by Sarah Porter
“I thought you could only throw a mermaid out if she broke the timahk! Anais has broken it a bunch of times now, actually, but at first—”
“Not sika. No one should allow sika to remain. They will always cause terrible dangers. They will destroy any tribe that welcomes them...”
“But I don't understand...” Luce fell silent, wondering. Nausicaa looked deep into her eyes. Her gaze had a green and black brilliance that reminded Luce of a field of fireflies.
“You must remember this feeling, Luce? Of your time of changing? You lay on the cliff, just as the Unnamed Twins once did, and you felt...” Luce didn't know what twins Nausicaa was talking about, but she remembered the feeling perfectly.
“I felt like I was turning cold. At first it was just my body, but then it was my heart and everything—My body changed into water. I could feel the moonlight shining through me.”
“Yes.” Nausicaa nodded, her snaky black hair surging with the wind. “You turned cold. All the way to the quick. And yet in such a cold sea as this you have recovered so much warmth of spirit.”
“But then...”
“A sika, like this Anais, she does not turn cold. She is cold to start with. Cold to the quick from birth. So there can be no vision to see of her turning cold. It is her essence, and her danger. She can care for nothing,” Nausicaa added with calm finality.
Luce was quiet for a minute, and Nausicaa went back to nibbling seaweed. Would it make any difference if Nausicaa explained this to the tribe? Luce had a depressing intuition that it wouldn't.
“Nausicaa?” Luce asked suddenly. “Do you come from Greece?”
Nausicaa glanced up, smiling. There was such deep acceptance in that smile that Luce thrilled at the sight of it.
“I do. It was long ago.”
“How long ago?” Luce felt oddly embarrassed as she asked this, as if it was somehow a terribly personal question.
“Oh, Luce,” Nausicaa sighed. “How can I know? Why should I look for numbers in the sky? Long ago. But if I guess for you, I will say, perhaps three thousand years.”
Luce had been prepared, though barely, to hear Nausicaa mention hundreds of years. This was almost too much for her.
“Three thousand?” It came out high and frantic.
“It might be less,” Nausicaa conceded. She looked amused. “But it was a time of few men on the earth, and there were many fewer ships then, all with oars. There were places where the whales swam so thick that it could be hard to find enough room between them to reach the surface, and everything was clean. I cannot believe, sometimes, that the world has not yet crumbled to dust from so much time passing by.”
“But how have you survived? I mean, all that time...” As Luce said this she noticed that Nausicaa's smile had turned strained.
“Death does not like the taste of me, I suppose.” Nausicaa looked away, and Luce saw something almost grim in her eyes. “I have taken enough risks. I have traveled the world around and again around, more times than I can remember. I know so many languages that I could tell you a story speaking only one word from each. And on many occasions I have come very close to dying, but something always interferes. Today it was you. A new mermaid, but with the courage of one so long in the sea that death has become an empty threat, and with the rare power of singing so that the water will understand her. Yet she will not be called queen. Very little can still make me wonder, Luce. But with you I admit I am curious.”
Luce looked down at the bright crescents of seafoam, the subtle glow of her own hands refracting through the night black water. “You can ask me whatever you want, if you're curious about me. But I don't think it'll be very interesting for you, Nausicaa. I mean, I've only been a mermaid since April, and anyway you said you probably already know my story. Remember? You said all the stories turn out to be the same.”
Nausicaa laughed. Her deep olive-bronze skin gave off a richer light than Luce's, a strong greenish gold. “Perhaps someday someone will change that story. Perhaps you will, Luce. Then the story will be new, even for me. I would be very pleased if that were so.”
Luce looked up at her, intrigued. “Change it how?”
“If I could guess that,” Nausicaa observed sardonically, “I might be the one to do the changing.” She suddenly looked bored, and Luce winced at the idea that Nausicaa was already getting tired of her. Still, the conversation made Luce think of another moment several months before, another mermaid murmuring to her in the darkness.
"What you're saying—it reminds me of my friend Miriam. She thought it was pointless to kill humans, when there were always more of them anyway. She couldn't understand why we had to keep doing the same things over and over.” Luce felt her stomach seize up. She was painfully anxious to hear what Nausicaa thought about sinking human ships.
“I long ago came to that view myself. Humans are repulsive and senseless, and they work restlessly to destroy the world that carries them. But singing them to their deaths, though we are charged to do it...” Nausicaa shrugged. “A game for the newer ones, and I feel I have done my share. But no doubt you enjoy it.”
“I don't, actually.” Luce heard her voice break a little, and Nausicaa's glance sparked at her again.
“From the beginning? You felt this way? Do you think, even, that it is wrong, the vengeance mermaids bring?”
Luce paused and considered this. She couldn't help being aware that the conversation was veering into dangerous territory, but the impulse to trust Nausicaa was overwhelming. “I mean, I helped sink ships at first, once or twice. But I always felt horrible about it. I kept remembering humans I'd loved.”
Nausicaa was nodding in a slightly impatient way, and Luce realized that this was just another story Nausicaa already knew. “It happens so, sometimes. There are those who still feel with their human hearts, and they cannot bear the task that is given to them.”
Luce was simultaneously bewildered and fascinated. The task that is given to them? Who gave it, then? Even more exciting, though, was the information that there were other mermaids somewhere who felt the way she did. If they could all live together...
“Where are they?” Luce asked, too eagerly, and Nausicaa looked blank. “I mean, the mermaids who don't kill. Do they have their own tribe?” Now that, Luce thought, would be a tribe where it would be a tremendous honor to be queen, if they only thought she was good enough. Maybe she could persuade Dorian to run away, and they could start a new life together. Maybe mermaids like that would even accept him.
“Oh.” Now that Nausicaa understood what Luce was asking, she looked a little sad. “There is no such tribe, Luce. Mermaids who feel as you do—they do not choose to live as we must. All that I have ever known or heard of, they pull themselves soon enough from the water and die in the air.”
Luce stared at Nausicaa in horror, and suddenly remembered something Catarina had said when Luce had just changed and had barely escaped from an encounter with orcas: Luce, were you trying to die? Tell me the truth! So Catarina had known mermaids who preferred suicide to a life of murder in the sea. And Miriam...
“That's what Miriam did,” Luce said; she could hardly restrain her tears.
“Of course. I knew that instantly from what you said of her.”
“But I haven't! Maybe I thought about it, but I never tried...”
“You may yet.” Nausicaa said this with terrible indifference. “But maybe you will make a different choice and live with what you are now, knowing that the longing to kill belongs to all of us.”
“But I want to change it. I mean, I want to completely change what it means to be a mermaid and start a new tribe someday. That's why I taught myself how to sing to the water. I was looking for a way I could do that...” Luce broke off when she saw the way Nausicaa was staring at her; her gaze was suddenly glinting with fascination, even with longing and other emotions Luce couldn't identify. Was that pity?
“It is our father, Proteus, who has given us this task, Luce. The price of our being is th
at we must avenge all the girls who are broken and outcast as we are. A mermaid may neglect her work, as I do, but all of us are charged with it. The urge moves in our hearts and in our voices.”
“Our father who?”
“Proteus is a god. If you try to alter the destiny of the mermaids, you will not merely be defying their nature. You will be defying the will of the gods themselves!”
Luce considered this in silence, staring out at the white rippling trails of foam sliding over the black sea. It was the first time she had ever revealed her secret ambition to anyone, and she was grateful to find that Nausicaa didn't hate her for it. But Nausicaa clearly knew much more than Luce did, and from what she'd said—about defying the gods—it sounded like she thought Luce's hopes were utterly impossible.
“So are you saying it's crazy? To defy Proteus? I mean, are you saying I shouldn’t try to do that?” Luce couldn't suppress her anxiety as she asked this, and she gazed urgently into Nausicaa's eyes. If she had to surrender her deepest hope, Luce thought, then maybe life as a mermaid would become unbearable, even now that she had Dorian. And what if he outgrew her someday?
“Oh, Luce.” Nausicaa smiled with ferocious brilliance. “I am not saying this. Not at all.”
Luce felt so disoriented that for an instant the sea and sky seemed to reverse their places, rocking her between two immense black fields. “But you said...”
Nausicaa reached out and lightly rested her hand on Luce's forehead. It was a strange gesture but somehow also profoundly sweet.
“Defy whom you will, little queen,” Nausicaa said firmly. And then Luce saw the tears welling in her night-deep eyes.
12. Enough
Luce was worried at first that having Nausicaa around would make it impossible for her to visit Dorian. But immediately it became apparent that, even if Nausicaa regarded Luce as a friend, she tended to be restless and to prefer her own company most of the time. She was used to traveling alone. Nausicaa told Luce about her trick for hitching rides on huge ships: she'd either steal or find a life preserver and lash it to a ship's hull at the waterline in a spot where the curve of the ship would hide her from anyone who happened to peer overboard. By tying her body into the life preserver she could keep her tail submerged and her head above water, watching through the days and sleeping through the nights. She'd crossed entire oceans that way, back and forth, freeing herself from the coast-bound life of the other mermaids. It all sounded insanely dangerous to Luce: what if a shark or an orca came at her while she was sleeping? What if someone in a passing boat saw her there? But it was clear that Nausicaa simply didn't care much about danger, and Luce didn't want to annoy her by arguing.
The day after Luce rescued her, Nausicaa began to fidget, then announced that she was going exploring. It was getting to be the middle of the afternoon, almost time to meet Dorian, so Luce only smiled, trying to disguise her relief. “Are you going to come back tonight?”
“I may.” Nausicaa glanced over at her with moody interest. “Perhaps where you are is a place something will happen.” Luce didn't know whether to be flattered or hurt. She couldn't escape the sense that Nausicaa regarded her as a kind of experiment, something that might or might not turn out well. Luce watched Nausicaa swim slowly out through the purple bands of oncoming dusk; evening came so early now. She was heading into deep waters, completely ignoring Luce's warnings about orcas.
Dorian might be angry with her for leaving him so abruptly the day before. But once she explained what had happened, he'd have to understand. Wouldn't he?
The daylight lasted for a noticeably briefer period every day, and the dusk dragged on for what seemed like hours, descending a slow scale of darkening tones. Luce arrived at their beach in the deep blue slur of fading afternoon. The beach looked empty, but Dorian often waited back under the trees. Luce gazed around and let out a quick windy call before she remembered that he might not understand it.
“Hey.” He wasn't concealed in the forest margin at all. Instead he was perched eight feet up on the tall boulder to her right where she hadn't noticed him. “Thanks for making time for me. I know you have a lot of more important things to deal with. You know I didn't make it back until almost eleven? And my arms were killing me, and I nearly capsized like twenty times. I had to talk an incredible amount of shit to keep from getting grounded,too.”
Luce stared up at him, uncomfortable with the distance between them. Had he climbed up there because he knew she wouldn't be able to reach him? “I saved her life.”
“You did what?”
“That mermaid we heard calling. She'd gotten swept up by one of those huge nets, and I realized I'd have to go back to my old tribe's cave to get a knife to cut through it. Dorian, I barely got to her in time...” Hurt as she felt, Luce couldn't hold back the story. She launched into it too quickly, so that her nervousness was obvious to both of them. Dorian sat on his rock, leaning out so that his head seemed to float over her in the darkness, his face stiff with resentment.
By the time Luce reached the part about the fight in the cave, though, he suddenly let out an exclamation. Luce looked up, surprised. “Oh my God, Luce! You did that for someone you don't even know? They could have killed you!”
“Yes, but Dorian, Nausicaa's seriously incredible. I can't wait for you to meet her!” Dorian laughed a little nastily, and suddenly Luce realized the absurdity of what she'd said. “I mean, I wish you could.”
“Did you think at all about what would happen to me if you died? Like, did you ever think that you're all I have left?” Dorian asked in an overly calm voice that made Luce's skin prickle. She hadn't thought about that, in fact; the situation had seemed so imperative that she hadn't stopped to think about anything. But maybe Dorian was right and it had been insensitive to put a stranger's needs first. Especially after she'd helped kill his family. Dorian stared down, his dark blond hair hanging in tendrils all around his face. “Okay. I get it. You didn't give a shit about that.” Luce started to protest, but he interrupted her. “Just tell me the rest of the story. Okay? You used this insane power you have to throw Jenna into a wall...”
She'd been so excited to tell him everything, but now as Luce went on she felt close to tears. He was so angry at the risks she'd taken when she'd secretly hoped he would be proud of her, thrilled with how brave she'd been. It was hard to keep going. “The trawler had swung way out, and I had to chase it. I was swimming so fast I could barely see where I was going.”
“You told me it's too dangerous to swim out now. Because of the orcas.” Dorian's voice was still flat, and Luce found herself flushing.
“I was going too fast for them, though. I mean, I saw a few of them, but...” Luce felt a powerful impulse to understate the danger she'd gone through, but she could tell by Dorian's expression that he wasn't fooled. He listened to her with his lips set in a grim line, not saying anything, until Luce reached Nausicaa's confrontation with Anais.
“That all sounds completely amazing.” He said it coldly, still glowering down at her. Luce wished he'd climb off the rock at least, even if he was too angry to touch her.
“Dorian, I—” Why couldn't he understand that she'd only done what she had to do? “I couldn't have left her to die that way. Really. I had to at least try.”
“My life must seem so boring to you, compared to that. I can see why you don't want to be human again. Even though that's the only way we could really be together.”
You probably wouldn’t love me anymore if I was human, Luce thought. But out loud she said, “You know I can't, though! Dorian, I can't ever turn back.”
“You don't know that.” He almost snarled the words.
“Anyway, you said you wanted to be the one to change. Into a merman.” If anyone knew a way to make that happen, Luce thought, it would be Nausicaa. But then she'd have to tell Nausicaa the truth.
“But that's just because—” Dorian hesitated. “I mean, I'm fifteen now, Luce. But what about when I'm seventeen, or twenty, and you're stil
l only fourteen, and we still can't be together? I'll go crazy.” Suddenly Luce understood what he meant by the words “be together” and flinched. Why remind her of that when he knew she'd never be able to be with him in that way? It was hard enough for her to know that she would never experience that kind of closeness, while her body still retained its human cravings. “So I thought, if I became a merman, it would be the one way I could deal with it. Like, it might not bother me then. That you can't even grow up or anything—"
“Who wants to grow up?” Luce heard her voice going sharp and high-pitched.
“Jesus, Luce.” Dorian had never sounded so snide before. “I do.”
For a few moments they just stared at each other, deep blue light cradling them on all sides. Luce felt the first tear gliding across her cheek. Was he actually breaking up with her?
Dorian sighed, loudly, and started clambering off the boulder, his toes scrambling for the few jags on its side. He thudded down onto the pebbles as Luce watched miserably, wondering if he'd simply turn and leave. Instead he sat down cross-legged near the water's edge. “I really love you, Luce.” He sounded more resigned than tender, though.
“Then why are you doing this to me?” Her voice broke, and she fought to hold back tears. She couldn't escape the feeling that he was just looking for excuses to resent her, and that proved he'd never truly forgiven her at all.
“Doing what to you? You're the one who ran off and abandoned me in the middle of nowhere. You're the one who almost went and got killed in like three different ways yesterday, and you expect me to be okay with that? I'm not. And now you're so excited about this new mermaid that you don't care how I feel at all, and you haven't asked me one question about anything in my life.”
That was so unfair, Luce thought, when he'd kept insisting that she had to finish the story. But still...
“What happened with you, then? Besides having to row back, I mean.”