Waking Storms

by Sarah Porter

  “But Dana...” Violet had never felt so strong before. She was even smiling secretly to herself. “Do you remember how Luce sounds? When she sings that way?”

  “Pretty much, I guess. It's kind of a weird sound. It's really different from her other singing.”

  “Try it.”

  Dana flashed a skeptical look at Violet, but then she grinned. Some of Dana's old warmth and hopefulness was coming back, Violet thought, feeling her tail starting to switch a little with enthusiasm. As awful as everything was, Violet suddenly felt a kind of exhilaration that went deeper than mere happiness.

  “I guess we've got plenty of time on our hands,” Dana admitted. “Okay. Let me get a jolt of that air, and I'll see if I can get close.” Violet passed Dana the hose and watched her breathe in again and again, a sparkling veil of bubbles racing across her brown eyes. Dana was stalling for time, Violet realized. She was scared of failing, scared of letting them both down.

  Finally Dana dropped the hose and sat stiffly with her eyes closed tight. She looked so nervous that Violet glanced around, half imagining a vast and highly critical audience jostling in the corners. Then Dana let out a slow, sustained, velvety note, as soft as summer air.

  It was wonderfully beautiful, Violet thought as she listened. So beautiful that her skin shivered and her heart seemed to blossom into flowers with the shapes of castles, with petals curving into high turrets. Dana's singing was splendid and strange, but the sound she was making was also unmistakably wrong.

  Dana opened her eyes, and Violet could see at once that she knew perfectly well how far she'd been from getting the song right. “Not even close,” Dana said sadly, shaking her head. “It's got to be some kind of magic only Luce has, Violet.”

  “But you didn't—” Violet didn't want to be rude, but she didn't want Dana to give up either. “I think Luce sounds a little different than that when she does it. Like, she gets this weird, smooth kind of tone...” Violet concentrated on remembering, and Dana stared at her. Violet gestured, a mussel shell still in one hand. “It sounds almost like she's feeling the water with her voice. Like ... I don't know how to describe it, but...”

  Dana tried again. Her voice was full of rippling magic. It was a living miracle that poured through Violet's skin, though her mind, dancing with delirious surprise. It just wasn't the right magic. Too bumpy, Violet thought. Pushing too hard. Luce didn't push; instead she joined her voice to the water, sympathized with the water, then coaxed the water to follow the notes as they ran up the scale or leaped skyward. Violet could hear it in her mind so precisely that she almost felt like Luce was there with her after all.

  Dana fell silent and flopped back onto the floor, despair plain on her face. “Oh my God, Violet. What if...” Dana didn't let herself finish the sentence, but still Violet knew what she'd been about to say: “What if we die here?”

  “I think ... I know you're so much better at singing than I am, and I don't want to try to tell you, but ... doesn't Luce sound more like...” Violet let out a tentative note. The timbre was odd and smooth, and Violet could actually feel her voice reaching out to the water, as if her song held the ocean's hand and they were racing together to a place where no one could ever hurt them again.

  Violet wasn't gripping the mussel shell anymore.

  Instead the blue-purple shell was bouncing in place a foot in front of her eyes, supported by a current that definitely hadn't been there a moment before. The white glow of its mother-of-pearl winked joyfully, and then Dana looked up and saw it, and screamed.

  16. Departures

  The sea looked very dark around the floating block of milk white ice. The block bobbed and spun with each pulse of the waves, a slick of meltwater gleaming bright blue on its sides. Nausicaa and Luce both stopped to look at it, neither of them speaking. Nausicaa had her usual look of detached curiosity, but Luce felt sick at the sight of the ice, her body buckling at the waist as if she'd just received a blow to the stomach.

  It didn't help that they were at the dining beach and that only one larva, the Inuit one, was still living there. The fairskinned one had vanished the day before and her little blackeyed companion couldn't seem to stop keening wordlessly as she lay hidden behind a jag of rock. As Luce and Nausicaa arrived at the beach the endless whimpering formed a kind of plaintive harmony running under the sound of the sea. The poor little Inuit larva had probably seen her friend swallowed alive. They'd tried repeatedly to comfort her and brought her oysters, but she refused to eat anything.

  Luce and Nausicaa settled in a relatively sheltered spot, leaning back against low crags. Although they'd come there for breakfast Luce didn't feel like eating, and she got the feeling that Nausicaa didn't either.

  “Luce?” Nausicaa's voice was unusually gentle. “I will be leaving here. Perhaps today.” Heavy snow felted the beach, vibrant blue in the endless twilight, and the snow-laden trees looked like melting blue candles. It was probably ten o'clock in the morning, but time seemed to blur into meaninglessness in this light, as if the old distinctions of days and hours no longer applied. Nausicaa's billows of midnight hair appeared even darker than usual, and her greenish bronze face was sad and determined.

  Don’t leave me! Luce thought, but she didn't say it out loud. Nausicaa would know what Luce was feeling without the words being voiced. They stared at each other in silence for a moment. Luce had known this moment might come sooner or later, but she still couldn't quite believe that Nausicaa would truly abandon her.

  “Come with me,” Nausicaa said in reply to Luce's unspoken words. “Luce, I do not like to beg, but please. Go and gather your tribe, whoever will agree to come with you. We will lead them away from here together. I cannot escape the feeling that some evil is coming to this place.”

  You know I can’t leave Dorian, Luce thought. She deliberately closed her mind to the possibility that the approaching ice might force her to leave him, at least for a while. In any case the ice wouldn't get that bad for weeks, and there was no reason to worry about it yet. Nausicaa, don’t make me choose between Dorian and you!

  “Your romance will end, Luce.” Nausicaa's voice was softer than Luce had ever heard it. “It will be so much better for you if you can accept that, and keep Dorian only as a beloved memory. Come with me, and I will help you found a new tribe. We will live by our own timay, breaking Proteus's thrall, and hunt humans no more. You will be queen in a new way, leading your mermaids on journeys never yet imagined. It will be exactly as you've dreamed...”

  Luce felt such an overpowering rush of longing that she wondered if Nausicaa was enchanting her. But no: the magic was all in Nausicaa's words. It was in her promise of a new and passionate life, a life in which the mermaids would finally be truly free to create their own future. Luce looked at the soft gold-green shine trembling on Nausicaa's skin. Luce understood how urgently her friend wanted to make this vision come true. Together they would certainly succeed, Luce knew, and for an instant she pictured herself fervently kissing Dorian goodbye. His lips devoured hers, and the trickling salt of their merged tears flooded her tongue...

  No. It was a horrible idea. She and Dorian needed each other.

  “Nausicaa...” Luce spoke aloud for the first time. The words stung her mouth, clawed at her throat; how could she keep going? “I can’t. You're my best friend ever in my life, and I'd give almost anything to start a tribe with you, but I can't leave. And I don't see why you have to, either!”

  The larval mermaid's whimpering got louder. A long, shrill cry spiraled under the wind. The little creature was maddened by loneliness that nothing would ever heal.

  “I have to leave, because—” Nausicaa stopped abruptly. “Ah, Luce. You are very dear to me. I would even call Dorian my true friend now, human or not. And I cannot bear to stay and see you destroyed by your love for him. Already yesterday I could sense that things between you two will not last much longer. However this ends—”

  “It's not going to end!” Luce insisted, too loudly. Just
because Dorian's brutalized heart was finally healing, did Nausicaa think he wouldn't need Luce anymore?

  Nausicaa didn't argue, but the look on her face wasn't calm at all now. A dark fire seemed to lick and needle at the inside of her skin. She gazed at Luce and then away into distances Luce could hardly imagine, as if centuries were scrolling along the far horizon. It was at least a minute before Nausicaa sighed and turned her stare back toward Luce. Luce could feel the gleam of those eyes entering her mind. She wanted to throw her arms around Nausicaa's neck and stop her from going, but somehow she couldn't move.

  “I hope you will defy more than the gods,” Nausicaa said at last. “Queen Luce.”

  Luce wasn't sure what Nausicaa meant by that, but she didn't seem to have enough strength to ask her. There was some kind of awful acrid smoke in her throat where her voice should have been. Nausicaa reached out and stroked Luce's face.

  “I hope you will defy, not only Proteus, but everything I know of the world. Everything I've seen in my three thousand years. I hope you will be the one who discovers the strength to make a different choice. Then someday, dearest Luce, I will find you again...”

  All Luce could see through her tears were bright webs of blue glow. Her cheek was suddenly cold where Nausicaa's hand had been, and the icy wind buffeted her shoulders, tossed her short hair. She didn't hear a splash, but even so she knew that Nausicaa was gone, and gone forever.

  Her parents couldn't help dying, Luce told herself. They'd left her for somber regions she knew nothing about, but they hadn't wanted to go. But Nausicaa had abandoned her here on this cold beach voluntarily, purely because Luce wasn't doing what Nausicaa wanted her to do. Luce heard her own sobs merging with the larva's wails.

  ***

  Later that day Dorian met her in the rowboat, and she towed him through the daytime night to their secret shallow cave under the overhanging roots. But it hurt Luce to be there. It was incredible to think that only yesterday she'd sat on these stones listening to Dorian and Nausicaa talking, feeling annoyed and left out of the conversation. Now, of course, she would have given anything to have Nausicaa appear and interrupt their privacy. The sea seemed so brutal, so infinite in its rough indifference, like a monster that would only talk to itself. Dorian held Luce tight—she could hardly feel the shape of his body through all the winter layers—and stroked her hair while she cried.

  “I was just getting to like her,” Dorian observed wryly. “At first I thought she was such a bitch. But, Luce, listen—

  “Why didn't she understand that I can't leave you? It seems so unfair ...” Luce was dimly aware that she was being a little childish, but she couldn't help it. She felt as if her father's ship had just vanished, as if she'd watched her mother dying a second time, as if Catarina had run away from her again, all at once. She just couldn't stand to lose people anymore.

  “Luce? Baby? Listen. I know you don't want to hear it, but I swear it's better this way.”

  Luce looked up at him, outraged. Was he still resentful of the time she'd rushed off to save Nausicaa's life? “Just because you had to row home that night, and you got, like, jealous—

  “Not because of that,” Dorian sighed. He was still gently caressing Luce's back and hair as he spoke, and her face rested on his shoulder. “I admit I was a jerk about that. Okay? But Luce, Nausicaa didn't mean to, but she's kind of been holding you back.”

  Luce couldn't believe what she was hearing. No one had ever taught her as much as Nausicaa had. How could Dorian not realize that? “She's so brilliant, Dorian. And she knows so much...”

  “She is, she is, she is. Brilliant. But Luce, Nausicaa's also, like”—Dorian laughed—“old-fashioned. She just doesn't get how different everything is now. Because, I mean, from everything I've been reading the ocean is really in danger. And I know you'd like to help, right? If you could. But the thing is, there's not a whole lot you can do about it if you're stuck living in some cave somewhere, and you can't even let anyone know you exist.”

  Luce had a sudden queasy sense of where this was going. He hadn't mentioned his idea of trying to turn Luce human in weeks. Why did he have to bring it up now? “Dorian, it's crazy to keep talking about this!”

  “It's not crazy! You could do so much more if you were human again, Luce. I've been thinking, we could both become like marine biologists or climate scientists, and I'll be an artist, too. Then we could work together to change things! It would be a lot smarter than splashing around getting chased by orcas. But Nausicaa would never be able to see that, and as long as she was hanging around...”

  Luce understood. Dorian hadn't bothered to mention his project of turning Luce human recently because he'd known he'd never be able to persuade her to attempt it. Not while Nausicaa was there urging Luce not to listen to him. But now...

  “Nausicaa knew a bunch of mermaids who tried it. Changing back. She said she's known hundreds of mermaids who left the water, and only two of them survived.” Luce tried to keep her voice calm and reasonable. Why couldn't she make Dorian understand this? “So, Dorian, you really shouldn't keep asking me this! Not unless you want me to die.”

  “But those—” Dorian began. Luce looked up to see his eyes staring into the darkness. The indigo sky was crystalline with falling snow and with icicles that spiked from the roots above them. He took a deep breath. “Luce, those mermaids didn't have any help, right? They just let their boyfriends carry them onshore.”

  Luce was bewildered. What kind of help could a mermaid have in that situation? The best she could hope for was that someone would hold her while the pain lanced in from all directions, while she screamed in a blur of white, burning agony. Luce had felt that impossible suffering when she'd left the water to save Violet, and even the memory of it made her shiver. But if Dorian did have a better idea, well, then she might at least consider... “Help? Dorian, what are you talking about?”

  “We can't do this on our own, Luce. I know that. You'll die if we try it. And I don't ever want to live without you.” His voice was grim and settled. This wasn't some sudden impulse, Luce realized, but an idea he'd been mulling over for weeks. But there was only one entity she could think of who might be able to do what Dorian wanted.

  “But ... you said you didn't want to ask Proteus for any favors. Even if we could find him.” And what if Proteus agreed? Luce thought. Would she really give up the sea, the wild free sky, and her own astounding voice for the tedium of a normal human life? Even a life with Dorian?

  Maybe. Maybe she would. Since he was warm and kind and brave enough to accept her, forgive her, even after Emily ... Luce owed him something for that. She owed him so much...

  And he was right, anyway. It was the only way they'd ever be able to sleep beside each other; the only way that nagging heat could ever flare high enough to quiet again. Maybe. If she was really positive he'd still love her...

  Dorian twisted to look into her face. “I wasn't thinking of asking Proteus.”

  “Then who?”

  Dorian's eyes fixed on hers. They were full of secretive glimmers, passing shades. For the first time it occurred to Luce that there was something he wasn't telling her. He hesitated for a few more moments, his hands sliding through her jagged hair. “Ben Ellison.”

  “WHAT?” Luce screamed. Ben Ellison the FBI agent, Ben Ellison the enemy, always out to break Dorian's will. Luce felt the sudden panicked certainty that Dorian must have betrayed her and she began thrashing violently, wrenching her body out of his arms. She splashed back a few yards and slumped with her tail coiled tight, ready to whip away into the distance. Dorian was leaning toward her with his legs folded under him, his hands spread on the stones.

  “He's not a bad guy, Luce! I swear to God if we just talked to him ... he'd do whatever he could to help us. I know he would. And he's really smart, and he has to know, like, scientists and people who could figure this out. He just doesn't understand what it's like for you, but if you told him—

  “Told him about the mer
maids?” Luce's voice was so bitter she thought she might choke on it.

  “Well, I guess you'd have to, yeah.” Dorian almost sounded like he thought this was funny. “He'd probably notice the tail. But Luce, I'm pretty sure he already knows. He said some things ... I can't explain exactly, but I think the FBI knows you guys are out here. He said something about—that him and me are both in a select society, that almost nobody alive has heard what we've heard—

  “If they know,” Luce snarled, “then it's probably because somebody told them.”

  “I knew you'd think that.” Dorian sighed. “But it's totally unfair. I didn't tell them shit.”

  “But then—”

  “Jesus, Luce. It's not like I'm the only person who ever got saved by a mermaid! Maybe there aren't a lot of us, but ... And the FBI might have other ways to find stuff out, anyway. I mean, all those ships your tribe sank. Did any of you ever think that they might have surveillance cameras or something?”

  The camera, Luce thought. The words were like a slow-motion explosion that obliterated the world around her. Dorian was still talking, but she couldn't make out what he was saying. That black, furtive boat and the black-suited diver planting the camera she'd smashed. How could she have been stupid enough to believe it was the only one?

  “They'll try to kill all of us,” Luce said breathlessly. Her own voice was part of the white burst still spreading through her mind.

  And if the mermaids were threatened, how could she even consider changing into one of the creatures that wanted them dead? She'd have to do her best to defend her own kind. Not that Dorian would be too happy with her if she announced her intention of fighting on the mermaids' side.