us, Andrew?”
“When you wouldn’t even admit that we’d seen a mermaid at all until we watched our own video ten times, I don’t think you get to lay claim to some kind of higher rationality!” Kathleen fumed. She slathered butter on a hunk of bread and flung it on Andrew’s plate in a way that made him grin uncontrollably.
“It’s okay,” Andrew said softly. “I can answer. But it just . . . it means getting into kind of a long story, and a lot of it . . . it might be hard for me to say. Or for you to believe, really. I’ll do my best, though.”
“Please,” Kathleen said. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her. Whatever you can tell me, it would mean so much! Right now all we know is what Chrissy told us.”
“Chrissy?”
“The neighbor’s little girl. You can see her in the video too. She said she talked to the mermaid under the dock and brought her some food, and that the mermaid was very nice and told Chrissy not to trust magic things, and that she’d been bit by a squid.”