Waking Storms

by Sarah Porter

  Luce dove. She might have hurt Jenna seriously, maybe even broken some bones, but there was no time to think about that. Luce whipped her way back out of the cave and angled toward the surface at the sight of wavering fins. Violet was there, a feverish glow in her eyes, her smile somehow sad and eager at the same time. And the distant, windy voice still beckoned them, though now it was so faint Luce's heart burned with desperation at the hopelessness of reaching it in time.

  Violet's head dipped toward the water. It took Luce a moment to understand that Violet was bowing to her.

  “Queen Luce,” Violet whispered, “you saved me before. I know you'll save her, too!” Luce felt the handle of the knife pressing into her hand and tried to focus. She could just see the fishing trawler, a rusty dot propped in front of the dim blue shelf of Russia far away. In the instant before she dove, it occurred to Luce that the ship was farther from the safety of the coast than she had ever swum before.

  The water became an endless gray-green tunnel. Luce drove herself relentlessly, the water whipping out behind her until it no longer seemed to be water but only an unceasing road. The pain in her body streaked like bubbles, like falling light, and more than once she slapped against startled animals, her speed throwing them aside. The baby faces of beluga whales winked at her, and she parted walls of fish with the currents that rushed off her body. She couldn't hear the silvery voice anymore, only the storm of ripped water striking her cheeks like millions of torn flags. Every now and then she surfaced to catch a quick, panting breath, and also to make sure she was still heading for that distant fishing boat. Was she even getting any closer? And even if the strange mermaid was exceptionally strong, wasn't it crazy to imagine she could survive so long without air? Luce saw the black and white smears of orcas dash by below her. They seemed to realize she was going too quickly for them to catch her, but sooner or later her exhaustion would become overwhelming and she'd have to slow down.

  The fishing boat was closer, suddenly. The water shivered with the roar of its engines. Luce was so tired that her head swayed, and the boat seemed to become a stained metal cloud. But, very softly, she heard a last exhalation of windy song, a final call. Whoever it was in the net was still alive, then, if only barely. Luce dove again, the spiraling of her tail harsh and automatic. She could see the boat through the water now, the swell of the enormous net behind it like some vast, pulsating tumor. Luce raced on, and soon the silver mass of thousands of struggling fish was all she could see, spreading for dozens of yards on both sides. She clenched the knife and threw herself against the net, her free hand digging through its strands and against the cold, squirming bodies of a nation of pollock.

  Then she raised the knife and slashed, cutting the clustered fish in her desperation. Blood began to spiral through the water and red gouts striped the gleaming scales, but the net didn't give. Luce tried to calm herself and began to cut through one strand at a time, still gripping the net like a mountain climber. Bit by bit a gash began to form in the net, the first few wounded fish slithering through it. Luce cut steadily on, and a bulge of fighting silver bodies began to squeeze toward the opening, shoving at her hands and sometimes slapping straight into her face as they burst free. Luce began to hear the moan of straining fibers, the popping sounds of breaking strands.

  Suddenly there was a loud ripping noise, and the piece of net Luce was clutching swung far back, almost throwing her. An avalanche of shining fish tumbled out, pummeling Luce's arms and head. The knife flew from her right hand, and she managed to reach through the beating silver forms and lace her fingers through the net's holes while her body pitched wildly back and forth among the scrape of scales and round black eyes. All she could see was the constant flash of fish, disgorged so thickly that they became a desperate, living flood. Then came other creatures: a family of drowned porpoises, pulped jellyfish, a small shark, all crushed together. Clinging like this there was the risk that she would be pounded into unconsciousness and drown before she came to. But if she let go, the torrent would sweep her far away. Luce pictured the strange mermaid sinking deeper all alone. Where was she?

  Then, in the endless repetition of silver shapes, Luce caught a glimpse of something hopeful. It was a single elegant hand, its skin the somber green-gold-brown of a bronze statue left for centuries in the ocean. The hand hung limp, its owner still wedged between fish close-packed into a bowed wall. Luce tried to reach it, but the rushing animals beat her back. Then something gave, and a girl's form swept toward her in the middle of a tumbling mass of scales and fins and fur. A mermaid, dark-skinned and with a deep emerald tail. Luce barely managed to catch her in one outstretched arm. The fish were thinning out now, and with an involuntary groan Luce lashed her tail, tugging the strange mermaid toward the surface. Her greenish eyelids were closed and she didn't move, but somehow Luce thought she could feel an almost imperceptible flutter of life deep inside her.

  They came up just below the hard, rust-colored wall of the ship. There was an outcry of voices above as angry sailors noticed the ruptured net, the escaping haul of fish. Under normal conditions Luce would have never taken the risk of surfacing where humans might see her, but the situation was too urgent for her to worry about that. She embraced the strange mermaid from behind and leaned steeply so that the unconscious face dangled out over the rocking sea. Then Luce squeezed under her ribs to bring the water up from the girl's lungs. It spattered out, and Luce squeezed again, then turned the girl and caught her face, blowing air between her still lips. Again, and then again. The girl didn't move, and Luce thought of Miriam. Once again she'd come too late to save a mermaid from death, and Luce thrashed in fury, ready to fling the dragging body away from her.

  Then the dark girl coughed and another stream of salt water gushed down her chin. Luce hurriedly grabbed her head and held it angled down. Then, for what must have been the first time in an hour, the mermaid inhaled freely, with a drawn-out, rasping sound. Luce heard her sigh. She had a crow's nose and a thick cloud of black, savage, looping hair; she was beautiful, Luce thought, in the way a thunderstorm at midnight is beautiful.

  A pair of greenish black eyes turned sidelong to look into Luce's, calm and curious. Seeing those eyes was like gazing far into the past, into ancient memories and impossible distance. It took Luce a moment to recover from that glance and remember that they were still far from safety. If only there was a nearby island, even an outcropping of rock, they could rest before they attempted the journey back to shore. Luce scanned from one horizon to the next, seeing only the repeating peaks of tall gray waves. The cliffs of her own coast were strangely shrunken, no more than a zigzagging band of gray and green. Now that her frantic race for the fishing trawler was over, Luce's muscles seized up with pain. Reaching that distant land seemed impossible, especially with the addition of this strange girl's weight dragging on her arm.

  The mermaid said a few words in a low, singsong language Luce didn't recognize, and laughed. She was probably in shock, Luce thought. She didn't understand how awful the situation really was.

  Then Luce thought of something. Her tail was gripped by cramps, her body was trembling from weariness, but she still had her voice. It seemed like too much to hope for, but once they were far enough from the ship she could at least try. Slowly Luce began towing her strange companion along the surface, and to her surprise the other mermaid inhaled sharply, then began driving her own tail as well, although from the heaviness of her movements it was obvious that her strength was almost gone. But at least, Luce thought, she wouldn't have to fight all alone to get them back to shore.

  "When they were half a mile from the trawler, Luce released a long, sustained note, lifting a smooth arch of water below them. They hovered together up above the beating of the wild waves, and the strange mermaid turned her head to examine Luce with calm interest. Luce ignored her. Instead she focused on the music that poured from her, expanding her voice to call the wave onward. The stone-colored twilight was rapidly deepening, and the clo
uds above them sagged like a dim blue tent. Now that she was singing Luce felt a sudden thrill of serenity, and the darkening world became bright and vital with music. The sea sang through her, and the low clouds cast down harmonies like shadows. They weren't traveling as quickly as Luce had before, but they still sailed along much faster than they could have hoped to swim in their weakened state. Once an orca leaped at them, but the wave swirled them on and the huge jaws snapped on empty air.

  The strange mermaid laughed again, then raised her own voice in an undercurrent below Luce's. That voice, Luce thought, seemed to carry an impossible weight of dreams with it; it was foreign-sounding and mournful and so beautiful that even Luce could barely stand to hear it.

  11. Nausicaa

  “I thought this would be the time,” the strange mermaid said. She had an unrecognizable accent that seemed to flare up suddenly and then vanish again. They had stopped to rest on the shore of the same craggy island where Dorian's family had met their deaths, and the night was thick and starless. “What are the Fates to do when there is one like you waiting to snap their thread?” Luce didn't know what the dark girl was talking about, and the slow, unrelenting curiosity in those greenish eyes made her feel shy and uncertain. “And is it even right, I wonder? This thing you've done?”

  Luce felt herself flush. But why should she feel ashamed of saving someone?

  “I heard you calling. I couldn't just leave you to die there!” Luce protested. The strange mermaid rolled back against the shore, stretching her back and twisting her emerald green tail. It gave off complicated lights, blue and amber mixed with flashes of deep purple.

  “It doesn't matter at all that I did not die today.” The dark girl's voice was cold and lazy as she said this, and her words rang like heavy bells.

  Luce was appalled. “Of course it matters!”

  “What matters is that you made the choice to save me as you did. Who are you?”

  Luce couldn't understand why such a simple question had the power to embarrass her so much. “I'm Luce.”

  “Queen Luce...”

  “I'm not Queen anything!”

  “My name is Nausicaa. But if you are not queen, then you must be alone here?”

  “Oh, Luce!” Another voice broke in on them. “Oh, I knew you'd get her! I tried to follow, but you were going too fast.” Luce turned in the direction of this new voice to see Violet's sweet, gray-green eyes staring at them. Violet was so excited that she seemed to forget her usual shyness. “I bet Luce would never tell you this,” Violet went on breathlessly, beaming at Nausicaa, “but she saved my life, too! My very first day as a mermaid I was so dumb I tried to leave the water, and Luce came after me. She almost died! And she is so the greatest singer.”

  Nausicaa gave Violet one of her oddly peaceful smiles. “I have heard your queen sing. Though she denies her rule here. But none of what you tell me now surprises me.”

  “She's supposed to be our queen,” Violet explained with an audible note of resentment. “She just won't do it. Maybe she'll listen to you, if you tell her? I mean they did try to kill Luce just now, when she raided our cave to get the knife, so now she probably hates us even more than she did already...”

  Nausicaa was glancing back and forth between them, a quizzical smile on her face. Luce thought she should say something. “It's a really long story, Nausicaa. You're probably way too exhausted to want to hear it now.”

  “All the stories are long,” Nausicaa observed dryly.

  “Once you've had a rest I'll take you back to my cave, and if you want I'll tell you about it tomorrow...” Luce went on.

  “All the stories are so long that they”—Nausicaa paused, and her hand drew a circle on the air—“that in the end, they become the same story. So I may already know yours, Queen Luce.”

  Luce didn't quite know what to say to that.

  “Just Luce. Okay? And this is Violet.” Luce suddenly noticed other shining heads popping up in the water around them. “Um, Nausicaa? We should probably get out of here.”

  Nausicaa shook her head and held up one hand with a casually majestic gesture. “We will wait, please. I will speak to them.” Anais's golden head emerged directly face to face with Nausicaa, her expression savage. They were no more than five feet apart, and Luce thought how bizarre they looked together; this close to Nausicaa's dark patina, Anais's brash blond beauty seemed phony and brittle, like something made of tinsel and plastic. After a moment Anais registered Nausicaa's devastating calm, and something wavered in her eyes. She glanced around for her followers; Luce noticed then that Jenna was missing and that Samantha was cowering pitifully behind a rock. Nausicaa waited in silence for so long that Luce could hear the blood surging in her veins.

  “It is your cave, where Luce stole the knife?” Nausicaa said at last. “You think this is a cause for an argument?” Luce was glad to notice that Anais was visibly flustered. There was something about Nausicaa that she simply didn't know how to deal with.

  “Like anything around here is any of your business!” Anais tried sneering, but it sounded false and whiny. “I don't think I owe you an explanation. Just get out of our way now, okay?”

  “She stole the knife so that she could save me from the net. She has only done what you should have done. She has timay.” It took Luce a moment to understand that this was Nausicaa's way of saying that Luce had only been obeying the timahk; three seconds later Anais seemed to realize the same thing.

  “Oh my God! Did everybody hear that? She can't even say timahk right, and she thinks she can tell us what to do!” Anais's sneer sounded more genuine now, and a few mermaids laughed.

  Nausicaa wasn't fazed at all. “To say timahk is a corruption. A change that has come over the word from many hundreds of years. The Greek word is said ‘timay.’ ”

  “Like you know Greek!” Anais almost squealed it. Luce saw Nausicaa's slow, unending smile, a smile that seemed to cross whole oceans, and suddenly felt sure that Nausicaa knew Greek as well as she knew the sea itself.

  Everyone seemed to be waiting, with inexplicable anxiety, for Nausicaa to answer back. She didn't bother, just gazed at them all with the same merciless calm, the slightly ironic smile.

  “Anyway, retard,” Anais snapped at last in a tone that suggested she was desperately trying to cover the silence, “I'm queen here! And I say you've got to get lost, like you and Luce had better get out of Alaska right now and never come back, or I'll make sure you're both sorry!”

  “You are queen?” Nausicaa didn't even sound sarcastic, just coolly disbelieving. “If you can outrank Luce, you must be a singer such as our world has never heard before.” Anais opened her mouth, then shut it again, and to Luce's surprise a handful of mermaids laughed openly. Luce wanted to warn them to stop. Anais would definitely find a way to get back at them later. “Luce? You will come with me?” Luce saw Nausicaa's outstretched hand, and took it. No one tried to stop them as they swam away.

  ***

  Luce wanted to be sure Dorian had made it safely home, but there was no way she could do that with Nausicaa right beside her. For the first time in weeks Luce found herself feeling a little ashamed of her forbidden romance. Nausicaa believed that Luce was honorable, after all, worthy of deep respect; somehow it would be unbearable to disappoint her. They stopped at Luce's dining beach and ate, both of them too tired out to talk much, and Luce was pleased to see that Nausicaa didn't mind the two little larvae at all. Instead she crooned to them and fed them oysters and petted their hair. They warbled around her, splashing and giggling at the attention.

  It wasn't just exhaustion that kept her from talking to Nausicaa, Luce realized. She felt shy around this dark, powerful mermaid in a way that she hadn't felt with anyone since the days when she was just a helpless human girl.

  “That queen,” Nausicaa said after a while. Her tone made it clear how ridiculous she thought it was to call Anais that. “Why do they not drive her away? Anyone can see that she is sika.”

  Luce w
as confused. “Are you saying—I mean—are you calling Anais a psycho?”

  Nausicaa looked blank for a second, then cracked up laughing. It was the first time Luce had heard her sound young, although she had the face and body of an exquisite fifteen-year-old girl.

  “Not psycho. How strange, I always think, that the English for ‘crazy' is almost the same as ‘psyche,’ the Greek name for soul. Do you all believe here that to have a soul at all is to be insane? She has no soul. Sika: a cold one. You must see it when you look at her, so.” And here Nausicaa gave Luce the sidelong glance that would reveal the secret past that had changed her. Luce flinched at having Nausicaa gaze at her that way, but Nausicaa's face remained so impassive that after a moment Luce relaxed. And then she understood what Nausicaa was trying to tell her.

  The dark shimmering of the indication always hung thickly around Anais's head. But unlike every other mermaid in the tribe, with Anais that sparkling didn't seem to contain a story. You could gaze at her sideways until your head throbbed from the effort and not see anything more than a few hazy winks of boring, everyday events. She had the mark, it seemed, but not the deep emotional wounds that the mark implied. Luce had always wondered why that was and what it meant.

  “You mean because you can't see anything happening to her? I never understood that. Do you—I mean—you know what that's about?”

  Nausicaa looked surprised. “You don't know this, Luce? This tribe does not know? Have the mermaids truly forgotten so much? That would explain why they allow her to stay here, like a poisonous snake sleeping beside them. A wiser tribe would never permit it.”