by Sarah Porter
***
Over dinner Lindy asked him at least five times if he was enjoying his macaroni and cheese mixed with hamburger meat; every time she asked in precisely the same simpering, anxious voice. Pink scalp winked through the wisps of her fuzzy, apricot blond hair, and her pale eyes looked permanently frightened inside their red rims. She made Dorian think of a sick, senile rabbit.
“It's delicious,” Dorian replied automatically. He kept looking over at the window, where early twilight glowed between red checkered curtains. The kitchen was prim, secure, and always extremely clean. A painted wooden bear in a chef's hat and apron stood on the counter, forever frying a wooden egg. A game show host jabbered on the TV about how fabulous that evening's prizes were. How long would it be before he could get away? “I'm going to go study at a friend's house. Okay?”
Lindy and Elias both nodded so cautiously that it was like he'd just confessed to suicidal impulses and they were terrified of saying something that would push him over the edge. Not that suicide seemed like the worst idea ever sometimes.
Dorian scraped and washed his plate. It was important to keep going through the motions. Convince them that he hadn't been driven totally crazy by the trauma. It was bad enough that he screamed in his sleep sometimes. They were probably already afraid that he was going to come after them with an ax.
He had to find the mermaid who'd saved him. Not to prove to himself that she hadn't been some kind of hallucination—he knew what he'd seen. But she owed him an explanation at least. After all, what kind of reason could she have had for murdering so many people? Absolute evil? If that was it, though, why make an exception for him, singing or no? He didn't deserve to be alive when his parents and Emily were dead.
He needed to talk to her, needed it urgently, and he told himself that it didn't matter why. He just had to hear what she would say. But how was he supposed to find a mermaid? Steal a rowboat and go paddle around in the open sea like an idiot? He'd been brooding over the problem for weeks, and tonight he thought he might have found an answer. It was worth a try at least.
It was only the middle of September, but it was already cold enough that he pulled on a parka and hat before stepping out into the wild dusk, where the wind reeked with the weedy, fishy breath of the harbor. The smell always brought back the sickening taste of mingled bile and salt water horribly flecked with the sweetness of the previous night's chocolate cake that he'd disgorged that day on the shore. His stomach lurched a little from the memory, but he did his best to ignore it.
The small tan house stood on a narrow street that ran straight down to the tiny harbor. The hill was steep enough that the sidewalk was a staircase with broad cement steps. He could see the black masts of a few sailboats crisscrossing like chopsticks in front of the electric blue sky while farther up clouds sagged in a violet jumble. He walked between glowing windows, heading for the sea. It was obvious he'd have to walk for a mile or two, past the beach north of town where she'd left him, then up onto the low, ragged cliffs where a path wound through stands of half-dead spruce. The farther the better, really. She wouldn't want to come too close to a town.
He didn't want to care how she felt about anything, but sometimes he couldn't help wondering if she still thought about him. Maybe she'd completely forgotten him in the three months since she'd swum with him in her arms.
Then he'd remind her. He wasn't about to let her forget what she'd done. He'd show her what a big mistake she'd made by letting one of her victims survive. Especially since that survivor was him.
2. The Voice on the Cliff
“Luce? Oh, Luce, it is you! We've been trying to find you for weeks!”
The dreamlike thrum of Luce's song dropped into silence, and she glanced up in surprise at Dana's warm smile, already very close to her own face. Dana leaned back with her elbows on the pebble beach and glanced around the small cave with its smooth, rounded ceiling. Her long tail stirred under the water, flicking up glimmers of ruby and coppery shine. Luce's cave didn't have any cracks that could let the sun in. The only light came through the underwater entrance set in a deep crevice between cliffs, so that a nebulous, dusky glow refracted up through the water. The dimness didn't keep Luce and Dana from seeing each other clearly, though; they could see without difficulty in any degree of darkness. Dana was stunning even by mermaid standards, with a mouth like a heavy rose and faintly luminous brown skin. As with all mermaids, a dark, subtle shimmering hung in the air around her. Her thick black hair was parted neatly in the middle and fanned out around her shoulders in a dozen puffy twists. Unlike Luce, who was completely naked, she wore a red bikini top. But at least, Luce thought, Dana wasn't wearing a lot of stolen human jewelry the way she'd done before.
“It's a nice cave. I was worried you'd just, like, taken off somewhere, but then Rachel said she'd heard your song in the water, really faint. I didn't know if I should even believe her, but some of us started looking. And here you are!” Dana's voice was too enthusiastic, trying to cover up the awkwardness that kept growing as Luce stayed quiet. Still, she felt better about Dana than she did about the rest of them. Dana and Violet were the only ones who hadn't participated in the assault on Catarina.
“Hi, Dana,” Luce finally yielded. She couldn't imagine why any of them would bother looking for her, though, unless Anais had something nasty in mind. Luce kept out of their way; they should keep out of hers. “Were you trying to find me so Anais can finally kill me?” Dana jerked backwards so sharply that Luce felt the shock transmitted through the water. Hurt widened Dana's huge brown eyes.
“Luce, that is so unfair! I mean, I know you must hate Jenna now, and maybe you think she'd help Anais ... do something to you ... But why would you say something that paranoid to me? I mean ... I didn't even touch Catarina! You know I didn't! And I always stood up for you!”
Luce didn't exactly remember it that way, and she didn't much want to be reminded of all the times when Dana had been nice to her.
“You didn't start clawing at Catarina, but you didn't do anything to help her either. You would have just let the tribe rip her apart right in front of you!” Luce was surprised by the savagery in her tone, the sudden racing of her heart. She hadn't realized how angry she still felt until she'd seen Dana's beautiful face again. Dana was shifting from hurt to aggrieved now, her lips tightening and a golden heat in her eyes. Dim bluish light wavered on her cheeks.
“Like we had a choice! Me and Violet! Like, you think if we'd gotten in their way they wouldn't have beat the crap out of us, too, or just killed us? Luce, everyone was wasted. We'd all drunk like a ton of scotch that day. And Anais got them totally crazy. Jenna and everyone, they didn't know what they were doing.”
“You're trying to tell me your own sister would have helped Anais kill you?” Luce's tone was cutting, but in her heart she had to admit that Dana had a point. The mermaids had been out of their minds when they'd thrown themselves on Catarina; they'd been in an alcohol-fueled frenzy, wild with hysterical cruelty. Of course, Luce's uncle had been drunk when he'd tried to rape her, too, back when she was still human. And no mermaid would have thought that was an excuse for him.
Dana didn't answer at first. She suddenly looked horribly sad, gazing down at the flash of her own scales under the water. “I think Jenna might have killed me then, actually. Yeah. I do.” Dana whispered the words. It took Luce a moment to understand her, and another moment to absorb the mournful helplessness of her tone.
“Dana, I...”
“Luce, that's the problem!” Dana looked up, the golden light in her brown eyes broken by urgency and awful regret. “I mean with having Anais be queen. Having her get to people. Like, Jenna and some of the others, they're just completely different now than they used to be, and I have to look at them every day, my twin sister and my best friends, and think how they'd probably strangle me in my sleep if Anais told them to!”
“Dana, I'm sorry! I mean, I'm sorry I blamed you...”
“I want you to be more
than sorry!” The words lashed out. “I want you to care! I mean, you're sitting here alone in this cave for months, when you're the only one who could help us. And all you can think about is Catarina and how pissed off and, like, superior you are, but you don't care about the rest of us at all. Everyone keeps acting crazier all the time, Luce. Like, as long as there were ships we could sink, it kind of took the pressure off, but now that the ships have completely stopped coming this way ... I keep thinking we might wind up fighting each other, or maybe some of the girls will go like Miriam!”
Luce winced at the mention of that name. Miriam's suicide had left a crater of pain in her heart; it wasn't right for Dana to use that pain to make Luce do what she wanted. Not that Luce was clear on exactly what Dana was after.
“What do you want from me, Dana?” Luce snapped. Dana looked surprised, then assessing.
“You've changed a lot, too. God. You used to be such a marshmallow.” Luce tensed with annoyance, but she didn't say anything. “But maybe that's a good thing. I mean, you'll have to be pretty tough to go up against her!”
So that was it. “You think I'm going to get rid of Anais for you?” Luce asked.
A quick, contorted smile bent Dana's mouth. “You're right that she wants to kill you, you know. I'm not going to tell anyone where you are—at least, not anyone but Violet, she's dying to see you—but if somebody on Anais's side finds out they'll come after you for sure. ”
Luce halfway smiled. Did Dana think, if she couldn't manipulate Luce with heartache, then she could control her with fear instead?
“Tell Anais not to bother. It's a waste of her time.”
“Luce, you don't get it! Anais knows you're the rightful queen. And she knows we all know it, too! No one really talks about it, not straight out, but we all saw what you did ... using your voice to move the sea...”
“I knew what you meant, Dana. You can tell Anais not to worry. Tell her I don't even want to look at anyone in our tribe who hurt Catarina, and I definitely don't want to be their queen. Tell Anais I think she's the queen they all deserve!”
Dana reeled back so hard her shoulder banged the stone wall. Her tail slashed back and forth, kicking up small recoiling waves. “Just because they all broke the timahk, and you didn’t ...” Luce flinched at that, but luckily Dana was glaring past her and didn't notice. “What, you think that means you're so much better than they are? You're too good to even give them orders?”
Luce sighed. She still felt angry, but she understood that Dana was in an awful position, stuck with a psychotic queen. And it sounded like Luce's old tribe might be on the verge of some kind of internal war. Dana was trying to do the right thing.
“It's not about the timahk, Dana.” Luce's voice was much gentler now. “I don't know if I even believe in the timahk anymore, or not in all of it ... But I really loved Catarina, and she's gone now, and there's no way I can even find out if she's alive or not. I can't be around a bunch of mermaids who tried to kill Cat and just somehow pretend to feel okay about them!”
Dana stared hard at Luce, as if she couldn't make up her mind whether or not to be mollified.
“Why didn't you go with her, then? If you loved her so much?” Dana's tone was still sharp, but Luce could tell that her heart wasn't in it anymore. She was forcing herself to act angrier than she really felt. Still, the question made tears start up in Luce's eyes, and she turned her face away. “Luce? Actually, that was what we all thought at first. That you and Cat had just gone off together. Even if it seemed weird after how bad you two had been fighting...”
“I wanted to go with her. She wouldn't let me.” She looked back at Dana, whose face had gone blank with disbelief.
“She wouldn't what? No way, Luce! There's no way any of us would just swim off alone like that. Not if there was any choice! I mean, with how dangerous it is ... and not having anyone to help you...”
“Catarina did, though.” Luce could hear how bitter her voice sounded. Dana was right; she had changed a lot in the months since Miriam's suicide and Catarina's near-murder. “She even tricked me. She waited until I went out to look for food and then sneaked off. To stop me from following her. Because she knew I would.”
“Crazy! You didn't think of chasing after her?” Dana wasn't asking it to be cruel, Luce knew, but the question still grabbed her stomach in a knot of shame. The fact was she couldn't completely explain to herself why she hadn't done exactly what Dana suggested. Catarina had been battered and terribly weak when she'd disappeared. If Luce had rushed south after her, searching all the caves she'd passed, there was a good chance she could have caught up with the wounded ex-queen.
Something heavy and sad and secret had urged her to let Cat slip away, to linger where she was. In her darker moments Luce accused herself of disgusting cowardice. But, if she was completely honest with herself, the truth was something even worse than that. Luce suddenly realized that her own silvery green tail had started swishing nervously without her being aware of it.
“Luce? I guess I should admit I was kind of lying before. Saying that Anais would come after you. I was mostly trying to scare you.” Luce looked up, smiling in sheer relief that Dana wasn't pursuing the question of why Catarina had left alone. “I mean, Anais would practically cut off her own fins to see you dead, like killing you would be the most amazing thing that ever happened to her, but the thing is ... there are probably only a handful of girls who'd go along with it now. And she knows that.” Luce noticed that Dana refrained from mentioning that one of those girls was almost certainly Jenna. “The tribe is barely holding together, and if Anais pushed everyone to kill you for no reason ... I don't know, a lot of us might just leave her, or fight on your side. She's not going to risk it unless she can come up with some really good excuse.”
Luce watched Dana's wide brown eyes staring off into a corner of the cave. Delicate curls of blue light flickered across Dana's irises, and Luce had a sudden flash of insight: more than anything else, Dana was afraid that she'd wind up fighting her own twin sister, maybe even killing her. Dana must know that if Luce challenged Anais there would almost certainly be a battle, mermaid blood unraveling through the water. And Dana was prepared for that, ready to face her own worst fears for the sake of the tribe. It was stunningly brave of her to come here and to say these things. Luce almost felt ashamed of herself, but she still wasn't ready to give in.
“It's wonderful to see you, Dana. I really missed you.” Luce was startled to hear herself say it, and just as surprised to see Dana suddenly grinning back at her with the same open-hearted warmth she'd had before everything in their tribe had gone so hideously wrong.
“You know I'm not going to stop bugging you, Luce. About the whole queen thing. Now, you just know you want to take that screwy blond bitch down! Admit it!”
Luce burst out laughing. Then she realized with a hard jolt of sorrow that it was the first time she'd laughed in three months.
***
It was already twilight by the time Dana left, and Luce drifted over to the nearby beach where she usually foraged for dinner. Tall rock formations protruded from the water there, sheltering her from view in case any boats came by. They were at that juncture in the early Alaskan autumn when the night began to swing as if it were on hinges, closing steadily in on the daylight. By December the days would be no more than a dim grayish haze seeping through as the door of night was briefly knocked ajar. It was the first time Luce had really wondered what it would be like to spend a deep northern winter out in the sea. She'd only been a mermaid since April, after all, but she had a vague recollection of Kayley saying that in years when the ice got bad the tribe would be forced to migrate south for a while, out past the Alaskan Peninsula, slipping through the Aleutian Islands. She could just make out the Aleutians from here, a dark uneven band wrapping the southern horizon. Maybe she should just leave now and look for Catarina.
She knew she wouldn't, though. As she leaned between two boulders and cracked oysters for dinner, L
uce admitted to herself that there was still something holding her here. Not that she had any reason to believe that the boy with the bronzeblond hair would have stayed in the area. It was highly unlikely, in fact. Assuming his parents had been with him on the cruise ship Luce's tribe had sunk in their furious grief over Miriam, then the boy would now be one of the lost kids, just as Luce herself had been, dumped on whatever grudging relatives could be persuaded to take him in or else passed around from one foster home to the next. He could be anywhere in the country. What were the odds, after all, that he'd have family on this desolate stretch of the Alaskan coast? She should picture him living in Montana or New York or Georgia: anywhere but here. That was simply logical.
But she couldn't shake the sense that he was still somewhere nearby. "Wishful thinking, Luce knew. The kind of lonely delusion that would send her out of her mind if she let it. She wasn't sure which was stupider: imagining that someday she'd see the boy she'd saved again, or wanting to see him. He must hate her utterly, and it would be a violation of the timahk, the mermaids' code of honor, for Luce to speak to a human at all.
It had also been against the timahk for her to save his life, of course, no matter how she tried to rationalize what she'd done. Luce knew there were good reasons for the law she'd broken—the one which demanded that any human who heard the mermaids singing had to die—but she couldn't think about those reasons now without feeling a surge of rebellious stubbornness. Her resentment of the timahk's insistence on murder had been in the back of her mind when she'd spoken those reckless words to Dana: I don’t know if I even believe in the timahk anymore. In retrospect, Luce knew it was a terrible idea to say that out loud. She'd been living in dreamy isolation for so long that she'd forgotten the importance of keeping her most dangerous thoughts to herself.
There was a nudge at her hand. Luce looked down, glad to be distracted. It was one of the two larval mermaids who lived beside this beach: little girls, maybe eighteen months old, who'd changed into mermaids before they'd even learned how to talk right. Now they were stuck being that age for as long as they lived—and for most larvae that wasn't very long. Larvae were slow, awkward swimmers, easy prey for orcas; Luce was glad that these two were too babyish to understand that. They squealed and tumbled together in the water, nuzzling Luce so that she wouldn't forget to crack extra oysters for them. Sometimes she'd sing them to sleep, even tell them half-remembered fairy tales. Not that they understood anything, but they loved the attention.