Waking Storms

by Sarah Porter

  Some evil is coming to this place, Nausicaa had said.

  War.

  “That's exactly why you should talk to Ben Ellison,” Dorian answered coolly, and Luce struggled to focus on him again. “Look, Luce. He needs to know that you're not all the same. You'll be a lot safer that way. And if we can figure out some way to turn mermaids back without killing them...”

  Luce had never felt so angry with him. Did Dorian actually believe that she would abandon her fellow mermaids, even give the FBI information about them, simply in order to save herself? “No.”

  “He said he wants to meet you, Luce. I think he might be pretty ... open-minded about the whole thing. If you just gave him a chance.”

  Luce was leaning back propped on her hands, trying to think through everything Dorian was telling her. Her fingers curled over the pebbles of the seafloor, and she felt a subtle disturbance in the water. Maybe there were seals playing nearby?

  Suddenly Dorian was scrambling to his knees, throwing himself behind a snarl of roots and jumbled shards of rock. Luce gaped after him, confused. He wasn't completely hidden, just huddled back in a gloomy corner, but he was obviously trying to get out of sight as best he could.

  “Luce!” Violet screamed behind her, and Luce swung around in shock. Violet's sleek brown hair was streaming, her gray-green eyes bright and wild with some combination of exhilaration and terror. “Oh, God, Luce, she tried to kill us! I guess she heard the way we were practicing singing and got worried, because she actually pulled the air hose away! But I ... but we ... we'd gotten good enough at moving the water, and we managed to sing so that we shoved the bolt up just in time! Dana! Dana, she's here! I found her!”

  Luce was so overwhelmed that she could barely understand what Violet was saying to her, but one thing seemed clear. The she who'd tried to kill Violet could only have been Anais.

  And Violet was so beside herself that she hadn't spotted Dorian yet. But that couldn't last. “Let's go talk somewhere else,” Luce hazarded. If she could just coax Violet out of this shallow cave, around the bend of the cliffs, then she could come back for Dorian later.

  “We've got to get away now, Luce! When Anais finds out we've escaped ... we're swimming south before they start searching for us, and you have to be our queen now! You can't say no anymore!” Even in her bewilderment, Luce couldn't help but notice how different Violet suddenly seemed. The shy, cringing little mermaid who never even made a suggestion was actually ordering Luce around. “And, Luce, I can move the water by singing! Just like you! I'm not as good yet, but I will be! But you'll always be my queen because I learned it from you!”

  Luce had Violet's hand, and she was gently tugging her farther out. They were just moving beyond the jags that enclosed the cave and into the rough, high waves of the open sea. The darkness was speckled white with fine eddies of snow, and Dorian was behind them. As long as he stayed quiet Luce might be able to stop the other mermaids from discovering him.

  Dana's luminous brown face burst out of the water, blocking their way. Her hair was loose and matted and, Luce saw, she looked utterly drained. However giddy Violet might be, she and Dana had clearly been through a terrible ordeal. Dana glared at Luce as the three of them pitched in the darkness. Through the black glass waves Luce could see that Dana actually had her hands on her hips.

  “Why didn't you do anything to help us?” Dana demanded fiercely. “Why didn't you even try? Okay, we're alive, but it was way too close.”

  “I didn't know you were in trouble,” Luce objected. It sounded horribly lame. “I just thought you didn't want to talk to me anymore because of Jenna...” Was Dorian visible from this angle? It took all of Luce's willpower to keep from glancing over her shoulder to check. Dana stopped glowering at Luce, and her eyes fixed on something back in the direction of the cave.

  “What's that rowboat doing here?” Dana's voice was suddenly much quieter, stunned and airy.

  Luce's heart stopped, and she struggled to hold her voice steady. “Probably it just drifted here.”

  “It didn't drift! I can see the rope, it's tied up to that fallen tree!” Violet was whispering, too. She'd spun in place to stare back the way they'd come, and her sleek brown hair gleamed in the darkness. “There's got to be a human here, Luce! And they've been listening to us, and maybe they've even seen us...”

  Dana's face took on a weary, incredulous look, as if she just couldn't believe that there was one more problem she had to wrestle with. “Luce has this thing about not killing humans,” Dana explained to Violet, loudly enough that Dorian could almost certainly hear her. “I'll take care of this. Luce, sorry, I know you don't like it, but you're just going to have to deal.” Dana and Violet were swimming back toward the cave now and Luce followed along beside them. She wasn't about to let Dana hurt Dorian, and she knew she had to at least try to explain, but she had no idea where to start. Dana would be so hurt ...

  Dorian stepped out from behind the roots and walked calmly to the edge of the water, stopping five yards away from them. He looked strangely beautiful standing there, almost princely, with the golden tint of his wide, high-boned cheeks and his tangled brown-gold hair framed by the shadows behind him. “Hey,” he said. “That's not going to work.”

  Dana's eyes went wide. She was shocked into answering him. “"What's not going to work?”

  “Killing me. I'm not as easy to kill as most people,” Dorian announced. He sat down with his legs folded insolently close to the water's edge; close enough that Violet and Dana could simply grab him and drag him under, Luce realized. She was dismayed at the thought that she might have to fight the mermaids she cared about most.

  Dana was beginning to get over her astonishment at being spoken to by a human, and a wicked look came into her eyes. She was clearly eager to prove this presumptuous boy wrong, and she smiled as she started to hum very faintly. Dorian could defend himself perfectly well against mermaid song, Luce knew, but still...

  “Stop it!” Luce yelled.

  Dana wheeled around to confront her. “Luce, if this upsets you then you don't have to watch. Head south and we'll catch up with you in a few minutes, okay?”

  “It's not going to work,” Dorian repeated coolly, and the three mermaids spun to stare at him again. “Singing to me. I know how to keep from getting enchanted. And anyway, Dana, I'm not your enemy. Killing me would be totally stupid.”

  Dana and Violet both started speaking at the same instant. “Dana, I mean, he hasn't actually heard us sing yet,” Violet objected shyly, just as Dana snapped, “How do you know my name?”

  Dorian looked back and forth between the two of them, then grinned blatantly at Luce. He clearly found the situation entertaining, but Luce's insides were ice cold and her heart thrummed painfully. Much as Luce loved Dorian's courage, this seemed like a horrible moment for him to make a display of it. “Don't you know who I am, Dana?” Dorian asked.

  Dana's face turned green. “The boy Luce killed. The boy she said she killed...”

  “She tried. Twice. Like I said, I'm not that easy.” Dorian smiled with unconcealed amusement. “Now we've settled that, maybe we can be friends. I'm Dorian.”

  “Dorian,” Dana said. Her voice was as empty as the charred remains of a burned-out house. She turned to look at Luce, and her blank, violated face was the most horrible thing Luce had ever seen. “You lied to me.” She sounded much too calm.

  “I...” Luce began, but she couldn't keep going, and she couldn't look away from those ruined eyes. “Dana, I...”

  “You lied to my face while I was crying!” Dana's voice was rising to a shriek now. Her beautiful face was contorted into a crumpled mask, and with her rising scream serpents of seawater pulled themselves from the waves and writhed in the gusting air. Luce had never seen another mermaid control the sea with her voice before, and she stared mesmerized. “And we almost died because of you! You filthy, worthless, lying...” A twisted length of seawater ripped forward with insane speed, slashing Luce in th
e face so hard that she could feel her skin break. The blow threw her sideways, and she wobbled for a moment below the surface. Everything was green-black, warped, and shaken, and she could still hear Dana shrieking, her voice tearing at the sea as if it were made of thin fabric. Strange fissures of air like living wounds opened in the water around Luce, and she tasted her own blood.

  Luce came up screaming a note as harsh as stone, pain throbbing in her face. A rolling wave picked Dana up and twirled her over and over at full length, her long body a blur of caramel and ruby, until Luce gasped and Dana crashed back down. Her coppery tail kicked up white arcs of foam. For an instant they were silent, glaring at each other while Violet and Dorian looked on in shock, hands clenched over their ears. Stop this, Lucette! “Dana, this is wrong...” Luce tried. The welt burned from her forehead all the way to her chin.

  “You're the one who's wrong!” Dana was still screaming, but the magic had fallen out of her voice. The ocean crashed indifferently again, following its own cold rhythms.

  “But what was I supposed to do? Dana, please, think about it...” Luce gasped the words out desperately. Maybe it was too much to hope that Dana would ever forgive her, but at least she might be able to understand.

  “What were you supposed to do?” Dana was half sobbing now, her arms stretched out on the pitching waves as if she was searching for support. “God, Luce, how can you ask me that?”

  But I couldn’t do what you wanted, Luce thought. I couldn’t kill him! She was just starting to say this when Dana interrupted, her voice like a sustained moan. “Luce, you were supposed to trust me! You should have trusted me enough to tell me the truth!”

  Somehow this was the last thing Luce had expected Dana to say.

  It was worse than anything she could have imagined Dana would say. And it was impossible to answer, because she knew that Dana was right. Luce was knocked into silence and darkness. Her thoughts billowed like smoky clouds, and she stared helplessly at the rocks and the icy, domineering sea. The unforgivable thing wasn't that she'd let Dorian live, but rather that she'd treated one of her few real friends as if she were an enemy, as someone who deserved to be fooled.

  Apologizing wouldn't help, Luce realized. Dana's face was buckling in pain, smeared with tears. For a full minute no one spoke.

  “Violet,” Dana murmured at last, “let's get out of here. We're never coming back. "Well never even think about this...”

  “I still want Luce to come with us,” Violet whispered. “She's still my queen.” Despite the words there was something horribly raw in Violet's face, Luce saw: the dull grief of disillusionment.

  “That is no one's queen,” Dana replied coldly. She wouldn't look at Luce anymore.

  “But...” Violet gazed at Luce in urgent appeal, her childish gray-green eyes washed by tides of heartache. “Luce, don't you want to be with us?”

  “Luce isn't going anywhere,” Dorian suddenly put in loudly. There was something disruptive about the sound of his voice, as if they'd all forgotten he was still there or that he was capable of speech. “She belongs with me.”

  For the first time Luce wasn't so sure. Hadn't Dorian asked her to talk to the FBI? If Dana felt this betrayed now, what on earth would she think if Luce became an informant for the humans?

  Violet was crying as she swam up and kissed Luce on the seeping welt that striped her cheek. The kiss stung, and Luce knew that the taste of her blood would linger on Violet's lips through her long journey south.

  Then Violet and Dana were gone. The waves closed behind them. Luce gazed out beyond the spot where they'd vanished, and the sea appeared like a vast field crowded with the black silk tents of a lost army.

  Luce swirled over to the shore and stretched out face-up, her fins dragging weakly across the stones of the seabed. Dorian drew close and softly washed the blood from her face. “Luce?” he said. “You know they had to find out sometime, right?”

  Luce didn't answer, and Dorian gave up trying to talk to her and wrapped his arms around his knees, staring out to sea. Luce turned her head until she couldn't see even a sliver of his clothing. Nothing but the racing snow. She knew Dorian was still sitting silent beside her, and she knew she had to take him home, but it was hours before she moved or spoke.

  17. Ice

  The pack ice began to float in from the north. It came sparsely at first, a broken white parade dancing over the surface of the water, and it didn't take Luce long to realize she'd underestimated how dangerous it might be. The blocks were big and heavy enough that if the waves threw one against her head, maybe in a storm, the blow would surely knock her unconscious or possibly even break her neck. The world became a waltz of ice and darkness, the pale crags of far snowy mountains traced on a black sky far taller than any mountain. And the cold was fierce enough now to bother even a mermaid a little. Luce dug Dorian's olive parka out of its hiding place every night and slept with it wrapped around her upper body, breathing his warm, earthy smell.

  Dorian had said she was all he had left. Now with Nausicaa and Dana gone he was all she had, too. She couldn't escape the suspicion that he might be secretly glad about that, but she couldn't stop loving him either. In the days following their confrontation with Dana, Luce and Dorian seemed to be living in the center of an infinite castle carved from black glass and white snow. Their voices echoed in each other's minds as if through winding corridors and abandoned ballrooms. Every afternoon they sprawled together on the beach, Dorian's breath emerging in a series of pale clouds. Sometimes Luce would drag the rowboat along the shore under crystal overhangs that dripped from the cliffs, accumulated icicles so thick that they became monstrous slabs of rippling light in the darkness. The aurora borealis hovered like shining green rain or like scarlet plumes, the colored glow caught and distorted by the ice.

  It was all so beautiful and so dreamlike that it could be hard to remember how real the world was and how serious their problems were. Once or twice Dorian tried again to bring up his idea of asking Ben Ellison to find a way to turn Luce back.

  “I'd rather try it without him,” Luce finally said. “Just you and me. It might kill me, maybe, but I wouldn't be betraying anyone else that way. Even if I died at least I wouldn't hate myself!”

  Even in the dimness Luce could see that Dorian's face had turned ashy white. “I will not let that happen! Luce, we're not going to do this unless ... unless it's at least kind of safe. I mean, I'd go insane if you died because of me!”

  Safe, Luce thought a little contemptuously. The word was ridiculous considering what they were talking about. “Then don't ask me anymore, or ... Dorian, can't we just be together like this?”

  She might have to do what she could to protect the other mermaids someday, but she couldn't tell him that. He'd only get angry if he knew she was considering doing anything as dangerous as throwing herself into battle.

  She couldn't realistically hope ever to change back, of course. Almost certainly not. But even so she pictured herself walking barefoot up to his door, his old olive parka hanging to her thighs; how astonished he would look as he realized it was her standing there ... Would he still love her as much if she had an ordinary human face again, though, and if she lost the power in her singing?

  They were lying on their secret beach. Dorian was stretched out parallel to the shore while Luce's head rested on his stomach. On one side a motionless fountain of dripping ice hung in permanent suspense from a jumble of high roots, and on the other the pale fallen tree sprawled in the water like the diamond-crusted spine of a murdered giant. The rowboat jerked in the grip of its stripped, ivory branches. “This is amazing,” Dorian admitted. “It's all more gorgeous than anything I ever thought would happen to me. Except it's so damn cold.” He laughed.

  “And anyway,” Luce pursued doubtfully, “if I got to be human I wouldn't be able to sing to you anymore. Not, like, real singing anyway...” She was surprised at how anxious she felt to hear what he would say about that.

  “That would suc
k,” Dorian agreed. “I've kind of imagined that maybe you'd get to keep your voice. But if you didn't I'd really miss it.” He was quiet for a moment, his fingers brushing across Luce's naked shoulders. “Sing to me now?”

  Luce was a little disappointed by his answer, but she sang anyway. She sang a cluster of delicate notes as pointed as the light of stars, then idly used her voice to pull a sphere of water free of the ocean's surface. Dorian let out a faint cry, and Luce began carefully shifting the tone of her song. She sang several notes at once and gathered some of them into tense bundles, let others blow and belly outward, all to sculpt the blob of water that was trembling in midair. It looked ebony black and gleaming in the dimness, but a few hints of crimson glow slipped from the far-off aurora and curled in the watery head. She gave it broad high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, and then with some difficulty managed a large, slightly crooked nose. Shaping the sculpture with her voice felt almost like caressing Dorian's head with her fingers, tracing the familiar curves and planes.

  “Oh my God!” Dorian whispered after a minute. “That's me! Luce, how can you ... I mean, it's so incredible...”

  Luce didn't answer. She was still concentrating on her portrait of Dorian, trying to get the slope of his forehead exactly right. The hair was going to be tricky. She divided her voice into more notes than she had ever managed before, all weaving together, and thick sinuous strands of water began to spin from the floating head. The red light of the aurora curved like rose petals in its core. Her voice was soft yet still piercing; it felt like they were listening to the night's own secret thoughts cast in music.

  Dorian had started crying silently from the power of that music, and Luce softly lowered the water-sculpture, letting it flow back into the sea. She was amazed herself by how much the sculpture had looked like him and by how graceful it was. Her earlier attempts had been crude by comparison.

  “God, Luce! I wish there was some way we could have kept that! I mean, I think I'm a good artist and everything, but that was so beautiful!”